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The briefing identifies critical policy gaps in national coal transitions, emphasizing that a 'just transition' requires more than carbon pricing. It highlights the need to protect workers, build local economic resilience, avoid stranded assets, coordinate international trade flows, and secure financing. The document frames these managed transitions as a credible way for countries to increase their climate ambition within the UNFCCC framework.

The report argues that current technologies are insufficient to meet the Paris Agreement's 1.5˚C limit for the steel and cement industries. While efficiency gains and energy supply decarbonisation could reduce emissions by 30%–50% below current trends by 2050, further reductions will require innovative low-carbon technologies, product substitutions, circular production, and carbon capture and storage (CCS).

The document outlines the technical framework for analyzing New Mexico's energy transition, comparing a 'business-as-usual' baseline against a strengthened renewable portfolio standard (RPS). It specifies the cost, performance, and retirement assumptions for various power generation technologies and the economic parameters used to estimate job creation and local revenue from wind, solar, and transmission projects.

The document analyzes how the rise of variable renewable energy (VRE) undermines current electricity market designs, which rely on short-term marginal costs often set by natural gas. It highlights risks such as zero or negative pricing and increased financing costs due to investor uncertainty. To resolve this, the authors propose splitting the system into an 'energy market' for long-term, low-risk contracts for capital-intensive resources and a 'delivery market' that uses locational marginal pricing to incentivize flexibility from batteries, demand response, and dispatchable plants.

The document analyzes data from the TerraClass database showing a significant increase in secondary vegetation in the Brazilian Amazon, growing from under 10 million hectares in 2004 to over 17 million hectares in 2014. It highlights that current monitoring systems, PRODES and DETER, are designed to detect primary forest deforestation and therefore leave secondary vegetation 'invisible'. The authors argue that understanding the drivers of this regeneration is essential for optimizing land use, reducing the costs of implementing the Forest Code, and achieving Brazil's carbon emission reduction targets under the Paris Agreement.

New data from the TerraClass dataset reveals that tropical secondary vegetation in the Brazilian Amazon increased by over 70% between 2004 and 2014, growing from 10 million to more than 17 million hectares. This regrowth represents nearly a quarter of the total area ever cleared in the region. Despite this increase, Brazil's primary satellite monitoring systems, PRODES and DETER, are designed to track primary deforestation and do not capture tropical regrowth, leaving the phenomenon largely invisible in official deforestation rates. The document argues that this regeneration does not necessarily equal primary forest in biological or ecological terms and calls for rigorous analysis to determine how it interacts with the Brazilian Forest Code, carbon reduction goals, and land-use efficiency.

The document outlines stakeholder feedback on the California Air Resources Board's (ARB) CCS Concept Paper, arguing that CCS is critical for California's GHG goals but requires flexible, risk-based regulatory frameworks to attract investment. The authors advocate for the integration of CCS into both the Low Carbon Fuel Standard and Cap & Trade programs, express skepticism toward a 'checkbox' approach for permanence protocols, and propose a tiered, performance-based system for post-injection monitoring instead of arbitrary 50- or 100-year default periods.

ClientEarth has alerted Glencore and its investors to potential legal risks arising from the company's 2016 corporate reporting. The organization contends that Glencore's assertions—specifically that its coal assets will not become stranded and that demand will continue to grow—ignore critical market trends and independent analyses. ClientEarth highlights that the omission of disruptive factors, such as the rise of renewables and peaking demand in China, could be viewed as reckless or fraudulent under the UK's Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, potentially granting shareholders the right to claim compensation for losses.

The authors argue that the Proposed Plan underestimates the readiness and effectiveness of Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS). They assert that CCS is technologically viable, citing sixteen integrated projects in North America and the necessity of the technology for deep decarbonization in industrial sectors like steel and cement. The coalition recommends that the Scoping Plan explicitly include CCS for both industrial and power sectors, identify potential synergies with the reduction of toxics and criteria pollutants, and remove regulatory barriers, such as the requirement that carbon capture occur onsite at crude oil production facilities.

The Climate, Land, Ambition and Rights Alliance (CLARA) provides recommendations for land-use policies within the UNFCCC framework. The briefing emphasizes the need for free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) for indigenous peoples, the protection of collective land rights, and the adoption of agroecological practices. It strongly opposes the use of terrestrial carbon sinks to offset industrial emissions, citing the non-permanence of such sinks and the unreliability of soil carbon accounting. Additionally, it warns against large-scale bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and 'Climate Smart Agriculture' due to risks of land grabs and corporate green-washing.

The Clean Air Task Force asserts that President Trump's Executive Order to rescind the Climate Action Plan and related rules cannot be implemented by 'administrative fiat' due to the requirement for notice and comment rulemaking. The author argues that the Clean Power Plan is a cost-effective method for reducing emissions from power plants and that curbing methane emissions from the oil and gas industry is essential for public health and the climate, noting that methane is '70 times as potent a warmer as CO2' over its first 20 years.

The Clean Air Task Force (CATF) supports Massachusetts' proposed technology-neutral Clean Energy Standard, which includes nuclear power and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) to help achieve an 80% reduction in grid carbon emissions by 2050. However, CATF argues that the proposed power plant emissions caps are not deep enough and fail to account for the 'maximum technologically feasible reductions' required by law. Additionally, the document criticizes the state's methane reduction proposals for being too narrow, focusing only on certain leaky distribution pipelines for three years while ignoring larger transmission and storage facilities.

The report examines the lifecycle emissions of major transportation fuels, finding that while electricity and biofuels are becoming cleaner, oil is becoming more polluting due to the shift toward unconventional sources like tar sands and fracking. It advocates for the 'Half the Oil' plan to reduce U.S. oil use by 50% by 2035 and calls for greater corporate accountability, transparency in emissions reporting, and a shift toward renewable electricity and non-food biofuels.

The report argues that while vehicle tailpipe emissions are decreasing due to efficiency gains, the overall climate impact of gasoline is rising because the oil industry is shifting toward more energy-intensive and polluting extraction and refining methods. It highlights the high emissions from depleted wells, tight oil (fracking), and tar sands, and calls for increased transparency, the elimination of routine flaring, and a transition to cleaner fuels to reduce the projected 100 billion barrels of oil consumption between 2015 and 2035.

The author asserts that the $7 billion cost of the Kemper plant in Mississippi is attributable to the first-of-a-kind TRIG gasifier and construction issues, not the Selexol carbon capture technology, which is a well-established process used in over 110 projects. The document contrasts Kemper with the Petra Nova project in Texas, which was completed on budget as a retrofit. Kemper is presented as globally significant because it demonstrates the storage side of coal gasification, offering a potential model for coal-to-chemicals plants in China to stop venting CO2. Domestically, the project demonstrates the expandability of the U.S. CO2 pipeline network. The author concludes by calling for Congressional incentives, such as production tax credits, to accelerate the deployment of carbon capture in the power and industrial sectors.

The report assesses the environmental impacts of the proposed Thabametsi coal-fired power station, focusing on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, climate resilience, and palaeontological risks. It finds that while the project will have a 'High (Negative)' significance rating due to 'Very Large' GHG emissions, it aligns with South Africa's energy policy and is more efficient than the country's oldest coal plants. Climate risks include water shortages and high temperatures, while palaeontological risks are rated as low to medium depending on the geological formation. The report concludes there are no environmental fatal flaws, provided mitigation measures are implemented.

The report argues that achieving the EU's 2050 climate targets requires a broad portfolio of innovative production processes, material substitution, and efficiency gains. It proposes an integrated policy approach combining EU ETS reform—specifically the 'inclusion of consumption' to ensure carbon price pass-through—with public procurement and targeted innovation support, such as carbon contracts for differences, to overcome investment risks and the 'technology valley of death'.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is conducting a comprehensive review of the Federal coal program via a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS). This scoping report identifies key areas for reform, including increasing royalty rates to ensure fair market value, accounting for greenhouse gas emissions through carbon budgets or royalty adders, and improving lease process efficiency. The document summarizes extensive public input and proposes several combination packages of policy options to be analyzed in the Draft PEIS, alongside 'no action' and 'no leasing' alternatives.

Spain has experienced a sharp decline in coal production and employment over the last two decades, driven by EU legislation, falling international prices, and the rise of renewable energy. While government plans successfully reduced coal's share in the energy mix, efforts to mitigate socioeconomic impacts in mining regions were largely ineffective, focusing too heavily on public infrastructure rather than the creation of sustainable alternative industries.

The document examines the Dutch coal experience, starting with the state-managed closure of domestic mines in Limburg (1965-1974) driven by the discovery of natural gas and political shifts. It details the social engineering and subsidies used to transition 75,000 workers, noting that while the region eventually diversified, the process was lengthy and marked by economic crises. The study then analyzes the 'return of coal' in the 1970s, where policy shifted toward imported coal to diversify energy security after the oil crises, leading to a lasting reliance on coal-fired power plants. It concludes that current climate targets and court rulings now clash with this path-dependency, creating a risk of stranded assets in modern coal plants.