At Climate Home News, we found this year a pretty depressing one to cover, shaped as it was by Donald Trump’s attacks on climate science and action at home and abroad – and rounded off by the UN declaring global warming will break through the key 1.5C limit the world set itself in 2015.
But it wasn’t all bad. Nobody had decided to follow the US out of the Paris Agreement by the time it turned 10 this month. Anti-climate candidates in Canada and Australia, backed by Trump, lost elections convincingly. And 2025 may also have been the year carbon dioxide emissions fell for the first time.
What’s more, our reporting this year saw results in the real world. After we revealed that Chilean doctors believe pollution from copper mines in the northern hub of Calama is causing autism, campaigners sued state-owned mining company Codelco. The case is ongoing.
One of the lawyers representing the campaigners said “when [Climate Home News] revealed our silent suffering and our fight, we felt we had finally been heard and had entered the national conversation thanks to international media coverage. That was the final push to file the lawsuit.”
If you want to fund more impactful reporting like this in 2026, please subscribe and unlock all of our content for just the price of a coffee per week. Or to keep up with our latest coverage, you can sign up for our free newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, BlueSky and Facebook.
Below are nine of our best stories this year and, if that’s not enough, here’s nine more from 2024.
1. Solar squeeze: US tariffs threaten panel production and jobs in Thailand
In the year of trade wars, Trump extended Biden-era tariffs on solar panels from China to neighbouring countries. Nicha Wachpanich spoke to some of those workers who subsequently lost their jobs making panels at Chinese-run factories in Thailand and found that the US levies and bad behaviour by bosses had combined to crush their dreams of a better life.
2. Business-as-usual: Donors pour climate adaptation finance into big infrastructure, neglecting local needs
Trump being Trump, and axing US climate finance, is no reason to let other wealthy donor nations off the hook. We examined the latest spreadsheets for annual adaptation aid and found Japan is counting support for massive infrastructure projects in its figures, despite them having only a dubious role in helping people adapt to climate change.
Our reporter Tanbirul Miraj Ripon visited one such project – the Matarbari port in Bangladesh. He found that the port handles coal and gas imports and has destroyed locals’ homes and livelihoods. Despite this, on paper it represents $363 million in Japanese climate adaptation finance, the biggest single climate resilience project being funded by a wealthy country in 2023.
3. Ethiopia’s bold EV ambitions hit bumps in rural areas
Other nations are trying hard to go green but finding it tricky. This year, Ethiopia hosted the Africa Climate Summit, was selected as the host of COP32 and opened the continent’s biggest hydropower dam.
It plans to use some of this clean power to charge electric vehicles, after banning imports of cars with internal combustion engines (even as the European Union is softening its own 2035 ban on ICEs). While that will reduce Ethiopia’s already tiny emissions and its fossil fuel import bills, it won’t be easy in a nation where only half the population has electricity access, as Solomon Yimer and Vivian Chime reported.
4. Ending poverty and gangs: How Zambia seeks to cash in on the global drive for EVs
Other African governments are trying to cash in on their minerals, which big players like China, the US and increasingly Saudi Arabia want for green technologies and/or making equipment for wars.
Pamela Kapekele went to look at the situation in Zambia’s Copperbelt province – where you can probably guess what they produce! She found that good tax regulations and working conditions will be needed if locals are to see the benefits of surging demand for the metal.
Later in the year, an acid spill from a copper-mine tailings dam that contaminated the country’s main river showed the value of environmental regulation too. Reporting from Nigeria’s lithium and South Africa’s platinum mines also highlighted the challenges of making minerals mining and processing cleaner and fairer for communities.
5. Is the world’s big idea for greener air travel a flight of fancy?
Some sectors – like international aviation and shipping – tend to fall outside the scope of national media, and it’s a gap we’ve aimed to fill. Together with Singapore’s Straits Times, we tracked the supply chain for what the airline industry calls “Sustainable Aviation Fuel” (SAF) and found that virgin and barely used palm oil – which threatens rainforests – is being passed off as waste cooking oil and used to power planes in Europe.
Malaysia is a particular hotspot for this fraud, as government subsidies there make virgin palm oil cheap in the shops – and it can be sold for a higher price as “used” cooking oil, providing a profit motive for flipping it. Our investigation was picked up by the Financial Times, Bloomberg and the Malaysian authorities, who have since launched a crackdown on this kind of fraud.
But with verification of the materials used for SAF relying on just a handful of commercial auditors conducting mainly paper-based checks, airlines currently cannot know for sure if their green jet fuel is actually sustainable. Their advertising to passengers should – but often doesn’t – reflect this uncertainty.
6. Brazil’s environment minister suggests roadmap to end fossil fuels at COP30
Our reporting was often prescient this year. We called it correctly that the US would leave the Paris Agreement but not the UNFCCC, that Argentina would not follow America out of Paris, that Ethiopia rather than Nigeria would be chosen as COP32 host and that petrostates would try to kill a new green shipping framework at the International Maritime Organization.
We are also pretty sure we were the first – at least in English – to pick up on Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva’s proposal for COP30 to agree on a roadmap away from fossil fuels, which she aired back in June at London Climate Week. That proposal was pushed by President Lula at the start of COP30, dominated much of the conversation at the summit and will continue to be discussed throughout 2026.
8. PR firm working for Shell wins COP30 media contract
In the summer of 2025, our crack investigative reporter Matteo Civillini got the scoop on how the Brazilian government, via a contract tendered by the UN, was working with Edelman on international media relations for the COP30 climate summit while the global PR giant was simultaneously engaged in promoting Shell’s fossil fuel interests in Brazil.
This story was picked up by a range of other media, and amplified calls for agencies whose clients include fossil fuel firms to be excluded from the climate negotiations. Advocacy group Clean Creatives was inspired by Matteo’s reporting to launch a campaign against Edelman’s COP involvement. That culminated in an open letter from influencers and creators with a combined audience of over 24 million calling for Edelman to be dropped. The drumbeat on this theme is likely to get louder in 2026.
8. “House of cards”: Verra used junk carbon credits to fix Shell’s offsetting scandal
And talking of smoke and mirrors, just when we thought the murky web of carbon offsetting linking oil and gas major Shell to sham rice-farming projects in China couldn’t get any more convoluted, it did exactly that.
By combing through the records of carbon-credit registry Verra – the world’s biggest – Matteo confirmed that nearly a million bogus offsets from 10 disqualified methane reduction projects had been compensated for with the same number of junk credits from another four such projects that were also axed by Verra.
“It’s frankly unbelievable that Verra considers it appropriate to compensate for hot air credits with other hot air credits,” Jonathan Crook, policy lead at Carbon Market Watch, told us. “To pretend this is a satisfactory resolution is both absurd and deeply alarming.”
Verra insists the replacement credits were technically available to plug the gap left by the first batch – even though the second set, too, now need to be swapped out. Shell is keeping its distance, saying it does not manage or operate “the projects in question” despite being earlier involved in the Chinese rice-farming programmes as their “authorised representative”. Mind-boggling indeed!
9. Self-taught mechanics give second life to Jordan’s glut of spent EV batteries
In what was on balance a bad year, we brought you some hope too. A landmark advisory opinion on climate change and human rights from the International Court of Justice in The Hague was stronger than anyone imagined and may open the door to lawsuits against polluting countries and companies in 2026.
Other good news stories included analysts suggesting China’s fossil fuel use could peak this year, the UN’s loss and damage fund launching its first call for proposals, South Korea and Morocco moving to phase out coal and a boom in imports of solar panels to Africa.
Hope came too from ordinary people and their ingenuity – like the untrained Jordanians interviewed by Yamuna Matheswaran, hooking up solar panels to old Tesla batteries, lowering both their electricity bills and their carbon emissions into the bargain.
The post Nine of our best climate stories from 2025 appeared first on Climate Home News.
SYDNEY, Thursday 20 August 2026 — Commenting on the release of the government’s final nature law standards made today, including for Matters of National Environmental Significance, the following lines can be attributed to Glenn Walker, Head of Nature at Greenpeace Australia Pacific:
“Ultimately the test of the new nature law standards will be whether they materially bring down Australia’s shockingly high rates of deforestation caused by bulldozing for beef and logging of native forests.
“Deforestation severely threatens the forest homes of some of Australia’s most threatened species including the koala, greater glider and swift parrot. In Queensland the bulldozing of forests is causing mass erosion and the run off of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of muddy soil on the Great Barrier Reef each year.
“Unless these standards deliver protection for the Great Barrier Reef from deforestation runoff and ensure the healthy recovery of wildlife under threat then they will have failed.
“There’s clear improvement on the draft standards that were released, which we welcome, but what we have today still falls well short of what would be optimal. In particular, the heavy reliance on offsets and the failure to address the cumulative impacts of hundreds of instances of deforestation–death by a thousand cuts–create serious ongoing weaknesses in the way the standards work. The acid test will now be in the operation: will the standards succeed in stopping deforestation, or not.
“The effectiveness of the nature law reforms hang heavily on these standards. We will be watching closely as they are implemented and raising the alarm on any failure to curb deforestation.”
-ENDS-
Phalkun Out is manager of energy policy and government relations at EnergyLab Asia.
Cambodia has made impressive strides in transitioning from dirty coal and imported electricity to homegrown renewable energy that now accounts for nearly half of the electricity mix. The kingdom has a target to source 70% of its total power capacity from renewables by 2030. This is achievable but requires global support and cooperation.
The recent momentum on developing a formal process to assist countries in transitioning away from fossil fuels (TAFF) is very encouraging. The roadmap process championed by the COP30 Brazil presidency and at the Santa Marta conference in Colombia shows a clear appetite among countries to invest in a just and orderly transition.
The current energy crisis provides a stark reminder of how relying on imported fossil fuels, like oil and gas, puts at risk our economic competitiveness and energy security. The impact on families, particularly poorer households, has been devastating as they struggle to pay for transport, food and electricity.
-
China keeps Indonesia’s battery dream afloat but future less certain
Chinese capital and technology turned Indonesia into the world’s top nickel supplier, but its dependence on China and the rise of nickel-free batteries could upset its battery ecosystem plans -
New coal mine openings slow as East Asian demand plateaus
China and Australia drove global decline in new capacity additions in 2025, but planned production kept growing
Even as Cambodia has been able to shield itself from the worst impacts, thanks to its renewable investments, this moment is still a wake-up call for all of Southeast Asia, which has experienced a devastating oil shock twice in a decade.
Given the turbulent times ahead, the region cannot afford a return to the status quo of high dependence on foreign fuel supplies. As a clean energy leader, Cambodia can play a critical role in elevating the importance of clean energy transition at the regional level.
Cambodia cannot go it alone
A new international governance framework and coordinated transition plans are essential for Cambodia and the rest of Southeast Asia to achieve a just and orderly transition. There are structural barriers that need to be overcome swiftly.
However, to reach Cambodia’s 70% renewables target, the government plans to overcome structural hurdles – upgrading grid infrastructure, managing limited fiscal space, and addressing the high upfront capital costs of renewable energy – that require more than local effort.
Concessional loans and grants similar to the $110-million World Bank credit to Cambodia for the Sustainable Energy Transition Project, approved in June 2026, are crucial to help build smart grids, high-voltage transmission lines and large-scale battery energy storage systems, needed to make the most of the new renewables coming online.
Global initiatives like the COP31 Türkiye presidency’s plans to champion electrification and a global target for electricity to provide 35% of final energy consumption by 2035 are commendable. But they still need to be understood in terms of what opportunities and support this could offer for countries like Cambodia.
(Photo: EnergyLab Asia)
(Photo: EnergyLab Asia)
Cambodia has seen progress on electrification, recording a 127% increase in year-on-year electric vehicle registrations in 2025. And, to sustain the renewable energy momentum, the government eliminated import taxes and duties on solar and energy storage technologies in April, which analysts predict will slash total renewable project costs by an estimated 7% to 30%.
Energy think-tank Ember has also noted a trend across Asia in which countries that built the skills to make electronics then moved into electric technologies, manufacturing solar panels, heat pumps and electric vehicles. This suggests Cambodia could follow with the right government financial and policy support.
However, for these trends to continue and even accelerate, continued international financial and technical support for countries like Cambodia is also essential.
COP31 can enhance cooperation and support
At COP30 last November, Brazil agreed to develop a global roadmap on transitioning away from fossil fuels, and several countries made it clear this was a priority for them.
The Brazil COP30 presidency previewed its roadmap at the Bonn climate talks in June, championing the roadmap as a flexible implementation tool adaptable to national circumstances. This guide can be used by countries like Cambodia to structure its transition and tackle technical barriers.
Southeast Asia’s fragile grids threaten billions in clean energy investment
The Turkish and Australian COP31 presidencies this year have the opportunity to transform the roadmap and prevent the issue from being sidelined at the summit in Antalya. The world needs a coordinated process that can sustain deliberate planning, technology transfer and adequate public investment.
For regions like Southeast Asia and Africa, the transition is not just a climate obligation; it is an economic necessity that requires the world to stop talking and start building.
The post Collective global roadmap can boost Cambodia’s energy transition goals appeared first on Climate Home News.
Collective global roadmap can boost Cambodia’s energy transition goals
When a South Korean firm pulled the plug on a multibillion-dollar investment last year, it was a major blow to Indonesia’s plans to build an integrated battery-manufacturing ecosystem – until a group of Chinese companies stepped into the breach.
Project Titan aims to tap Indonesia’s vast nickel reserves in East Halmahera – the epicentre for mining the sought-after metal – before shipping refined and processed material to make batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) more than 2,000 kilometres away in a factory in West Java.
Even before South Korean battery firm LG Energy Solution scrapped its planned $8.45 billion investment in Project Titan, citing “various factors” including market conditions, years of stalled feasibility studies had cast doubt on the initiative – a pillar of Indonesia’s goal to use its nickel riches to become a global battery manufacturing hub and a base for EV production in the region.
The $6-billion investment and cooperation framework struck earlier this year between state companies and a Chinese consortium keeps Project Titan alive, but it also highlights Indonesia’s heavy dependence on China for capital, technology and materials in battery manufacturing.
-
Allegations of harm at China-backed transition minerals projects rise
The growth in recorded abuses linked to Chinese investments comes as a new mediation mechanism between companies and communities gets underway -
Indonesia and Vietnam set for surge in coal use this decade despite transition deals
Rising demand in Southeast Asia and India is expected to prevent coal use from falling significantly this decade, the International Energy Agency predicts -
Cobalt and nickel-free electric car batteries boom in “good news” for rainforests
Lithium iron phosphate batteries do not contain cobalt and nickel, which are mostly found in rainforest nations like the DR Congo and Indonesia
“We get cash but there is no tech transfer or skilled labour jobs,” Zulfikar Rakhmat, director of the China-Indonesia Desk at the Jakarta-based Center of Economic and Law Studies, told Climate Home News. Indonesia’s dependence on China for funding, nickel smelting and processing capacity is “almost total”, he added.
And at a time when cheaper nickel-free battery alternatives are winning over the EV market, China’s outsized role could bring additional commercial risks for Indonesia’s emerging battery industry.
“If Indonesia’s battery chain is seen as entirely Chinese-owned and coal-powered, its product will struggle to enter the Western markets,” Rakhmat added, referring to efforts by countries, including the European Union, to break their dependence on Chinese cleantech and reduce imports of carbon-intensive goods.
A Chinese tale of two halves: steel and batteries
Chinese investment in industrial projects to develop Indonesia’s nickel reserves – the world’s largest – is not new.
China was “the main engine” behind the country’s successful push to refine its nickel domestically after the government banned the export of raw ore in 2020, said Berlin Syahputra Situmorang, a researcher at the Indonesian Initiative for Sustainable Mining.
China, which imported most of Indonesia’s raw nickel ore prior to the ban, invested billions of dollars in building the country’s refining capacity.
Large, mostly coal-powered industrial parks sprang up near mines to refine nickel, some of which have been associated with extensive environmental and human rights abuses.
By 2025, Indonesia produced two-thirds of the world’s raw nickel supply and boasted 43% of nickel refining capacity. Yet three-quarters of the country’s refining capacity is controlled by Chinese firms, according to research by the Washington-based research organisation C4ADS.
And while the Indonesian government talked about developing its mineral wealth to power the batteries needed for the energy transition, Indonesia’s real success was to develop a stainless steel industry, the biggest consumer of nickel globally.
More than 80% of Indonesia’s nickel supplied the stainless steel sector in 2025, with only 17% going into the EV battery supply chain, according to analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).
“It’s a tale of two different parts,” said Lloyd Hain, managing director of Xenith Market Services, an Australian mining and supply chain consultancy. “Indonesian stainless steel goes all over the world. The battery side, however, has been a completely different story.”
An emerging battery ecosystem
Developing a battery industry has proved a lot more difficult. Several plants to process nickel into battery-grade materials are planned or under construction across the country, but many remain at early stages of development.
Still, Indonesia’s battery exports exceeded $1 billion in 2025, according to data from the UN Comtrade Database. By 2028, CREA estimates that 30% of Indonesia’s nickel production will go towards making battery materials.
The nation’s first battery cell plant in Karawang, West Java, began operating in 2024. It was developed by South Korean car maker Hyundai and LG Energy Solution, which continues to operate the facility despite withdrawing from Project Titan.
-
Southeast Asia’s fragile grids threaten billions in clean energy investment
Renewables developers need reliable electricity infrastructure and stable policies to help the region meet climate goals and surging demand for power -
India looks to untapped graphite riches for slice of critical minerals boom
Clean energy demand for battery-grade graphite is surging, but India faces hurdles as it positions itself to compete with China’s grip on the supply chain -
Recycling could meet half of Europe’s critical mineral needs by 2050
A new report by an EU-funded research project says the bloc could harness its “urban mines” to reduce its dependence on China for energy transition minerals
Project Titan, the flagship integrated battery project, aims to develop 20 gigawatt hours (GWh) of capacity to produce nickel-based EV batteries as well as energy storage batteries to support the country’s goal of rolling out 100 GW of solar capacity in the next four years.
Under the deal agreed this year, it will be operated by Indonesian state companies and a consortium including China’s Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt and battery manufacturer EVE Energy.
Another $5.9-billion joint venture between state firms and a consortium led by Chinese battery giant CATL will develop nickel mining, processing and a battery-recycling factory in East Halmahera as well as a 6.9 GWh battery facility in Karawang, with plans to scale.
Collaboration with Chinese firms “is expected to encourage technology transfer so that national companies can become leaders in their own country”, Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Bahlil Lahadalia said in a statement about Project Titan.
Foreign companies investing in Indonesia are required to partner with the Indonesia Battery Corporation (IBC), a state-owned enterprise made up of state mining and energy firms, tasked with establishing the capabilities for developing a battery and EV ecosystem.
It is the complexity of making batteries that underlies Indonesia’s dependence on Chinese know-how, said Situmorang of the Indonesian Initiative for Sustainable Mining.
Without a transfer of technology, Indonesia “risks remaining dependent on external players for the most advanced parts of the value chain”, Situmorang told Climate Home News.
Forging a path of its own
Indonesia’s reliance on China does not stop at money and technical knowledge. It also relies on Chinese imports of key battery materials, such as lithium and graphite.
That means Indonesia should aim to diversify its investment partners by working more closely with South Korean companies and seek long-term lithium and graphite supply deals with major producers such as Australia, said Rakhmat of the Center of Economic and Law Studies.
It must also invest in domestic research and development as well as nurturing its own engineering talent, he added.
Eventually, however, the Indonesian government will need to decide whether it wants to integrate its battery ecosystem “completely and unconditionally” into China’s EV supply chain “or go its own way”, said Shen Wei, a research fellow at the UK-based Institute of Development Studies.
He warned that it would be “inherently difficult” for Indonesia to continue to learn from China while simultaneously trying to compete with it.
In a sign of tension between Indonesia’s efforts to capture more value from its resources and the Chinese firms that have bankrolled the industry’s expansion, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce wrote to President Prabowo Subianto in May warning that recent policies, including a sharp reduction in nickel ore production quotas to push up prices, could undermine existing projects and future investment.
The Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Indonesia’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources or the Ministry of Investment and Downstream Industry.
A damaging myth: “Nickel is everything, forever”
The rapid shift towards nickel-free EV batteries poses another threat to Indonesia’s plans.
China is driving global adoption of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, a battery chemistry which relies on more common materials, is cheaper to produce and is better suited for frequent charge and discharge, making it an attractive alternative to power electric two- and three-wheelers, urban EVs and stationary power storage.
LFP batteries accounted for more than 55% of EV batteries deployed globally last year, driven by China and imports of Chinese-made vehicles by emerging market countries, according to the International Energy Agency. They also accounted for about 90% of battery storage deployment.
“If Indonesia stays too fixed on a ‘nickel equals EV future’ mindset, there’s a risk of missing where the bulk of the market is actually going,” Situmorang said, noting that in Indonesia, most of the EVs sold in 2025 used LFP batteries.
Nickel-based batteries, which can pack more energy in each battery, are still in demand for long-range and premium EVs popular in the US, Europe and upper-end Asian markets. Outside China, almost 80% of EV batteries used nickel-containing types in 2025.
Rakhmat said Indonesia is adapting its manufacturing strategy, targeting its nickel-based batteries for the export market and boosting production of LFP batteries to meet domestic demand.
Several Chinese firms are already investing to manufacture LFP batteries in Indonesia.
But Rakhmat said the realisation of changes in the market “came very late” and that many local officials still incorrectly believe that “nickel is everything and forever”.
Without a robust industrial policy and a strategy to create sustained domestic demand for “Made in Indonesia” batteries, “there is a possibility that we will be left behind,” he warned.
Main image: A view over the PT Virtue Dragon nickel industrial complex in Konawe, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia (Photo: Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images)
The post China keeps Indonesia’s battery dream afloat but future less certain appeared first on Climate Home News.
China keeps Indonesia’s battery dream afloat but future less certain
-
Climate Change1 year ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases1 year ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Renewable Energy10 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Greenhouse Gases1 year ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits