This story is from Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. Sign up for Floodlight’s newsletter here.”
From her home in Donaldsonville in the southern US state of Louisiana, less than three miles from the world’s largest ammonia plant, Ashley Gaignard says the air itself carries a chemical edge.
The odour, she said, is sharp and lingering. Years ago, when her son attended a school about a mile from the massive CF Industries ammonia production facility, he would begin wheezing during breaks from class, she recalled. His breathing problems eased only after he transferred to a school several miles farther away.
“I’m not against progress,” Gaignard said. “We are against development that poisons and displaces and disregards human life.”
Now, along Louisiana’s Mississippi River corridor, fertiliser giant CF Industries and other companies are placing multibillion-dollar bets on “blue ammonia” — a product made from fossil fuels but with extra technology to capture planet-warming gases and pipe them underground for storage.
To date, no commercial-scale blue ammonia plants are operating — but more than 20 have been proposed nationwide, according to Oil and Gas Watch. Four of the largest such plants are slated for Louisiana, in communities already saturated with petrochemical pollution.
An extensive review by Floodlight found no evidence that existing carbon capture projects anywhere in the world have achieved anything close to the emissions cuts companies like CF Industries are promising. Permit documents, meanwhile, show that the proposed plants combined could be allowed to discharge more than 2,800 tons each year of air pollutants (not greenhouse gases), including more than 400 tons of ammonia.
Classified as a highly hazardous chemical, ammonia can damage the lungs and hurt the skin, eyes and throat. In the air, it can form fine particles that are linked to increased risks of heart disease and stroke, and can be deadly — particularly for children, older adults and people with heart or lung disease.
The Louisiana plants would also be allowed to release carcinogens, including benzene and formaldehyde.
The companies proposing those plants — CF Industries, Air Products, Clean Hydrogen Works and St. Charles Clean Fuels — have said their operations will provide an abundant source of clean fertiliser and clean energy to global markets, including countries whose climate and trade policies favor low-carbon fuels. They’ve also said they’ll create nearly 840 permanent jobs and millions in new tax revenue for local communities while prioritising public health and safety.
“We are designing the facility with advanced emissions controls, robust monitoring systems, and strong operational practices to minimise impacts,” said Chandra Stacie, the director of community relations for St. Charles Clean Fuels. “Our goal is to operate responsibly and be a constructive, long-term partner.”
Environmental advocates, scientists and community members, however, say the new ammonia plants would delay the phase-out of fossil fuels — and bring substantial air pollution and safety risks to places that have long borne the health costs of America’s industrial economy.
Why Louisiana became ground zero
While the historic streets of Donaldsonville recently served as the backdrop to the 2025 blockbuster Sinners, the town’s real-life drama is far less cinematic.
Donaldsonville lies at the center of Cancer Alley, a chemical corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans known for its elevated health risks and dense concentration of petrochemical plants and refineries.
Now this stretch of Louisiana is also ground zero for a new buildout: four proposed blue ammonia plants, with several more planned for Texas.
So, why the Gulf Coast?
South Louisiana has abundant natural gas for ammonia production and ports that connect to international shipping routes.
The state offers an existing pipeline network, a seasoned chemical-industry workforce and political leaders who have consistently favored industrial development. The companies proposing ammonia plants can also tap generous state and federal incentives, including more than $2 billion in federal tax credits for carbon capture projects.
The Inflation Reduction Act, former President Joe Biden’s signature climate law, allows companies to collect up to $85 for each ton of carbon captured and permanently stored.
And the state of Louisiana is offering developers millions more in grants and tax breaks designed to spur economic development.
Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University who has studied carbon capture systems for years, said there’s little to be gained — and much to lose — from making ammonia this way.
“These plants increase air pollution, they increase global warming … they increase not only energy costs, but total social costs, and so there’s zero benefit — except to the people who are taking the subsidies to implement these projects,” he said.
The scale of subsidies for the proposed Louisiana ammonia plants is “off-the-charts outrageous” — and amounts to a bad deal for taxpayers, said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a nonprofit that tracks and analyzes economic development projects. The plants are unlikely to deliver anything close to $2 billion a year in public benefits, he said.
“It can only be accurately called a massive transfer of wealth from U.S. taxpayers to corporate shareholders,” he said.
Ambitious pitches, tougher reality
Ammonia has long been a workhorse of the global economy, quietly underpinning modern agriculture. It’s the key ingredient in nitrogen fertiliser, and demand is expected to grow as global food production strains to keep pace with population growth.
Now, producers say it could play a far larger role — not just as fertiliser, but as a climate-friendly fuel for ships and power plants.
When it’s burned as a fuel, ammonia doesn’t emit carbon dioxide (though it can produce nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas roughly 270 times more potent than carbon dioxide).
It can also be burned with other fuels in power plants or potentially used to store hydrogen for shipping and later conversion for use in fuel cells.
But the process commonly used to make ammonia carries a heavy climate cost.
Most production relies on hydrogen derived from natural gas, a process that releases carbon dioxide. Enormous amounts of energy — typically from fossil fuels — are then used to force hydrogen and nitrogen to combine under extreme heat and pressure.
Nitrogen fertilizer plants in the U.S. released more than 46 million tons of heat-trapping gases in 2021 — roughly the emissions of nine million cars running for a year — according to a report by the Environmental Integrity Project. Globally, almost 2% of carbon dioxide emissions come from making ammonia — or as much as the energy system emissions of South Africa, according to the International Energy Agency.
That’s where carbon capture comes in. The companies planning blue ammonia plants say they will isolate most of the carbon dioxide released, piping it deep underground for permanent storage.
Texas-based Clean Hydrogen Works says its Ascension Clean Energy project, slated for Donaldsonville, will produce up to 7.2 million tons of ammonia annually and will capture “up to 98 percent” of the carbon dioxide produced.
Nearby, CF Industries and the Pennsylvania-based Air Products plan to build two plants they say will have capture rates of 95% or more.
About an hour to the east, the St. Charles Clean Fuels project would capture more than 99% of carbon dioxide generated, its developer says.
Those claims are unlikely to hold up, said Cornell University professor Robert Howarth, an expert on greenhouse gas emissions and ammonia pollution.
“Is the industry correct in saying that they can produce a really, really low emissions fuel using natural gas as their original feedstock?” he asked. “The answer is no. It’s just never been done, and I don’t think it can be done.”
The majority of existing carbon capture facilities trap less than 60% of carbon dioxide, according to a 2023 review by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “No existing project has consistently captured more than 80% of carbon,” the institute found.
Blue hydrogen — a prerequisite for blue ammonia — “is neither clean nor low-carbon,” and pursuing it would divert time and money from more effective climate solutions, the institute concluded.
In an email to Floodlight, Air Products spokesperson Christina Stephens said the company is “very confident in our proprietary technology that allows us to capture 95 percent of the CO2 emissions.” She did not elaborate.
Stacie, the St. Charles Clean Fuels representative, said its facility’s design will be “conducive to high capture rates.”
Experts also note that carbon capture itself is typically powered by natural gas, adding emissions and undercutting its climate benefits.
Compounding the problem are emissions of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Methane is frequently emitted during drilling, processing and transport of natural gas. More escapes in the process used to extract hydrogen for ammonia production.
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Total methane emissions from the fertilizer industry could be more than 140 times higher than official estimates, one 2019 study found.
Stephens, the Air Products spokesperson, said the company believes previous research related to methane leakage has flaws that led to inaccurate conclusions.
Stacie, meanwhile, said St. Charles Clean Fuels will monitor and verify methane emissions through “operations control and third-party verification consistent with emerging best practices.”
The local cost of a global fuel
Even if blue ammonia plants deliver the climate benefits their backers promise — benefits that experts dispute — their local impacts could still be substantial.
In 2024, the CF Industries Donaldsonville plant — near Gaignard’s house — released more toxic air pollutants than all but one other industrial site nationally, according to EPA data. The 7.1 million pounds of ammonia the plant released that year would more than fill the New Orleans Superdome, according to Kimberly Terrell, a research scientist for the Environmental Integrity Project.
Emissions from the planned blue ammonia plants could worsen respiratory health, Terrell said, with impacts extending far beyond the plant sites.
“I would be concerned about increasing asthma rates long term,” she said.
Ascension Parish, where three of the proposed blue ammonia plants would be built, hosts more than two dozen industrial facilities and already has the second highest amount of air emissions in the country, according to EPA data.
So the prospect of new ammonia plants in Ascension Parish worries Twila Collins.
She has lived her entire 55-year life in Modeste, a historic, predominantly Black community along the Mississippi River. If CF Industries gets its way, a massive ammonia plant would rise roughly a mile from her home.
Her message for the company is blunt: “Leave us alone and find somewhere else to go where there’s nobody living, so you won’t disrupt a community.”
Industrial pollution already drifts into her neighborhood, bringing smells “like a landfill,” she said, and a new ammonia plant would add another layer of pollution — and another set of health risks.
In a 2024 report, CF Industries said its employees “regularly maintain, replace, and update equipment” to reduce emissions.
But under its draft permit for the Blue Point plant, the company would be allowed to release more than 1,100 tons of air pollutants each year — equivalent to the weight of more than 27 fully loaded tractor trailers. That includes more than 140 tons of ammonia and more than 580 tons of carbon monoxide.
Collins said she can name more than 30 people in Modeste who suffer from cancer or respiratory problems. The issue is deeply personal. She herself has struggled with cancer. And in 2002, her 9-year-old son died of an asthma attack. He had struggled with asthma all his life, but Collins still wonders whether the industrial pollution surrounding Modeste helped trigger the attack that killed him.
She also worries about what could go wrong if something fails — an accident, a leak or worse — because ammonia production and carbon dioxide transport involve well-documented industrial risks.
CF Industries’ Donaldsonville plant has a history of deadly accidents: a 2000 explosion and fire killed three workers and injured at least eight others, and a 2013 blast killed one worker and injured eight more.
This past November, an explosion at another CF Industries plant in Yazoo City, Miss., led to an ammonia leak and prompted the evacuation of nearby residents.
Residents push back
While supporters emphasise the economic boost and high-paying jobs the projects could bring, many local residents have turned out at public hearings to oppose them.
So many people packed a hearing room on the St. Charles project in 2024 that it had to be canceled and rescheduled in a larger venue.
Some of the public fears have centered on the carbon dioxide pipelines that would be needed to make the projects work.
Air Products, for instance, has proposed piping millions of tons of carbon dioxide 38 miles to be stored a mile underneath Lake Maurepas. The project would be “the world’s largest permanent carbon dioxide sequestration endeavor to date,” according to the Louisiana Department of Economic Development.
At a November public hearing on the project, Air Products vice president Andrew Connolly said the company has an “unsurpassed safety record.”
“All pipelines will be monitored 24-7 and we will meet or exceed all pipeline regulations,” he said.
More than 300 people turned out for that public hearing, according to Dustin Renaud, a spokesperson for the environmental law group Earthjustice. Among the more than 50 people who spoke, all but three opposed the project.
Opponents have warned of what could happen if a carbon dioxide pipeline ruptures, as happened in 2020 in Satartia, Mississippi. That disaster sent 45 people to the hospital and left some residents unconscious in their homes and cars. Starved of oxygen, cars stalled or couldn’t start, making evacuation difficult.
The Air Products pipeline would run within half a mile of Sorrento Primary School, an elementary school in Ascension Parish with more than 600 students. An expert hired by Earthjustice concluded that a pipeline rupture could endanger the schoolchildren, along with residents of a nearby subdivision.
Stephens, the Air Products spokesperson, said the company will run the pipeline deeper than is required by code in the school’s vicinity. The pipeline will also have more shutoff valves than required, she said.
“We have a long safe history of operating the largest hydrogen pipeline network in the world right here in Louisiana,” she wrote.
Stacie, the St. Charles Clean Fuels representative, said the company will incorporate “detection systems, automated shutdowns, mechanical integrity programs and emergency response planning” — consistent with federal rules and “lessons learned from prior incidents.”
Still, some residents worry.
“We don’t have a good evacuation route,” said St. James Parish resident Gail LeBoeuf, who co-founded the environmental justice group Inclusive Louisiana. “If something would happen, we would just be stuck like Chuck.”
The companies behind the blue ammonia projects have said they will bring jobs and millions of dollars into the state economy — a message that has found a receptive audience in the state capital and some city halls.
CF Industries did not respond to Floodlight’s questions about its proposed plant, while Clean Hydrogen Works declined to answer questions.
Amid public opposition, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry in October announced a moratorium on new carbon capture projects. The order halted the state’s review of new permits for projects that would inject carbon dioxide underground, while allowing existing applications to continue — including the blue ammonia projects already underway.
A lower-carbon alternative
There are cleaner ways to make ammonia.
Instead of extracting hydrogen from natural gas and then trying to capture the CO₂, producers can use renewable electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. That “green hydrogen” can then be combined with nitrogen to make what’s known as “green ammonia.”
At least one large-scale green ammonia plant is already operating. In Chifeng, China, a facility powered by wind turbines and solar panels began industrial-scale production in 2025. By 2028, the plant is expected to produce 1.5 million tons of green ammonia annually.
In the U.S., developers have proposed green ammonia plants in Texas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Washington.
“Instead of making this big labyrinth of pipes and equipment and sending CO2 everywhere and using more energy, you can simply produce that hydrogen with electricity from solar and wind,” said Jacobson, the Stanford professor.
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In the debate over blue ammonia, the stakes are high.
For ammonia producers, the projects promise billions in federal tax credits and a foothold in emerging energy markets. They also offer oil and gas companies a way to delay the phase-out of fossil fuels, critics say.
“It’s a great way to lock in oil and gas infrastructure. … Something that we should be getting away from, as opposed to locking in for years and years to come,” said Alexandra Shaykevich, a research manager at the Environmental Integrity Project who tracks oil and gas projects.
For residents along Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, the stakes are more immediate. They’re being asked to live with new plants, new pipelines and new risks in places that have already absorbed decades of pollution.
But Gaignard plans to keep fighting for her community.
“I don’t look at this as red and blue and the left and the right,” she said. “We need to start looking at humanity.”
Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.
The post As Louisiana bets big on ‘blue ammonia’, communities brace for air pollution appeared first on Climate Home News.
As Louisiana bets big on ‘blue ammonia’, communities brace for air pollution
Dozens of governments led by the EU and the UK have pledged to throw their political weight behind a rapid electrification of the world’s economy, billed as a “powerful weapon” for cutting reliance on planet-heating fossil fuels.
At a high-level summit in London’s Mansion House on Tuesday, energy ministers and business leaders were joined by UN secretary-general António Guterres in calling for faster action to curb demand for oil, coal and gas by powering homes, industry and transport with clean electricity.
Electrification – which spans measures such as switching from petrol cars to electric vehicles – has emerged as a key priority in climate and energy policy circles this year.
COP31 co-hosts Türkiye and Australia have made a global target for electricity to meet 35% of final energy demand by 2035, up from around 20% today, the main plank of this year’s action agenda for the UN summit. Reaching that level is necessary to keep the 1.5C warming limit within reach, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
Turkish COP31 President-Designate Murat Kurum said earlier this month that the host nation would work to forge “a strong global coalition that is ready and determined to act” and promised to facilitate access to technical assistance.
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Rallying support for electrification
Five months before countries are due to sign on to the pledge, efforts to rally support gathered momentum at London Climate Action Week, as a record-breaking heatwave baking the capital underscored the urgency of weaning the world off fossil fuels.
Guterres said the world faces an “historic opportunity” to turn the page on its dependence on fossil fuels and fully embrace clean electrification powered by renewables.
“The age of clean electrification is here,” he added. “The question is whether we can build the grids and storage, mobilize the investment, and deliver the infrastructure at the speed and scale required”.
Without investment and government policies supporting upgrades in infrastructure, ageing power grids are often unable to handle the growing influx of renewable energy, creating bottlenecks and slowing the energy transition, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Meanwhile, the high upfront costs of buying electric vehicles, heat pumps and industrial equipment remains a challenge to switch households and businesses away from using fossil fuels across the world, according IEA analysts, despite these technologies being cheaper over their whole lifecycle.
Global coordination platform
In a bid to overcome these hurdles, the European Commission and the UK government on Tuesday launched a new platform to coordinate global progress on electrification.
EU energy commissioner Dan Jorgensen said the goal was to build coalitions, draw up policy recommendations, share best practice and secure new funding to speed up the electrification of homes, industry and transport.
Brazil’s COP30 presidency, the joint Australia-Türkiye COP31 presidency, Ethiopia’s incoming COP32 presidency, Canada, the Philippines and South Korea joined the initiative at launch.
Jorgensen urged governments worldwide to “choose transformation over turbulence” and switch to clean electricity to make economies and societies more resilient and shield them from future shocks driven by volatile fossil fuels.
COP31 leaders unveil global targets, with spotlight on electrification
For many countries, especially those heavily reliant on imported fossil fuels, the oil and gas crisis triggered by the US and Israeli attacks on Iran and the ensuing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has driven home the urgency of the clean energy transition.
The UK’s energy secretary Ed Miliband said on Tuesday that, unlike previous fossil fuel shocks, clean electrification now offers the world a clear alternative.
“An alternative that cannot be disrupted by foreign wars, that isn’t subject to global shocks because it is locked in stable prices at home, and that can create good jobs and drive growth,” he added, “an alternative that can deliver national security, energy security and indeed climate security.”
At the recent conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels in Santa Marta, a group of 60 governments led by the Netherlands and Colombia said electrification is one of the areas where they can align work with the UN climate talks.
Financial reforms needed
Achieving the electrification target – dubbed the “35 by 35” goal – will require significant financial resources. Investments in power grids alone need to double from their current rate to around $1 trillion each year in the next decade, according to IRENA.
But Guterres said that developing countries are still “starved from investment” in their clean energy sector. He urged deeper reforms of the global financial architecture by reducing lending risk, lowering the cost of capital and attracting more private investment.
Surangel Whipps Jr., president of the low-lying Pacific island state of Palau, said faster progress in electrification is a “powerful weapon in our arsenal”. But he warned that the energy transition would stall without “fit for purpose investment that is fast, predictable and accessible”.
The post EU, UK lead push for electrification as “powerful weapon” against fossil fuels appeared first on Climate Home News.
EU, UK lead push for electrification as “powerful weapon” against fossil fuels
A major ocean conference has ended in Mombasa, Kenya, with just a handful of countries committing to high-level political declarations on banning deep-sea mining, protecting climate-resilient coral reefs and combatting illegal fishing.
The Our Ocean Conference (OOC) brought together more than 5,000 delegates to discuss marine issues and make voluntary commitments to advance ocean sustainability.
It was the first time in the conference’s 11 editions that it had been held on African soil.
African countries played an “important leadership role” at the talks, observers told Carbon Brief, helping to drive ambition on fisheries transparency, a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining and developing proposals for marine protected areas on the high seas.
Across the three-day conference, attendees also made 320 separate commitments, including new funding for scientific research, improving waste-management programmes to reduce marine pollution and mapping Indigenous groups’ customary waters.
Some of these commitments were accompanied by announcements of new funding, with a total of $6.4bn “mobilised” across all pledges.
Several non-governmental organisations also released new reports during the conference, on topics ranging from the implementation of marine protected areas to “climate-resilient” coral reefs.
Observers told Carbon Brief that the commitments and discussions at the conference were “positive steps”, but added that these pledges must now be backed up by action.
During the opening ceremony, former US secretary of state John Kerry urged delegates to move “from commitments to implementation”.
Here, Carbon Brief outlines the key takeaways from the OOC across five major climate-related topics.
Background
The OOC was first held in Washington DC in 2014, where it was championed by Kerry.
The conference aims to “identify action-based solutions and make tangible commitments” towards addressing key issues facing the ocean, such as climate change and overfishing. It does so through voluntary commitments made by governments, non-governmental organisations, civil society groups and others.
These commitments align with the six “pillars” of the conference:
- The ocean-climate nexus
- Marine pollution
- Marine protected areas
- Maritime security
- Sustainable blue economy
- Sustainable fisheries
Since then, the conference has been held annually (with the exceptions of 2020 and 2021 during the Covid pandemic), with the host city changing every year.
Each edition of the conference is very different, attendees told Carbon Brief, and the host country plays a large role in setting the conference’s priorities.
For example, at the 2024 conference, held in Athens, Greece, shipping and sustainable tourism were discussed at length alongside the six existing pillars.
At this year’s summit, extra attention was paid to the roles of local communities in achieving a “healthy” ocean.
Since 2025, the conference has had its own dedicated secretariat, hosted at the research organisation, the World Resources Institute (WRI). (Prior to that, the US Department of State acted as the de-facto secretariat.)
Conference participants told Carbon Brief that the OOC has been “highly successful” in achieving its aims over the past decade.
An analysis of the first 10 years of the conference, published by WRI in 2025, found that of a total 2,618 commitments made at the OOC, around 1,130 had been completed and a further 1,005 were in progress.
In Mombasa this year, 104 countries and organisations made a total of 320 voluntary commitments. More than one-quarter of these commitments were made in the “sustainable blue economy” action area.
According to the preliminary report released by the secretariat at the conclusion of the OOC, the commitments made at the conference represent $6.4bn in “mobilised” finance. However, it is unclear from the report how much of this figure is new committed funding.
Marine protected areas
Marine protected areas (MPAs) are one of the six key action areas of the Our Ocean Conference.
A June 2026 independent assessment of the MPA-related commitments at previous editions of the OOC found that the conference has “made an outsized contribution to global marine conservation efforts”.
According to the analysis, more than one-third of the Earth’s MPAs stemmed from announcements made at the OOC – a total area of more than 10m square kilometres (km2).
This progress is the result of nearly two-thirds of MPA-related OOC commitments already fully implemented, the assessment says, while most of the remaining commitments “show evidence of progress”.
If all pledged MPAs were to be implemented, it would represent protection for around 14.4m km2 or 4% of the ocean.
The chart below shows the number of pledged actions related to MPAs and other area-based conservation methods that were pledged at the OOC between 2014 and 2025, coloured by the progress made on each commitment.
Several groups announced new MPAs – or the completion of previously announced MPA designations – at the OOC.
These included the establishment this year of two new MPAs in the Juan Fernández region of Chile, protecting a total of around 337,000km2 of ocean, and the approval of the Azores Marine Park, which will span 287,000km2 – making it the largest network of protected areas in the north Atlantic Ocean.
However, despite the progress made in designating MPAs, further work is needed to ensure that these areas are truly protected, experts told Carbon Brief in Mombasa.
A report released by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) at the summit detailed the “implementation gap” facing MPAs. It noted that “at least half of existing MPAs remain unimplemented or operationally ineffective”, while just 3.5% of the global ocean is “fully and highly” protected.
Closing this gap will require “inclusive, sustained and context-sensitive design, management and funding approaches”, continued the report.
Dr Ana Spalding, the director of STRI’s Adrienne Arsht community-based resilience solutions initiative, told Carbon Brief that, while MPAs are typically evaluated based on their biodiversity outcomes, the communities that rely on ocean ecosystems are also very important to consider. Focusing on just one aspect or the other will result in an MPA that is not effective, she added:
“There’s going to be a sweet spot between the two.”
High Seas Treaty
The Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction – also known as the BBNJ Agreement or the High Seas Treaty – entered into force on 17 January 2026.
This followed the treaty, achieving the necessary 60 state ratifications on 19 September 2025. The week before the OOC, the east African nation of Comoros became the 90th party to ratify the agreement.
The first Conference of the Parties for the High Seas Treaty will be held in January 2027 in New York City. At that meeting, parties will be tasked with creating the rules of procedure, establishing the subsidiary bodies and carrying out other foundational work.
Because so many key decisions will be made at this COP1, it is “imperative” to have as many ratifications as possible before the conference begins, said Rebecca Hubbard, director of the High Seas Alliance, a coalition of non-governmental organisations that advocates for protection of the high seas. She added:
“We hope that well over 100 countries will be party to the agreement by COP1, so that they can be at the decision-making table.”
One of the key provisions of the High Seas Treaty is that it creates a mechanism for countries to establish MPAs in international waters. This will be key to achieving the “30 by 30” target of protecting 30% of the world’s land and oceans by 2030, Hubbard told Carbon Brief.
However, establishing a high-seas MPA under the agreement requires a thorough process, including a review by a scientific and technical subsidiary body, a consultation with parties and a vote by the COP. Thus, in order to achieve the “30 by 30” target, parties will need to act swiftly to begin the process of establishing high-seas MPAs, according to Hubbard. She said:
“It will be very, very tight. It’s definitely possible, but it requires really strong government leadership and prioritisation.”
She added that it is “essential” that governments begin forming proposals for high-seas MPAs before the COP meets in January, noting that some countries are already doing so.
At a side event on 16 June, representatives from South Africa and the EU detailed plans to propose a high-seas MPA that would link two existing protected areas in the sub-Antarctic – one South African and one French. Hubbard told Carbon Brief:
“That’s a really great example of what we can do with the High Seas Treaty – having developed and developing countries working together, sharing knowledge [and] developing scientific approaches together. I think that’s the hopeful future, collaboration [and] cooperation, that the High Seas Treaty really provides.”
Also at the summit, Senegal, Mauritania, the Gambia and Guinea-Bissau committed to creating “at least two” transboundary west African MPAs.
Deep-sea mining
Although deep-sea mining was not a major focus of the Mombasa talks, it did feature at several side events.
At a reception held by the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC), Prof Rashid Sumaila of the University of British Columbia said the “wrong question is being asked” about deep-sea mining. He continued:
“It’s not whether they have the minerals, it’s whether extracting them gives a net-positive impact.”
Sumaila added that evaluating the risk of deep-sea mining will require a cost-benefit analysis that is as “broad and inclusive as possible”.
At the same reception, the foreign-affairs minister of Malawi, Dr George Chaponda, announced the country’s support of a “precautionary pause” on seabed mining in international waters. This would prohibit mineral exploration in such areas until there is robust scientific evidence showing limited environmental harm.
In doing so, Malawi became the first African country to support such a pause – and the 41st country overall to support a precautionary pause or moratorium on the activity.
Chaponda told the assembled guests that Malawi’s existence as a landlocked country did not preclude its involvement in the deep-sea debates, urging:
“To my fellow landlocked states: geography does not diminish our stake in the ocean.”
Later in the week, Kenya and Madagascar also announced their support for such a pause.
In a statement, David Willima, the Africa lead at DSCC, said:
“The leadership shown by Malawi, Kenya and Madagascar sends a vital signal that African nations are stepping forward to defend the deep ocean and are unwilling to accept the risks of deep-sea mining.”
Coral reefs
At the third UN Ocean Conference (UNOC), held in Nice, France, in June 2025, 11 countries and several partner organisations launched the high-level commitment to protect “climate-resilient” coral reefs.
These are reefs that, according to scientists, have the “best chance of long-term survival in the face of climate change”.
(UNOC occurs every three years and is specifically focused on achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goal on sustainable ocean use. Unlike the OOC, UNOC results in a negotiated political declaration.)
A further four countries signed the commitment in Mombasa: Comoros, the Dominican Republic, Kenya and the UK. According to a representative at the launch event, the goal is to reach 31 signatories – representing 80% of the world’s coral cover – by COP31 in Turkey in November this year.
Signatory governments pledged their commitment to:
- Identifying climate-resilient reefs and prioritising their protection.
- Integrating coral-reef protection into national strategies and plans.
- Enacting policies to reduce the local pressures facing coral reefs, such as overfishing, pollution and overdevelopment.
- Implementing national reef monitoring programmes and action plans.
- Ensuring equity and working with local communities in protecting reefs.
The Mombasa conference also coincided with the presentation of a new study on climate-resilient reefs, covered in the 17 June edition of Carbon Brief’s Cropped newsletter. (The study is currently in the final stages of peer review.)
Building on a 2018 project that identified the 50 coral reefs that “form an optimal portfolio of reefs that are most likely to survive climate change”, the new work mapped more than 165,000km2 of coral reefs across 70 countries. These were found to have the best chances of persisting in the face of climate change and a warming, acidifying ocean.
Dr Emily Darling, director of coral-reef conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society and a co-author of the study, told Carbon Brief that “one of the key things countries can do that have these important reefs is elevate them into national policy” across multiple government sectors.
She added that learning from these reefs will become vital over the coming months as El Niño warms the world’s oceans even further.
Darling told Carbon Brief:
“Climate change is not a single blanket on the world’s oceans. There are a lot of pockets of resilience, there are pockets of revolution for corals, and it’s all about finding those places, and how do we support them through the other local pressures that they experience that we know we can manage.”
Although few monetary coral-related commitments were made at the summit, Norway pledged to allocate NOK 20m ($2m) to the Global Fund for Coral Reefs.
Fisheries
One of the major achievements of the summit was the adoption of the Mombasa Declaration to advance fisheries transparency and combat illegal fishing.
The declaration “recognise[s]” that illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is a major factor driving the unsustainable use of ocean resources and the degradation of marine ecosystems.
The declaration, which was signed by 16 national governments – eight of them from Africa – commits parties to follow a set of principles laid out in the Global Charter for Fisheries Transparency. This was developed and promoted by a group of civil society organisations known as the Coalition for Fisheries Transparency.
The commitments in the Mombasa Declaration fall within four broad categories:
- Supporting transparency and accountability in the fishing industry.
- Strengthening monitoring of fishing activities and cooperating with enforcement actions.
- Building capacity and supporting implementation of transparency reforms.
- Strengthening ocean-observing systems and promoting the use of open-access data.
The declaration notes that these principles should “apply to and benefit both small-scale and industrial fisheries” and support “broader ocean-management efforts”.
At a press conference announcing the launch of the declaration, Ghanaian fisheries and aquaculture minister Emelia Arthur called it a “global testament of our collective commitment to transparent fisheries”. She emphasised the importance of the sector to all aspects of life, saying:
“Fisheries is nutrition. Fisheries is food security. Fisheries is livelihoods. Fisheries is national security.”
Several civil society organisations, philanthropies, community groups and governments also made separate fisheries-related commitments at the summit.
The EU committed €46m ($52m) through its Horizon Europe research programme to fisheries work, including €32m ($36m) for “adaptive co-management strategies” and €14m ($16m) for research on conservation and sustainable management of migratory fishes.
The EU and Italy both also announced contributions to the European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund.
The government of Kenya made nine fisheries-related pledges at the summit, including committing to train compliance officers dedicated to combatting IUU fishing, developing management plans for all of its commercial fisheries and establishing bycatch mitigation measures.
At the summit, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization launched its biannual “state of world fisheries and aquaculture” report.
According to the report, the world set a new record for fisheries and aquaculture in 2024 – producing a total of 235m tonnes of fish and algae. This total consisted of nearly 92m tonnes of fish from capture fisheries, 103m tonnes of farmed fish and 40m tonnes of algae production.
The amount of fish produced by capture fisheries has remained largely stable since 2000, while aquaculture production has increased by an average annual percentage rate of just under 5%, according to the report.
While the largest growth has occurred in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the vast majority of aquaculture production – 89% – occurs in Asia.
The report also says that more than one-third of the world’s marine fish stocks are overfished, with significant variation based on region and species. It adds that climate change may play an increasing role in driving the unsustainability of fisheries in the future:
“Despite the uncertainty of climate risks in the short, medium and long term, studies on the impacts of climate change on aquatic food systems around the world increasingly document the relevance and potential success of adaptation measures, urging decision-makers to integrate climate change considerations into fisheries and aquaculture planning and management.”
The post Mombasa: Key outcomes from the Our Ocean Conference in Kenya appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Mombasa: Key outcomes from the Our Ocean Conference in Kenya
Christopher Wright is the principal analyst at CarbonBridge, a decarbonisation consulting firm.
Less than two months ago, Colombia hosted the world’s first international conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels. This weekend, however, it appears that Colombia’s first ever leftist presidency has ended. Far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, who was last week strongly endorsed by Donald Trump, will not only take the reins of government but also steer the future of Colombia’s energy transition.
As the world’s sixth-largest coal exporter, and fourth largest oil exporter in Latin America, Colombia plays a critical role in the world’s energy markets. However, this role had shrunk under President Gustavo Petro’s administration, as it sought to proactively shift the country away from its fossil-fuel based economy, ahead of a potential oil and gas production shortage over the next decade.
That could all change as De la Espriella’s takes power. Calling himself the Tiger (“El Tigre”), he has promised to focus on deregulation, exploit oil extraction “to the maximum” and leverage the energy sector as a key “engine of growth”.
Colombia’s world-leading energy transition
Over the last four years, Colombia has embarked on one of the most rapid and holistic energy transitions anywhere in the world. Shortly after coming to power in 2022, the government of Gustavo Petro halted new oil and gas exploration contracts, suspended all hydraulic fracking pilots, and pledged to end the development of new unabated coal power plants.
While many of these moves faced domestic and legislative challenges, they were widely praised in climate circles around the world.
Colombia soon became a pivotal member of the Powering Past Coal Alliance, the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance and the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Alliance. It then went on to host the biodiversity COP in 2024, launch a $40-billion climate transition investment portfolio, and famously, host the Santa Marta conference earlier this year.
While fossil fuels still comprise around 7% of Colombia’s GDP and 56% of its total exports, there were already signs that the transition policies had begun to have an effect.
Coal production last year fell to its lowest level in the last 22 years. According to the Colombian national association of coal producers, coal export volumes declined by 23% in 2025. While the oil sector has not seen an equivalent precipitous drop, production levels have remained historically low since COVID.
What about its domestic electricity sector?
Since the 1970s Colombia’s electricity sector has been dominated by large hydro-electric dams, endowing it with some of the lowest carbon electrons anywhere in the world. Today, close to 70% of its electricity supply comes from these large dams.
However, electricity demand rose by close to 10% under the Petro government. To meet this demand, total installed electricity capacity has expanded by a similar figure, and solar power has made up over 70% of new electricity capacity since.
As a result, by the end of 2025, gas power generation in the electricity sector had hit its lowest point since 2018. Wind power had doubled, and solar power generation had risen by over 630%. Colombia’s renewable energy association predicts that, by the end of 2026, the country may be home to more than 4.2 GW of installed variable renewable energy capacity.
Far-right jumps on energy challenges
Despite the progress, the last three years have been an incredibly challenging period for Colombia’s energy sector.
During Petro’s first two years in office, inflation remained above 10%, and interest rates stayed above 13% for most of 2023. This put a pause on new energy investments, as foreign direct investment fell by a third since 2022.
On top of this, Colombia suffered through an El Niño-fuelled drought in 2023-24, crippling its hydro-electric power supply. This forced the country to turn to expensive gas and coal power, just as both sectors had effectively begun to pull back. This sent electricity prices through the roof, increasing nearly 40% in a single year, and led the Petro government to intervene with price controls, aiming to protect everyday Colombians.
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Unsurprisingly, this made energy investors even more cautious. By the end of 2023, GDP growth had plummeted and renewable energy investments fell by 70%. Since then, all the major credit agencies have downgraded the country’s credit rating, making it even shakier to invest.
As a result, even with the new solar coming online, and 1.2 GW of additional hydro-power from the Ituango dam expected by 2028, the country could still face a major energy deficit by 2027, with permitting delays halting project developments, and 5.1 GW of approved projects unable to reach financial close.
Challenging domestic debate
This has led to a challenging domestic debate on energy policy. While 96% of Colombians want to see solar expand further, they have been understandably frustrated by high electricity bills and limited economic growth.
As a result, De la Espriella’s campaign, which has largely focused on taking a hardline stance to combat growing concerns around security and crime, was relatively open to solar power, but sought to blame Colombia’s current energy crisis on the speed of its current energy transition.
Branding himself as neither a climate denialist nor “dogmatic environmentalist” the incoming president who will take office in August, will likely seek to revoke the ban on new hydrocarbon exploration contracts, legalise fracking and restructure the national oil company, Ecopetrol.
While he is unlikely to cancel market-driven projects and may reduce regulatory hold-ups, it is also likely that he will shift away from the government’s recent overwhelming support for long-renewable energy and battery storage projects, which have driven much of the recent uptake in solar power.
Future of energy transition in doubt
In a country of close to 54 million people, the final election count was only decided by about 250,000 votes. However, this weekend’s margin belies the magnitude of the shift that will likely now take place.
With the country facing a potential domestic energy shortage 2027, President-elect De la Espriella has promised to revitalise the hydrocarbon economy, shifting Colombia’s recent energy transition on an entirely new course.
While this may unlock some regulatory challenges hindering renewables roll-out, broader support mechanisms for solar projects will likely be dismantled, and the broader economic transition abandoned, along with its recent flurry of international climate alliances.
He will also take his place among a wave of right-leaning Presidents that have swept to power across the continent in the last 18 months. This has seen right-wing electoral victories across Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Argentina and now Colombia, with Peru’s Keiko Fujimori potentially joining the club soon – pending a final vote count.
With the Brazilian elections scheduled for October, and run-off scenarios between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro still far too close to call, 2026 will undoubtedly be a pivotal year for Latin America’s energy future.
The post Did Colombia’s energy transition just come to a halt? appeared first on Climate Home News.
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