US President Donald Trump grabbed the headlines again at the World Economic Forum, launching his “Board of Peace” for Gaza on the final day of the gathering of political and business leaders. But discussions on climate and energy continued below the media radar.
Climate Home New has been listening in – here are some of the best bits.
Occidental boss: Banks “coming back” to oil and gas
Banks which have previously refused to fund oil and gas projects are “coming back” to the industry, an American oil executive told an event at Davos on Thursday.
Vicki Hollub, CEO of Occidental Petroleum, the world’s 28th most polluting company, said in a conversation with US Energy Secretary Chris Wright that “there was a time” when banks shunned her industry. That, she added, had been a “burden”.
“But some of those banks are now coming back – and in fact I talked to one yesterday that had kind of abandoned us and now are back and wanting to do business in the oil and gas industry,” she said, without revealing the name of the bank.
A report by the London School of Economics last year found that many banks weakened their policies against fossil fuel lending in 2025 and the Net Zero Banking Alliance shut down in October 2025, after many – particularly American – banks left the green initiative.
Azeri oil chief says no spare cash for green tech
European investors appear to have been slower to abandon their climate commitments. Rovshan Najaf, president of SOCAR (the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic), told a separate Davos panel that his company struggles to get financing from most European commercial banks for its oil and gas operations.
As a result, he said, the firm must use its available cash to fund oil and gas projects – “one of the priority areas” – leaving it with little free capital to invest in lower-carbon fuels like green hydrogen and ammonia, or emissions-reducing technologies such as carbon capture or methane abatement.
Recent COP hosts Brazil and Azerbaijan linked to “super-emitting” methane plumes
Unlike renewables and electrification, there is still no commercial case for funding those potential breakthroughs at scale and making them affordable, he added.
“There should be a big picture approach to all energy mixes and how we can free up the capital [for decarbonisation],” he argued.
Najaf promised last year that the firm would achieve near-zero methane emissions in its oil and gas production by 2035. But, as Climate Home News reported recently, the latest data available from SOCAR shows that its methane emissions more than tripled from 2023 to 2024, when the country hosted COP29.
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Climate at Davos: Clean tech powers on despite policy wobbles
Al Gore says climate policy may be suffering “a recession” in many countries – but the energy transition continues apace, driven by falling costs for renewables and batteries -
Climate at Davos: Energy security in the geopolitical driving seat
While climate change is a lower priority for leaders at this year’s World Economic Forum, control of energy supplies and minerals is a hot topic -
Ahead of Davos, climate drops down global elite’s list of pressing concerns
In the short term, leading business people, academics and politicians are more worried about geoeconomic confrontation than extreme weather
US promotes fossil gas to “ally” Europe
One key reason why SOCAR has been investing in more gas production and export capacity is deals with European governments to help replace Russian gas after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
At Davos, Wright praised Europe for being close to independence from Russian gas, saying it could achieve that goal in the next year or two.
He called for the EU to weaken its environmental regulations on methane – a particularly potent greenhouse gas – to enable American fossil gas to displace Russian supplies.
Despite President Donald Trump’s recent threats to take over Greenland, which have caused a growing rift with European leaders, Wright insisted Europe is “our main ally in defending the Western world”.
The US supplies about a quarter of the EU’s gas imports, a percentage which has risen since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
But overall, the EU’s gas imports are declining and are predicted to keep falling, as the continent moves towards clean energy. On Thursday, data published by think-tank Ember showed that wind and solar generated more EU electricity than fossil fuels in 2025, producing a record 30% of EU power, ahead of fossil fuels at 29%.
“New era of climate extremes” as global warming fuels devastating impacts in 2025
On climate change, Wright played down the threat, saying that deaths from extreme weather have declined over the last 100 years.
While floods, droughts, storms and heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense as the planet warms, Wright is correct in saying they have caused fewer deaths over this long time period.
This has largely been the result of economic development and, more recently, climate resilience measures of the kind the Trump administration has drastically reduced US funding for.
The post Climate at Davos: Oil execs bemoan “burden” of bank boycotts appeared first on Climate Home News.
Climate at Davos: Oil execs bemoan “burden” of bank boycotts
The head of the United Nations called on Wednesday for governments to get together for an “honest dialogue” on how to transition away from fossil fuels.
Antonio Guterres told those gathered for the International Energy Agency’s ministerial meeting in Paris that “we must stop treating the transition away from fossil fuels as taboo”.
“Delay will only breed instability,” he said in a video message, “history is littered with the wreckage of failed transitions – broken economies, scarred communities and lost opportunities. We face a choice: design the transition together – or stumble into it through crisis and chaos.”
He called for “a dedicated global platform for honest dialogue on transitioning away from fossil fuels” that includes fossil fuel producers and consumers, developed and developing countries, civil society and public and private financial institutions.
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Türkiye prioritises cleaning up garbage emissions in COP31 ‘action agenda’
‘Zero Waste’ is the personal project of Turkish First Lady Emine Erdogan and aims to cut emissions from landfills and waste disposal -
Argentina’s pioneering glacier law on the line as Milei bets on copper rush
President Javier Milei wants Congress to relax groundbreaking glacier protection legislation to boost mining, but opponents say the environmental risks are too great -
As Louisiana bets big on ‘blue ammonia’, communities brace for air pollution
Carbon capture hasn’t delivered major climate benefits — and the plants would still emit thousands of tons of pollution.
Guterres’ call contrasted sharply with the position of the United States. Ahead of the conference, US energy secretary Chris Wright threatened to pull Washington out of the IEA if the government-funded think tank continues to promote the energy transition.
At the event, Wright downplayed the importance of climate change, claiming that while it is a “really physical problem, it just isn’t even remotely close to the world’s biggest problem”. He called on the IEA to focus more on providing clean cooking solutions, which include fossil gas.
But, while US support wavers, the IEA’s head Fatih Birol celebrated that Brazil, India, Colombia and Vietnam have joined the Paris-based institution. He said this shows that the IEA’s strategy of engaging with the world outside developed countries was paying off. UK energy secretary Ed Milliband said it was a “vote of confidence” in the IEA.
Roadmap and conference
Guterres’ words come just over two years since governments agreed at COP28 to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems and three months after over 80 governments pushed at COP30 for a roadmap away from fossil fuels.
After the proposal failed to gain consensus at COP30 in the formal negotiations, Brazil’s COP30 presidency promised to deliver a global roadmap through an informal initiative before this year’s COP31 climate summit in Antalya.
Separately, Australia, which is leading the negotiations at COP31, vowed it would “continue to argue” for a transition away from coal, oil and gas in energy systems during its co-presidency.
Governments, experts, industry leaders and Indigenous representatives will be gathering this April in the Colombian city of Santa Marta for a highly-awaited first conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels.
The government of Colombia, which is co-hosting the summit with the Netherlands, said it would seek to launch a permanent platform that would help a “coalition of the willing” accelerate the shift away from planet-heating coal, oil and gas beyond the UN climate process.
“Although there is growing consensus to gradually eliminate fossil fuels, there were still no specific spaces or meeting places dedicated to comprehending and addressing the pathways needed to overcome economic, fiscal and social dependence on fossil fuels, especially for producing countries,” Maria Fernanda Torres Penagos, director of climate change in Colombia’s Environment Ministry, said last month.
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After disappointing COP30, EU mulls “less naive” strategy for climate talks
EU environment ministers are discussing how to show more “realism” and “pragmatism” in international climate negotiations -
COP31 chief slams climate backsliding, but rejects priority focus on fossil fuels
After a first COP31 strategy meeting, Türkiye’s environment minister says he will “safeguard the development priorities” of developing countries
It is unclear how that platform would cross over with Guterres’ suggestion. But Alex Rafalowicz, the director of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative (FFNPTI), which is supporting the conference, praised the UN chief’s “welcome leadership and vision”.
He said that the development of this platform is already happening through the FFNPTI, in which 18 countries are participating in discussions on a fossil fuel treaty.
“The Santa Marta conference is the first stop on this journey and all countries that are seriously committed to the 1.5C limit should be there”, he said, “we expect that out of Santa Marta we will have more proposals and commitments that can feed into the [Brazilian] COP Presidency roadmap”.
Coalitions like the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance and the Powering Past Coal Alliance already offer platforms to discuss transitioning away from fossil fuels. But major fossil fuel producers have not joined these alliances.
Guterres said that the platform should deliver a global transition plan which “aligns investment, energy security and climate goals – with concrete milestones and robust finance, particularly for developing countries”.
Guterres said in 2022 that, in order to be compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C, wealthy countries should phase out coal by 2030 and other nations by 2040. The IEA said in 2021 that the world should reach net zero by 2050 to meet the 1.5C warming limit.
The post UN head calls for platform for “honest dialogue” on fossil fuel transition appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN head calls for platform for “honest dialogue” on fossil fuel transition
Residents and elected officials are speaking out against a proposed border barrier through Texas’ biggest state park and one of the jewels of the national park system.
REDFORD, Texas—Plans for a border wall through the Big Bend region of West Texas are raising alarms among residents and elected officials.
But the lawsuit, filed Friday by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, could shield the petrochemical giant from harsher litigation from a local citizen group.
The Texas Attorney General’s office filed a lawsuit Friday afternoon against Dow Chemical Co., North America’s largest chemical manufacturer, describing hundreds of water pollution violations from its industrial complex on the rural Gulf Coast in Seadrift.
Texas Alleges ‘Habitual Non-Compliance’ of Wastewater Rules at Dow Chemical Complex
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