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After a tough 2025 dominated by the US opposing climate action at home and abroad, 2026 looks set to be shaped by coalitions of countries willing to bypass the COP’s need for consensus and take voluntary action as a group.

While troubled multilateral talks on cleaning up plastics and shipping limp on, smaller groups of governments will gather to discuss taxing luxury air travel and planning a fair phase-out of fossil fuels. Australia and the Pacific’s initiatives for COP31 – which could continue discussions on the fossil fuel transition – will be crucial too.

As always, elections will shape the year too, particularly in the Americas. Presidential elections in Brazil and Colombia will determine whether Lula and Petro’s climate progress is reversed and Congressional elections in the USA will shape whether Trump’s climate vandalism can be checked.

    January

    From January 10-12, the International Renewable Energy Agency will gather ministers and officials at its Abu Dhabi headquarters for its annual assembly and related side events. The organisation will announce new insights into whether the world is on track to meet the COP28 goal of tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, and our editor Megan Rowling will be there to cover the summit.

    The next week (January 19-23) is the World Economic Forum, where the global elite gather in the Swiss mountain town of Davos. With the Trump administration trying to push climate change down the agenda in return for his participation, we’ll be looking to see if he has got his way.

    Donald Trump arrives at the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 26, 2018 (Photo: World Economic Forum / Boris Baldinger)

    February

    On February 7, government representatives will gather in Geneva to elect a new chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution. The previous chair – Ecuadorian Luis Vayas Valdivieso – stepped down in October after failing to get governments to agree to a plastics treaty.

    The new chair will face a tough task reviving those talks, with governments whose economies rely on oil and gas opposing any measures to reduce plastic production.

    March

    At a still undecided date in March, the Danish government will gather a representative group of climate ministers in their capital for the Copenhagen Climate Ministerial. Expect topics to include next steps in transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems.

    Meanwhile, on March 23-27, the oil and gas industry, energy ministers and other high-flyers in business and politics will travel to the Texan oil town of Houston for the CERAWeek conference. The annual gathering offers signals of what’s happening in the real economy.

    Around the same time, on March 26-29, trade ministers will head to Cameroon for the World Trade Organisation’s ministerial meeting. With trade issues increasingly overlapping with the climate space, especially with the European Union’s carbon border tax coming into force at the start of 2026, the statements and discussions here will shed light on climate policy around the world.

    April

    On April 13-18, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund will hold their annual spring meetings in Washington DC. Over the last few years, both institutions have tried to get more money to climate action. But, with the head of the World Bank effectively chosen by the US president, will this push survive Donald Trump’s presence in the Oval Office?

    On April 28-29, the governments of Colombia and the Netherlands will co-host the first “International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels” in the Colombian port city of Santa Marta. With 24 countries signing a related voluntary declaration at COP30, the conference could launch a coalition against fossil fuels that grows outside of the notoriously slow COP process.

      May

      On May 11-12, the France-Africa summit will be held in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. With Kenya and France both key backers of a coalition of countries seeking to tax luxury air travel to fund climate action, we will be looking out for progress on those proposals.

      The Colombian government of Gustavo Petro has inspired many climate campaigners with plans to phase out fossil fuel production. But Petro can’t run for another term and the first round of elections to replace him will take place on May 31. Who will replace him is currently highly uncertain.

      June

      On June 8-18, climate negotiators, campaigners and a select group of journalists – including Climate Home News – will travel to the German city of Bonn for the annual mid-year climate talks. Discussions on the Global Goal on Adaptation – unresolved at COP30 – will continue and the first trade-climate dialogue will be held.

      Overlapping this gathering will be the G7 leaders summit on the French shores of Lake Geneva (June 14) and the following week’s London Climate Week (June 21-29). The men’s football/soccer World Cup will begin in North America (June 14), with high temperatures expected.

      July

      On July 8-10, the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage will have a board meeting in the Philippines, at which it is expected to approve its first set of projects, three and a half years after the fund’s creation grabbed headlines at COP27 in Egypt.

      August

      Dates are unconfirmed but there may be the next round of plastics treaty negotiations at some point in August or September and – with Australia and the Pacific involved in COP31 – Pacific leaders will gather for the annual Pacific Island Forum summit around this time.

      September

      Throughout September, diplomats will gather in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Coinciding with that will be New York Climate Week (September 20-27), where power brokers in the climate world hold meetings, strike deals and make speeches.

      October

      Brazil’s president Lula has reversed the rising rainforest destruction of his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, hosted COP30 and pushed for a roadmap towards fossil fuel phase-out. Whether he will be able to continue in that vein depends on the two rounds of presidential elections, scheduled for October 4 and 26. Polls suggest he is the clear favourite to win.

      Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva speech during the opening ceremony of the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30).
      Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva speech during the opening ceremony of the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30). (Photo: Ueslei Marcelino/COP30)

      On October 13-18, the World Bank and IMF host their annual autumn meetings and on October 19-30, the biodiversity COP comes to the Armenian capital city of Yerevan, where countries will produce the first global stocktake of the landmark Global Biodiversity Framework. Research suggests some of its goals, including a target to protect 30% of land and sea ecosystems, are highly off track.

      November

      An important month starts with US midterm elections for both branches of its Congress on November 3. The Democrats are currently expected to regain control of the House but not regain the Senate, where fewer seats are up for grabs. Losing either would limit Trump’s power in the world’s second-biggest emitter.

      Around the same time, the annual pre-COP meeting will be held in a still-undetermined Pacific Island nation. Pacific governments hope to attract world leaders to come and see firsthand how climate change is threatening their islands.

      Then on November 9-20, the climate COP will take place in the Turkish seaside city of Antalya, at its Expo Center. Australia is presiding over the talks – as part of a deal with Turkiye. Expect fossil fuel phase out and adaptation to be key themes.

      Overlapping with COP31 will be the Marine Environment Protection Committee of the International Maritime Organisation in London (November 16-20). In 2025, the US and Saudi Arabia won a year’s delay to green shipping measures. This meeting will determine if that delay becomes permanent.

      December

      On December 14-15, the leaders of the G20 (except South Africa) have been invited for a summit in Miami. The US, which is barring South Africa partly because of its green policies, has indicated it will use the G20 to promote fossil fuels.

      The post What’s on the climate calendar for 2026? appeared first on Climate Home News.

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      Climate Change

      Coal in a green mask: Indonesia’s co-firing plan will harm, not help, the climate 

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      11 hours ago

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      October 22, 2026

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      Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is director of the China-Indonesia Desk at the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS). Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara is executive director of CELIOS.

      Indonesia bills its plans to mix wood with coal at dozens of power plants as a way to cut electricity generation emissions as the country transitions towards clean energy. But look closer, and the biomass co-firing plan could do far more harm than good. 

      Biomass co-firing involves mixing a small amount of wood or other plant matter, usually wood chips or wood pellets, into the coal that a power plant burns.

      State electricity company PLN wants to use it at 52 coal-fired plants across the Southeast Asian nation – a target set out in its national electricity supply business plan and tied to Indonesia’s pledge, under its Nationally Determined Contribution to the Paris Agreement, to raise renewables to 23% of the energy mix. PLN originally aimed to secure 10.2 million tonnes of biomass a year by 2025; that target has already slipped to 2031, as the country struggles to line up enough supply. 

      Most plants only mix in a small amount of wood, often between 1% and 5% of the fuel load, meaning they do not even have to change machinery. In truth, it lets coal plants keep doing what they have always done, just with a little wood added to the mix.

      That presents two big problems.

        Firstly, creating additional demand for wood would put further deforestation pressure on the country’s thick and biodiverse tropical forests, already at risk from mining and palm oil plantations.

        Secondly, by making old coal plants look a little greener on paper, the plan could hand them a reason to keep operating well beyond when they would otherwise be retired, meaning the fleet keeps emitting for longer than a genuine phase-out would allow.

        This is not a real climate solution. It is coal wearing a green mask.

        A threat to forests

        To meet its co-firing mandate, Indonesia would need more than 10 million tonnes of wood pellets every year, an area of forest equivalent to 3.27 million football fields, according to a 2024 assessment by a group of NGOs.

        The same report warned this could push deforestation as high as 2.1 million hectares a year, and found that a 10% cut in coal use through co-firing could threaten 10 million hectares of untouched forest in the areas where wood is collected. At Indonesia’s biggest power plants alone, switching just 10% of coal to wood could clear an area of forest roughly 35 times the size of Jakarta.

        PLN and the forestry companies that supply it insist the wood comes from dedicated “energy plantation forests” – land set aside to grow fast-growing trees for fuel, not from clearing natural forest. But the same assessment found that of the 1.2 million hectares already designated for these plantations, more than 400,000 hectares still contain undisturbed tropical forest, which will come under growing pressure as demand rises. The claim that this wood comes from already-degraded land does not hold up to scrutiny. 

        Advocates of co-firing say wood is a clean fuel because trees can grow back. But when old natural forests are cleared to make way for fast-growing forestry plantations to grow trees for fuel, they release carbon that took decades or centuries to build up. 

        One study, by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), estimated that co-firing with just 10% wood across 52 power plants could create up to 26.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions each year, once the clearing of land and the production of wood pellets are counted.

        Wood pellets for export 

        Government rules have made this easier, not harder. Companies that already hold industrial timber plantation permits can convert them into energy plantations, giving them a ready-made legal route into the wood pellet business without applying for new forest land.

        Indroyono Soesilo, chairman of the Indonesian Forestry Entrepreneurs Association (APHI), has publicly called on the government for tax breaks and relief from state forestry levies in exchange for making that switch.

        Research by Trend Asia found that the push into energy plantations for biomass is dominated not by small or informal loggers but by large companies already notorious for deforestation, including APP Group, Korindo Group, Barito Pacific and Wilmar International. In short, some of the same companies long associated with clearing forests are being given an easier path and a green label to keep doing it.

          Much of this wood does not even stay in Indonesia. Japan and South Korea have