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Diesel Hits $5 Per Gallon in US, 33% Higher Than Before Trump Launched War Against Iran
The latest supply crunch comes at a time when "US gasoline inventories have become critically low," said one analyst.
Jul 16, 2026
President Donald Trump's decision to restart his illegal war with Iran has sent the price of oil back up, leading to a corresponding rise in the prices of gasoline and diesel fuel.
Data published by AAA on Thursday showed that the average price of diesel in the US is once again over $5 per gallon, which is 33% higher than the average price of diesel before Trump unlawfully attacked Iran without congressional authorization in February.
Oil industry analyst Patrick De Haan wrote in a Thursday social media post that diesel fuel powers "the trucks that move nearly everything you buy—groceries, goods, supplies," meaning the current spike will lead to "higher prices down the line" for other key goods.
According to a Thursday report in The Wall Street Journal, the rise in diesel prices is unlikely to be short-lived given that there are now multiple factors pushing costs higher.
In addition to the resumption of the Iran war, the Journal writes, Russia has now banned diesel exports after its refineries came under attack by Ukraine. And in the US, domestic stockpiles of the fuel have now fallen to their lowest levels in 20 years.
Given all these factors, analysts told the Journal that diesel prices "could soon climb an additional 20 to 25 cents a gallon."
An analysis published on Thursday by CNN Business senior reporter David Goldman pointed to another factor pushing diesel prices higher: Global refining capacities have taken a significant hit since the start of the Iran war.
Goldman noted that Iran has "damaged or destroyed 30 Middle Eastern refineries" since the start of the conflict, causing global refinery output to fall by "3 million barrels at the peak of the Strait of Hormuz disruption, and 2.1 million barrels of refining capacity remain offline."
Energy analyst John Kemp said on Thursday that the diesel supply crunch will likely spill over to the price of regular gasoline in the coming weeks.
"US gasoline inventories have become critically low," Kemp explained in a social media post, "as domestic refiners prioritize production of jet fuel and diesel to replace global supplies hit by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and Ukraine's escalating attacks on Russia's refineries."
Kemp added that the US gasoline stocks "have depleted in 13 of the last 16 weeks by a total of 43 million barrels" since the start of the war, making it "by far the largest [depletion] on record for the time of year, and three times faster than average over the last decade."
In an interview with Bloomberg published on Wednesday, International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol warned that renewed fighting between the US and Iran was again threatening to create a global fuel supply crisis that could come in "not months" but "weeks."
"If the Strait of Hormuz remains closed," Birol said, "we may again have some difficulty for global economies, including those in the region and developing nations and Asia."
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Without a US-Iran Peace Deal, the World Is Headed for an Energy Crisis Apocalypse
Global reserves of petroleum could fall so low by September, if the crisis is not resolved, that they will reach what analysts call “an operational floor.”
Jun 06, 2026
The International Energy Agency has made its May report free to download, and the news is not good for the second and third quarters of this year, i.e. April-September. The IEA hopes things will look up in the fourth quarter, but premises that expectation on an early end to the US conflict with Iran and a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
At the moment (June 5, 2026), there does not seem much movement on that front, and in fact the US and Iran are not only skirmishing with one another but Iran is making good its threat to hurt US allies like Bahrain and Kuwait every time the US hurts Iran.
One was killed and dozens injured in Kuwait on Wednesday by Iranian Shahed drone barrages that also damaged the airport. Kuwait Airlines shut down briefly but is now flying from a different terminal; it is the only carrier flying from Kuwait. Iran also targeted the HQ of the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain but CENTCOM says the missiles were intercepted. Iran says the attacks were in reaction to US strikes on Qeshm Island, which is a base for Iranian missiles and a radar installation.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Friday Iran time that no progress has been made in talks with the US, though contacts are ongoing.
Last week alone, US petroleum reserves fell by 10.6 million barrels, to the lowest level seen since 2004.
In the meantime, the IEA says that in Q2, ending June 30, world demand for petroleum will be down by 2.45 million barrels a day. This reduction is what economists call demand destruction, and it is a very bad sign. People are just using less petroleum because it is more expensive than it was before the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. In the US, gasoline is up by 35% to 50%. In Europe, diesel, which runs trucks, was the equivalent of $6.78 a gallon in February, and is now $8.02 per gallon (€1.82 per liter). If you are running a fleet of trucks over thousands of miles, that is a huge loss, and you might consolidate and cut out less remunerative routes.
Likewise, airlines have cancelled tens of thousands of flights and ticket prices have risen, so some passengers are cancelling or postponing trips. Trucks deliver goods to retail stores, so prices of commodities have gone up, and some customers have put off buying things they don’t desperately need right now. If the retailer doesn’t sell a product, it doesn’t order more, so the trucks don’t roll as often. And if the goods aren’t selling, the factories scale back production, so they use less petroleum, too.
The IEA statistics suggest that the pain is greater for the poorer countries, which makes sense. The wealthy countries’ consumers are paying more and cutting back a bit. Those in the developing world are just going without, as I pointed out on Monday.
The IEA expected the world to produce 106.1 million barrels a day in 2026. It won’t. That projection has been revised down to 102.2 million barrels a day, a reduction of 3.9 million barrels a day. That is severe. But here is the catch. That is the reduction if “flows through the Strait gradually resume from June.” As Qasim al-Ali points out, that is an iffy bet as things now stand. So the shortfall in production will be bigger. Which will slow the world economy even more.
The agency observes, “With Hormuz tanker traffic still restricted, cumulative supply losses from Gulf producers already exceed 1 billion barrels with more than 14 mb/d of oil now shut in, an unprecedented supply shock.”
The shock hasn’t been as bad as it could have been so far, for several reasons. We just saw that there is enormous demand destruction, with the economic slowdown it implies. Also, there was a glut in the oil market going into the crisis, which takes some of the pressure off. The US, Europe, and China are drawing down their Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPRs) at an alarming rate. That move eases the pain in the short term. But low reserves imply a limited ability to deal with further supply shocks that may occur next year. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled that he’d like to attack Iran again. So the big crisis may be next year this time, when there won’t be any SPR cushion.
Also, Strategic Petroleum Reserves are not infinite. China has enough for six months. At some point governments will become reluctant to draw them down any more, and then the interruption in supplies from the Gulf will hit all that much harder. The reserves held at oil hubs can’t go to zero, moreover. The inventory at Cushing, Oklahoma has fallen from 33 to 24.5 million barrels. But it can’t go lower than 20 million barrels without gumming up the pipelines and refineries.
Last week alone, US petroleum reserves fell by 10.6 million barrels, to the lowest level seen since 2004.
Global reserves of petroleum could fall so low by September, if the crisis is not resolved, that they will reach what analysts call “an operational floor.”
And when that happens, the shortages won’t be able to be finessed anymore, not by demand destruction and not by release of reserves.
And when we cross that threshold, oil shoots suddenly to $200 a barrel, which is an energy crisis apocalypse and spells deep gloom for the global and the US economy.
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US-Israeli War on Iran Sparks 'Largest Supply Disruption in History of Global Oil Market': IEA
"The oil market challenges we are facing are unprecedented in scale," said the executive director of the International Energy Agency.
Mar 12, 2026
The International Energy Agency said Thursday that the US-Israeli war on Iran and its reverberating impacts across the region have sparked "the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market," with flows of crude and other fossil fuel products through the Strait of Hormuz plummeting and Gulf nations slashing production as they run out of storage space.
The agency noted in its monthly report on the state of the global oil market that "oil prices have gyrated wildly since the United States and Israel launched joint airstrikes on Iran on 28 February," pointing to "disruptions to Middle Eastern supplies due to attacks on the region’s oil infrastructure and the cessation of tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz," which have "sent Brent futures soaring, trading within a whisker of $120/bbl."
The IEA's report came a day after the agency's 32 member nations—including the US—agreed unanimously to release a total of 400 million barrels of oil from their emergency reserves to "address disruptions in oil markets stemming from the war in the Middle East."
"The oil market challenges we are facing are unprecedented in scale, therefore I am very glad that IEA member countries have responded with an emergency collective action of unprecedented size,” said the agency's executive director, Fatih Birol.
The IEA assessment on Thursday came as oil prices surged again as Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran's new supreme leader, vowed to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed. An estimated 20% of the world's oil passes through the route each year.
Earlier on Thursday, Iraq—which has among the largest confirmed reserves of crude oil in the world—suspended all of its oil terminal operations after two vessels were attacked off the nation's coast. NPR reported that Iran "took responsibility for attacking one of the tankers, which it said was owned by the US."
The US and Israel have also bombed Iran's oil infrastructure, choking Tehran with black smoke and spraying toxic rain that prompted warnings from the World Health Organization (WHO).
"The black rain and the acidic rain coming with it is indeed a danger for the population, respiratory mainly," WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told reporters in Geneva earlier this week.
Heba Morayef, Amnesty International's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said Wednesay that "the potential for vast, predictable, and devastating civilian harm arising from strikes targeting energy infrastructure, including uncontrolled deadly fires, major disruptions to essential services, environmental damage, and severe long-term health risks for millions, means there is a substantial risk such attacks would violate international humanitarian law and in some cases could amount to war crimes."
“Regardless of whether a military objective is cited to justify targeting energy infrastructure, under international humanitarian law all parties have a clear obligation to take all feasible precautions to reduce civilian harm and refrain from attacks that cause disproportionate death or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects," said Morayef. "This includes any foreseeable knock-on, indirect adverse effects on civilians’ life and health, such as exposure to toxic chemicals.”
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Global Energy Report Offers Choice for Humanity: Renewable Transition or 'Dystopian Future' Pushed by Trump
"At COP30, governments must reject this nightmare fantasy, uphold a just transition, and choose a fast, fair, and funded fossil fuel phaseout," said one climate campaigner.
Nov 12, 2025
An International Energy Agency report published Wednesday underscores that world leaders are at a crossroads and must decide whether to embrace an ambitious transition to renewable energy or succumb to the agenda of US President Donald Trump and others bent on propping up the planet-wrecking fossil fuel industry.
The IEA said in its flagship World Energy Outlook that under a so-called "current policies scenario," oil and fracked gas demand could continue to grow until the middle of the century, complicating the organization's earlier projections that global fossil fuel demand could peak by 2030.
The change came amid pressure from the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers in the United States, the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases. The New York Times noted Wednesday that "Republicans in Congress have been threatening to cut US government funding to the IEA if it does not change the way it operates."
"In an essay posted online, the authors of this year’s report said they were restoring the current policies scenario because it was appropriate to consider multiple possibilities for the way the future might unfold," the Times added. "They did not say they were responding to pressure from the United States."
Fatih Birol, the IEA's executive director, said in a statement that the scenarios outlined in the new report "illustrate the key decision points that lie ahead and, together, provide a framework for evidence-based, data-driven discussion over the way forward."
Under all of the scenarios examined by the IEA, "renewables grow faster than any other major energy source" even as the Trump administration works to roll back clean energy initiatives in the US and promote fossil fuel production.
China, the report states, "continues to be the largest market for renewables, accounting for 45-60% of global deployment over the next ten years across the scenarios, and remains the largest manufacturer of most renewable technologies."
The analysis was released as world leaders gathered in Belém, Brazil for the COP30 climate talks, which the Trump administration is boycotting while lobbing attacks from afar.
David Tong, global industry campaign manager at Oil Change International, said the IEA report "sets out a stark and simple choice: We can protect people and communities by safeguarding 1.5ºC [of warming], settle for a disastrous business-as-usual 2.5ºC, or choose to backslide into a nightmare future of much higher warming."
"This year's report also shows Donald Trump's dystopian future, bringing back the old, fossil-fuel intense, high-pollution current policies scenario, charting an unrealistic pathway where governments drag their energy policies backwards and rates of renewable energy adoption stall, leading to high energy prices and unmitigated climate disaster," said Tong. "At COP30, governments must reject this nightmare fantasy, uphold a just transition, and choose a fast, fair, and funded fossil fuel phaseout."
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Nationwide Backlash Brewing Against Big Tech's Energy-Devouring AI Data Centers
"For any Democrat who wants to think politically, what an opportunity,” said Faiz Shakir, a longtime adviser to US Sen. Bernie Sanders. “The people are way ahead of the politicians.”
Oct 14, 2025
America's biggest tech firms are facing an increasing backlash over the energy-devouring data centers they are building to power artificial intelligence.
Semafor reported on Monday that opposition to data center construction has been bubbling up in communities across the US, as both Republican and Democratic local officials have been campaigning on promises to clamp down on Silicon Valley's most expensive and ambitious projects.
In Virginia's 30th House of Delegates district, for example, both Republican incumbent Geary Higgins and Democratic challenger John McAuliff have been battling over which one of them is most opposed to AI data center construction in their region.
In an interview with Semafor, McAuliff said that opposition to data centers in the district has swelled up organically, as voters recoil at both the massive amount of resources they consume and the impact that consumption is having on both the environment and their electric bills.
"We’re dealing with the biggest companies on the planet,” he explained. “So we need to make sure Virginians are benefiting off of what they do here, not just paying for it.”
NPR on Tuesday similarly reported that fights over data center construction are happening nationwide, as residents who live near proposed construction sites have expressed concerns about the amount of water and electricity they will consume at the expense of local communities.
"A typical AI data center uses as much electricity as 100,000 households, and the largest under development will consume 20 times more," NPR explained, citing a report from the International Energy Agency. "They also suck up billions of gallons of water for systems to keep all that computer hardware cool."
Data centers' massive water use has been a consistent concern across the US. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on Monday that residents of the township of East Vincent, Pennsylvania have seen their wells dry up recently, and they are worried that a proposed data center would significantly exacerbate water shortages.
This is what has been happening in Mansfield, Georgia, a community that for years has experienced problems with its water supply ever since tech giant Meta began building a data center there in 2018.
As BBC reported back in August, residents in Mansfield have resorted to buying bottled water because their wells have been delivering murky water, which they said wasn't a problem before the Meta data center came online. Although Meta has commissioned a study that claims to show its data center hasn't affected local groundwater quality, Mansfield resident Beverly Morris told BBC she isn't buying the company's findings.
"My everyday life, everything has been affected," she said, in reference to the presence of the data center. "I've lived through this for eight years. This is not just today, but it is affecting me from now on."
Anxieties about massive power consumption are also spurring the backlash against data centers, and recent research shows these fears could be well founded.
Mike Jacobs, a senior energy manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists, last month released an analysis estimating that data centers had added billions of dollars to Americans' electric bills across seven different states in recent years. In Virginia alone, for instance, Jacobs found that household electric bills had subsidized data center transmission costs to the tune of $1.9 billion in 2024.
"The big tech companies rushing to build out massive data centers are worth trillions of dollars, yet they’re successfully exploiting an outdated regulatory process to pawn billions of dollars of costs off on families who may never even use their products," Jacobs explained. "People deserve to understand the full extent of how data centers in their communities may affect their lives and wallets. This is a clear case of the public unknowingly subsidizing private companies' profits."
While the backlash to data centers hasn't yet become a national issue, Faiz Shakir, a longtime adviser to US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), predicted in an interview with Semafor that opposition to their construction would be a winning political issue for any politician savvy enough to get ahead of it.
“For any Democrat who wants to think politically, what an opportunity,” he said. “The people are way ahead of the politicians.”
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Renewables Surging Worldwide—But Going Backward in US Under Trump
Despite US backsliding, solar and wind generated more electricity than coal worldwide for the first time this year.
Oct 07, 2025
Led by Chinese expansion, global adoption of renewable energy is accelerating, with the world’s wind and solar farms generating more electricity than coal for the first time this year—however, the US embrace of fossil fuels under President Donald Trump is proving a drag on humanity's transition to clean power.
The climate think tank Ember on Tuesday published its Global Electricity Mid-Year Insights report, which found that solar and wind outpaced demand growth in the first half of 2025. Solar generation grew by a record 306 terawatt-hours (TWh)—a 31% increase—with China accounting for more than half the world's increase.
In a major milestone, solar and wind overtook coal electricity generation for the first time ever, as renewables grew by 363 TWh (+7.7%) to reach 5,072 TWh, while coal generation decreased by 31 TWh to 4,896 TWh.
"This analysis confirms what we are witnessing on the ground: Solar and wind are no longer marginal technologies—they are driving the global power system forward," Global Solar Council CEO Sonia Dunlop said in a statement Tuesday.
"The fact that renewables have overtaken coal for the first time marks a historic shift," Dunlop added. "But to lock in this progress, governments and industry must accelerate investment in solar, wind, and battery storage, ensuring that clean, affordable, and reliable electricity reaches communities everywhere."
NEW | Solar and wind OUTPACED global electricity demand growth in the first half of 2025, leading to a fall in fossil fuels compared to this time last year ☀️🌪️Record solar and steady wind growth is reshaping global power as renewables OVERTAKE coal for the first time.https://loom.ly/c-MNZSk
[image or embed]
— Ember (@ember-energy.org) October 7, 2025 at 1:01 AM
Two years after agreeing at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP28, in Dubai to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030, many key nations have failed to make significant progress toward that goal. Chief among these countries is the United States, where the return of Trump and his "drill, baby, drill" policies has resulted in the International Energy Agency (IEA) revising the country's renewables growth outlook for 2030 downward by a staggering 45%.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law by Trump on July 4 includes billions of dollars in handouts for the fossil fuel industry, boosts drilling on millions of acres of public lands, mandates oil and gas lease sales, and imposes new fees on renewable development.
Additionally, the US Department of Energy recently announced a $625 million investment “to expand and reinvigorate America’s coal industry." This, as the DOE dramatically slashes funding for clean energy projects. Other federal agencies have similarly turned their backs on renewable development under Trump.
The good news is that despite backsliding by countries including the US and Japan, the IEA says that global renewable generation could double by the end of the decade, with 80% of new clean energy capacity expected to come from the sun.
Even in the United States, the combination of all renewables—wind, solar, hydropower, biomass, and geothermal—produced 9.9% more electricity during the first half of 2025 than it did a year ago, providing more than a quarter of all US electricity generation.
"Notwithstanding enactment of the anti-renewables provisions in the Trump megabill, solar and wind continue to power ahead," noted SUN DAY Campaign executive director Ken Bossong. "Meanwhile the electrical output [year-to-date] by the Republicans' preferred technologies—nuclear power and natural gas—has actually fallen."
Climate campaigners hailed the continued growth of clean energy.
“Renewables overtaking coal for the very first time is a sign of how the economics of power generation have been transformed," Julia Skorupska, head of secretariat at the Powering Past Coal Alliance, said in a statement Monday.
"There is a clear economic case for replacing coal with renewables, which are now the cheapest forms of energy in most of the world," Skorupska continued. "The transition from coal to renewables underpins competitiveness, enables energy security, creates good jobs, and lowers electricity prices and air pollution risks for citizens."
“With COP30 around the corner, countries have the opportunity to work together to accelerate this shift," she added, referring to next month's UN climate summit in Belém, Brazil. "We need genuine partnerships that enable coal-dependent countries to speed up their coal-to-clean transition, placing them right at the cutting edge of the energy revolution."
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IEA Report Underscores Urgency of Fossil Fuel Phaseout as Electricity Demand Surges
"The world has the need and the capacity to go much faster."
Oct 16, 2024
The International Energy Agency on Wednesday released a major report showing that the world's nations are not on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with 2030 targets and doing so will be made more difficult by growing demand for electricity.
The 398-page report, World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2024, is the latest in the IEA's flagship annual series, which is heavily cited by stakeholders across the world.
The report found that while renewables are entering the energy mix at an "unprecedented" rate—a record 560 gigawatts came online globally in 2023—the world's nations are on track to reduce emissions only by 3% from 2023 levels by 2030, rather than the 33% needed to meet agreed-upon targets. It also finds that the path to net zero by 2050 is "increasingly narrow."
"The world has the need and the capacity to go much faster," the report says.
The challenges to decarbonization include an increase in demand in electricity, especially in China and India.
This year's WEO projects a 6% higher rate in global electricity demand by 2035 than did last year's, with the surge "driven by light industrial consumption, electric mobility, cooling, and data centers and [artificial intelligence]."
While renewable development and electrification generally help bend down the emissions curve, experts warn that renewables only do so if they replace fossil fuel use, and the electricity needs to be powered cleanly.
"What the WEO is showing is that a market-led approach is leading to renewable energy being added on top of fossil fuels, rather than driving a rapid transition away from them," Collin Rees, U.S. program manager at Oil Change International (OCI), told Common Dreams. "That's why we need more direct intervention to actually phase down the fossils and boost renewables to make up the difference."
The growth in electricity demand raises the bar for climate action. Dave Jones, a director at Ember, an energy think tank, told The New York Times that "with higher energy use, even fast renewables growth doesn't translate to fast falls in carbon dioxide emissions."
The new WEO projects coal to decline more gradually than had been previously expected due to the rising electricity demand. This is true not only in China and India but also the United States, thanks partly to the inordinate amounts of energy used by AI data centers.
"With established technology companies and AI startups making major investments, a sharp rise in electricity consumption by data centers looks inevitable," the WEO says.
Still, Fatih Birol, the IEA's executive director, celebrated the overall move toward electrification and drew attention to the WEO finding that solar and wind would power far more of the world's electricity by 2035.
Electricity's growing role in the energy mix makes it vital to ensure as much of it as possible is generated from clean sources
The rapid growth of solar & wind means they are both set to overtake power generation from coal by 2035
More in #WEO24 ➡️ https://t.co/SiR6lGAAPw pic.twitter.com/zkNeRtbkG7
— Fatih Birol (@fbirol) October 16, 2024
The key problem highlighted by the new WEO is the continued reliance on fossil fuels, according to an OCI statement: "The WEO lays bare how much work is left to do for governments to follow through with the policies and funding needed for a livable planet."
OCI calls for stop to all oil, gas, and coal extraction beyond existing fields and mines. The group also opposes liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects, which the IEA authors raised as a point of concern in the WEO.
The report says that "an unprecedented volume of LNG is due to come online in the second-half of the 2020s, led by a near-doubling of export capacity in the United States and Qatar."
The WEO authors project that a surplus of LNG will depress gas prices internationally, which could affect the uptake of renewables.
"Clean technology costs are coming down, but maintaining and accelerating momentum behind their deployment in a lower fuel-price world is a different proposition," they wrote.
Rees of OCI said the LNG glut could lead to "displacement of renewable solutions like wind, solar, and heat pumps" and condemned U.S. policymakers for pushing LNG exports "when there's no room for it in a livable climate, and no need for it even in scenarios far off track from climate safety."
Though the IEA's projections show that the world is not doing enough to tackle climate change, there is no guarantee that even the modest progress assumed in the projections will come to pass. Big Oil executives have cast doubt on the idea that fossil fuel use and climate emissions will peak by the end of the decade, as the IEA projects.
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The Path Toward a More Just and Sustainable Mineral Supply Chain
What’s needed to make the Minerals Security Partnership work on the ground
Sep 15, 2024
Azure waters and exotic islands are not the only attractions of Cabo Delgado in Mozambique. The province is home to the largest graphite reserve globally, prompting Syrah Resources’ Twigg to open the Balama mine. This is one of the dozen projects across the world chosen by the Minerals Security Partnership to secure and diversify the supply of raw materials.
The energy transition is dependent on critical minerals such as lithium and copper as the world electrifies transport and shifts to renewables. With most minerals currently controlled by China, many western countries are playing catch up. The Minerals Security Partnership (MSP), whose members include Australia, Canada, India, the U.S. and many European countries, is central to this effort.
History is full of not-so-pretty attempts by western nations to capture minerals supply chains, as many living in the Global South know first hand. So how can this partnership offer a truly different value proposition centered on sustainability and deliver truly responsible projects?
Strong transparent standards
Despite some effort, the current situation in the extractive industries is far from adequate. A recent report by the International Energy Agency notes that while governance in the minerals sector has somewhat improved, progress on water and greenhouse gas emissions is at best stagnating. (Add to this a deeply felt mistrust among communities and companies and you quickly realize how complicated the matters are.)
But it does not have to be this way. Most technologies for safer tailings management or better water treatment, rules for robust anti-corruption and human rights due diligence, and practices to engage communities and co-govern with Indigenous peoples all exist. They just need to be applied and upheld consistently. This is where the new minerals partnership can bring real value.
Yet right now the MSP principles lack any such concrete requirements. That’s a big omission. For example in the case of Cabo Delgado, concerns around involuntary resettlement of nearby communities and local value proposition abide. MSP-supported projects like this one will be judged as much by the volumes of critical minerals they supply as by their environmental and social stewardship.
The good news is that the MSP does not have to reinvent the wheel. The answer lies in applying the human right and environmental due diligence practices as stipulated in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) guidelines. The EU has recently done exactly that in its new battery law. This will require tracing, addressing and mitigating all manner of social and environmental risks, alongside upholding global treaties such as on Free, Prior and Informed Consent.
Any global miner, refiner, or recycler whose cobalt, graphite, lithium, and nickel are found in batteries on the European market will already have to track and mitigate all manner of social and environmental risks from 2026, including forced labor, water pollution, and biodiversity. MSP member countries can simply uplift these provisions into the partnership projects.
From rhetoric to action on the ground
Setting strong and transparent standards is the first step. These need to also be implemented so that they bring difference on the ground.
This means that the minerals partnership needs to quickly move from vision to a pipeline of responsible projects on the ground. So the focus should be on coordinating with local governments to bring local value and infrastructure, on engaging local communities to have a social license to operate and on bringing in finance instructions to make the projects happen.
Given how far ahead China is, there is no time to waste. A laser sharp focus to scale responsibly managed projects across the world is necessary to build a more diverse supply chain. But this should also come with better environmental stewardship and advancing the rights and livelihoods of those impacted, breaking from past behavior.
The Minerals Security Partnership shows global governments are waking up to the challenge of securing critical minerals responsibly. But whether projects like the Balama mine will become largest suppliers of quality graphite and raise the local community out of poverty will depend on how quickly responsible mining practices are scaled up on the ground.
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A Full-Court Press for Renewables Will Save Money and the Planet
Although there are up front costs of building solar and wind farms, these new energy plants will pay for themselves over time, and by the 2040s energy will be much cheaper.
Jun 14, 2024
Last week, the International Energy Agency put out a new report that turns conventional wisdom regarding the clean energy transition on its head.
It is cheaper for everyone to adopt solar, wind, batteries, and other renewables as soon as possible than to go on depending on coal, fossil gas, and petroleum. And we’re just talking about energy costs in a vacuum here, not factoring in the climate change damage that fossil fuels do to the planet, which costs billions of dollars a year and will cost ever more as time goes on.
The report’s authors write that in China in 2023, “more than 95% of new utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) installations and new onshore wind capacity had lower generation costs than new coal and natural gas plants. Where electric cars and two- and three-wheelers have higher upfront costs, which is not always the case, they typically result in substantial savings because of lower operating expenses.”
Since the cost of producing electricity by solar is falling so fast, whereas petroleum prices are either stable or slated to rise, if we shift from oil to electricity we obviously are saving a lot of money.
I repeat, solar and wind had lower generation costs. And no wonder, since the cost of solar panels plummeted an astonishing 30% in 2023. And we’re only at the beginning of the transition. Between 2009 and 2019, the price of solar electricity dropped 89%. Think about the last 10 years of gasoline prices in the U.S. The average price of gasoline in 2014 was about $3 per gallon. In 2023 it was $3.52. In real terms, accounting for inflation, the price was probably about flat or down just a wee bit. Fossil fuels are remaining just as expensive as they always were, but renewables are rapidly declining in price. These declines will continue as new technologies are invented and implemented.
Although there are up front costs of building solar and wind farms, these new energy plants will pay for themselves over time, and by the 2040s energy will be much cheaper. The IEA says, “Today, around 50% of total consumer energy expenditure is on oil products, and another 35% is on electricity. In rapid energy transitions these swap places, making the price of electricity the key measure of affordability for most consumers.”
Since the cost of producing electricity by solar is falling so fast, whereas petroleum prices are either stable or slated to rise, if we shift from oil to electricity we obviously are saving a lot of money.
But, we’re going to need some major investments up front to unlock these lower prices. The report says: “As things stand, around $3 trillion is invested each year into the energy sector, of which $1.9 trillion is in a range of clean energy technologies and infrastructure. By 2035, total investments need to rise to $5.3 trillion in the NZE Scenario, with $5 trillion going to clean energy.”
The bottom line is the bill you get from your energy utility every month, and your monthly cost for transpiration fuel. The IEA observes, “Our projections highlight that rapid clean energy transitions result in lower consumer bills compared with a trajectory based on today’s policy settings.”
If we stop subsidizing fossil fuels and put the money instead into a Manhattan Project-style full-court press for renewables, in 11 years consumers could be paying 20% less for their energy, especially in the developing world.
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Climate Groups Call for Rich to Pay More as International Meetings Begin
"We have to put the social justice element upfront," an architect of the 2015 Paris agreement said as the world's climate delegates gathered in Germany.
Jun 04, 2024
Advocates on Tuesday issued strong calls to action on climate finance for developing countries and an international agency released a report on the need to ramp up renewable energy production as the Bonn Climate Change Conference continued in Germany and G7 nations prepared to meet in Italy next week.
At the conference in Bonn, Friends of the Earth International pushed for more rich-country financing to pay for the rising costs of climate impacts in the Global South, while Laurence Tubiana, head of the European Climate Foundation and an architect of the 2015 Paris agreement, called for the global rich to pay their share through taxes and consumption levies.
Meanwhile, two organizations warned that countries aren't on track to meet targets they set just last year. Oil Change International (OCI) published a briefing showing that G7 nations are expanding oil and gas commitments that undermine goals set at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) meeting in Dubai, and the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued a report showing that the world's nations are not on track to meet their Dubai pledge to triple renewable energy production by 2030.
"The world is on fire because of decades of inaction by rich countries on reducing emissions, and their failure to pay the climate finance they owe to developing countries to transition to renewable energy systems for all, and to pay for rising costs for loss and damage and adaptation," Sara Shaw, Friends of the Earth International program coordinator, said in a statement. "What is on the table to date is scales of magnitude away from what it needed. This year must be a year of breakthrough on climate finance."
Climate representatives are meeting in Bonn this week and next to prepare for COP29 in November in Azerbaijan, where a key agenda item is expected to be financing for a green transition in the Global South. COP negotiations are conducted under the aegis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). At COP21 in 2015, nations signed the Paris agreement, a treaty that sought to limit global warming to less than 2°C above preindustrial levels.
Tubiana, an architect of that deal, said Tuesday that tackling climate change requires centering global justice in order to avoid conflict and gain public acceptance of climate measures.
"We have to put the social justice element upfront," Tubiana, a French economist and diplomat, told The Guardian.
Tubiana said that raising the funds required for low-income nations will require holding both rich nations and people to account, via taxes and consumption levies, given that inequities exist not just between nations but also within them.
"This inequality is true not only between developed countries and developing ones, but within each country—the 1% of rich Chinese, or the 1% of very rich Indians, or the U.S. citizen—they have a lifestyle which is very, very similar, in terms of overconsumption," she said.
The world's richest and most powerful nations are not taking responsibility for climate action as they should, the new OCI briefing argues.
"Some G7 countries are massively expanding fossil fuel production at home, while others are investing in more fossil fuel infrastructure abroad," the briefing states. "Both are catastrophic failures of leadership."
OCI cites the United States, Italy, and Japan as particularly bad climate actors. The U.S. is the largest oil and gas producer in the world and has plans for massive expansions of the industry, despite President Joe Biden's climate promises, the briefing notes. Italy has announced plans to double natural gas production. And both the U.S. and Japan have financed billions of dollars worth of oil and gas production in other countries just since the end of 2022, the document states, citing earlier OCI findings.
.@G7 countries 🇨🇦 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 could be responsible for nearly half of the CO2 pollution from new oil & gas projects planned between 2023 and 2050 - equivalent to the lifetime emissions of nearly 600 coal plants.
📑 https://t.co/ujhMLMVNtr pic.twitter.com/8IB1sxLuHj
— Oil Change International (@PriceofOil) June 4, 2024
The IEA also spelled out unfulfilled commitments, while detailing progress that has been made on the energy transition. The agency looked at the domestic policies and targets of 150 countries to see how far along they were toward reaching the international target of tripling renewable power generation by 2030. It found that once added together, the nations' domestic plans would get them about 70% of the way toward the 11,000 gigawatts of additional capacity required to meet the goal.
"There is a gap, but the gap is bridgeable," Heymi Bahar, a senior energy analyst at the IEA and co-author of the report, told The Guardian.
Governments have not in most cases written these domestic plans into their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris agreement. The IEA report says that countries need to "bring their NDCs in line with their current domestic ambitions" and scale those ambitions up further still, to get from 70% to 100%. Moreover, they must follow through with their promises and achieve the targets they've set.
"This report makes clear that the tripling target is ambitious but achievable—though only if governments quickly turn promises into plans of action," Fatih Birol, the IEA's executive director, said in a statement.
The world added about 560 gigawatts of renewable capacity in 2023, a record increase, more than half of which came from China, according to the IEA. About half of planned capacity increases are in solar, with a quarter from wind power, the IEA report states.
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