Under cofounder Jensen Huang, Nvidia has become the engine for the AI boom - and one of the tech industry's biggest environmental liabilities. Its sought-after chips have triggered a new wave of water- and chemical-intensive factories, drained power grids from inside massive data centers, and set the stage for a looming e-waste problem.
Under Huang's leadership, Nvidia clashed with environmental groups seeking to hold the company accountable for its so-called "hidden" emissions. Huang has talked up the idea of using AI to fight climate change while his company's supply chain emissions ballooned. Nvidia's investments, meanwhile, have support …
ANTALYA, Turkey — The EU climate chief has signaled the bloc is prepared to give up on a key clean energy demand at this year’s COP conference, in a bid to get more countries on board with an electrification push.
A global agreement on accelerating electrification — by increasing electricity’s share in energy use — has been touted as a way to address both worsening climate change and soaring fuel prices resulting from the Iran war.
Countries at the COP31 climate summit in Antalya are currently debating whether they can reach a consensus on the issue in the conference’s final decision. The Turkish-Australian hosts have also urged countries to sign a voluntary pledge to boost electrification.
The EU began the conference wanting any electrification agreement to refer explicitly to “clean” power, generated from renewables or nuclear, a position enshrined in the negotiating mandate agreed by its 27 member governments last month.
But Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, who will co-lead negotiations for the EU from Monday, suggested in an interview that the bloc could drop that condition.
“The world needs much more radical, much faster electrification. Ideally, that comes for the overwhelming part from solar, from wind, and from nuclear sources,” he told POLITICO and other media outlets Friday.
“But at the same time, let’s also acknowledge that a certain degree of pragmatism is probably warranted and needed, to also make sure that the group of countries signing up is as large as possible.”
He added that even electrification using polluting sources — known as gray electricity — was better than burning fossil fuels straight up, as the switch from combustion to more efficient power by itself reduces energy demand and thus emissions.
“Of course we need to have a high degree of solar, wind and nuclear — and at the same time, if we embark on more electrification and part of that is gray, it is still much better to have someone charging their car with gray electricity than to continue to drive on fossil fuels, right?” said Hoekstra. “It would be a tactical mistake to seek absolutes in this.”
He nevertheless hoped electrification would act as a “unifier” in the talks that could help deliver on a previous, more contentious agreement to transition away from fossil fuels. Even China held a similar view to the EU on electrification, he said.
“The good thing about electrification is that there is a certain degree of ambiguity to it, which will probably make it easier to unite a larger group behind that thing,” he said.
Hoekstra also admitted he had “low expectations” for the Antalya summit.
“The geopolitics of the moment are extremely difficult. … Secondly, the whole pushback on climate action from various corners of the globe, the fact that the Americans have completely checked out of this, if you add all of that up … that combination shapes expectations,” he said.
Still, he insisted: “I do think we have a chance of success in the domain of electrification.”
ANTALYA, Turkey — “Anything is possible if you believe,” croons Turkish pop megastar Tarkan in his theme song for this year’s global COP31 climate conference.
Attendees appear to have taken his words to heart.
The Antalya summit marks the first climate talks since the United Nations told the world global warming would soon exceed 1.5C, effectively burying the totemic Paris Agreement target that has steered COP negotiations for more than a decade.
Yet leaders here are straining to keep the goal on life support.
“We are on course to overshoot the 1.5 degree target, and every fraction of a degree matters. So we must double down,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in her speech to fellow leaders on Wednesday.
“Let’s show that the fight for 1.5C is not over,” Hilda Heine, president of the Marshall Islands told leaders.
Even before the talks began, Danish Climate Minister Samira Nawa told POLITICO her country’s priority at COP31 was “to push for keeping the 1.5C target in the heart of global climate ambitions.”
Other leaders and ministers, reviving slogans from COPs past, have exhorted their colleagues to “keep 1.5 alive” or ensure the target remains “within reach.”
But scientists say that dream is over.
The U.N. last month said that, even if countries dramatically slash planet-warming emissions starting right now, the best outcome would be a rise in global temperatures of 1.8 degrees. If they also deploy vast amounts of carbon removal tech to clean up the atmosphere, there’s a chance of getting back to 1.5 degrees after surpassing it — in theory.
In reality, though, greenhouse gas emissions are still rising and the carbon-hoovering technologies needed to achieve that reversal are unproven at scale.
The collective ambition of national climate plans, already insufficient before the U.N.’s announcement, is even weaker than projected last year. Countries that have been among the strongest proponents of meeting the 1.5-degree target are watering down efforts to achieve it.
But at the same time, many countries (and climate scientists) fear that publicly dumping the rhetoric around 1.5C will open the door to weakening global ambitions even further. Highlighting other possible targets, such as the 1.8C mentioned by the U.N., would be a “slippery slope,” warned one European climate negotiator.
“I do not support the political messaging of keeping 1.5C alive — but on the other hand, I don’t want to lose it,” said Johan Rockström, a leading climate scientist and director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
“Politicians, when they say that, may naively think that we somehow still are on this linear, incremental journey that can simply take us to safety, which is not the case,” he added. “On the other hand, if we scientifically criticize it, the risk is that they do indeed say: ‘OK, let’s just drop it and aim for 2 degrees instead,’ which would be a big mistake.”
For island nations already losing land and livelihoods to rising oceans, the 1.5 degree target is not merely symbolic. It represents their very survival.
“Our response to the threat of overshoot must be overwhelming, or the world we know is over,” said Heine, the Marshall Islands president. “Overshoot means waves eating away our shores, flooding that destroys towns, schools, hospitals. It destroys our land and ocean.”
The temperature target was not chosen arbitrarily. It represents the level of warming scientists say the planet can endure before the heat trapped in the atmosphere unleashes exponentially greater dangers.
In the Paris accord, countries vowed to limit warming to below 2 degrees and “ideally” 1.5 degrees. The second target has become so dominant that the International Court of Justice last year declared it the primary goal.
A group of developed and highly vulnerable nations, known as the High Ambition Coalition, have called for a credible response to the overshoot as one key COP31 outcome.
“There is no way we can lose that anchor, out of our moral responsibility toward the people who have contributed the least and are the most impacted,” said Christiana Figueres, who headed the U.N. climate body when the Paris Agreement was adopted.
But promises have not aligned with reality.
“Leaders, and in particular those from developed countries, cannot keep expanding fossil fuel production while claiming to be committed to 1.5 degrees,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told world leaders in his opening speech on Wednesday.
Yet immediately after his speech, leaders did just that.
Australia, COP31 co-hosts with Turkey, is expanding investments in coal and natural gas, even as its Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen urges leaders in Antalya to act with “urgency, solidarity and resolve.”
“With every minute that we fail to achieve the targets set out in the Paris Agreement, the risks and costs we face continue to grow,” said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Two days earlier, he had celebrated the discovery of two new oil fields.
“The science is clear. Breaching 1.5 isn’t where we down tools and give up,” Katie White, the U.K.’s climate minister, said in response to the U.N. findings. White promised COP31 was the place to double down on action — but a day later, her own department approved a major natural gas project in the North Sea.
Meanwhile the United States, the largest polluter in world history, has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and is no longer part of COP talks. Donald Trump’s abandonment of efforts to address global warming has left a large gap in the world’s collective efforts to cut emissions.
Tina Stege, the Marshall Islands’ climate envoy, acknowledged the difficulty of the challenge. But she was unbending.
“That’s not a reason to not do everything that we absolutely can,” she told reporters. “Every country that showed up at this talk to do the work needs to do that work and more.”
Doing more means ramping up clean electrification and alternative fuels, say experts.
It also means dramatically curbing short-term climate pollutants, such as methane. That’s emerging as a possible response to the overshoot declaration in the final agreement from this year’s negotiations, according to the European diplomat cited above.
“If we cut methane by nearly half by 2030, we could avoid almost 0.3 degrees of warming by the 2040s and save 250,000 lives every year,” said Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, on Wednesday. “This buys us the time to get back to the 1.5 degrees.”
The politics are tricky. Even as technological advances have allowed for better detection of the potent pollutant, the U.S. and Europe have weakened regulations aimed at curbing methane emissions.
Mottley was adamant nonetheless that flagging global ambitions were no reason to give up.
“I call for a global movement: 1.5 billion voices for 1.5 degrees,” she said. “We need to do this before we meet at COP32 next year. … Make 1.5 impossible to ignore on the planet Earth.”
ANTALYA, Turkey — Donald Trump is not at the COP31 climate summit but almost everyone is talking about him — and not in the way he’d like.
The U.S. president’s fateful decision to attack Iran earlier this year, sending global oil and gas prices soaring and compounding an international cost of living crisis, has been invoked — directly or indirectly — by leader after leader in Turkey as a reason to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.
European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen said disruptions on the Strait of Hormuz are “shaking global energy markets.” The U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham invoked the specter of “wars across two continents” that “have sent fuel prices and gas bills soaring for families and businesses across the world.” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres noted how “recent conflicts made clear” that countries’ dependence on imported fossil fuels “is a recipe for chronic insecurity and a cost-of-living meltdown.”
“The case for fossil fuels is collapsing,” Gutteres said.
Trump is the name on everyone’s lips for another reason, too.
For the first time since he was reelected two years ago — and promptly announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the U.N. climate process and double down on fossil fuels — delegates at COP are starting to picture life without him in the White House.
“His shadow is still here. His shadow is here because of the midterm elections,” said London Mayor Sadiq Khan, co-chair of the C40 group of city mayors who back stronger climate action. People could “see now, on the horizon, a world without President Trump” or “one of Trump’s protégés” he told POLITICO.
Notwithstanding the Republicans’ crushing midterms defeat — itself in part down to the war’s impact on international fuel prices — Trump still looms large.
“The shadow of Trump” is also present at COP because “everyone is struggling with the cost of living,” added Khan — who has form in beefing with the U.S. president.
“Whether you speak to people from the Middle East, from sub-Saharan Africa, from Europe … all these fingers are pointed at President Trump and what he did in Iran. More so ironically — perversely — than Putin in Ukraine. President Trump has got Putin off the hook.”
The rhetoric on display in Turkey has not gone unnoticed in Washington, which has not sent a delegation to COP31. The U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change treaty that underpins COP talks will be completed early next year.
“President Trump is ensuring Iran can never have or use a nuclear weapon—a threat that would have a catastrophic impact on the entire world,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers. “The conflict in Iran has underscored the importance of having access to reliable, affordable, and secure energy sources.
“Nations around the world are now turning to the United States as both an example and a partner in pursuing common-sense energy dominance policies,” she argued.
Nonetheless, Khan’s criticisms of Trump — and a cautious optimism about post-2028 American climate policy — are echoed by other diplomats and campaigners in Turkey.
The U.S. midterms and even more importantly for most diplomats the reelection in Brazil of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva offer a “more positive vibe at COP31,” said founder of the E3G climate think tank Nick Mabey, “as countries see a move away from populism and the possibility of positive U.S. engagement on climate.”
“After Lula’s win and what we learned from the U.S. midterms,” agreed one European diplomat, “there’s a bit of a sense of tails up here now.”
Poland failed to overturn seven major European Union climate laws Thursday, with the bloc’s top court rejecting challenges to measures including the 2035 target for zero-emission cars and carbon pricing for heating and transport.
The rulings by the Court of Justice of the EU uphold key parts of the EU’s Green Deal and bring to a close a legal campaign launched by Poland’s previous nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government. Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s pro-EU administration kept the campaign alive by deciding not to withdraw the lawsuits.
Poland argued that the laws would fundamentally reshape its coal-dependent energy system and therefore required unanimous approval by EU governments, effectively giving Poland a veto.
The court rejected that argument, ruling that the measures could be adopted by a qualified majority of member countries. The judges also dismissed challenges to the bloc’s carbon border tax, energy efficiency rules and national emissions reduction targets.
Six lawsuits were filed in July and August 2023, while PiS was in power. The seventh was lodged on Dec. 14, a day after Tusk took office with a promise to repair Warsaw’s relations with Brussels. His government reviewed the cases but decided not to withdraw them.
The court’s decisions are final, but Tusk’s Poland is still among the countries pushing to weaken parts of the EU’s climate legislation, including by seeking to delay the new carbon market for heating and transport, known as ETS2.
ANTALYA, Turkey — World leaders and industry must make electric cars and heat pumps affordable if they are to ensure “people on all incomes” can “make the green transition,” U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the COP31 climate summit.
During a flying visit to this year’s U.N. conference in Turkey, Burnham — who has made affordability his core domestic political focus — reaffirmed the U.K.’s commitment to the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
But he warned that the world had “not moved as quick as I had hoped in the past five years” to show citizens that climate action and electrification have cost-of-living upsides.
“The last of these meetings I attended was COP26 as the mayor of Greater Manchester,” Burnham said, referring to the 2021 summit hosted by the U.K. He warned at the time that the climate movement must not lose sight of the “struggles of ordinary families.”
“The world feels very different now, and we need to adapt,” Burnham said. “Electrification in transport, heat and industry is how we make clean power, cheap power.”
While voicing support for COP31 hosts Turkey and Australia’s electrification push, Burnham stopped short of backing the specific target of 35% of global energy use shifting to electricity by 2035.
But he emphasized the benefits the switch could bring, while urging industry to help ensure it helped all consumers.
“If you drive a new electric car today in the U.K., it costs less than a petrol equivalent. Get on the right tariff and a heat pump can be cheaper to run than a gas boiler. These technologies are becoming cheaper, but they are not available to everybody on all incomes,” he said.
“As a government, we are doing our bit by investing in innovation and subsidizing upfront costs for the public. But we need industry to play their part too, and help people on all incomes to make the green transition.”
The focus on EVs and heat pumps comes despite Burnham’s government cutting the subsidy pot for heat pumps at last month’s budget. Ministers are also weighing proposals to water down industry EV quotas.
Nonetheless, Burnham reiterated the U.K.’s over-arching strategy to cut dependence on fossil fuels.
“The climate crisis is not a distant threat. It is upon us all now, devastating lives and livelihoods everywhere. Meanwhile, two wars across two continents have sent fuel prices and gas bills soaring for families and businesses across the world,” he said. “The common thread running through all of this: our dependence on fossil fuels.”
He announced the U.K. would use its G20 presidency next year to “put climate resilience back on the agenda, with debt, development, and insurance as key issues.”
Burnham’s government has also created a new role of special representative for climate security, appointing former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee Chair Madeline Alessandri to the post.
ABU DHABI — When Jared Kushner walked into the briefing room to announce the results of two days of peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, he didn’t try to conceal how hard it had been.
“The reality is there’s no trust right now between the sides,” Donald Trump’s son-in-law and trusted envoy told POLITICO during a post-talks briefing. “There were some pretty tough discussions.”
The two sides, one led by a Kremlin aide and the other by Ukraine’s spy chief, discussed all the most difficult topics including the toughest — what happens to disputed territory — and fought hard for their own objectives, according to those in the room.
The mood cooled from the first day to the second. On Tuesday, with negotiations lasting four and a half hours, officials on the ground in Abu Dhabi who were familiar with the talks described them as “constructive.” The best they could muster on Wednesday, when the session broke up after just two hours, was that the exchange had been “neutral.”
In truth, few on the Ukrainian side ever believed this week’s resumption of face-to-face negotiations would deliver a breakthrough. The biggest announcement concerned the non-trivial matter of a planned prisoner exchange — which Kushner said would be the biggest in the war so far, but on even this they failed to announce the final agreed numbers.
Yet despite the muted rhetoric, the meeting in the air-conditioned environs of a secure government guest house — where staff were constantly on hand to provide coffee, sandwiches and even pizza — was nevertheless a significant moment in the stop-start journey toward peace after nearly five years of war.
Here’s what you need to know about where things stand.
Everything. According to Kushner, there was no significant topic that was not raised over the two days. The question of territory, he said, would clearly be “the hardest” to resolve. According to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Kyiv’s negotiators scored a major win on day one by convincing the Americans to accept their analysis of where the front line stands, and just how much less Ukrainian territory Russia has conquered than Moscow claims.
It’s hard to see a quick resolution on that issue, although privately U.S. officials say both sides have shown some flexibility on how to settle territorial claims. Zelenskyy still insists, and it seems the American mediators agree, that matters relating to the fate of Ukrainian land can only be discussed at the level of leaders. That kind of meeting is still very far away. “Clearly, there’s not great trust or love between the leaders,” Kushner said.
A big prisoner exchange — potentially the largest since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. But even this isn’t yet final: Kushner made it clear that it would depend on approval from Vladimir Putin, and that he’d try to obtain that on Thursday on a visit to Moscow .
“One of the positives was that we agreed that we’re going to have the biggest humanitarian release of prisoners — we’re gonna finalize the numbers tomorrow,” Kushner said. He said he would be traveling with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s other envoy, “to Moscow tomorrow to meet with President Putin, to go over what was discussed today, and try to make more progress on some of the issues.”
Ukraine’s negotiators said “strict directives” from Moscow had limited the scope of their Russian counterparts to reach agreements this week, making the talks harder.
The Moscow trip is key. Kushner said his other big goal in speaking to Putin would be to get him to allow Europeans to join the next round of negotiations. “I believe that hopefully tomorrow in Moscow, Steve and I will be successful and President Putin will give the blessing for that to occur. I think that if he agrees to that we will be able to make a lot more progress,” Kushner said in response to a question from POLITICO.
Then the Americans plan to head to Dublin to meet Zelenskyy in person and try to push the agenda forward. The Ukrainians want to get the next date in their diary for more talks because they hope to have a deal before the end of the year, with Russia ramping up strikes on Ukraine’s power grids and energy facilities and another winter looming.
Arguably, the biggest change in recent days has been in America’s attitude. This was never simply a negotiation between Russia and Ukraine, after all; ever since Trump returned to power nearly two years ago, Kyiv and Brussels have been trying to persuade Washington to take their arguments more seriously. For Ukraine’s European allies, that lobbying has paid off.
Kushner and Witkoff now want European officials to join the next round of negotiations — so they can move on to discussing one of Putin’s most totemic obsessions: Relations with NATO, and the future system of European security.
“We need to have the Europeans at the table,” Kushner said, answering a question from POLITICO at the briefing. “We have relayed to President Putin directly several times and to his team that the only way to get this done is to have them by our side, and I think they are receptive to it.”
Ukrainian negotiators said Russian attitudes only started to soften — and open to dialogue — once the U.S. moved to discuss postwar settlements for both sides.
On Ukraine, too, American attitudes have changed. Only a few weeks ago Trump was angrily demanding that Zelenskyy be replaced amid a bust-up over Ukraine’s criticism of the U.S. president’s diesel deal with Putin. Russia, Trump said, had been “fine” on Ukraine.
Now, however, Kushner is careful to praise the Ukrainian negotiating team and “the great efforts” they made in Abu Dhabi. “I think they fought very, very hard for their issues, were very constructive, and I think it was a very productive session.” The Ukrainians also expressed gratitude to the U.S. side.
It’s one thing to be invited to take part in real talks with Russia and Ukraine — and Europeans have yet to be given even this chance. But it’s another to participate and then influence the conversation when it finally happens. For that, Europe needs to choose its representatives wisely.
Zelenskyy says he wants to be consulted on who should get the role of speaking for Europe — and that it should be a single person. He also wants Europe to decide by the end of this month.
So far, however, Europe’s approach has been anything but streamlined. Attending the talks on the sidelines in Abu Dhabi were representatives of the European Commission, the European Council, NATO, the U.K., France, Germany and Italy.
Wearing his diplomatic hat, Kushner described this arrangement as “strong” — but added that “If Europe could identify one person to speak on their behalf, that would be a bigger achievement than getting the Russians to include them in the negotiation.”
If the latest negotiations have achieved nothing else, after months of worrying about being left on the sidelines, Europe now finds itself — subject to Putin’s approval, of course — in the thick of the most perilous negotiations in the continent’s recent history.
One critical question is how far talks about changing the continental security framework, which is underpinned by NATO, will be tied to the peace negotiations regarding Ukraine. Europeans have long campaigned for Ukraine to get the strongest possible security guarantees to prevent Russia from attacking again when the war ends. And U.S. officials want to explore the idea of providing a NATO-like collective defense agreement with Ukraine that could even involve NATO itself as a guarantor.
Officials in European capitals say the sequencing of these talks will be critical. The European side has signaled its willingness to explore the continent’s wider security system to allay Russia’s concerns — in parallel with the Ukraine peace process. But they don’t want to sign up to any wider reforms until peace has been achieved.
Kushner said the aim was to discuss all the issues and then “find a pathway to settle them all at the same time.”
“I think that having these discussions is very important,” he said. “But the implementation of postwar security will not occur until there’s an agreement on territory and on all other bilateral issues.”
If that position holds, it could work for Europe. But in the end, anything agreed among officials in the negotiating room is always provisional. All it would take is a phone call from Putin to Trump.
Some Europeans are wary. German officials involved in the Abu Dhabi talks see very little potential upside and view the process as a “Russian trap” to give a false impression that Moscow is willing to make peace, said one German official with knowledge of talks, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly.
“The Europeans are only trying to survive this,” the official said.
James Angelos and Veronika Melkozerova contributed reporting.
ATHENS — A controversial maritime border deal between Libya and Turkey has riled Greece, annoyed the European Union — and could intrude on Friday’s EU leaders’ summit.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will raise the issue during the informal meeting of EU leaders in Dublin, according to a senior official in Athens who spoke on condition of being granted anonymity. The summit is supposed to focus on AI and Ukraine.
The row centers on a Turkey-Libya agreement that claims a corridor in the eastern Mediterranean between Greece and Cyprus — waters Athens says fall within its exclusive economic zone and where the EU has backed energy and connectivity projects.
“Greece has explicitly stated … that in the event of any escalation, it will request sanctions and support from the European Union,” Greece’s Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis said last week in an interview with local TV.
Despite being NATO allies, Greece and Turkey have quarreled over maritime boundaries and overlapping claims to their continental shelves. Athens fears Ankara could invoke the Libya deal to challenge offshore exploration south of Crete and the EU-funded undersea electricity cable linking Greece and Cyprus, turning both projects into flashpoints.
Turkey signed the agreement in 2019 with Libya’s U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, and it was unanimously ratified by rival authorities in eastern Libya on Oct. 20.
The EU immediately responded.
“This agreement infringes upon the sovereign rights of third states, it does not comply with the Law of the Sea, and is null and void,” said a joint statement on Oct. 20 from the heads of the European Commission and Council.
Egypt also rejected the border pact, as did Bahrain, Cyprus (which has its own separate disputes with Turkey over Ankara’s occupation of the northern part of the island since the 1970s), Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Turkish foreign ministry accused Brussels of adopting what it called the “maximalist and illegal” positions of Greece and Cyprus that were “detached from reality.”
“We expect them to respect the joint will of our country and Libya,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said during a recent Cabinet meeting.
Mitsotakis raised the issue at last month’s U.N. General Assembly, and Athens is now pressing the rest of the EU for stronger action.
“There is no precedent for such a diagonal delimitation,” he said in New York, holding up a map to illustrate Greece’s position. “Geography cannot be rewritten … and sovereign rights cannot be erased by drawing arbitrary lines on a map.”
The underwater border demarcation is part of a broader Turkish policy of stressing its sovereignty over coastal areas. Ankara aims to codify what it calls its Blue Homeland doctrine by year’s end.
Greece and Cyprus warn that Turkey’s claims could be used to block strategic projects in the eastern Mediterranean.
The EU’s latest report on Turkey’s stalled EU accession progress specifically referred to Ankara’s continued obstruction of a €1.9 billion electricity interconnection between Greece and Cyprus. The project was interrupted in 2024 amid a standoff between Athens and Ankara.
Three months ago, French company Meridiam became the project’s majority shareholder.
On Tuesday, a French vessel sailed from Heraklion, Greece, to start working on the project. Gerapetritis told a parliamentary committee last week that Athens is bracing for a Turkish reaction.
Tension over the maritime border and the energy project comes as Turkey’s already difficult ties with the EU — from protecting the car industry to Ankara’s role in Black Sea security — come under greater pressure, noted Carnegie Europe Turkey analyst Marc Pierini.
“In the eastern Mediterranean, several divergences over maritime borders have widened the gap between Turkey and EU governments,” wrote Pierini.
ANTALYA, Turkey — As world leaders arrive at the U.N. climate conference, the fate of the summit’s flagship pledge hangs in the balance.
On Tuesday, the Turkish hosts held a ministerial meeting aimed at “showcasing early support” for their proposed target of raising electricity’s share of global energy consumption to 35% by 2035, an idea dubbed 35×35.
Only a smattering of governments, however, have explicitly backed the goal so far. Many major economies and big emitters have stayed mum. One diplomat from a developed country said that, for now, only a dozen nations were prepared to sign the pledge.
The tepid endorsement comes as presidents and prime ministers fly into Antalya for the conference’s leaders’ summit on Wednesday and Thursday.
In the corridors, and occasionally in press conference rooms, negotiators voiced concerns about the pledge’s alignment with emissions-slashing efforts, the financial aid needed to implement the goal, and whether a brand-new target is necessary at all.
“On the electrification issue, the target is clear, but how can we move together?” asked Adão Soares Barbosa, climate envoy of Timor-Leste and chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group in a press conference on Tuesday.
“The LDCs are categorized as [having] limited economic capacity to address this electrification issue, this 35×35. So we call upon all parties … to provide financial support. So that we can move together.”
Explicit endorsements were limited to a handful of developed countries, island nations and governments involved in hosting current or upcoming climate summits. Fossil fuel producers such as Saudi Arabia, or big polluters such as China and India, remained silent.
Germany, Norway and Ethiopia — which is hosting next year’s COP32 summit — were among the countries that publicly backed the pledge in the ministerial meeting. The European Union, though it still has a few bureaucratic boxes to tick, is poised to sign up to the target, POLITICO reported earlier on Tuesday.
Others offered soft support for electrification as a theme or made clear that their backing was conditional.
Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s climate minister, told POLITICO the pledge would need to clarify that the increase in electrification should be achieved only with renewable energy.
“We support it, but only if the electrification is from renewable sources,” he said. “We don’t support electrification from fossil fuel sources.”
The United Kingdom also appeared to be on the fence about supporting the target, emphasizing the link to clean energy.
“The U.K. is strongly supportive of clean electrification. We warmly welcome the focus of the COP presidency,” London’s Climate Minister Katie White said at the ministerial. “Achieving the ambition we need will require electrification to proceed hand in hand with clean power growth.”
Pakistan’s Climate Minister Musadik Masood Malik told the ministerial that his country “welcomes” the target, but emphasized it must not tie governments down.
“We appreciate that it creates no binding national targets or additional reporting obligations,” he said. “Its success depends on practical pathways that respect different national circumstances, development needs, and capacities.”
Brazil, which hosted last year’s climate conference, offered only lukewarm support.
“Brazil fully supports the proposal of electrification,” Climate Minister João Paulo Ribeiro Capobianco told a press conference Tuesday. Then he highlighted Brazil’s use of biofuels, saying the combination of biofuels and electrification was the best way for Brazil to achieve the pledge.
Spokespeople for the Turkish summit presidency did not respond to questions. The Australian co-hosts of COP31, who are leading the formal negotiations at the conference, said they were currently exploring how to include the electrification theme in the final decision text.
The International Energy Agency, which co-hosted Tuesday’s ministerial, exhorted countries to back the pledge.
“If it was signed by many, many countries … this will give the markets [and] investors an unmistakable symbol that electricity is the future,” said IEA director Fatih Birol. “It’s the reason this will not only be another pledge, another target — it’s the turning point in the electricity sector.”
Spain’s conservative People’s Party launched its electoral manifesto in Madrid on Tuesday in the run-up to the Nov. 29 snap election, as almost all pollsters point to a looming coalition of the PP and far-right Vox.
The PP already set out some of these measures in the ‘Contract with Spain’ — a list of commitments modeled on the 1994 Republicans’ ‘Contract with America’ — which PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo signed on Oct. 19. They also mirror those of the European People’s Party in the European Parliament.
Here are five ways in which the PP plans to take Spain in a dramatically different direction after eight years of Socialist rule.
The PP plans to harden Spain’s stance on immigration — a move that goes hand in hand with Vox.
The conservatives “will promote agreements to establish return centers in third countries,” following in the footsteps of other EU countries such as Denmark and Germany, which are already exploring this option. They will propose deportation as “the standard procedure” for migrants convicted of sexual, violent and repeated offenses.
The party will ban future mass regularizations such as Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s move to grant legal status to 500,000 people — which Feijóo has fiercely criticized. The PP will also make it mandatory for foreign nationals who want to renew their temporary residence to sign an “integration agreement,” learn Spanish and become “familiar with the Constitution and the values of the EU.”
As first reported in POLITICO’s Madrid Playbook, five nuclear plants would see their licenses extended. The PP will also relax climate rules, putting “an end to the imposition of unrealistic timelines,” based on three factors: “What is happening in the rest of the world, the technology that is available at the moment and changes in demand.”
On data centers, the manifesto calls for additional capacity on the electricity grid to meet Spain’s demand. On the fiscal side of energy, the document proposes to “immediately eliminate the 7% tax on electricity production and reduce fixed-rate energy contracts.”
While Sánchez has been particularly vocal on foreign policy, criticizing Israel for its war in Gaza and the U.S. administration, at times diverging from most of his European partners, the PP will keep a lower profile.
The conservatives will have a “stable and predictable” policy focused on aligning Spain with the wider European consensus and prioritizing its relationship with Latin America.
The PP, usually dominated by pro-Atlanticist figures, also calls for a “balanced and strong relationship between the United States and Spain,” marking a shift in tone from the strained relationship between Sánchez and U.S. President Donald Trump.
On the southern flank, the PP will have a “policy of balance with Morocco and Algeria” but steers clear of a tougher line on Rabat after July’s Ceuta crisis. On Western Sahara — on which the Socialists made a dramatic shift by backing Morocco’s 2007 autonomy plan — the PP says that it will support the United Nation’s efforts, but it falls short of calling for self-determination for the Sahrawi people.
On housing, one of the campaign’s flashpoints, the PP promises to build 1 million homes with a new land law and through streamlining building and renovation permits. It also proposes reducing VAT from 10% to 4% for first-time buyers under 40.
The party pledges to repeal the housing law, which allows regional governments to enforce caps on rent in the so-called “stressed zones,” areas in cities under extra pressure from tourism and a lack of rentals. The PP argues the caps reduce the supply of rental housing, pushing prices higher. It also calls for tax breaks for tenants and for landlords who renew leases.
The PP promises to make it possible to evict squatters within 48 hours, and has made Badalona Mayor Xavier García Albiol a key figure of its campaign on squatting.
Some of the PP’s key proposals concern the renewal of institutions, as the PP has accused the Socialists of “invading” the state and “circumventing checks.”
The conservatives propose that the 12 judge members of the General Council of the Judiciary be elected by judges themselves, rather than through the main political parties. It also wants stricter eligibility requirements for members of the Constitutional Court.
The PP is also proposing changes to public broadcaster RTVE and to other institutions it has criticized as being too close to the government, such as public pollster the Center for Sociological Investigation.
It will call for an audit of public bodies within its first 100 days in office.
ANTALYA, Turkey — The European Union will sign a pledge to raise the global electrification rate at the U.N. climate conference, three diplomats told POLITICO.
The bloc was divided over whether to back a voluntary goal, proposed by the Turkish-Australian hosts of this year’s COP31 summit, to increase the share of electricity in global energy consumption to 35% by 2035. The share is currently around 20%.
But the diplomats, who were granted anonymity to disclose details of closed-door discussions among governments, said the 27 member countries had now reached consensus on supporting the pledge.
While consensus unblocks the process, the EU’s formal support for the pledge still needs to clear more bureaucratic hoops before it becomes official.
Until Monday, a handful of EU countries were still reluctant to back the goal — some because the pledge did not specify that the electricity used to meet the target must be “clean” rather than generated with fossil fuels, and some because they did not want to sign up to a new target before discussions over domestic EU energy policies are settled.
At COP31, countries pushing for increased climate action want to see electrification efforts tied to clean energy in order to make progress on phasing out polluting fossil fuels. Other governments, however, prefer to leave the door open to meeting new electricity demand with coal and gas.
The pledge’s wording, as unveiled in September, did not include a reference to clean power.
LONDON — Democratic wins across the U.S. brought a brief rush of excitement to Britain’s left-wing establishment last week — but they also contained warnings for Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government.
Labour insiders privately cheered the midterm results, interpreting the outcome as a damning verdict on Donald Trump’s politics and a win for Democrats’ unifying strategy of focusing on living standards, despite ideological differences across their slate of candidates.
It’s left Burnham’s followers cautiously optimistic about his approach so far as prime minister, which has included incremental measures to lower costs, such as reducing food tariffs and offering money off energy bills.
A Labour MP, granted anonymity like others in this article to speak frankly, said their own engagement with Democratic New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s team had hammered home “the politics of trying.”
“If people think you’re not even trying, which obviously is what they thought about Trump, then you’re just going to get blown away,” they said. By making small adjustments, the MP argued, Burnham has begun to “develop a coherent argument — which is actually voters have to see you trying on the cost of living.”
Yet beyond this apparent vindication of the PM’s basic strategy, members of his party see clear warning signs for the incumbent British government in the U.S. political shift. An administration only just coming out of a dire stretch in public opinion polls, they worry, could take the wrong lessons from the Dems’ triumph across the pond if they don’t heed the deep anti-incumbent sentiment that drove it.
Burnham has badged his fledgling administration as a “cost of living government” since he replaced Keir Starmer at the top of Labour earlier this year.
Yet he has faced criticism from some quarters that a government-wide budget unveiled last month lacked real ambition — and now the pressure is on to deliver before a general election, due by 2029.
Claire Ainsley, a former adviser to Starmer who works for the Progressive Policy Institute think tank on both sides of the Atlantic, told POLITICO that, despite arguments about the future direction of the Democratic Party, “what they’ve all had in common is a real focus on affordability.”
“They’ve really focused on bread-and-butter issues for everyday Americans, and clearly that’s the path to be building and hopefully winning in 2028,” she said.
Ainsley highlighted striking moves by a host of prominent Democratic politicians, including Mamdani, who has offered childcare support to New Yorkers, and New Jersey’s Mikie Sherrill — who declared “a state of emergency” on utility bills. Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger has targeted the cost of prescriptions.
“You’ve still got people who are worried here and wouldn’t necessarily say the cost of living is being relieved,” Ainsley warned. “You’ve got interest rates going up and there are lots of warning signs on our dashboard.”
Adam Terry, executive director of the Future Governance Forum think tank, argued likewise that Burnham’s action on the “little things” was part of the answer — but that he has not yet tackled “the big structural questions, namely: why is the economy so sluggish?”
That need to provide deeper solutions to Britain’s woes only raises the stakes for Burnham’s promised ten-year plan and his broader strategy for rewiring the British state, Terry said.
The same Labour MP quoted at the top of the piece — while broadly positive about Burnham’s impact so far — said: “It’s not a coincidence that basically every government in Britain since Brexit has failed usually within 18 months — and I would include in that Keir Starmer’s. Clearly systemic change is definitely required.”
Deborah Mattinson, a Labour member of the House of Lords and pollster who has worked in both the U.S. and U.K., cautioned progressives against believing the age of Trump-style politics is over, “because until things that encourage Trumpism are fixed, it won’t happen.
She added that in the U.S. — and in Germany and France, too — “working people feel the contract that they made with the state has fallen down.”
“The U.K. needs to be really mindful that if you don’t fix those fundamental grievances that people have, then you continue to be in a bind,” Mattinson added.
Even those at the top of Labour sense that the PM is up against it if he is to buck the anti-incumbency trend demonstrated by the punishment of Republicans right across the United States.
A senior Labour aide observed that the midterm results strengthened the Democrats as they begin to target the White House in 2028 — but in the meantime they face a similar dilemma of delivery as Burnham.
No.10 Downing Street knows it needs to improve people’s lives, the aide said — but it remains “very difficult” to pull one lever that makes a substantial difference without upsetting financial markets.
Burnham has already been quick to draw a direct line between the U.S. electoral shift and politics closer to home. “I can’t get people’s cost of living pressures down until the conflict in the Middle East is resolved,” he said last week — while urging world leaders to “unite” around efforts to wind down the war.
Here, too, the prime minister may be testing the limits of his own country’s ability to shift the diplomatic dial — while few expect a calmer international picture in which Burnham can really bear down on costs.
Britain will stick to a steady drumbeat of quiet diplomacy for the rest of the year, two people inside government said, including talks with G7 and G20 partners, ongoing contact with Gulf allies, and a bid to maximize the U.K.’s G20 presidency starting in January.
But a minister in Burnham’s government predicted that when it comes to international relations, and especially military action, Trump’s election drubbing “will not make much difference” to his mindset.
Anxiety in London over Trump’s next move has certainly not been quelled by initial post-election ripples within the White House, either. Ministers and aides are watching nervously for further news of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s future — generally seen as a reliable interlocutor with the U.K. — while one serving British diplomat said Stephen Miller’s installation as Trump’s chief of staff represented a “red flag.”
The senior party official quoted above said: “The U.S.’s relationship with every single country in the world has just been thrown into a level of uncertainty and fluidity.”
MADRID — Spain’s center-right People’s Party has pledged to “put a stop to the imposition of unrealistic timelines” for climate goals if it wins the national elections on Nov. 29, a significant pivot from the Sánchez government’s pro-green policies.
The PP, the favorite to win the vote, said decarbonization is an “essential goal for Europe,” but promised to push for an “orderly, realistic, and fair transition,” according to the energy chapter of the party’s manifesto obtained by POLITICO’s Madrid Playbook.
The manifesto said it’s time “to reassess the pace of progress” in the clean energy transition “without dogmatism,” while conceding there are “environmental, geostrategic and economic reasons” behind the decarbonization strategy.
Spain under Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been one of the bloc’s most influential cheerleaders for ambitious climate goals, advocating to protect key EU policies like the Emissions Trading System, pollution reduction targets and the phase-out of gasoline cars.
But the PP’s manifesto shows that would change if the EU’s fourth-largest economy votes for a conservative government led by PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
Polls point to a clear majority for a coalition between the PP and Vox, a far-right party which is highly hostile to climate policies and is rising in the polls — potentially giving it significant weight in the next cabinet.
Feijóo’s team advocates assessing and relaxing Spain’s climate policy sector by sector, considering three factors: “What is happening in the rest of the world, the technology that is available at the moment, and changes in demand.”
“We will not impose unnecessary obligations and will remove those that harm competitiveness, industry, or employment,” the document adds.
The PP has taken a more skeptical approach to EU climate policy than many of its fellow conservatives in other countries. In November 2025, for example, it voted against the 2040 climate goal in the European Parliament, breaking ranks with most of the EU’s center-right umbrella group, the European People’s Party.
Alberto Nadal, a former secretary of state for energy and for budget under the previous PP government, is the key figure on energy in Feijóo’s team and the mind behind the manifesto’s energy chapter. According to a PP official, he also considered external contributions to the manifesto from experts.
In a March interview with public broadcaster RNE, Nadal criticized the EU’s “almost Taliban-like or radical” decarbonization strategy. In a recent interview with ElEconomista, Nadal, seen as a possible minister in a future conservative government, shifted his attention to energy prices and industry, without discussing climate or decarbonization.
The manifesto also proposes extending the operating lifespans of five nuclear plants “with the approval of the Nuclear Safety Council.”
It also points to a change of direction on data centers if there’s a PP-led government, pledging to resolve issues that “are hindering the grid connection” of data centers within 18 months.
The Socialist government has drafted a decree, expected to be approved before the Nov. 29 snap election, that would tie data centers’ access to the electricity grid to sustainability and digital sovereignty requirements. Nadal has already stated that a conservative government will repeal the decree, which he said represents “the end of Spain’s technological future”.
The document also touched on the thorny issue of the 2025 national blackout and commits to updating the operating rules for the electricity system in the first six months in office. In light of what the PP considers a lack of transparency regarding the nationwide blackout, the party has pledged that “every serious incident” will be the subject of its own report.
On the circular economy, the conservative party signals that it won’t “impose additional obligations, accelerate timelines, or squander the investments, infrastructure, and capabilities that Spain already possesses.” That wording casts doubt over the implementation of the country’s deposit return scheme.
At this point, reading through the latest splashy pledge to use AI for the good of the environment feels like downing a nonalcoholic beer. Admittedly, I'm suspicious from the onset. How can this be good? But I love beer and our planet enough to give it a whirl - and hey, why not try a little harm reduction?
Negotiators from more than 190 countries around the world are in Antalya, Turkey, this month for the annual United Nations climate summit, called COP31 (the 31st "Conference of the Parties" that ratified the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change). Turkey previewed its Antalya Artificial Intelligence Pledge ahead of the convening, inv …
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced Monday that the EU will help finance some Black Sea security costs after attacks on commercial shipping — blamed on Russia — even as the main diplomatic push to end the crisis unfolds elsewhere.
“Threats, attacks and incursions are rising off the coasts of the Black Sea,” von der Leyen said at the start of her visit to Romania.
In response, she said the bloc will “fast track the work on the Black Sea Maritime Security Hub, with a clear timeline for completion and dedicated funding of €50 million.”
She also announced an additional €10 million in EU cash for Romania’s search-and-rescue operations.
She was in Varna, Bulgaria, on Tuesday and announced an additional €10 million for Bulgarian search-and-rescue.
The sums are tiny compared to the €20 billion Romania and Bulgaria are getting under the EU’s SAFE arms loans program.
The hub, announced last year, is a joint control center to be run by Romania and Bulgaria and is expected to be fully operational by the end of the year.
It aims to monitor maritime activity in real time and safeguard vital infrastructure such as undersea power and communication cables. It would offer both countries a unified view of the sea and sky, helping them detect threats before they strike.
Monday’s announcement follows weeks of mounting violence on the Black Sea. Since early October, at least nine ships have been struck in the exclusive economic zones of NATO and EU members Romania and Bulgaria; four were sunk, and 34 sailors are dead or missing.
Other ships have been hit off Russia’s shores.
Both Romania and Bulgaria raised the issue at last month’s meeting of EU leaders and are pressing for more security support. However, while Romania has blamed Russia, Bulgaria has stopped short.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is steering talks on a Black Sea ceasefire and an agreement on safe passage, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying Washington is reviewing proposals from Turkey forwarded in late October and is “open” to ideas from India.
An agreement would not end the conflict, Rubio said, but it would “solve a unique aspect” of it by easing the spillover on food security for vulnerable nations.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Oct. 21 that the bloc is working with Turkey, India and food-importing countries in Africa and other regions on a freedom-of-navigation deal. Ukraine has agreed to such an arrangement, she added, but Russia has rejected it.
Von der Leyen said the EU backs Ukraine’s call for a Black Sea ceasefire, referring to “the peace talks taking place in Abu Dhabi tomorrow with European presence.”
Commission chief spokesperson Paula Pinho gave no details on the proposals or the EU’s role. She noted a “common interest” in resolving disruptions, but declined to comment on the intentions of Turkey or the U.S.
Asked whether he foresaw a possible breakthrough this week, Ukraine’s Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi was pessimistic. He said that Kyiv is “preparing to keep our farmers operating without access to the deep-water Black Sea ports for the long term.”
The Black Sea matters to both sides in the war.
The ports of Ukraine’s Greater Odesa region are main channels for its exports, including steel, iron ore and grain, and they bring in billions of dollars. Several ships hit in EU waters were carrying Ukrainian grain.
Most of Russia’s grain exports also leave through Black Sea ports such as Novorossiysk, a major oil export hub, along with Tuapse.
Other countries are deeply invested, too. Near Novorossiysk, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal, partly owned by U.S. oil giants Chevron and Exxon, handles about 80% of Kazakhstan’s crude exports.
Turkey has suffered the most ship attacks, and tankers headed for Georgia have also come under fire.
Agnes Rønberg contributed reporting.
This article has been updated.
LONDON — The leaders of five EU countries have urged Brussels to “swiftly” sign a deal to let the U.K. back into the single market for electricity.
In a letter seen by POLITICO, sent earlier this week, the leaders of Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, and Luxembourg say this month’s U.K.-EU summit should set out “a path” to getting the talks over the line as soon as possible.
Last year Brussels and London agreed to start negotiations on the U.K. rejoining the internal electricity market — but progress has been slow going and talks are not expected to be finished by the Nov. 20 meeting.
A group of countries are now urging the European Commission to wrap up discussions by the end of 2027, according to an EU diplomat granted anonymity to discuss internal discussions.
Proponents say the plan would unlock new renewable energy investment in the North Sea and could cut electricity prices.
But the EU says the U.K. would have to make a contribution to EU cohesion funds as the price of participating in the market — a politically difficult ask for London.
The leaders, including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten, write that the agreement is “necessary to unlock the full potential of the North Sea” and to “transform it into the largest clean energy hub in the world.”
“An agreement will thus enhance Europe’s energy security and contribute to a competitive economy that centres on access to clean and affordable energy,” the letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa states.
“These benefits underline the importance of swiftly concluding the ongoing negotiations. We call on you and the UK to agree during the Summit on a path towards the conclusion of these negotiations.”
Britain’s energy industry says the agreement could help bring down electricity prices in the U.K. — a cost-of-living priority for Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
Energy UK, the industry’s representative body, says that being outside the electricity market will create “additional costs of up to £10bn this Parliament through higher energy bills and lower Treasury revenues.”
The same EU diplomat quoted above, from a country supportive of a swift agreement, said the financial contribution required to rejoin the market would amount to “investing” in market access.
“A larger electricity market will ultimately lead to lower electricity prices in the U.K. And of course, the U.K. is currently facing very high electricity prices,” they said.
“The U.K. would be investing in access to a more integrated, secure and competitive European energy market — bringing lower energy costs, greater investment certainty and huge opportunities for British businesses and consumers.”
Greater security of supply, more price stability, and greater certainty for investors would also be key benefits, they said.
While talks on the internal electricity market are not expected to conclude in time for this month’s summit, the Nov. 20 meeting is expected to see both sides sign off three further agreements on youth mobility, emissions trading and alignment on agri-food rules.
Brussels and London are also expected to issue a “joint statement” at the meeting which will address other issues, including the future of talks on the internal electricity market.
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