This edition dives into the climate disinformation dilemma and a firestorm brewing over data centers, which are making the cost of electricity as volatile and politically sensitive as the price of eggs.

OUR TAKE ON COP30: Every five years, COP asks countries to put forward a new set of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to cut emissions. That was the backdrop for COP30, last month’s global summit in Belem, Brazil, in this NDC year. And we did see a few limited gains, including a new target to triple climate adaptation finance by 2035 and adoption of a “just transition mechanism” to address worker and community concerns. 

But for net zero advocates, the summit ended in disappointment and frustration. Two years after COP28 agreed to “transition away” from gas and oil by 2050, COP30 marked a big retreat. According to the World Resources Institute, submitted NDCs would close less than 14 percent of the globe’s yawning “emissions gap” by 2035—the difference between projected emissions and what they’d need to be to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. With the U.S. out of the picture and China under-promising, roadmaps to end the use of fossil fuels and stop deforestation were effectively vetoed by petrostates. In fact, the final conference statement did not so much as mention “fossil fuels.”

Climate denialism, driven by cynical disinformation and pushed by interests aligned with fossil fuels, has re-emerged as an obstacle to climate action. While Brazilian President Lula da Silva denounced those who “reject scientific evidence and attack institutions” and COP30 endorsed a call for “information integrity,” a more pointed declaration to take on climate disinformation was signed by only 21 countries. There’s clearly much work to do in this area, and Speed & Scale will continue to bring transparency, credible metrics, and the best available data to help leaders take bolder action to decarbonize.

OKRs in the News

🚗 1.0 – Electrify Transportation

• Train Gains: Amtrak set new all-time records for both ridership and revenue in FY25, delivering 34.5 million trips and $2.7 billion in adjusted ticket revenue. The U.S. rail operator invested $5.5 billion in cleaner infrastructure and launched new electric trains, notably the NextGen Acela (Amtrak).

• Combustion Comeback: Chancellor Friedrich Merz is urging Brussels to scrap its ban on combustion engine cars and allow hybrids to remain legal beyond the EU’s 2035 deadline. Critics argue that the ban threatens Germany’s industrial competitiveness, with EV demand falling short of expectations and rising competition from China and the U.S. (Financial Times).

OKR Highlight

The seemingly irresistible drive to develop gigantic data centers for AI in the United States is hitting some speed bumps. The pushback surfaced in last month’s gubernatorial election in Virginia, the world’s number-one data center market, where victorious Democrat Abigail Spanberger ran on a plank to require the centers to “pay their fair share” of rising electricity costs. In deep-red rural Georgia, meanwhile, Republicans crossed party lines over similar concerns to help two Democrats win seats on the state’s Public Service Commission in landslide upsets. Earlier, citizen “techlash” pulled the plug on an Amazon data center slated for Tucson, Arizona, and another planned by Google for Indianapolis.

While concerns have been voiced by both sides of the aisle–and in particular by young people–public opinion on data centers is complex. According to a recent Heatmap poll, people find the high-paying jobs and increased tax revenue compelling–not to mention the importance of competing with China. The most pressing objections? Data centers hurt the environment, strain local infrastructure, and consume too much electricity and water. As one observer put it, “Electricity is the new price of eggs.”

🐄 3.0 – Fix Food

• Greener Grains Ahead: Rice cultivation accounts for 8 percent of global methane emissions and 40 percent of irrigation water consumption, making it an urgent climate challenge. In response, the Global Methane Hub has launched a $30 million Rice Methane Innovation Accelerator, a global effort to fast-track research into low-emission rice farming solutions that cut methane, conserve water, and preserve yields (Global Methane Hub).

• Melting Point: Rising summer heat reduced milk production in Italy by 17 percent, threatening the country’s iconic cheese industry. In Puglia, the birthplace of burrata, small-scale operations are developing low-milk cheeses and reviving slower, more sustainable practices to weather a changing climate (New York Times).

• Compost City: New York City’s curbside composting program set a new record for the third straight week, diverting over 6 million pounds of food and yard waste from landfills. Since the sanitation department program went citywide in October 2024, it has helped curb a rat infestation while also helping the environment (NYC.gov).

Podcast Highlight🎙️

A special seaweed could help fight climate change, one bovine burp at a time 🐄💨

Livestock accounts for over 12 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, but farmers and scientists have discovered a superfood that might reduce these enteric emissions by up to 99 percent.

In the latest episode of Speed & Scale, Ryan and Anjali talk with Breanna Roque, animal scientist at Future Feed, and Sam Elsom, CEO of Sea Forest, about Asparagopsis, a red seaweed that inhibits methane formation in cows’ stomachs–and how it’s transforming cattle farming.

🌳 4.0 – Protect Nature

• Sparks Fly: With power lines linked to some of the deadliest wildfires in recent years, utilities are under pressure to prevent equipment-related ignitions. Burying lines underground can cost over $3 million per mile. A number of companies, including Overstory and Rhizome, are using AI to help utilities target high-risk trees, flammable brush, and vulnerable grid components before sparks turn into catastrophic fires (Bloomberg).

• REAL Estate: Zillow removed climate risk scores from more than one million listings after the California Regional Multiple Listing Service raised concerns about the accuracy of flood models used by data provider First Street. The dispute highlights the sensitivities around predicting which homes are most vulnerable to climate impacts and how that affects their value (New York Times).

• Kelp Is on the Way: Off Palos Verdes, 80 acres of underwater forest—an area the size of 60 football fields—have been revived in one of the largest kelp restoration efforts in the U.S., where teams remove kelp-devouring urchins to allow native kelp to flourish. Led by Chumash tribal leaders and marine scientists, the project is bringing back one of nature’s most efficient carbon sinks (Smithsonian Magazine).

🧱 5.0 – Clean Up Industry

• Pave the Way: Third Derivative and RMI’s Industrial Innovation Cohorts are backing startups that aim to decarbonize cement and concrete. The sector accounts for nearly 8 percent of global CO₂ emissions yet receives less than 1 percent of climate tech venture capital (RMI).

• Toxic Tide Rising: Global plastic pollution is projected to reach 280 million metric tons annually by 2040—equivalent to a dump truck’s worth of plastic every second. Pew’s new ‘Breaking the Plastic Wave’ report outlines an array of solutions: phasing out plastic production subsidies; mandating better product design; and expanding reuse infrastructure to avoid rising plastic-related greenhouse gas emissions (Pew).

🧹 6.0 – Remove Carbon

• Capital Gap, Climate Risk: Carbon removal is critical to achieving net zero, but with just 0.1 percent of needed renewals now delivered annually, the financial system isn’t built to scale it. To unlock billions of tons of removals, we’ll need to bridge the ‘missing middle’ between early equity and bankable projects with catalytic capital, reliable demand, and better risk alignment (World Economic Forum).

• Plane and Simple: Boeing has signed an agreement to purchase up to 100,000 tons of permanent carbon removal from Charm Industrial, which uses bio-oil from agricultural and forest waste to lock away CO₂ underground. The deal advances durable carbon removal while creating rural jobs and scaling a technology that could help decarbonize aviation, a notoriously hard-to-abate sector (Charm Industrial).

🏛️ 7.0 – Win Politics And Policy

• Climate Cracks the Capital: Facing the irreversible destruction of underground aquifers and an acute water shortage, Iran may be forced to relocate its capital from Tehran to the country’s southern coast. Experts point to decades of corruption, water mismanagement, and ignored scientific warnings of climate change as the drivers of this avoidable disaster (Scientific American).

• Stalled, Not Stopped: With the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement and decarbonization efforts hampered by rising costs, delays, and Trump-era rollbacks, analysts argue that market-driven reforms may be our best path forward. Even as global progress lags and U.S. climate commitment falters, rising energy demand and fast-tracked permitting can keep clean energy in play (Tech Brew).

🏃 8.0 – Turn Movements Into Action

• Gore’s Core Message: At COP30, former Vice President Al Gore asserted that “climate realism” is a fossil-fuel-driven delay tactic and called for urgent reforms to the COP process and global finance. He argued that while climate solutions already exist and are cost-competitive, access to capital remains broken, especially for developing nations (Bloomberg).

• Beyond the Toolbox: Climate solutions are advancing, but so are climate risks, with cascading feedback loops and destabilizing “red alerts” that existing tools for decarbonization can’t fully address. Outlier Projects’ Kelly Erhart makes the case for expanding our climate toolbox with additional and as yet untried options, from solar radiation management to glacier stabilization (The ARC).

⚡ 9.0 – Innovate!

• Cosmic Cover: A stealth startup called Stardust is racing to commercialize solar geoengineering, the deployment of particles into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight and cool the Earth. The initiative raises urgent questions about transparency, governance, and planetary risk. With $75 million already raised, early tests underway, and no global regulations in place, experts warn that we may be hurtling toward climate intervention without a safety net (Politico).

• Bugging Out Emissions: Methane-eating microbes are showing major promise in cutting greenhouse gas emissions at farms and landfills, with field trials slashing methane by up to 90 percent. The startup Windfall Bio is turning these pink-hued organisms into dual-purpose climate tools, capturing methane and converting it into fertilizer and animal feed to support a more sustainable food chain (Washington Post).

💰 10.0 – Invest!

• Climate Clash on Wall Street: New York City Comptroller Brad Lander is urging the city’s pension boards to drop BlackRock as manager of $42 billion in assets, slamming the firm’s climate plan as “inadequate” and too timid in the face of financial risk. The move escalates the use of pension power to demand stronger net zero commitments from asset managers (Financial Times).

• The Long Game Pays: After a volatile year of tax credit rollbacks and regulatory changes, climate investors are steering away from subsidy-dependent plays and toward politically durable areas, such as baseload power, infrastructure, and adaptation. Despite short-term headwinds, long-duration capital is finding upside in an evolving climate economy defined by structural demand (Latitude Media).

• ESG’s New Power Player: As ESG momentum wanes in the West, China has leapfrogged the U.S. and Europe to become the world’s top green bond issuer, deploying a record $70 billion in 2025 to finance its energy transition. Backed by state support and growing climate urgency, China’s green finance push is powering the world’s largest buildout of clean energy (Financial Times).

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