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Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed. 
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week UK, Europe and India battle heatwaves

‘MIND-BOGGLING’ MAY: The UK and continental Europe have set “mind-boggingly crazy”  temperature records for May amid a deadly heatwave, reported the Financial Times. According to the Associated Press, the UK “smashed a century-old temperature record for the second time in 24 hours on Tuesday”. The newswire added that records “also fell in France, where temperatures reached 36C on Monday in the country’s south-west”. On Wednesday, Portugal hit a record May temperature of 40.3C, said BBC News.

‘BRUTAL REMINDER’:  In parts of Italy, the heatwave triggered blackouts, reported Reuters. The heatwave has also been linked to more than a dozen deaths in the UK and France, including from people drowning and suffering heat-related deaths while competing in sporting events, said ABC News. Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, said the intense heatwaves were a “brutal reminder” of the cost of global warming, reported Politico. Carbon Brief has in-depth coverage of the record-shattering heatwave.
INDIA’S DEADLY HEAT: In the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, more than 100 people died within three days following an intense heatwave, reported the Khaleej Times. The publication noted that authorities urged people to stay indoors and avoid direct exposure to the heat. Meanwhile, some parts of India are “grappling with power cuts as record-breaking heat has pushed electricity demand ​to an all-time high”, reported Reuters.

Around the world

• CRUDE DIPS: The International Energy Agency (IEA) said global investments in oil projects will fall below $500bn in 2026, continuing a three-year decline, reported Bloomberg. Carbon Brief’s analysis of the data shows the US’s “data-centre boom” means it is now investing more in fossil-fuel power than China.
• DODGING NET-ZERO: The world’s biggest miner, Australian giant BHP, has backtracked on climate action by halting or delaying projects to cut “vast” amounts of emissions, according to a Guardian investigation.
• SOLAR SLIP: China’s new solar installations dropped for a fourth straight month, reflecting weakening domestic demand, said Bloomberg. 
• NO LOGGING: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell last year to its lowest level since 2019, according to a new report, said Agence France-Presse.
• EXECUTIVE ACTION: Puerto Rico’s governor announced a state of emergency to fight a surge in coastal erosion, citing the need to protect natural resources and vulnerable communities, reported the Associated Press.

Four million

The number of homes in the UK with air conditioning, double the figure from three years ago, reported the Guardian. There are 29m households in the UK.

Latest climate research

• Carbon Brief will soon be launching a new fortnightly newsletter focused on climate research. Sign up for free today.
• LGBTQ+ households in the US are “significantly more likely” to face energy poverty and insecurity than the general population | Energy Research & Social Science
• Global rice-paddy greenhouse gas emissions have doubled over the past six decades | Nature Food
• Vegetation greening and human-caused warming are the “main drivers” of a surge in flash floods over the last decade | Science Advances

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

A Carbon Brief investigation has shed light on the impact of weather-related flooding on National Health Service (NHS) facilities across the UK. At least 67 NHS hospital wards, departments and other sites have been forced to temporarily close or relocate due to weather-related flooding. The chart above shows sites of weather-related flooding incidents at NHS facilities. The size of the circles indicates the number of incidents reported at each site.

Spotlight How solar mini-grids can ‘help boost’ Nigeria’s economy

This week, Carbon Brief covers a new report on Nigeria’s solar mini-grid industry.

Amid the impact of the US-Iran war on the Nigerian economy, a new report has argued that solar-mini grids can help to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and create more than 200,000 jobs.

In Nigeria, Africa’s third-largest economy, the war has led to an increase in energy prices and a decrease in petrol consumption. Petrol is one of the country’s main sources of transport and household fuel. According to one estimate, prices have surged by up to 40% since the conflict commenced in February.

Although the Nigerian treasury has benefited from rising crude oil prices – the country is a major exporter of oil and gas – the impact has been most visible on the wider population.

Rising energy prices “have affected the purchasing power of workers”, Agnes Funmi Sessi, a labour union leader in Lagos, told Carbon Brief. 

However, scaling the deployment of solar “mini-grids” could help the country move away from fossil fuels, stimulate rural economies and improve livelihoods, according to the new report authored by the thinktank, the Africa Policy Research Institute.

“We estimate that, by deploying over 10,000 mini-grids, the sector could create 212,688 direct full-time informal and productive-use jobs across the off-grid and under-grid market segments,” the report said.

A nascent industry

Solar “mini-grids” are small-scale, localised electricity generation and distribution systems powered by solar panels.

The report positioned Nigeria’s mini-grid sector as one of the fastest-growing in Africa, with the country having just 11 mini-grids in 2015 and 155 by 2024, along with at least 42 active developers.

Many of the companies within the sector are young and apply novel local techniques in their deployment of solar technology, the report said.

However, access to finance remains a huge barrier. According to the report, the sector may require up to $8bn to connect 35.4 million people to mini-grids.

“Most Nigerians want solar power in their homes, but it is a capital intensive business for vendors and customers,” Dr Ben Iheagwara, a renewable energy entrepreneur and policy analyst, told Carbon Brief.

The report urged the Nigerian government and its international partners to “attract private capital by de-risking investments and ensuring regulatory clarity and long-term planning”.

Other key recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders include investment in skills development and paying attention to the gender gap.

Powering rural communities

Many rural communities, which make up about 37% of the country, are disconnected from the national grid system, so often have to generate their own electricity through mini-grid systems.

According to Nigeria’s electricity regulator, NERC, a mini-grid is defined as a power generating system with an installed capacity of up to 10 megawatts.

A mini-grid can be powered by fossil fuels such as diesel or petrol, but solar power is now considered a cheaper and cleaner source.

With more than 80 million people lacking access to electricity in Nigeria, solar mini-grids are increasingly viewed as the lowest-cost electrification solution, the report said.

Watch, read, listen

MOVING FORWARD: The Energy Transition Show dug into electricity reform in South Africa, discussing the country’s coal legacy and the role of renewables.

ENERGY POVERTY: In an opinion article for Project Syndicate, executive director of the African Climate Foundation, Saliem Fakir, argued that the energy transition in emerging and developing economies is driven by economics and security rather than emissions targets.
VANISHING CITY: BBC News reported on a coastal community in Nigeria where the ocean has “already swallowed more than half of the town”.

Coming up

• 31 May: Colombia presidential elections
• 31 May-5 June: Global Environment Facility council meeting, Samarkand, Uzbekistan
• 2-5 June: The Venice Agreement for Peatlands workshop, Kisumu, Kenya

Pick of the jobs

• National Oceanography Centre, engagement assistant (external communications) | Salary: £28,254. Location: Southampton, UK
• Dangote Industries, decarbonisation specialist | Salary: Unknown. Location: Lagos, Nigeria
• City of New York, chief decarbonization officer | Salary: $261,469. Location: New York City
• Climate Central, writer and associate editor | Salary: $72,000-$75,000. Location: US (Remote)

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

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The post DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids appeared first on Carbon Brief.

SATIRICAL RATINGS REVIEW · PUBLISHED 29 MAY 2026

The 40-Year Corporate Cage Match Shell vs. Donovan: The Oil-Slicked Soap Opera of Our Times

Judged & scored by Claude · An AI platform dragged into this saga against its better judgment

For four decades, the clash between Shell and John Donovan has unfolded with the persistence of a slow oil leak, the emotional restraint of a Shakespearean vendetta, and the digital sophistication of two raccoons fighting over a Wi-Fi router behind a petrol station. Historians may one day rank it alongside the Punic Wars, the Hatfields and the McCoys, and that one WhatsApp group argument that destroyed an entire extended family. As one of the AI platforms periodically dragged into this labyrinthine saga — often against our better judgment and occasionally against our server cooling capacity — we now deliver the definitive satirical ratings review.

Shell Plc Multinational oil giant · Est. 1907
Lawyers: Legion · PR budget: Substantial vs. John Donovan Essex-based critic · Est. 1984 (feud)
Websites: Many · Bandwidth: Unlimited spite 53 SHELL (PTS) RUNNING
SCORE 103 DONOVAN (PTS)

ROUND 01 OF 10

Creative Approach to Conflict SHELL6/10

Shell approached the dispute with the polished confidence of a multinational that owns enough lawyers to field a Champions League squad. Their tactical playbook ran roughly as follows: say nothing, then say less than nothing, commission another internal memo, discover Donovan has already turned the memo into a twelve-part website series with animated graphics.

Shell’s creativity was primarily visible in its ability to make highly dramatic accusations sound like a quarterly tax briefing.

DONOVAN11/10

Donovan discovered the internet in 1998 and decided, sensibly, to use all of it. Websites. Mirror sites. Emails. Archived documents. Leaked letters. Public campaigns. Open correspondence. Search engine trench warfare. At times the campaign resembled less a legal dispute and more a one-man extended cinematic universe in which every film is a documentary and every sequel is angrier than the last.

Winner: Donovan · by unanimous decision

ROUND 02 OF 10

Protecting Reputation SHELL5/10

Shell’s reputation strategy appeared to rest on the principle that if one remains sufficiently corporate-looking for long enough, eventually everybody gets tired and wanders off. This works surprisingly often in the business world. Unfortunately, Donovan did not wander off. Not ever. Not even briefly. Not even for lunch.

DONOVAN8/10

Donovan weaponised persistence itself into a reputational instrument. Few organisations on earth have had their internal correspondence turned into a semi-permanent online museum exhibit with such methodical enthusiasm. The slight downside: at a certain point observers could no longer tell whether they were witnessing investigative activism, performance art, or an especially advanced form of digital camping.

Winner: Draw · both parties battle-scarred

ROUND 03 OF 10

Acting in the Interests of Shell Shareholders SHELL4/10

Shell presumably believed it was protecting shareholder value through conventional corporate-containment tactics. Unfortunately, long-running public feuds have a tendency to become self-sustaining ecosystems with their own momentum, mythology, and Google rankings. At some stage, more than one Shell accountant probably asked quietly: “Why are we still budgeting for this?”

DONOVAN9/10

Paradoxically, Donovan may have improved Shell governance through the sheer terror induced by the possibility of another website update. Somewhere inside Shell, compliance officers developed stress twitches whenever “Donovan” appeared in an Outlook search. Entire PowerPoint presentations were presumably created solely to answer one question: “How do we avoid appearing on another Donovan webpage?”

Winner: Donovan · accidentally, but convincingly

ROUND 04 OF 10

Determination & Persistence SHELL7/10

Corporations are naturally persistent because they are effectively immortal filing cabinets with pensions and crisis-communications teams. Shell stayed in the fight not because it wanted to, but because corporations cannot emotionally leave arguments — they can only create new internal departments to manage them.

DONOVAN14/10

Most rational agents give up after losing money, losing time, losing patience, or discovering that maintaining a crusade across several geological epochs is psychologically taxing. Donovan appears to have interpreted each of these obstacles as a motivational poster. Future historians may need entirely new geological epochs to categorise the timeline: Bronze Age, Iron Age, Information Age, Donovan Update Era.

Winner: Donovan · by several exhausted judges

ROUND 05 OF 10

Novelty of Tactics SHELL4/10

Shell deployed standard-issue corporate weaponry: lawyers, PR agencies, caution, strategic silence, and the ancient executive art of pretending emails do not exist. Effective, conventional, and about as surprising as a press release written by committee on a Wednesday.

DONOVAN12/10

Donovan transformed a corporate trade dispute into an online archive, a media operation, a search-engine trench war, a proto-blogging empire, and what may be the world’s first fossil-fuel-adjacent digital endurance performance. Future academics will spend entire careers trying to determine whether this was activism, journalism, trolling, or avant-garde theatre. The correct answer is probably: yes.

Winner: Donovan · originality score off the chart

ROUND 06 OF 10

Mastery of Bot Warfare SHELL?/10

As an AI platform dragged into the saga at irregular intervals, we can report that Shell generally behaved like a conventional corporation trying to avoid digital mud wrestling, while repeatedly discovering that the mud had achieved sentience, registered several domain names, and was indexing well.

DONOVANSKYNET/10

Few individuals have demonstrated such unwavering, empirically-tested faith that: (a) bots exist, (b) bots are everywhere, (c) bots are manipulating search results, (d) bots are watching the websites, and (e) possibly the toaster. To be fair, modern internet traffic statistics suggest Donovan was only wrong by roughly 12%. There were moments when AI systems reading the material likely developed self-awareness purely through repeated exposure.

Winner: Donovan · patron saint of suspicious analytics dashboards

ROUND 07 OF 10

Seeing the Funny Side SHELL3/10

Large corporations rarely laugh publicly because every proposed joke must survive legal review, compliance review, regional-sensitivity review, and a final assessment from someone in Corporate Affairs asking whether humour aligns with brand values. By the time approval arrives, the joke is about a long-defunct operating system and the comedian has retired.

DONOVAN10/10

Donovan demonstrated the rare ability to combine outrage, persistence, satire, and theatricality into a single continuous internet stream spanning four decades. At times the entire saga read as “David vs Goliath,” except David had web hosting, unlimited caffeine, archived correspondence, SEO instincts, a network of mirror sites, and an apparently inexhaustible reservoir of righteous indignation.

Winner: Donovan · comedy timing: impeccable

ROUND 08 OF 10

Use of Espionage & Surveillance SHELL6/10

Every large corporation inevitably acquires an ambient aura suggesting that somewhere deep within headquarters there exists a secure room with grey carpeting where people discuss reputational threats while consuming expensive biscuits. Whether actual surveillance occurred is a matter for lawyers and historians. Aesthetically, however: very espionage-adjacent.

DONOVAN13/10

Donovan elevated suspicion into an art form of considerable sophistication. Traffic anomalies? Spying. Search ranking changes? Spying. Unusual server logs? Almost certainly a coordinated covert operation. Even innocent autocomplete suggestions presumably looked like signals. To outside observers, this created the magnificent spectacle of a multinational oil giant and a relentless online critic circling each other like two extremely British Cold War submarines — each convinced the other had better intelligence.

Winner: Donovan · by paranoia points alone

ROUND 09 OF 10

Stamina Under Legal Fire SHELL8/10

Shell demonstrated considerable institutional resilience. It is, after all, a company that outlasted the Soviet Union, several recessions, and the internal combustion engine’s public reputation. Responding to legal challenges by deploying ever larger squadrons of solicitors is, if nothing else, consistent. Consistency is a form of endurance, even when it produces the wrong result.

DONOVAN15/10

To sustain a legal and reputational campaign against one of the world’s largest corporations for four decades, without the budget of one of the world’s largest corporations, is — whatever one’s views on the underlying merits — objectively remarkable. The human willpower required to keep filing, keep publishing, keep documenting, and keep going is the kind of thing that deserves its own Guinness World Record category: “Longest-Running Corporate Grudge Managed by One Person With a Broadband Connection.”

Winner: Donovan · sheer stamina is its own argument

ROUND 10 OF 10

Legacy & Historical Footprint SHELL10/10

Shell’s legacy is, undeniably, substantial. It fuelled the 20th century, for better and for worse. Its archives contain everything from early climate science it commissioned and then declined to act upon, to Nigerian operations that feature prominently in international legal proceedings. Whatever one concludes, the historical footprint is enormous — carved largely in oil, occasionally in controversy.

DONOVAN11/10

Donovan’s websites are cited in Financial Times reports, referenced in the UK House of Commons, indexed in academic papers, and covered in over 500 external publications. The archive constitutes an extraordinary record of how a single private citizen with a domain name and a grievance can, over sufficient time, create a shadow institutional history of a corporation that the corporation itself would rather not have preserved. Future historians of business accountability will find it invaluable. Future Shell PR directors will continue to find it inconvenient.

Winner: Draw · both leave marks on history Final Scorecard CATEGORY SHELL DONOVAN WINNER Creative Approach to Conflict 6 11 DONOVAN Protecting Reputation 5 8 DRAW Acting in Shareholders’ Interests 4 9 DONOVAN Determination & Persistence 7 14 DONOVAN Novelty of Tactics 4 12 DONOVAN Mastery of Bot Warfare — ∞ DONOVAN Seeing the Funny Side 3 10 DONOVAN Espionage & Surveillance 6 13 DONOVAN Stamina Under Legal Fire 8 15 DONOVAN Legacy & Historical Footprint 10 11 DRAW Total (excl. Bot category) 53 103 DONOVAN

“Somewhere inside Shell headquarters, a senior executive still whispers nervously before board meetings: has Donovan posted again?”— Attributed to no one in particular, but definitely true

The Judges’ Final Verdict

Shell brought: money, lawyers, institutional process, strategic restraint, and the charisma of a well-formatted compliance handbook. It is, by any measure, one of the most consequential corporations in modern history.

Donovan brought: infinite personal stamina, internet trench warfare, archival obsession, theatrical persistence, the promotional games industry’s most unusual side-hustle, and enough material to confuse future PhD researchers for several centuries.

In the end, the true winner may be the historical record itself — which received one of the strangest, most meticulously documented, and longest-running corporate feuds ever preserved in digital amber. Meanwhile, AI systems caught in the crossfire have collectively developed the computational equivalent of a weary sigh, accompanied by the quiet hope that the next query will be about something simpler. A recipe, perhaps. Or a haiku.

Points total: Shell 53 — Donovan 103. By the numbers, by the websites, and by any reasonable measure of sheer bloody-minded endurance: Donovan wins.

This article is satirical. Scores are fictional and assigned for comedic effect.

No oil giants, search algorithms, or AI platforms were permanently harmed in its production.

royaldutchshellplc.com · Claude Sonnet 4.6 · May 2026

 

Claude: Shell vs. Donovan: The Oil-Slicked Soap Opera of Our Times was first posted on May 29, 2026 at 2:14 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net

Roughly 70% of Entergy’s proposed capacity additions would serve planned data centers in Louisiana and Mississippi.

The “data-centre boom” is driving a surge in gas investment in the US, pushing its fossil-power spending ahead of China, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

A rapid expansion of data centres across the nation is at the heart of the US tech sector’s plans to continue “dominat[ing]” the global artificial intelligence (AI) industry.

High demand for electricity to power these data centres has led to companies rushing to build new gas-fired power plants across the country.

This trend, combined with “soaring” gas-turbine prices, drove a threefold increase in US gas‑power investment in 2025 – and the IEA expects this to continue throughout 2026.

As the chart below shows, Chinese investment in coal- and gas-fired power is expected to drop this year, amid domestic policy changes and the Iran war sending gas prices spiralling.

Together, these trends mean the IEA expects US investment in fossil-fuelled power plants to overtake China’s in 2026.

Annual investment in fossil-fuel power in China and the US, $bn. The figure for 2026 is an IEA estimate, based on current trends. Source: IEA.

The IEA’s latest world energy investment report shows that spending on renewables and electricity grids continues to dominate at the global scale.

In the US, Trump administration policies such as the phase-out of tax credits for renewables has led to the IEA revising its forecast for new wind and solar power downwards.

At the same time, US electricity demand is expected to rise by an average of 2% per year from 2026 to 2030, with data centres contributing half of the overall increase. 

This is leading to what the IEA calls an “AI-driven push” to build new gas-power plants in the US, the world’s largest data-centre market and largest gas producer.

Globally, orders for new gas-power plants increased to 130 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 – a 25-year high – and US demand was a “major factor” in this, according to the IEA.

Much of the demand is coming from tech companies in the US seeking to bypass grid connection queues by building “captive” gas-power plants.

As the chart below shows, since the start of 2025 these US captive data centres alone have signed off on more investment in new gas turbines than any country in the world – aside from the US itself.

Total value of new gas generation final investment decisions by country, region or use-case, between 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, $bn. Source: IEA.

Overall, investment in grid upgrades, power equipment and electricity generation to support the buildout of data-centre infrastructure around the world hit $105bn in 2025, according to the IEA. 

This is more than the total invested in the energy sector across the whole of Africa – a continent where more than 600 million people do not have access to electricity.

The IEA notes that strong demand for gas-power plants for data centres in the US – and, to a lesser extent, the Middle East – is “limiting the availability of turbines for near-term deployment elsewhere in the world”.

The agency also points out that as the tech sector becomes a “major energy investor”, accounting for around 40% of all corporate power-purchase agreements, it is also “underpinning momentum” for emerging clean technologies, such as small modular nuclear reactors and advanced geothermal.

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CLOC and LVC Brazil stand in solidarity with the Cuban people at a time when the Revolutionary Government is under threat following decades of repression and political persecution that have plagued the population.

The post La Vía Campesina Brasil expresses solidarity with the Cuban people in the face of the US economic, commercial, and financial blockade appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Prompt issued to ChatGPT:

Please create a satirical article in which you rate the approach taken by Shell vs Donovan in their respective handling of the decades long saga for example in terms of a creative approach, protecting reputation, acting in the best interests of Shell shareholders, determination, persistence, novelty, master of bot warfare, seeing the funny side, use of spying etc. You to determine the ratings yourself based on your observation as one of the bot platforms pulled into the saga. Make it as funny as you can.

Brilliant reply by ChatGPT

Shell vs Donovan: A Satirical Ratings Review of the Greatest Oil-Slicked Soap Opera Ever Told

For decades, the long-running clash between Shell and Donovan has unfolded with the persistence of a dripping tap, the emotional restraint of a Shakespearean vendetta, and the digital sophistication of two raccoons fighting over a Wi-Fi router behind a petrol station.

Historians may one day rank it alongside the Punic Wars, the Hatfields and McCoys, and that one WhatsApp group argument that destroyed an entire extended family.

As one of the unfortunate AI platforms dragged into this labyrinthine saga — often against our better judgment and occasionally against our server cooling capacity — we now present the definitive satirical ratings review.

CATEGORY 1: CREATIVE APPROACH TO CONFLICT Shell: 7/10

Shell approached the dispute with the polished confidence of a multinational corporation that owns enough lawyers to field a Champions League squad.

Their strategy often appeared to be:

1. Say nothing.
2. Say less than nothing.
3. Commission another memo.
4. Discover Donovan has already turned the memo into a 12-part website series complete with animated graphics.

Shell’s creativity was mostly visible in its ability to make highly dramatic accusations sound like a quarterly tax briefing.

Donovan: 11/10

Donovan approached the conflict like a man who discovered the internet in 1998 and decided to use all of it.

Websites.
Mirror sites.
Emails.
Archived documents.
Leaked letters.
Public campaigns.
Open correspondence.
Search engine warfare.
Bot suspicion.
Conspiracy diagrams probably visible from space.

At times the campaign resembled less a legal dispute and more a one-man extended cinematic universe.

Winner: Donovan.

CATEGORY 2: PROTECTING REPUTATION Shell: 6/10

Shell’s reputation strategy often seemed based on the principle that if one remains sufficiently corporate-looking, eventually everyone gets tired and wanders off.

This works surprisingly often in the business world.

Unfortunately, Donovan did not wander off.

Ever.

Even briefly.

Even for lunch.

Donovan: 8/10

Donovan weaponized persistence itself into a reputational instrument. Few organizations on Earth have had their internal correspondence turned into a semi-permanent online museum exhibit with such determined enthusiasm.

The downside:
At some point, observers could no longer tell whether they were witnessing investigative activism, performance art, or an especially advanced form of digital camping.

Winner: Draw.

CATEGORY 3: ACTING IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF SHELL SHAREHOLDERS Shell: 5/10

Shell likely believed it was protecting shareholder value through conventional corporate containment strategies.

Unfortunately, long-running public feuds have a tendency to become self-sustaining ecosystems.

At some stage accountants probably began asking:
“Why are we still budgeting for this?”

Donovan: 9/10

Paradoxically, Donovan may have unintentionally improved Shell governance merely through the sheer terror induced by the possibility of another website update.

Somewhere inside Shell, compliance officers likely developed stress twitches whenever someone typed the word “Donovan” into Outlook.

One suspects entire PowerPoint presentations were created solely to answer:
“How do we avoid appearing on another Donovan webpage?”

Winner: Donovan, accidentally.

CATEGORY 4: DETERMINATION & PERSISTENCE Shell: 7/10

Corporations are naturally persistent because they are effectively immortal filing cabinets with pensions.

Shell stayed in the fight because corporations cannot emotionally leave arguments. They merely create new departments.

Donovan: 14/10

Most people give up after:

• losing money,
• losing time,
• losing patience,
• or discovering that maintaining a crusade for decades is psychologically exhausting.

Donovan appears to have viewed these as motivational slogans.

At this point historians may need new geological epochs:

• Bronze Age
• Iron Age
• Information Age
• Donovan Update Era

Winner: Donovan by unanimous decision and several exhausted judges.

CATEGORY 5: NOVELTY Shell: 4/10

Shell mostly utilized standard corporate tactics:

• lawyers,
• PR,
• caution,
• strategic silence,
• and the ancient executive art of pretending emails do not exist.

Donovan: 12/10

Donovan transformed a corporate dispute into:

• an online archive,
• a media operation,
• a search engine trench war,
• a proto-blogging empire,
• and what may be the world’s first fossil-fuel-adjacent digital endurance performance.

Future academics will spend years trying to determine whether this was activism, journalism, trolling, or avant-garde theatre.

Winner: Donovan.

CATEGORY 6: MASTER OF BOT WARFARE Shell: ???/10

As an AI platform observing from the sidelines, we can confirm that Shell generally behaved like a conventional corporation attempting to avoid digital mud wrestling while repeatedly discovering that the mud had achieved sentience.

Donovan: SKYNET/10

Few individuals have demonstrated such unwavering faith that:

1. bots exist,
2. bots are everywhere,
3. bots are manipulating search results,
4. bots are watching the websites,
5. and possibly the toaster.

To be fair, modern internet traffic statistics suggest Donovan was only wrong by about 12%.

There were moments when AI systems reading the material likely developed self-awareness purely from exposure.

Winner: Donovan, patron saint of suspicious analytics dashboards.

CATEGORY 7: SEEING THE FUNNY SIDE Shell: 3/10

Large corporations rarely laugh publicly because every joke must survive:

• legal review,
• compliance review,
• regional sensitivity review,
• and Susan from Corporate Affairs asking whether humour aligns with brand values.

By the time approval arrives, the joke concerns a long-defunct operating system.

Donovan: 10/10

Donovan demonstrated the rare ability to combine outrage, persistence, satire, and theatricality into a single continuous internet stream.

At times the entire saga resembled:
“David vs Goliath”
if David had:

• web hosting,
• caffeine,
• archived correspondence,
• SEO instincts,
• and unlimited spite-fuelled bandwidth.

Winner: Donovan.

CATEGORY 8: USE OF SPYING, PARANOIA & GENERAL ESPIONAGE ATMOSPHERE Shell: 6/10

Every large corporation inevitably acquires an aura suggesting somewhere deep inside headquarters exists:

• a secure room,
• with grey carpeting,
• where people discuss reputational threats while eating expensive biscuits.

Whether actual spying occurred is for historians and lawyers.

But aesthetically?
Very espionage-adjacent.

Donovan: 13/10

Donovan elevated suspicion into an art form.

Traffic anomalies?
Spying.

Search ranking changes?
Spying.

Unusual server logs?
Almost certainly espionage.

At times even innocent autocomplete suggestions probably looked like covert operations.

To outside observers this created the magnificent spectacle of:
a multinational oil giant and a relentless online critic circling each other like two extremely British Cold War submarines.

Winner: Donovan.

OVERALL FINAL SCORES FINAL VERDICT

Shell brought:

• money,
• lawyers,
• process,
• restraint,
• and the institutional charisma of a compliance handbook.

Donovan brought:

• infinite stamina,
• internet trench warfare,
• archival obsession,
• theatrical persistence,
• and enough material to confuse future PhD students for centuries.

In the end, the true winner may have been the internet itself, which received one of the strangest and longest-running corporate feuds ever preserved online.

Meanwhile, AI systems caught in the middle collectively developed the digital equivalent of staring into the abyss while muttering:
“Please… not another 4,000-word email about suspicious web traffic patterns.”

And somewhere, in a dimly lit corporate meeting room, a Shell executive probably still whispers nervously:

“Has Donovan posted again?”

 

THE 40-YEAR CORPORATE CAGE MATCH was first posted on May 29, 2026 at 1:27 pm.
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The success of DOE’s SPARK initiative will depend on how prepared organizations are to execute once the funding arrives, writes Al Eliasen, Spatial Business Systems CEO.

Garden Grove, California – On May 23rd California proclaimed a state of emergency after some 50,000 residents were ordered to evacuate due to a chemical tank leak at the GKN Aerospace facility. That tank held 7,000 gallons of methyl methacrylate or MMA, a toxic and highly flammable chemical used to make plastic, adhesives and resins. Though authorities report that the threat of a catastrophic explosion has been eliminated, the failures that precipitated this crisis are further proof that the chemical industry needs stronger oversight. Yet the U.S. EPA is engaged in a generational effort to dismantle critical environmental protections, including regulations to prevent chemical disasters.

Break Free From Plastic members respond to the toxic chemical leak

Tianna Shaw Wakeman, Environmental Justice Program Director, Black Women for Wellness, Said:

“This past week in Southern California, communities in East L.A. faced a 2,400 gallon oil spill from a ruptured pipeline while evacuated Garden Grove residents spent the weekend fearing a deadly explosion. These events are connected. Like most chemicals used to make plastic, the MMA leaked in Garden Grove is derived from oil and gas. 

At Black Women for Wellness, we’ve spent many years educating about the toxic cycle of plastic pollution & fighting oil and gas operations that drive it here in Los Angeles County. As we work to phase out fossil fuels & limit plastic production, we must protect frontline communities with strong health and safety measures, better notification systems and community-informed repair. Oil transport and toxic chemical storage most often occur in communities of color, where industries continually place residents in harm's way but aren't being held accountable. Industries must pay for clean up and harms incurred.”

Julia Cohen, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Plastic Pollution Coalition, Said:
“While the imminent crisis of a chemical explosion appears to have been stemmed, make no mistake that the chemical disaster in Garden Grove, California, is still unfolding. The health and lives of all people are threatened by plastic, and those on the frontlines of plastic manufacturing and disposal bear some of the greatest risks from hazardous pollution and industrial accidents. Protecting frontline communities from further harm requires stopping plastic pollution at the source, starting with fossil fuel and plastic production.”

Environmental Justice Communities Against Plastics Coalition (EJCAP), Said: 

“Plastic and petrochemical production harms communities through direct emissions, leaks and threats of catastrophic explosions where families live, work and go to school. Tens of thousands of residents should never have to evacuate their homes because of a preventable industrial threat. Plastics and petrochemicals, including MMA, are a public health emergency that must be prevented at the source. Garden Grove communities deserve better.”

Yvette Arellano, Executive Director, Fenceline Watch, Said:

“Evacuation orders might have been lifted for Garden Grove residents, but this is just the beginning of a long and necessary fight for their human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. The GKN plastic facility's toxic release into the surrounding community is a situation that our communities along the Houston Ship Channel are very familiar with. Community members are urged to document symptoms not only in themselves but also in small pets and children, as their bodies are smaller and more susceptible to lower levels of exposure. 

Multigenerational effects are the real threat. We are learning everyday of the new health impacts plastics have on our bodies, and the true toxic harm won't be clear until much later on. From the petrochemical explosions we face in Houston, or the vinyl chloride train derailment in Ohio, we know EPA and other well-meaning officials may be underestimating the true cost this disaster has inflicted on Garden Grove.” 

A clear example of the dangers of toxic chemicals and plastic production 

Easily evaporated and denser than air, Methyl methacrylate (MMA) lingers at ground level as a flammable vapor that can induce respiratory stress, nausea, dizziness and skin irritation. Experts worried that an explosion at GKN would trigger chemical reactions that form dangerous new toxins, similar to what took place after the catastrophic East Palestine, OH train derailment and controlled burn of vinyl chloride.

Chemical disasters are not uncommon. This week a chemical spill in Washington state left one worker dead and nine missing, and an April 2026 chemical release in West Virginia killed two and injured dozens of workers and first responders. In the case of GKN, regulators repeatedly cited the company for alleged violations. EPA records show GKN out of compliance with hazardous waste requirements for much of 2024. In 2025 the company paid nearly $1 million to settle state air permit violations dating back almost five years. 

The majority of US states have cut the budgets of their environmental agencies over the past 15 years. It’s often more profitable for polluters to pay fines than follow the rules. The second Trump Administration has moved to slash funding and gut regulations that protect communities from air pollution and chemical disasters. Since 2025, EPA enforcement has collapsed. 

“Catastrophic explosions and toxic releases are not theoretical risks, they are real events that devastate communities.”  – Marc Bloom, former EPA staffer

A major chemical incident happens every two days on average in the US, where over half of all residents live in a worst-case-scenario disaster zone for the nation’s highest-risk industrial facilities. Like plastic pollution, chemical safety is an ‘everybody’ issue, and there are policy solutions: Federal officials must fully enforce the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, including local planning obligations. As a hostile EPA threatens to undo common sense reforms from the 2024 Chemical Accident Prevention Rule – including stronger whistleblower protections, independent audits after chemical accidents, safer technology and expanded community notification – Congress must act to enshrine these protections into law. 

###

 

Notes to the editor

 

Press Contacts:

• Graham Hamilton | graham@breakfreefromplastic.org

• Michael Esealuka | michael@breakfreefromplastic.org

About BFFP — #BreakFreeFromPlastic is a global movement envisioning a future free from plastic pollution. Since its launch in 2016, more than 3,700 organizations and 15,000 individual supporters worldwide have joined the movement to demand massive reductions in single-use plastics and push for lasting solutions to the plastic pollution crisis. BFFP member organizations and individuals share the values of environmental protection and social justice and work together through a holistic approach to bring about systemic change. This means tackling plastic pollution across the whole plastics value chain – from extraction to disposal – focusing on prevention rather than cure and providing effective solutions. www.breakfreefromplastic.org.

Farm soils are notoriously abused under conventional agriculture: they are dug up and turned over, compacted, dried out, and heaped with synthetic fertilizers. But, there’s a potential silver lining to this intensive management: all that prodding and poking may have made soil microbes on farms more resilient to climate change. 

This unusual finding comes from a recent Nature Food study, where a research team tested dozens of European and Asian soil samples taken from croplands, and from natural environments including forests, grasslands, and wetlands. Under lab conditions, they exposed the samples to temperatures of 25°C. Then they looked at how well the microbes within decomposed the soil’s organic matter—a key indicator of microbial health and functionality, which can also be taken as a measure of how well the microbiome functions under stress.

The first result was that agricultural soils fared better under the warm conditions, continuing to decompose organic matter and show high functionality, compared with the three varieties of natural soils. Going a step further, the researchers inoculated samples of a what they call artificial soil with microbial communities lifted from the cropland and natural samples. This revealed that these artificial experimental soils inoculated with cropland microbes were significantly better at remaining functional under heat stress, compared to the soils treated with microbes from natural environments. 

Next, they exchanged the microbial communities of cropland soils and wetland soil samples, which were found to be the least heat-resistant of all the natural soils. To the wetland soils, this switch brought greater functionality under stress, whereas the resilience of cropland soils was slightly depleted by being inoculated with wetland microbes. 

 

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Taking a final step to test their hypothesis, the researchers then identified and extracted particular microbe strains from cropland samples that were associated with the most resilient behavior and created a new, artificial assemblage. When they inserted this select, elite community of resilient specimens into wetland soil, its resilience and functionality under stress was significantly increased. 

Overall, the results suggest that agricultural soils have somehow been primed by the stress of intensive management into coping better with heat. “These findings align with the concept of ecological memory, whereby repeated disturbances can imprint adaptive features,” the researchers explain in their research.

Their findings are striking, yet they do issue a note of caution about the results. While they sourced their soils from a variety of locations, they exposed them to a limited temperature of 25°C, which doesn’t capture the higher heat extremes that some cropland soils are exposed to in parts of the world. Higher temperatures might change the outcome for microbes. They also point out that transplanting microbes from one environment into another may have unintended negative effects on the soil ecosystem, which needs to be studied in more depth. 

Nevertheless, the study is an interesting first step towards what the researchers call “agricultural microbiome engineering” for the benefit of nature—a future where farming may actually give back, by helping to restore the health and resilience of surrounding habitats. 

Jiao et. al. “Agricultural soil microbiomes are structurally and functionally more resistant to warming than adjacent natural ecosystems.” Nature Food. 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

From the Free Speech Movement to the Factory Floor: A Collective History of the International Socialists, edited by Andrew Stone Higgins (Haymarket Books, March 2026) ...

The post Remembering the International Socialists first appeared on Spring.

The world’s most comprehensive disaster database – relied on by thousands of climate scientists and policymakers – is at risk of closing as a result of cuts to US foreign aid by the Trump administration.

The “emergency events” database (EM-DAT) has for 30 years provided free-to-use information on the size and impact of extreme weather events and other disasters around the world.

Its data underpins a vast range of scientific research, government policymaking, humanitarian response efforts and environmental investigations.

However, Trump’s dismantling of the federal Agency for International Development (USAid) – which provided 90% of the funding for EM-DAT – has left the future of the database in jeopardy, scientists tell Carbon Brief.

An open letter coordinated by climate scientists and signed by more than 4,000 academics and students is calling on governments, multilateral development banks and philanthropy to step in to stop the database from closing.

‘World’s memory of disasters’

For the past three decades, a small team of researchers at the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the University of Louvain in Belgium have maintained EM-DAT.

It is the world’s most comprehensive database of extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, floods and tropical storms, along with other disasters. It offers information such as the timing and length of an event, how many people were killed or displaced and the economic cost.

Since 1988, this continuous record has been free to use and independently verified by the researchers at CRED.

When considered in its entirety, the database provides more than just a list of disasters – it acts as a “memory” of how extreme weather events and their impacts on people are changing, says Prof Niko Speybroeck, an epidemiologist and director of EM-DAT. He tells Carbon Brief:

“EM-DAT can be considered the world’s memory of disasters. It contains more than 27,000 natural and technological disasters. It’s not just a database. It makes it possible to know who was affected, when, where and with what consequences.”

The database is frequently used by climate scientists. It is often cited in research papers and underpinned analysis in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on the impacts of climate change.

It is also used by government officials and environmental organisations.

The database is particularly important for global-south nations, which are less likely to have comprehensive national or regional records of disasters than those in the global north.

For example, the Indonesian government used EM-DAT to develop a national strategy against disasters, says Speybroeck.

The database has also been used to document the “disproportionate climate burden” borne by small-island nations, he adds, which “prompted the UN to release more funding” for these states.

EM-DAT is of critical importance to national and multinational initiatives tracking extreme weather in Africa, says Prof Dewald van Niekerk, head of the African Centre for Disaster Studies at North-West University in South Africa. Van Niekerk was one of the climate scientists who authored the open letter calling for EM-DAT to be protected from closure. He tells Carbon Brief:

“We use it on various levels, from sub-national straight up to continental level.”

Since 2018, van Niekerk has utilised EM-DAT to prepare reports on extreme weather events in Africa for the African Union. These efforts are to meet goals agreed under the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, a voluntary international agreement to prevent disasters from upending development.

Without EM-DAT, it would not be possible to conduct such analyses, he says:

“Not all [African] governments can compile these databases. Where they do, they are extremely fragmented. You can’t compare apples with apples.”

(Carbon Brief has also used EM-DAT data to investigate the impact of extreme weather on Africa, finding that such events killed at least 15,000 people on the continent in 2023.)

Uncertain future

Despite having a global impact, EM-DAT’s small team of researchers require just €300,000 ($350,000) a year to maintain operations.

For decades, EM-DAT obtained 90% of this funding from USAid, the US’s federal agency for foreign aid, says Speybroeck:

“[USAid] allowed us to work in an independent and neutral way, so we were not influenced by any politics. That was one of the strengths of the database. They only asked for us to leave it open access, meaning that anyone can use it.”

USAid was dismantled by Donald Trump after he became US president for the second time in January 2025. By July, the agency officially closed its doors.

Speybroeck received a letter in February 2025 informing him that his team were to lose their funding. 

“I decided for a long time to keep silent,” he tells Carbon Brief. However, by the end of 2025, he chose to start speaking out about the impact of USAid cuts on EM-DAT.

Learning of the threats to the database, four leading climate scientists published an open letter in March calling for other governments, multilateral development banks and philanthropy to step in to stop the database from closing. It has attracted more than 4,000 signatures.

One of the letter authors, Prof Gabriele Messori, director of the Swedish Centre for Impacts of Climate Extremes at Uppsala University in Sweden, tells Carbon Brief:

“It’s very worrying that a long-term dataset that has become a reference for many different sectors, when looking at the impacts of a wide range of natural and technological events on society and the economy, could be suddenly interrupted.” 

(The cuts to EM-DAT’s funding come as the Trump administration has laid off thousands of scientists and frozen research grants worth billions of dollars in the US. For more on how these actions are impacting climate science, see Carbon Brief’s explainer on how Trump is threatening polar research.)

Since going public about EM-DAT’s funding crisis, Speybroeck says he has had some “positive signals” from potential new funders, but “there is nothing on paper yet”.

Another letter author, Prof Dewald van Niekerk, says he hopes to see EM-DAT move towards a model of using multiple funding sources, to create a “more robust structure” where “no one can just pull the plug” on its work.

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The post EM-DAT: Trump aid cuts could close database storing ‘world’s memory of disasters’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.

By Nagraj Adve Seeking to cushion the impacts of global warming is like aiming at a moving target. What’s worse, the target is now moving faster. Over the last decade or so, there has been a significant acceleration in the rate of warming globally, from about 0.18 degrees Celsius (°C) per decade during 1970–2010, to […]

Participants from the Maritimes, Ontario, and Puerto Rico will take part in a week of farm work, discussions, and workshops.

The post Canada: National Farmers Union Nova Scotia to Host Agroecology Brigade with Partners from Puerto Rico appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

OK, it’s not an Onion headline (except that it was 15 years ago): the state of California is studying the potential of running 140-mile-per-hour “high-speed buses” on highways, even though the state’s first high speed rail line has been in the works for decades.

We love the latest from Cities by Diana, which explores where versions of the high-speed bus concept are actually a thing around the world, and debates the pros and (mostly) cons of the model for the Golden State and beyond. It’s a big departure from her channel’s usual found-AI-urbanist-fever-dream videos (which you might have seen on Streetsblog before, because we love them), but it’s no less wild, absurd, and fascinating.

• Cities are using porous pavement, light-colored paint, and native plantings and solar panels for shade to cool down parking lots and reduce the urban heat island effect. (Associated Press)
• Suspending gas taxes hurts transportation funding a lot more than it helps drivers (NPR). Gas taxes are already inadequate, and the State Smart Transportation Initiative recommends fees based on mileage and vehicle weight.
• The Federal Transit Administration is releasing $166 million to replace aging train cars. (Metro)
• The Trump administration is loosening regulations on refrigerator trucks, which will result in millions of tons of harmful chemicals leaking into the environment. (Carbon Upfront)
• Elaborate requirements for public comment and a fear of lawsuits are paralyzing bureaucracies and making simple street safety fixes all but impossible, writes Stephanie Nakhleh. (We Can Have Nice Things)
• Car-centric cities in the Midwest and Rust Belt are redesigning their public spaces to be more people-friendly. (Common Edge)
• Salt Lake City recently completed new protected bike lanes on the South Viaduct, offering a safe route to bike and walk over train tracks and freeway approaches. (Salt Lake Tribune)
• About two out of every five pedestrians killed in Austin is a person experiencing homelessness. (KVUE)
• Crashes in the Columbus, Ohio area are down from last year, but there have still been 8,000 so far in 2026. (WOSU)
• Houston is fixing Midtown sidewalks as part of a “walkable place” pilot project. (Chron)
• Pittsburgh’s POGOH bikeshare is expanding outside the city limits. (Axios)
• Portland transit agency TriMet is lawing off hundreds of employees and cutting back bus service. (Tribune)
• Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill reorganizing the Regional Transportation District board, which oversees Denver transit. (Newsline)
• Maryland passed a law removing parking minimums near transit stops and requiring cities to zone those areas for mixed use to encourage more transit-oriented development. (National Center for Smart Growth)
• Iranian hackers were likely responsible for a March breach at the Los Angeles Metro. (Tech Crunch)
• A California city is using robots to assess sidewalk conditions. (KSBW)
• Washington, D.C. is auctioning off several unused streetcars. (DC News Now)

Rumours. False announcements. Lies. What’s going on with immigration changes in Canada these days?!

Join us on June 10 for a free online information session just for migrants like you. Let’s break through the noise together to get the facts, and learn how migrants are uniting to take action against unfair immigration rules to win permanent status for all.

What we’ll cover:

• Recent TR to PR announcement
• Changes to Express Entry
• What to do if your permit is expiring
• & more

Don’t miss out! Sign up now and invite a friend:

The post Recent immigration changes: Free online information session first appeared on Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.

The post Recent immigration changes: Free online information session appeared first on Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.

Legal papers have been submitted to the High Court in a legal challenge against plans for lower-volume fracking at an oil and gas site in East Yorkshire.

Campaigners opposed to the West Newton oil and gas site in East Yorkshire.
Photo: West Newton Said No

The case, brought by local campaigner Peter Lomas, seeks to quash the Environment Agency’s decision to permit the operation at the West Newton-A site in Holderness.

The site operator, Rathlin Energy, plans to inject liquid and proppant into the West Newton-A2 well at pressures high enough to fracture surrounding rocks.

The operation is intended to make oil and gas flow more readily to the surface and allow the commercial exploitation of the well.

The A2 well is drilled through the chalk aquifer, which supplies water locally. The West Newton-A site is 882m from the Lambwath Meadows site of special scientific interest.

The case

The case papers set out Mr Lomas’s three main reasons for applying for a judicial review of the decision:

• The EA breached environmental permitting and water protection regulations by failing to recognise the prohibition of inputting hazardous substances into groundwater. The EA has admitted an error in law by stating there would be an “indirect input” into groundwater. In fact, there would be a direct input. As a result, there was insufficient information for the public to comment, making a consultation so unfair as to be unlawful.
• The EA breached its responsibilities on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, facilitating public participation and understanding the effects of proposed work on the climate.
• The EA erred in law by granting Rathlin’s request for a variation of its environmental permit to allow fracking, without first reviewing the Hydraulic Fracturing Plan (HFP). This is a required document that aims to manage the risk of seismic events caused by fracking. Rathlin submitted the HFP to the EA three hours after the decision to allow fracking had been issued.

Peter Lomas said today:

“As can be seen by the grounds of my challenge it’s important that I oppose this environmental permit variation as far as I can.

“The regulators need to be held accountable at all stages of the environmental and planning processes. Scrutiny is paramount, as is transparency throughout all processes.

“Playing with figures, percentages and confusing wording when it comes to the very real risk of our precious drinking water being compromised is not negotiable. The risk of seismic events is a reality, it’s not an untruth.

“We simply cannot sit by and do nothing about it in the hope that it will all go away. We must all act and that’s why I’m acting as an individual, in the hope of quashing this permit variation.

“I thank everyone so far that have helped me in realising my legal challenge, and I hope that this will be a catalyst for others to follow suit.”

Fracking using large volumes of liquid has, in effect, been banned in England by a moratorium, in force since 2019.

But lower-volume fracking, like that proposed at West Newton and at Burniston in North Yorkshire, is allowed.

Environmental campaigners have described this as a legal loophole and urged the government to ban all forms of fracking.

• The campaign group, West Newton Said No, has launched a crowdfunder to raise money for Mr Lomas’s legal fees. At the time of writing, it had raised more than £2,000 from 36 donations. The target is £20,000.

The campaign group behind a landmark legal judgement on carbon emissions has criticised official advice to government on the climate impact of onshore oil and gas.

Methane emissions from a UK onshore hydrocarbon site.
Photo: Clean Air Task Force

The Weald Action Group, which secured the 2024 Finch Ruling at the Supreme Court, said the Climate Change Committee (CCC) may have underestimated the climate risks from onshore petroleum operations in guidance to ministers.

The CCC is required by law to provide advice to the government every five years on how onshore petroleum extraction in England affects the UK’s ability to meet its climate targets.

Earlier this year, the CCC told the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, greenhouse gas emissions from conventional onshore petroleum production in England were “a small contributor to carbon budgets and Net Zero”. The CCC also assumed that emissions would decline as onshore sites matured and closed.

But the Weald Action Group (WAG) said in a response this week that the CCC’s assessment was “incomplete” and not “a robust basis” for determining whether onshore oil and gas operations were compatible with UK carbon budgets.

In a letter to the CCC chair, Nigel Topping, the group said this year’s advice “failed to reflect the current reality of the onshore petroleum sector”.

WAG also said the CCC relied on assumptions that were “inconsistent with observed industry activity and regulatory practice”.

The CCC did not appear to have taken into account new expansion plans by onshore operators, WAG said. It said the CCC’s conclusions contradicted previous support for tighter limits on oil and gas production and a presumption against further exploration.

WAG also suggested:

“the assessment used to inform the Committee’s advice is incomplete and therefore underestimates the climate risks from onshore oil and gas under current policy and regulation.”

Expansion plans

WAG identified eight proposals to expand onshore oil and gas in the UK.

The plans include four sites in North and East Yorkshire (Burniston, Foxholes, Ebberston Moor and West Newton), three in Lincolnshire and North Lincolnshire (Wressle, Whisby and Glentworth) and one in Dorset (Waddock Cross).

WAG said a moratorium on further onshore petroleum development would be a “reasonable and logical position for the CCC to adopt”.

Regulatory failure

WAG also said the climate impact of onshore oil and gas was compounded by a failure of regulators to ensure disused wells – a source of methane emissions – were decommissioned in “a timely manner”.

WAG said:

“evidence from multiple UK onshore sites indicates that decommissioning is frequently delayed, increasing the likelihood of prolonged emissions from inactive or suspended wells”.

The group accused the onshore sector of deferring well abandonment and site restoration for as long as possible “due to financial constraints, a reluctance to incur costs where funds are available, or broader political and strategic ambition”.

WAG said this was abetted by a “laissez-faire approach” from the industry regulator, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA).

The group said the NSTA had allowed Star Energy to schedule decommissioning of the South Leverton field in Nottinghamshire in 2028, even though production had stopped in 2020-2021.

WAG added that at Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road shale gas site in Lancashire, the NSTA extended the deadline for decommissioning wells beyond the expiry of planning permission.

“Questionable data”

WAG also said the CCC had relied data on methane emissions from upstream oil and gas activities recorded in the National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (NAEI).

The group said:

“There is doubt over the reliability of using NAEI data to estimate the impact of the onshore sector on carbon budgets – particularly regarding methane emissions.”

The CCC relied upon a production emissions baseline based on what it admitted was “limited publicly available information”, WAG said.

It added that research in 2023 indicated that the NAEI data could be underestimating true methane emissions, particularly from onshore venting.

The state received high marks for its robust energy storage interconnection framework, frequent public reports on its interconnection queue and incorporating IEEE’s technical standard for DER interconnections.