Gas Catches Up, Forests Get a Reprieve · Morning Gist
Thursday, October 155 stories · 16 min
Gas Catches Up, Forests Get a Reprieve
US power planning is tilting back toward gas, even as home devices offer a cheaper fix and global forest loss falls, at least for now.
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Planned US gas power now matches wind and solar, EDF finds. More clean projects are being cancelled, while turbine shortages make gas slower and costlier. story 1 ↓
Home thermostats, batteries and EV chargers could add 25 GW and more than halve bill increases, says a Brattle report paid for by an aggregator. story 2 ↓
Over a billion people a year now get heat waves and wildfire smoke on the same day, more than population growth alone explains. story 3 ↓
Global deforestation fell 15% in 2025, and tropical Africa's losses nearly matched Latin America's. Brazil's election and El Niño threaten the gains. story 4 ↓
A Senate permitting bill would promise wave, tidal and river projects of 5 MW or less a federal licensing decision within one year. story 5 ↓
PJM will study SoftBank's Ohio AI project, which pairs about 10 GW of data centers with 10.2 GW of new gas generation.
1/5Utility Dive· Diana DiGangi· Oct 14
Planned US gas power catches up with wind and solar, report finds
A new Environmental Defense Fund report finds US clean-power growth has slowed from its 2024 peak. Weighted for how much they actually run, planned gas plants now roughly match planned wind and solar.
Why it matters · The plants planned now will set US power prices, fuel exposure and emissions for decades, and the report shows the mix tilting back toward gas.
Know this first
Context from the editor, not the article · 30 sec
1 · Which EDF this is
EDF here is the Environmental Defense Fund, a US environmental advocacy group, not the French utility Électricité de France. Its report tracks the pipeline of planned US power projects and argues for clean alternatives.
2 · Nameplate versus capacity factor
A plant's nameplate capacity is its maximum output. Its capacity factor is the share of that maximum it actually produces over a year. Gas plants usually run far more hours than solar or wind, so each gigawatt of gas yields more energy.
3 · Why demand is rising
After roughly two decades of flat US electricity demand, utilities now forecast rapid load growth, driven mostly by data centers and also by factories and electrification. That pushes planners toward dispatchable plants, meaning ones they can switch on when needed.
2/5Utility Dive· Robert Walton· Oct 14
Brattle: home devices could cut household bill increases by more than half
The consultancy Brattle Group says pooling home thermostats, batteries and EV chargers to cut US peak demand by 4% could more than halve household bill increases over five years, worth $4–7 billion a year.
Why it matters · Utility bills are rising faster than inflation, and new gas plants now cost about twice what they did. Demand flexibility is one of the few options that can scale quickly without building new capacity.
Know this first
Context from the editor, not the article · 30 sec
1 · What a virtual power plant is
A virtual power plant (VPP) is a fleet of small devices, such as smart thermostats, home batteries and EV chargers, that a utility or aggregator controls together. It cuts or shifts demand at peak times, as a power plant would add supply.
2 · Why the peak drives costs
Grids are sized for the few hottest or coldest hours of the year. Utilities have to build or contract generation and wires for that peak, so every kilowatt of peak demand avoided saves capacity spending that would otherwise end up on bills.
3 · Demand response, the older version
3/5Inside Climate News· By Katie Surma· Oct 14
Over a billion people a year now face heat waves and wildfire smoke together
A global study found that in 2010–2019, more than 1 billion people a year faced heat waves and fire smoke on the same day, up from 761 million in the decade before. Poorer countries were hit hardest.
Why it matters · Heat warnings and air-quality systems are usually separate. If the two hazards keep arriving together, alerts, shelters and building ventilation need to plan for both at once.
Know this first
Context from the editor, not the article · 31 sec
1 · Why smoke is dangerous
Wildfire smoke carries fine particles small enough to get deep into the lungs and bloodstream. They are linked to heart and lung disease, and the risk adds to the strain that extreme heat already puts on the body.
2 · Exposure-day metrics
Studies like this count "exposure days": one person exposed for one day is one person-day. Totals can grow because more people live in exposed places or because each person is exposed more often. Separating the two shows what is driving the change.
3 · Heat domes
A heat dome is a stalled high-pressure system that traps hot air over a region for days. The 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome set temperature records in Canada and the US and dried out vegetation ahead of large fires.
4/5Climate Home News· Matteo Civillini· Oct 14
Global deforestation fell 15% in 2025, but Brazil's election and El Niño threaten it
An annual assessment of the 2021 Glasgow forest pledge finds the world lost 7 million hectares of forest in 2025, down 15%. Brazil's enforcement drove most of the drop. The gains depend on politics and weather.
Why it matters · Tropical forest loss is a major source of emissions. This result shows that one government's enforcement can move the global number, and that a change of government can undo it.
Know this first
Context from the editor, not the article · 30 sec
1 · The Glasgow forest pledge
At the COP26 climate summit in 2021, 145 countries pledged to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. Independent researchers publish an annual assessment tracking how far actual forest loss is from the path that goal requires.
2 · Why the Amazon swings
Most Amazon clearing is for cattle pasture and crops, and much of it is illegal. That makes the rate sensitive to enforcement. Satellite alerts, fines and budgets for environmental agencies rise and fall with whoever runs the federal government.
3 · El Niño and forest fires
El Niño is a periodic warming of the eastern Pacific that brings drought to parts of the tropics, including Indonesia and the Amazon. Dry forests burn more easily, so tree loss tends to jump in strong El Niño years.
5/5Heatmap· Katie Brigham· Oct 14
Senate permitting bill sets a fast licensing track for small marine power
A new Senate permitting bill would give small wave, tidal and river-current projects a one-year federal licensing decision and long-term licenses. Experts say it removes one real barrier, but funding and technology maturity still hold the sector back.
Why it matters · It is a clear test of whether permitting reform alone can move a technology that is still at the pilot stage, when money and maturity remain the binding constraints.
Know this first
Context from the editor, not the article · 29 sec
1 · Who licenses water power
In the U.S., the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) licenses non-federal hydropower, including devices that use moving water. Its process was built for large dams, and environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act can take years.
2 · Pilot vs. commercial licenses
Marine energy projects have mostly run on short-term pilot licenses meant for testing. When a pilot license expires there is no practical route to keep running commercially, so projects shut down even after they have worked.
3 · Marine energy basics
Wave converters turn the motion of swells into electricity. Tidal and river turbines, anchored to the seabed or riverbed, spin in moving currents. Neither needs a dam. Today they supply almost no grid power in the U.S.
US clean-energy growth has slowed from its 2024 peak, and planned gas generation has caught up. That is the finding of a report released Tuesday by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a US environmental advocacy group. If new fossil plants run as projected, EDF says, fossil generation "could reach a market share not seen since the early 2010s."
What "caught up" means
Clean energy is still the largest share of planned US power development. But EDF says that "based on 1," planned gas capacity is now comparable to solar and wind. Capacity factor is the share of a plant's maximum output it actually produces in a year. Gas plants typically run about twice as many hours as solar, so a smaller gas pipeline can deliver as much energy as a much larger solar one.
Why the shift
EDF names two causes. The first is forecasts of fast electricity demand growth, largely from data centers. These have pushed utilities toward 2 plants, meaning ones they can turn on when needed.
The second is federal policy. The report cites coal subsidies, repealed greenhouse-gas rules, the rollback of clean-energy tax credits, permitting barriers for clean projects, and emergency orders that keep coal plants open past their retirement dates.
Cancellations point the same way. Fossil project cancellations fell in 2024 and stayed low through the first half of 2026. Clean cancellations have risen since 2022: in 2025, nearly 5% of 281.7 GW of planned clean capacity was canceled, about 14 GW.
Gas has its own problems
Turbine shortages and rising turbine prices are making new gas plants slower and costlier to build. Gas price swings could also raise their 3, the average lifetime cost per unit of power. A 4 analysis from Oct. 8 expects gas equipment to stay in short supply through the late 2030s. EDF also cites an 5 estimate: a repeat of the 2022 fuel-price spike would add $40.5 billion a year to electricity costs in a fossil-heavy scenario.
EDF says the Iran war has so far hit gasoline and diesel prices more than US gas prices, so it expects little immediate effect on what gets built.
Permitting bill
A Senate bill introduced Sept. 30, the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, would stop the government from revoking energy permits it has already issued. It would let projects sue over unequal treatment by project type, and it would speed reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act. The Sierra Club opposes it and the Citizens' Climate Lobby supports it. EDF is still studying it.
EDF's own counsel admits it is "difficult to predict how much the market will shift." The article gives no absolute pipeline figures or projected generation shares.
The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a US environmental advocacy group, released a report on Tuesday about the pipeline of planned US power plants. It finds that clean-energy growth has slowed from its 2024 peak and that planned fossil-fuel capacity has caught up. If the new gas plants run as projected, fossil generation "could reach a market share not seen since the early 2010s," the report says.
What the report measures
Clean energy still makes up the largest share of planned US power-sector development, EDF says. The change is in the gap. EDF writes that, "based on 1, planned natural gas project capacity is now comparable to that for solar and wind."
Capacity factor matters here. It is the share of a plant's maximum output that it actually delivers over a year. The article gives no figures, but typical US values are about 55–60% for a 2 gas plant, around 25% for utility solar and around 35% for wind. As an illustration with those typical numbers, 10 GW of planned gas produces about as much energy in a year as 20–24 GW of solar. So the solar and wind pipeline can be much larger in gigawatts and still be roughly matched by gas in delivered electricity. That is the comparison EDF is making.
Why developers are shifting
EDF gives two drivers. The first is fast load-growth forecasts, mostly from data centers. These have pushed utilities and developers toward 3 resources, meaning plants operators can turn on when needed, such as gas.
The second is federal policy. The report lists subsidies for the coal industry, repealed greenhouse-gas regulations, the rollback of clean-energy tax credits, and new permitting barriers for clean projects. EDF says all of these increasingly favor fossil generation. It also points to the Trump administration's emergency orders that keep coal plants running past their planned retirement dates, and to federal funding for new coal plants and retrofits.
Cancellations run in opposite directions
The trend also shows up in projects that get dropped. EDF says fossil-fuel project cancellations fell in 2024 and stayed low through the first half of 2026. Clean-energy cancellations have risen every year since 2022. In 2025, nearly 5% of 281.7 GW of planned clean deployment was canceled. That works out to roughly 14 GW, about the nameplate capacity of a dozen or more large gas plants. The article doesn't break cancellations down by technology or region.
The headwinds for gas
Building gas plants is not easy right now either. Turbine shortages and rising turbine prices are already making new gas plants more expensive and slower to build. Gas price volatility could also raise their 4, the average lifetime cost per megawatt-hour of output. David Villagrana, EDF's lead counsel for clean-energy tax solutions, told Utility Dive that these pressures are leading some developers to look at clean alternatives that "can often come online faster and at a lower cost."
A separate 5 analysis, published Oct. 8, points the same way. It says gas generation investment is entering "a supply deficit cycle through the late 2030s." Data-center demand outstrips the industry's ability to deliver equipment, which keeps capital costs for thermal (fuel-burning) plants high. Wood Mackenzie argues this strengthens the long-term economic case for renewables and storage.
Fuel price risk is the other weakness EDF stresses. It cites a June analysis by 6, an energy-policy think tank. That analysis found that a coal and gas price spike like the one in 2022 would "push up electricity costs $40.5 billion per year" in a fossil-heavy scenario. EDF warns that meeting demand mainly with new fossil plants could expose consumers to turbine constraints, rising capital costs and fuel swings all at once.
On the current Iran war and fuel crisis, Villagrana was measured. So far it has hit gasoline and diesel prices harder than US natural gas prices, so EDF expects "limited immediate impacts on power development decisions." He argues that a prolonged crisis still shows the risk of locking in plants that must buy fuel for decades. Wind and solar plants have no fuel bill.
A permitting bill in play
The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA) was introduced in the Senate on Sept. 30. It would bar the federal government from revoking or suspending energy-project permits it has already issued. It would also let projects sue over a pattern of "disparate" federal treatment based on project type, which would protect wind and solar from being singled out. And it would speed federal reviews by amending the 7, the law that requires environmental reviews for major federal actions.
Reactions are split. The Sierra Club says the bill "weakens environmental laws," while the Citizens' Climate Lobby supports it. EDF says it is still modeling the bill's effects.
What remains uncertain
Villagrana concedes it is "difficult to predict how much the market will shift." Policy pushes toward fossil generation, while equipment and cost constraints push back. Several numbers would help weigh the report, and the article supplies none of them:
the absolute gigawatts in each pipeline
the projected generation shares
the assumed capacity factors
how much planned gas can actually get turbines on schedule
EDF is also an advocacy group that argues for clean power. Its own data, that gas has caught up in the pipeline, is the useful part. Its argument that gas is a costly bet is a reasonable reading but contested.
Remember
Measured by expected output rather than gigawatts, planned US gas generation now rivals planned wind and solar.
About 14 GW of planned clean capacity was canceled in 2025, while fossil cancellations have stayed low since 2024.
Turbine shortages expected to last into the late 2030s may limit how far the gas rebound can go.
Demand response (DR) programs pay customers to use less power when the grid is stressed. Residential VPPs are the device-automated successor. Many programs still enroll only a small share of eligible homes.
Rooftop solar on homes in Santa Clarita, California. Brattle's report is about the home devices that make up residential VPPs.
The claim
1 is an economics consultancy that works on power markets. In a report released Oct. 13, 2026, it says US utilities could more than halve household bill increases over the next five years by scaling up residential 2 (VPPs). These are fleets of smart thermostats, home batteries and EV chargers that can be turned down or shifted during peak demand hours.
The target is a 4% cut in each utility's 3. The top 10% of existing 4 (DR) programs, which pay customers to use less when the grid is stressed, already reach that level. If every utility matched them, Brattle estimates residential VPP capability would rise from about 10 GW to 35 GW.
Why the peak matters
Grids are built for the highest-demand hours, and new capacity to serve those hours is getting expensive. Brattle says average US residential rates rose 33% in nominal terms from 2019 to 2025, with equipment costs a major driver. It also says the cost of building gas-fired generation has recently doubled. Each kilowatt of peak avoided is capacity nobody has to pay for.
Where the extra capacity would come from
According to Brattle, the devices are already installed. The bottleneck is enrollment, since most eligible thermostats, chargers and batteries aren't in any program. The report recommends 5. OEMs, original equipment manufacturers, are the device makers, and in this model they sign customers up through their products and apps, using controls the devices already have. The article doesn't explain the mechanics.
The numbers
Brattle values the added 25 GW at $4 billion to $7 billion a year for households:
$1.8 billion to $5.5 billion to all ratepayers through lower system costs
about $1.9 billion paid directly to participants
As a rough derived figure, that is about $160–280 per 6 of flexibility.
Caveats
Funding. Everyday Electric, an 7 formerly called Renew Home, paid for the report. Aggregators make money enrolling exactly these devices.
Best case as the norm. The 4% target assumes every utility can do what the best tenth already does.
Unanswered questions. The article doesn't give the baseline bill increase behind the "more than half" claim. It also doesn't say how the report handles VPP reliability, customer opt-outs, or the fact that utilities profit from building capital assets rather than avoiding them.
The report follows a March Brattle study arguing that fuller use of the existing grid could save consumers more than $100 billion over a decade.
The claim
1 is an economic consultancy that does a lot of work on electricity markets. In a report released Oct. 13, 2026, it argues that US utilities could more than halve the bill increases facing average households over the next five years, and that they could do it with equipment already in people's homes. The proposal is to scale up residential 2 (VPPs). These are fleets of smart thermostats, home batteries and EV chargers that a utility or 3 can dial down or shift during the hours of peak demand.
The target is a 4% cut in each utility's 4. Brattle chose 4% because the top 10% of US 5 (DR) programs, which pay customers to cut use during grid stress, already reach it. If every utility matched that, the report estimates national residential VPP capability would rise from about 10 GW today to 35 GW.
The problem it addresses
The report presents VPPs as a response to affordability. Brattle says the average US residential electricity rate rose 33% in nominal terms between 2019 and 2025, and that recent growth has outpaced inflation. It names the rising cost of power-system equipment as a "major driver" and singles out a "recent doubling of natural gas-fired generation capacity costs" as an acute near-term concern.
Peak demand ties these together. Utilities have to have enough generation and wires for the handful of hours each year when demand is highest. Every kilowatt of peak met with new capacity, such as a gas peaker plant, gets paid for through rates. Shaving that peak with load customers already have avoids or delays the purchase. The more new capacity costs, the more each avoided kilowatt is worth.
How the 25 GW would be found
Brattle's core point is that the hardware is already installed. It says a "substantial pool of flexible capacity already exists" in connected thermostats, EVs and batteries. What's missing is enrollment, because most eligible devices aren't signed up for any program. Brattle calls this "latent DR potential."
Its suggested fix is 6. OEMs, original equipment manufacturers, are the companies that make the thermostat, charger or battery. In this model the customer isn't asked to find a utility program and sign up. The device maker offers enrollment through the device or its app, using control capabilities the product already has. The article doesn't describe the mechanics in more detail, such as how customers opt in or how payments flow.
As an illustration of the principle (not from the report): a smart thermostat that pre-cools a house before a 5 p.m. heat peak and then lets the temperature drift up by a couple of degrees can shed perhaps a kilowatt for a few hours. Across millions of homes, that adds up to gigawatts, which is the scale of the 25 GW gap.
The numbers
Brattle estimates the extra 25 GW would produce $4 billion to $7 billion a year in financial benefits for US households. It splits this into:
$1.8 billion to $5.5 billion a year to all ratepayers, mainly through avoided capacity and system costs.
About $1.9 billion a year paid directly to customers who take part.
A rough derived figure, not from the report: $4–7 billion spread over 25 GW works out to about $160–280 per 7. That is a plausible range for avoided peaking capacity, and it would rise if gas plant costs keep climbing.
The headline claim is that this would cut bill increases for average households by more than half over five years. The article gives neither the baseline bill increase Brattle projects nor how it calculated the halving, so readers can't check that figure from the coverage alone.
Caveats
Funding. Brattle prepared the report for Everyday Electric, a distributed energy resource aggregator formerly called Renew Home. Aggregators earn money by enrolling and dispatching exactly these devices, so the sponsor benefits directly from the recommendation. That doesn't make the analysis wrong, but readers should weigh it.
Where it fits
The report follows a March 2026 Brattle study arguing that using the existing US grid more fully could save consumers more than $100 billion over a decade. Both make the same broad case: with new generation and equipment getting expensive, the cheapest capacity may be what's already built or already in homes. Brattle Principal Ryan Hledik frames VPPs as "a meaningful source of near-term bill relief while also helping meet emerging system needs." Whether the 35 GW appears depends less on technology than on enrollment, program design and regulators, and the coverage doesn't address any of those in depth.
Remember
The 4% peak-cut target is what the top tenth of US demand response programs already achieve.
Brattle values each kilowatt of home flexibility at roughly $160–280 a year, more as gas plant costs rise.
Enrollment, not hardware, is the bottleneck, and the report's sponsor profits from enrollment.
More than 1 billion people a year faced a heat wave and fire pollution on the same day during 2010–2019. That's up from 761 million a year in 2000–2009, according to a study published Wednesday in 1, a peer-reviewed journal. The authors, from Monash University in Australia and several universities in China, call it the largest global assessment of combined heat and fire exposure so far.
Why the overlap matters
Each hazard is dangerous alone. Heat strains the heart and can cause heatstroke, and wildfire smoke carries 2 linked to heart and lung disease. Tarik Benmarhnia, a climate epidemiologist at UC San Diego who wasn't involved, says a few studies have found that overlapping heat-and-smoke events send people to emergency rooms with worse heart and lung problems than either causes alone. Big gaps in the evidence remain. Public health plans usually deal with one hazard at a time, which the authors argue is no longer enough.
What drove the rise
The team combined hourly temperature, fire-emission and air-quality data with population maps. Exposure can grow because more people live in affected places or because the same people are hit more often. Lead author Yao Wu says the second cause dominates. The average number of dual-exposure days per person rose from 1.0 to 1.7 a year, much faster than population growth.
Who is hit hardest
Per person: Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Guatemala and Burundi. Zambians averaged nearly a month of combined exposure a year.
Total exposure days: The DRC, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil and Russia together accounted for more than half of the global total.
Countries with poorer health and education had the highest per-person exposure and the largest increases. Fire-related air pollution in low-income countries is four times worse than in wealthy ones.
A feedback loop
The authors say temperature now shapes fire patterns more than rainfall does. Heat and dry soil help fires start and spread, and fires add heat and pollution that make conditions hotter and drier. In the 2021 Western Canada and US fires, which burned 3.2 million hectares, a 3 (a stalled high-pressure system that traps hot air) contributed to 21–34% of the area burned.
What's missing
The researchers call for accessible cooling centers and shelters, and for buildings that filter smoke while staying cool. Benmarhnia suggests adding air-quality warnings to heat alerts. The study measures exposure, not deaths. Its data end in 2019. The article doesn't separate fires driven by climate from agricultural and land-clearing burning, and it doesn't give the thresholds the study used for "heat wave" or "smoke exposure."
A study published Wednesday in 1, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, puts a number on a hazard that has mostly been studied one event at a time. It counts people who face a heat wave and fire pollution on the same day. From 2010 to 2019, more than 1 billion people a year had at least one such day, up from 761 million a year in 2000–2009. The authors, from Monash University in Australia and several universities in China, call it the largest global assessment of combined heat and fire exposure so far.
Why overlap matters
Each hazard can kill on its own. In extreme heat the heart strains to move blood toward the skin, sweating drains fluids, and heatstroke can damage organs including the brain. Wildfire smoke carries toxic 2 linked to a wide range of heart and lung problems. Less is known about what happens when the two hit together. Tarik Benmarhnia, a climate epidemiologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego who was not involved in the study, says big research gaps remain. He notes that a handful of studies have found overlapping heat-and-smoke events send people to emergency rooms with worse heart and lung problems than either hazard would cause alone. The authors say these combined effects still need more study.
There's also a practical problem. Public health systems tend to plan for one hazard at a time: a heat plan, a separate air-quality plan. The researchers argue that this falls short when the hazards overlap.
How the study measured it
The team combined detailed environmental data (hourly temperature, fire emissions and air quality) with population data. That let them map where and when people faced both hazards. The article doesn't say what temperature counts as a heat wave or what smoke level counts as exposure. Those definitions shape the headline numbers, so readers who want them will need the paper.
The key step was splitting the growth in total exposure days, measured in 3, into two causes. Totals can rise because more people live in affected places, or because the same people are exposed more often. "Our findings show that the second reason plays a much bigger role," lead author Yao Wu, a postdoctoral fellow at Monash, told Inside Climate News. "The problem is growing mainly because people are experiencing these two hazards together more often, not simply because there are more people."
A rough check fits that claim. The number of people exposed rose by about a third between the two decades. World population grew by roughly 12% between the decade averages (an approximate figure from general UN data, not from the study). The average number of dual-exposure days per person rose from 1.0 to 1.7 a year, a 70% increase. The article doesn't say whether this average covers everyone or only people who were exposed.
Who is most exposed
The ranking depends on the metric.
Per person: Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Guatemala and Burundi top the list. Zambians averaged nearly a month of combined exposure a year. Smaller countries with frequent exposure rank high on this measure.
Total person-days: The DRC, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil and Russia together made up more than half of all global dual-exposure days in 2010–2019. On this measure, countries with large populations rise to the top even if each resident has relatively few days.
Countries with lower living standards, including poorer health and less education, had both the highest per-person exposure and the largest increases. The authors note that fire-related air pollution in low-income countries is four times worse than in wealthy ones, and that those countries have less capacity to adapt. Almost every region saw more dual-exposure days. The increases were largest in Central and South America, Central and Eastern Africa, Southeast Asia, and parts of North America, Australia and Russia.
The mechanism: a two-way loop
The authors describe heat and fire as feeding each other. Fire patterns used to depend mainly on how much rain an area got. Now, they say, rising temperature plays a bigger role. Hotter air, lower humidity and parched soil make fires easier to start and quicker to spread. Fires then release heat and pollution that can make local conditions hotter and drier. The researchers call this "a 4 in which heatwaves and fires amplify one another." Here "positive" means self-reinforcing, not good.
Warming also makes heat waves and large fires more likely to happen at the same time. The study cites:
2021, Western Canada and US: record fires burned 3.2 million hectares. A 5, a stalled high-pressure system that traps hot air, contributed to 21–34% of the area burned.
2022, Portugal, Spain and France: fires fueled by heat.
2020, Brazil's 6: heat and drought helped fires destroy about a third of the world's largest tropical freshwater wetland.
What to do about it
The researchers' recommendations focus on making it easier to stay safely indoors: accessible emergency shelters and cooling centers, and buildings designed for both heat and smoke, with ventilation that filters out toxic particles and gases. Benmarhnia suggests adding air-quality warnings to heat alerts. This matters because the usual advice for each hazard can conflict. Opening windows helps with heat, while closing them keeps smoke out, so a home needs cooling and filtration together.
What the article leaves open
Attribution. The researchers link the trend to climate change, but the article doesn't show how much of the rise comes from warming and how much from fire practices. Many of the highest-exposure countries see heavy agricultural and land-clearing burning, which is general knowledge rather than a finding reported here. The study's "fire pollution" appears to cover all fires, not just wildfires.
Health toll. No deaths or hospital admissions are estimated. The study measures exposure, not harm.
Timeliness. The data end in 2019, so they miss the large fire and heat years since, including 2023's record Canadian season.
Thresholds. The heat and smoke definitions behind the numbers aren't given in the article.
Remember
Exposure grew mainly because people faced both hazards together more often (1.0 to 1.7 days a year), not because of population growth.
Rankings flip by metric: Zambia leads per person, while the DRC, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil and Russia lead total exposure days.
The study measures exposure, not deaths, and its data stop in 2019, before several record fire years.
Aerial view of Amazon forest in Brazil, where slower cattle and farm clearing drove the 2025 decline.
The world lost about 7 million hectares of forest in 2025, roughly the area of Ireland. That is 15% less than in 2024 and the biggest annual fall this decade. The figures come from the yearly assessment of the forest pledge 145 countries made at the 1 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, which promised to end deforestation by 2030. It is the first meaningful slowdown since then. The world is still 70% off track, though. The article doesn't explain how that gap is calculated.
Erin Matson of the advisory firm 2, one of the report's authors, says 2025 looks good "in part because previous years look so bad." She calls it an exception, not a new trend.
Brazil's enforcement did most of the work
The main cause was slower expansion of cattle ranches and farms into the Brazilian Amazon. When President Lula returned to office in 2023, he brought in a new deforestation action plan and stronger enforcement, after clearing had soared under Jair Bolsonaro. The method pairs near real-time satellite monitoring with targeted enforcement: agents go after specific sites flagged as newly cleared. Amazon deforestation alerts fell 36% between August 2025 and July 2026. Colombia added a fourth straight year of decline.
The gains are politically fragile
The authors say the progress rests on a handful of governments. On 25 October, Lula faces Flávio Bolsonaro, the former president's son, in a run-off. Bolsonaro led the first round 47% to 45%, and polls show the two tied. He has said he doesn't believe in climate change and voted to loosen environmental licensing, though he pledges to end illegal deforestation by 2029. Ana Flávia Corleto of the research group 3 notes that a new federal government would mostly hit federal agencies and budgets. State and local policy would likely carry on. In Colombia, a new far-right president has already repealed mining restrictions.
Africa is catching up
Tropical Africa, home to the 4, lost 2.4 million hectares, almost level with the 2.5 million lost in tropical Latin America and the Caribbean. Its losses are still rising. They are driven by small farms expanding, logging and infrastructure, and by governments that lack the capacity to respond. That makes Brazil's satellite-and-enforcement approach harder to copy there.
5 fires come next
A strong El Niño, which brings drought to parts of the tropics, is expected to peak in December. Indonesia's fire emissions are on track to match 2015, its worst year this century. Matson expects tree loss to jump, as it did in 2015, so 2026 is unlikely to repeat 2025's decline.
The world lost about 7 million hectares of forest in 2025, roughly the area of Ireland. That is 15% less than in 2024, the biggest annual fall this decade. The figures come from the yearly assessment of the forest pledge countries made at 1 in Glasgow in 2021, as reported by Climate Home News. The authors call it the first meaningful slowdown since 145 governments promised to end deforestation by 2030. They also say it is "fragile": it depends on a few governments staying the course, and the coming months bring a close Brazilian election and a strong 2.
How big the improvement really is
A 15% drop means 2024 losses were about 8.2 million hectares (that figure is implied by the article's numbers, not stated). The researchers say the world is still 70% off track for the 2030 goal. The article doesn't explain exactly how that gap is measured. Assessments like this usually compare actual losses with a straight-line path down to zero by 2030, so falling behind early means steeper cuts are needed later.
Erin Matson, a lead consultant at the advisory firm 3 and one of the report's authors, put it bluntly: 2025 "look[s] good in part because previous years look so bad." She calls it "an exception and not a new trajectory because the underlying problem has not gone away."
What drove the drop: enforcement in Brazil
The main cause was slower expansion of farms and cattle ranches into the Brazilian Amazon. When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva returned to the presidency in 2023, he brought in a new deforestation action plan and tougher enforcement. Under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, enforcement had weakened and deforestation had soared.
Ana Flávia Corleto, a legal analyst at the research group 4 in Brazil, describes how it works: "near real-time monitoring and targeted enforcement." Brazil's satellite systems flag fresh clearing within days, and federal agents can then go after specific sites before the land is fully converted. Deforestation alerts in the Amazon fell 36% between August 2025 and July 2026, which she calls a historic reduction.
Colombia also helped. It recorded a fourth straight year of falling deforestation, partly because less forest was cleared for cattle.
Why the gains could reverse
The researchers' main warning is that the progress "rests heavily on the choices of a small number of governments" and is "highly vulnerable" to elections.
Brazil. On 25 October, Lula faces Flávio Bolsonaro, the former president's son, in a run-off. Bolsonaro narrowly won the first round, 47% to 45%, and polls show the two neck and neck. In an August TV Globo interview he said he did not believe in climate change, only in "cyclical" extreme weather. As a senator he voted in 2025 for a bill loosening environmental licensing rules. He has pledged to end illegal deforestation by 2029, but 5, a network of Brazilian climate NGOs, warns of "the dismantling of environmental safeguards, land grabbing, illegal mining, and deforestation."
Tropical Africa is catching up
Latin America has long been the world's deforestation hotspot. In 2025, tropical Africa, home to the 6, the second-largest tropical forest, lost 2.4 million hectares. Tropical Latin America and the Caribbean lost 2.5 million. Africa's losses kept rising while Latin America's fell, and the publishers call the near-parity "particularly ominous."
The causes are different too. In the Amazon, large-scale ranching is the main driver, and a strong state can police it. In tropical Africa the authors point to small farms expanding, logging and new infrastructure. They also describe regulatory systems that lack either the capacity or the political mandate to push back. Samuel Nguiffo, a lawyer and founder of Cameroon's Centre for Environment and Development, calls it "a deficit in government capacity." The countries need clear policy, strong laws and rigorous enforcement, he says. That suggests Brazil's model of satellites plus enforcement doesn't simply transfer to places without the agencies to act on the alerts.
The El Niño problem
Weather is the other risk. A "super" El Niño is forecast to peak around December. In Indonesia, which suffers drought in El Niño years, large areas of forest are already burning. Experts told 7 that the country's fire emissions are on track to match 2015, its worst fire season this century. Matson recalls a "huge spike" in global tree cover loss during the 2015 super El Niño and expects a similar rise now: "it's unlikely that in 2026, we'll see the same kind of reductions that we saw last year."
What the report leaves open
The article doesn't say how much of 2025's tree loss was fire versus clearing, or how the 70% gap is calculated. Nor does it break down how far Brazil alone moved the global total. The reading is still clear. The 2025 result shows that policy can cut deforestation quickly, but it shows this in one or two countries, under one government, in a fairly benign weather year. The next data point, for 2026, will be hit by El Niño fires whatever happens on 25 October. That will make it harder to tell how much any change comes from policy.
Remember
Brazil's Amazon deforestation alerts fell 36% in a year, a sign that satellite monitoring plus targeted enforcement can work quickly.
Tropical Africa lost 2.4 million hectares in 2025, nearly matching tropical Latin America's 2.5 million, and its losses are still rising.
The 2026 numbers will reflect a super El Niño's fires, so they will say little about whether the policy is still working.
The Senate's new permitting bill, the 1, includes a separate licensing track for small marine power: wave, tidal and river-current devices of 5 megawatts or less that generate electricity from moving water without dams.
What changes
Under the bill, the 2, which licenses hydropower, would have one year to act on commercial license applications. Projects would skip full review under the 3, the federal environmental-impact law. FERC could also grant 10- to 20-year licenses instead of the short 4 developers use now. Basic environmental screening, state and local permits, and the Endangered Species and Clean Water Acts would all still apply, though reviews under those two laws would be faster.
"Taking a 1-megawatt marine energy project and trying to license it like it's a 1,000-megawatt conventional dam just wasn't working," said Matthew Allen of the National Hydropower Association, a trade group.
Big resource, tiny output
The 5 estimates the technical potential at 2,300 terawatt-hours a year, more than half of U.S. generation last year, with wave power about 60% of it. NREL also says capturing even 10% would be lucky. Grid output today is essentially zero, and no 5 MW device even exists yet.
The current rules have already cost the sector. Verdant Power's tidal pilot in New York's East River delivered more than 312 megawatt-hours and then closed in 2021 when its pilot license expired. In Igiugig, an Alaska village of 70 people, two 35-kilowatt river turbines that supply nearly half its power are on a pilot license with three years left.
Where the bill falls short
Projects more than about 3 nautical miles offshore still need a separate lease from the 6, the agency that leases federal waters. 7, Oregon's pre-permitted grid-connected wave test site, took 15 years to approve and opened in August. It has no devices in the water yet.
Funding is the bigger obstacle. The startup AquaHarmonics shut down after the Trump administration withheld its grant. A Department of Energy solicitation for up to $112.5 million in wave testing never named winners, and no money has gone out. CalWave plans to connect at PacWave in 2027 or 2028.
Jennifer Garson, former head of DOE's Water Power Technologies Office, welcomes the certainty the bill would bring but expects "relatively small outputs of power until we reach more maturity."
The Senate's new permitting bill, the 1, includes a provision aimed at a technology that rarely features in energy debates: small-scale marine power. Much of the language comes from the bipartisan FLOWS Act, which was introduced in the Senate last December and never got a floor vote. It would create a separate licensing track for "2" projects: wave, tidal and river-current devices that draw power from moving water without dams or reservoirs and have a capacity of 5 megawatts or less.
What the bill changes
Three provisions matter most:
A deadline. The 3, which licenses non-federal hydropower, would have one year to act on a commercial license application for these projects.
No full environmental review. Projects would be exempt from full review under the 4, the law that requires federal agencies to study a project's environmental effects.
Long licenses. FERC could issue licenses of 10 to 20 years. Today developers rely on 5 designed for temporary testing.
Oversight would not disappear. Projects would still get basic environmental screening as part of FERC licensing. They would still need state and local permits, which can bring their own reviews. They would also remain subject to the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act, though the bill speeds up reviews under both.
The reasoning is about scale. "Taking a 1-megawatt marine energy project and trying to license it like it's a 1,000-megawatt conventional dam just wasn't working," said Matthew Allen of the National Hydropower Association, a trade group. He calls a separate process a potential "tremendous market signal."
Why marine power is a different animal
Conventional hydropower needs particular geography: large rivers in steep terrain, where a dam creates a big drop in elevation. Most of the good U.S. sites are already built, so few new dams are likely. Marine devices work differently. Some are buoys that convert the motion of swells into electricity. Others are turbines fixed to the seafloor or riverbed that spin as tides or currents move past.
The theoretical resource is large. The 6 puts the technical potential of wave, tidal and river-current power at 2,300 terawatt-hours a year, more than half of total U.S. electricity generation last year. About 60% of that is wave energy. NREL also suggests the country would be lucky to tap 10% of it, given costs, environmental rules, competing uses of the water and public acceptance. Even that 10% would be roughly 230 TWh a year (the article's figures; the arithmetic is ours). Actual grid output today is essentially zero.
That gap is why a 5 MW cap is not as limiting as it sounds. "A 5-megawatt device, it doesn't even exist right now," said Jennifer Garson, who directed the Department of Energy's Water Power Technologies Office under the Biden administration.
What the current system has cost
The deployments so far have been small and local. In Igiugig, an Alaska Native village of 70 people, Ocean Renewable Power Company installed two 35-kilowatt river turbines designed to supply nearly half the village's power and reduce its use of costly diesel. Its pilot license expires in three years. The bill could give it a way to keep running.
One project has already been lost to the lack of such a path. Verdant Power's tidal pilot in New York's East River was the first project of its kind licensed in the U.S. It delivered more than 312 megawatt-hours to the grid and then shut in 2021 when its pilot license expired.
Other developers include Oscilla Power, which makes surface-floating wave converters, and CalWave, which makes submerged ones. Both are aiming at utilities and remote communities. C-Power is targeting off-grid equipment such as ocean sensors. All three have some venture backing, but a large share of their money comes from DOE grants.
Where permitting reform stops
7 in Oregon shows the limits. It is the first grid-connected wave energy test site in the continental U.S., and it was pre-permitted so that developers could largely skip permitting and get devices straight into the water. Getting there took about 15 years of negotiation among the DOE, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM, the federal agency that leases offshore areas) and state and local authorities. It opened for testing this August.
The bill would not touch one piece of that process. Projects in federal waters, generally more than 3 nautical miles from shore, still need a separate BOEM lease. "You just have so many split jurisdictional challenges," Garson said.
Money is the bigger problem. PacWave currently has no wave devices in its waters. The Trump administration's freeze on federal funding disrupted developers' plans. AquaHarmonics, an Oregon startup that had been on track to deploy there, shut down last year after its allocated grant was withheld. Garson says marine energy budgets have generally grown, but little of the money reaches developers. A DOE solicitation offering up to $112.5 million for at-sea wave testing, including at PacWave, was supposed to name winners last year. It has not, and no funds have gone out.
CalWave is still going ahead. CEO Marcus Lehmann says the company is building its first grid-connected system and plans to launch at PacWave in 2027 or 2028. He calls the bill "really critical" for proving the technology at community or microgrid scale before moving to arrays that would exceed 5 MW.
An honest assessment
Garson welcomes the regulatory certainty for startups short on capital and calls the current permitting setup "byzantine." She does not expect a wave of new projects if the bill passes: "You're still talking about relatively small outputs of power until we reach more maturity." Her case is narrower. Kilowatt-scale projects matter to remote communities, military bases and coastal desalination even though they will not show up in national generation statistics for a long time.
The article leaves several things open. It does not say whether BAAJA is likely to pass, how the faster ESA and Clean Water Act reviews would actually work, or what marine power costs per megawatt-hour compared with the diesel it would replace. Those numbers will decide whether a faster license leads to more projects actually being built.
Remember
A 5 MW cap barely limits the sector today: no single marine device that large exists yet.
Verdant Power's East River tidal project closed in 2021 only because its pilot license ran out.
A $112.5 million DOE wave-testing solicitation never named winners, and no money has gone out.
Best-in-class as the national norm. The 4% target generalizes what the top tenth of programs achieve. Those programs may have favorable conditions that other utilities lack, such as hot summer peaks that air conditioning dominates, high device adoption or supportive regulators.
Reliability and persistence. A VPP is only worth capacity value if grid operators trust it to perform when called, repeatedly, without customers opting out. The article doesn't say how Brattle handles performance risk or fatigue across consecutive event days.
Utility incentives. Under traditional 8, utilities earn returns on capital they build, not on peak they avoid. The article doesn't address why utilities would push enrollment hard without regulatory changes.
What would survive a change. Corleto says a new federal government would mainly affect federal institutions and budgets, which is where the monitoring-and-enforcement system lives. Much environmental policy, though, is carried out by states and municipalities, so she expects some continuity there.
Colombia. The newly elected far-right president, Abelardo de la Espriella, has repealed mining restrictions and promised to support oil and gas exploration. The report's authors see both as threats to forests.
