2025-11-04 21:19

Nov 4 (Reuters) - A U.S. District Court judge ruled on Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump's Interior Department may reconsider the Biden administration's approval of the SouthCoast Wind project planned off the coast of Massachusetts. The order is a victory for the Trump administration, which argued that it had identified issues with the project's environmental analysis and that a review could result in a withdrawal of the SouthCoast permit. Sign up here. U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has said that offshore wind farms have no future under Trump, who has repeatedly called them ugly, expensive and harmful to wildlife. The order sends the matter back to Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to revisit its decision as part of Trump's broad review of U.S. offshore wind leasing and permitting. Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued the ruling in a lawsuit brought by the island town of Nantucket, Massachusetts, earlier this year, challenging the agency's approval of the project. SouthCoast Wind's developer, Ocean Winds, is a joint venture between Portugal's EDP Renewables(EDPR.LS) , opens new tab and France's ENGIE(ENGIE.PA) , opens new tab. In court documents, the company said it had invested $600 million in the project. It argued that a review of its permit would cause delays and jeopardize contracts for equipment and services that are necessary well in advance of construction. In the order, Chutkan wrote that the court was not convinced that the developer was likely to suffer immediate and significant hardship as a result of the reconsideration. Ocean Winds was not immediately available for comment. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/trump-administration-may-reconsider-southcoast-wind-project-approval-judge-rules-2025-11-04/

2025-11-04 21:03

43 people confirmed dead in Haiti, 32 in Jamaica Jamaica PM sees $6-7 billion economic hit in early estimate Melissa was among the Atlantic's strongest storms Climate change fuels stronger storms across Caribbean KINGSTON, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness on Tuesday said that last week's Hurricane Melissa, the strongest-ever storm to hit its shores, caused damage to homes and key infrastructure roughly equivalent to 28% to 32% of last year's gross domestic product. Holness told the Caribbean nation's lower house the $6 billion to $7 billion estimate was conservative, based on damages assessed so far, and short-term economic output could decline by 8% to 13%. Sign up here. Holness warned that costs would push up Jamaica's debt-to-GDP ratio and that his government would activate emergency provisions to temporarily suspend the country's fiscal rules. Holness, whose government set out credit and insurance provisions for a storm similar to last year's Hurricane Beryl, said he was seeking financial support from regional allies, development agencies and the private sector. "Experts describe Melissa to be on the very edge of what is physically possible in the Atlantic Ocean, a storm powered by record sea temperatures," he said. "Its force was so immense that seismographs hundreds of miles away registered its passage," he added. "Hurricane Melissa wasn't only a tragedy: It was a warning." Scientists say storms are intensifying faster as a result of greenhouse gas emissions warming ocean surfaces, piling up fuel for seasonal storms. Caribbean leaders have long called for reparations from wealthy heavy-polluting nations in the form of aid or debt relief. Holness pledged to rebuild infrastructure to withstand the worsening impacts of climate change, including moving parts of the electric grid underground. He also waived import taxes for some relief products such as solar panels and Starlink kits. "Every repaired bridge, re-roofed home and rebuilt road must be designed for the storms of tomorrow, not the storms of yesterday," he said. AT LEAST 75 KILLED By Tuesday, Melissa's confirmed death toll climbed to 75, as Haiti's official count climbed to 43 with 13 more missing, adding to the 32 confirmed deaths in Jamaica. Haiti was not directly hit but lashed with days of rain that flooded rivers. In one Haitian town, 25 died including 10 children. Nearly 12,000 homes were flooded, roads left impassible and communities lost access to drinking water. Both countries expect the number to climb as more bodies are recovered. Holness said more than 30 Jamaican communities likely remained cut off by damages to roads and bridges. He said response efforts were hampered by shortages in helicopters, social workers, doctors and engineers, and that this underlined the need to carefully plan ahead for future storms. Cuban authorities evacuated hundreds of thousands of people last week as Melissa landed near its second-largest city, Santiago. They reported no deaths, but extensive damage to homes, crops and infrastructure. Experts at U.S. forecaster AccuWeather estimated damages across the Caribbean of $48 to $52 billion. Data analytics firm Verisk estimated $2.2 billion to $4.2 billion in insured losses in Jamaica, a nation roughly the size of Connecticut. Melissa slammed into Jamaica's agricultural heartlands already battered by last year's Hurricane Beryl, which lawmakers said could push up the prices of food. It also tore through parts of the nation's key tourism corridor. Lawmakers said thousands of tourism workers were out of a job. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/hurricane-melissa-cost-jamaica-around-30-gdp-pm-estimates-2025-11-04/

2025-11-04 20:42

Trump sowed confusion with Truth Social post threatening SNAP benefits White House says the administration is complying with court order to issue partial benefits Cities and nonprofits ask court to force Trump to issue full benefits Nov 4 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump created confusion on Tuesday when he said that food assistance aid for millions of Americans will be given out only when the federal government shutdown ends, as lawyers for cities and nonprofits urged a federal judge to force the White House to fully fund the benefits. Trump, in a post on his social media platform Truth Social, said Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits "will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!" Sign up here. The Republican president's threat to withhold SNAP benefits for 42 million Americans came a day after the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it would use emergency funding to pay for reduced benefits in November after a judge blocked its plans to suspend payments during the shutdown. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a Tuesday press briefing that the administration is fully complying with the court order and that Trump was referring to future SNAP benefits in his post. "The recipients of these SNAP benefits need to understand it's going to take some time to receive this money," Leavitt said. "We are digging into a contingency fund that is supposed to be for emergencies, catastrophes, for war, and the president does not want to have to tap into this fund in the future," she said. The prolonged government shutdown on Tuesday entered its 35th day, matching a record set during Trump's first term for the longest in history, as Republicans and Democrats in Congress continue to blame each other for the standoff, which has put SNAP benefits in jeopardy. USDA WARNS OF WEEKS-LONG DELAYS U.S. District Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island had given the Trump administration the option of either using $5.25 billion in emergency funding to provide partial benefits once it resolved "administrative and clerical burdens" or tapping additional funding to provide SNAP benefits in full in November. The USDA on Monday said that, in light of his ruling, it would use the contingency funding to pay SNAP recipients 50% of their typical allotment. The benefits typically cost $8 billion to $9 billion per month. But the administration declined to tap other funding and said that it could take some states, which administer SNAP on a day-to-day basis, weeks to months to calculate and distribute the unprecedented partial payments. The USDA on Monday issued guidance to states instructing them to immediately calculate the reduced benefits and notify households of the reduction. "This will be a cumbersome process, including revised eligibility systems, State notification procedures, and ultimately, delayed benefits for weeks, but we will help States navigate those challenges," said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins in a post on X. Lawyers for the cities and nonprofits at the liberal legal group Democracy Forward in a motion on Tuesday , opens new tab told McConnell that the USDA's statement about delays demonstrated that the administration had failed to resolve the "burdens" entailed by making only partial benefits available. "Time is of the essence when it comes to hunger," the lawyers wrote. They urged McConnell, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, to force the administration to release funding in its entirety for November SNAP benefits. McConnell scheduled a Thursday hearing to consider the request. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-snap-benefits-begin-only-when-us-government-opens-2025-11-04/

2025-11-04 20:40

UNEP warns of 2.3-2.5°C warming despite pledges Lula criticizes lack of action on past climate deals Over 1,000 clean projects in development globally, report shows BELEM/SAO PAULO, Nov 4 (Reuters) - With a U.N. report warning that worldwide carbon emissions remain too high to halt global warming, Brazil’s president said on Tuesday that this month’s U.N. climate change summit in the Amazon would be a "COP of Truth" and offer real solutions. Despite three decades of global negotiations, countries will not prevent warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius – the main goal of the Paris Agreement brokered a decade ago. Instead, the world is on track for an extreme 2.3 - 2.5°C of warming, the United Nations' Environment Programme said on Tuesday. Sign up here. The forecast assumes countries will fulfill pledges they have made so far to cut emissions. If they fall short, the world will get even hotter. "This will be difficult to reverse," UNEP said of the 1.5C overshoot, noting that countries would need to move even faster and make even bigger reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to prevent runaway climate change. Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose country hosts COP30 on November 10-21, said failure to deliver on past climate deals – including the Kyoto Protocol and promised climate finance – was demoralizing for people around the world. Speaking with reporters at a naval base in Belem, Lula said countries must deliver on past promises, rather than making new ones. “We don't want the COP to continue to be an exposition or a fair for ideological climate products, with everyone seeing what they want, how they want it, and no one being obliged to do anything and make things happen,” Lula said. “We want it to be very serious, and for the things we decide to be implemented,” he said, noting some countries were “not complying” with the Paris treaty committing them to limit warming to “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial levels, working for a limit at 1.5°C. The U.N. emissions report on Tuesday noted that the current warming trajectory was only 0.3°C lower than it was a year ago before COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan - meaning new plans announced this year have done little to move the needle. Brazil will propose creating a new U.N.-linked global environment council empowered to travel and monitor progress on climate pledges around the world. “Because otherwise nothing will happen. A country says ‘I’m not going to comply’ and nothing happens to it,” Lula said. “So the COP loses its momentum, and soon people will no longer want to participate, because it’s pointless.” MONEY MEETS The conference will be held in the riverside city of Belem in the Amazon rainforest with dozens of indigenous groups participating in the talks. Still, limited capacity and high costs have created logistical headaches. “We didn't want to be comfortable, we wanted challenges. And we wanted the world to come and see the Amazon,” Lula said. Instead, many corporate executives, regulators, bankers and investors have gone further south to the coastal Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, where they hope to help speed up climate action in the real economy by highlighting what is working. Clean industry groups said in a report on Tuesday that over 1,000 clean projects were in development worldwide. More than 70 of them, together worth $140 billion, are set to be shovel-ready in coming months, according to the Industrial Transition Accelerator and Mission Possible Partnership. Near Sao Paulo’s financial hub, business experts attended panel discussions, meetings and roundtables tackling topics from carbon markets to best practices in pricing the carbon held in a stand of trees. Hitachi Energy’s head of sustainability, Alicia Argüello, said she attended a roundtable Monday about green electricity grids. "I got a lot of feedback,” she said. Across town at a massive convention center, another three-day event offered more than 150 speakers. Some were disappointed at being so far from the COP30 discussions in Belem, a four-hour flight from Sao Paulo. That meant they would not be able to network with country officials. “These people including ourselves tend to be implementers,” said CEO Andrew Johnstone of Climate Fund Managers. Not being in Belem “affects the peripheral discussions and collaborations that may come out of convening ideas and people. That's a negative.” The world has made some progress in 30 years of climate negotiations. A decade ago, when the Paris Agreement was signed, the planet was on course for around a 4°C temperature rise. But in 2024, UNEP said, global carbon emissions increased by another 2.3% to 57.7 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/world-will-overshoot-15c-climate-goal-un-says-2025-11-04/

2025-11-04 20:29

COPENHAGEN, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Norway's energy regulator said on Tuesday it had rejected an application to build a wind farm in its northernmost Finnmark county, citing impacts to a wilderness area as well as Indigenous Sami culture. The building of wind turbines has long been contentious in the Nordic country due to the impact from construction on nature and wildlife, and is particularly controversial in regions dominated by Sami reindeer herding. Sign up here. "The project will have major, irreversible impacts on Norway's second-largest continuous natural area with an untouched character," the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) said in a statement. "In addition, the area has great value for Sami culture and traditional use," it said. The project's name, Davvi, means 'north' in Sami language. The applicant, Grenselandet, can still comment on NVE's decision and affected Sami interests can also request consultation, the regulator said. ST1, majority owner of Grenselandet, did not immediately respond to a request for comment when contacted by Reuters. Despite the rejection, the regulator said that building renewable energy projects in Finnmark still remained a priority. The Davvi wind farm was designed to have a capacity of 800 megawatt (MW), the license application from Grenselandet showed. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/norway-blocks-wind-farm-wilderness-used-by-reindeer-herders-2025-11-04/

2025-11-04 20:25

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Argentina's YPF (YPFDm.BA) , opens new tab and Italy's Eni (ENI.MI) , opens new tab have reached an agreement with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company's XRG investment arm for it to join a liquefied natural gas project linked to Argentina's Vaca Muerta field, YPF said on Tuesday. In a statement released during the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference, YPF CEO Horacio Marin said XRG's incorporation "strengthens a key initiative for the energy future of the country," and will allow Argentina to turn into a "world-class" exporter of LNG. Sign up here. The project is seeking financing of at least $12.5 billion, a person close to YPF told Reuters. The companies are expected to sign a technical agreement within a month, that person added. Eni and Argentine state-controlled oil company YPF signed a final engineering agreement in October to export gas from the Vaca Muerta formation, the world's second-largest unconventional natural gas reserve. YPF is leading the project, which involves installing floating liquefaction units at a port in the Patagonian province of Rio Negro. Gas will arrive from Vaca Muerta, in the province of Neuquen, via a pipeline. Argentina, which is seeking to increase its foreign exchange reserves, could earn at least $10 billion annually if it exports 12 million tons of LNG a year, YPF said on Tuesday afternoon. Exports of LNG are expected to start by mid-2030. As part of the project, YPF expects to export 50 million cubic meters of natural gas per day, 100,000 barrels of oil and 150,000 barrels of liquefied petroleum gas. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/ypf-eni-sign-agreement-with-adnocs-xrg-develop-argentina-lng-project-2025-11-04/