Oil and gas executives met with President Trump at the White House on Wednesday, seeking to influence him on issues ranging from deregulation to tariffs. Some executives in the industry, which spent more than $75 million to help elect Mr. Trump, are increasingly frustrated with his agenda. Tariffs are making essential materials like steel pipe more expensive while also rattling consumer confidence. Oil prices have fallen around 14 percent since just before Mr. Trump took office, to about $67 a barrel. Peter Navarro, a senior White House aide, has talked about the benefits of oil that sells for just $50 a barrel. At such prices, companies operating in wide swaths of the American oil patch would lose money drilling new wells. Oil prices did not come up during Wednesday’s meeting, Trump administration officials said. “There’s nothing we could say in that room that would change that one iota, and so it wasn’t really a topic of discussion,” Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, told reporters. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Instead, according to Mr. Burgum, executives focused on issues such as making it easier to secure permits for energy projects. “We’ve got to be able to build, baby, build so that we’ve actually got the infrastructure to drive our economy forward,” he said. Energy companies are pushing Mr. Trump and Congress to ease permitting rules to make it easier to build transmission lines, pipelines and other infrastructure. Many companies want to make it more difficult for states to block proposed projects and for environmentalists and others to tie them up in court. “If you want more energy in the United States and you want more investment in the United States, we’ve got to be able to build things again. I’ve heard that repeatedly,” Chris Wright, the new U.S. energy secretary, said last week, summarizing feedback from executives he met at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston. “My answer is: Give me specifics. What permit? What was the thing?” Tariffs U.S. refineries buy oil from Canada and Mexico, transform it into fuels like gasoline, then export those more valuable products. These trade ties were formed over decades and would be difficult and expensive to untangle. Mr. Trump announced 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico with a lower, 10 percent rate for Canadian energy products. But this month he delayed those tariffs on most goods, including energy imported under a North American trade agreement Mr. Trump negotiated during his first term. That reprieve is set to end in early April. The 25 percent tariff on imported steel that took effect this month is also a big concern for executives. The metal is used in everything from pipelines to wells, and it is getting more expensive because of the tariff. Some executives remain hopeful that they will able to secure exemptions, though Mr. Trump has rebuffed that idea. Mr. Wright told reporters on Wednesday that discussions about tariffs were ongoing. Natural Gas Exports Earlier on Wednesday, the Energy Department awarded conditional approval to a large natural-gas export project on the Gulf Coast, known as CP2 LNG. This is an area where oil and gas companies and the Trump administration are aligned: Both want to sell more natural gas abroad. Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. paused permitting in January 2024 to study how the projects would affect climate change, among other concerns. Natural gas is mostly made up of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that can leak from wells, pipelines and other infrastructure. Burning natural gas also produces carbon dioxide, another greenhouse gas, though far less than burning coal. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The Biden administration ultimately found that a big increase in U.S. exports could cause global greenhouse gas emissions to rise modestly and create pollution in communities near export terminals. A separate study released this month by S&P Global found that greater U.S. exports would help keep a lid on global emissions because the gas would displace other, dirtier sources of energy. The developer of CP2, Venture Global, had been waiting more than three years for the Energy Department’s approval. The department said on Wednesday that it was granting approval because the project would help the U.S. economy and contribute to the energy security of the country and its allies. Tax Credits Some oil and gas companies want to preserve tax credits for producing hydrogen and renewable fuels, as well as capturing and storing carbon dioxide, the leading cause of climate change. Vicki Hollub, chief executive of Occidental Petroleum, a large U.S. oil company that has been building a carbon capture plant in West Texas, is pushing to maintain federal incentives for removing the greenhouse gas from the air. That tax credit is known as 45Q based on its place in the tax code. “To accelerate the technology at the pace that the U.S. needs it to accelerate to start having a positive impact on our energy independence, we need 45Q to happen and to stay in place,” Ms. Hollub said at CERAWeek. Clean energy tax credits were not discussed at Wednesday’s meeting, Mr. Burgum said.

A North Dakota jury on Wednesday awarded damages totaling more than $660 million to the Texas-based pipeline company Energy Transfer, which had sued Greenpeace over its role in protests nearly a decade ago against the Dakota Access Pipeline. The verdict was a major blow to the environmental organization. Greenpeace had said that Energy Transfer’s claimed damages, in the range of $300 million, would be enough to put the group out of business in the United States. The jury on Wednesday awarded far more than that. Greenpeace said it would appeal. The group has maintained that it played only a minor part in demonstrations led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. It has portrayed the lawsuit as an attempt to stifle oil-industry critics. The nine-person jury in the Morton County courthouse in Mandan, N.D., about 45 minutes north of where the protests took place, returned the verdict after roughly two days of deliberations. It took about a half-hour simply to read out the long list of questions posed to the jurors, such as whether they found that Greenpeace had committed trespass, defamation and conspiracy, among other violations, and how much money they would award for each offense. Afterward, outside the courthouse in Mandan, both sides invoked the right to free speech, but in very different ways. “We should all be concerned about the attacks on our First Amendment, and lawsuits like this that really threaten our rights to peaceful protest and free speech,” said Deepa Padmanabha, a senior legal adviser for Greenpeace USA. Just moments before, Trey Cox of the firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, the lead lawyer for Energy Transfer, had called the verdict “a powerful affirmation" of the First Amendment. “Peaceful protest is an inherent American right,” he said. “However, violent and destructive protest is unlawful and unacceptable.” Earlier in the week, during closing arguments on Monday, Energy Transfer’s co-founder and board chairman, Kelcy Warren, an ally and donor to President Trump, had the last word for the plaintiffs when his lawyers played a recording of comments he made in a video deposition for the jurors. “We’ve got to stand up for ourselves,” Mr. Warren said, arguing that protesters had created “a total false narrative” about his company. “It was time to fight back.” Energy Transfer is one of the largest pipeline companies in the country. The protests over its construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline drew national attention and thousands of people to monthslong encampments in 2016 and 2017. The demonstrators gathered on and around the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, arguing that the pipeline cut through sacred land and could endanger the local water supply. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe sued to stop the project, and members of other tribes, environmentalists and celebrities were among the many who flocked to the rural area, including two figures who are now members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard. But the protests erupted into acts of vandalism and violence at times, alienating people in the surrounding community in the Bismarck-Mandan area. Greenpeace has long argued that the lawsuit was a threat to First Amendment rights, brought by a deep-pocketed plaintiff and carrying dangerous implications for organizations that speak out about a broad range of issues. Greenpeace has called the lawsuit a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or SLAPP suit, the term for cases meant to hinder free speech by raising the risk of expensive legal battles. Many states have laws that make it difficult to pursue such cases, though not North Dakota. Mr. Cox laced into Greenpeace during closing arguments on Monday. The company accused Greenpeace of funding and supporting attacks and protests that delayed the pipeline’s construction, raised costs and harmed Energy Transfer’s reputation. Jurors, Mr. Cox said, would have the “privilege” of telling the group that its actions were “unacceptable to the American way.” He laid out costs incurred that tallied up to about $340 million and asked for punitive damages on top of that. “Greenpeace took a small, disorganized, local issue and exploited it to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline and promote its own selfish agenda,” he said. “They thought they’d never get caught.” The 1,172-mile underground pipeline has been operating since 2017 but is awaiting final permits for a small section where it crosses federal territory underneath Lake Oahe on the Missouri River, near Standing Rock. The tribe is still trying to shut down the pipeline in a different lawsuit. Lawyers for Greenpeace called the case against the group a “ridiculous” attempt to pin blame on it for everything that happened during months of raucous protests, including federal-government delays in issuing permits. Three Greenpeace entities were named in the lawsuit: Greenpeace Inc., Greenpeace Fund and Greenpeace International. Greenpeace Inc. is the arm of the group that organizes public campaigns and protests. It is based in Washington, as is Greenpeace Fund, which raises money and awards grants. The third entity named in the lawsuit, Greenpeace International, based in Amsterdam, is the coordinating body for 25 independent Greenpeace groups around the world. It was principally the actions of Greenpeace Inc. that were at the heart of the trial, which began Feb. 24. They included training people in protest tactics, dispatching its “rolling sunlight” solar-panel truck to provide power, and offering funds and other supplies. Greenpeace International maintained that its only involvement was signing a letter to banks expressing opposition to the pipeline, a document that was signed by hundreds and that had been drafted by a Dutch organization. Greenpeace Fund said it had no involvement. On Wednesday, the jurors found Greenpeace Inc. liable for the vast majority of the damages awarded, which came to more than $660 million, according to representatives for both Greenpeace and Energy Transfer. The damages cover dozens of figures that were read out in court for each defendant on each claim. Separately, Greenpeace International this year had countersued Energy Transfer in the Netherlands, invoking a new European Union directive against SLAPP suits as well as Dutch law. During closing arguments on Monday in North Dakota, Everett Jack Jr. of the firm Davis Wright Tremaine, the lead lawyer for the Greenpeace Inc., was a study in contrast with Mr. Cox. Both men wore dark suits and red ties to make their final arguments before the jury. But their demeanors were polar opposites. Mr. Cox was energetic, indignant, even wheeling out a cart stacked with boxes of evidence during his rebuttal to argue that he had proved his case. Mr. Jack was calm and measured, recounting the chronology of how the protests developed to make the case that they had swelled well before Greenpeace got involved. Given the months of disruptions caused locally by the protests, the jury pool in the area was widely expected to favor Energy Transfer. Among the observers in the courtroom were a group of lawyers calling themselves the Trial Monitoring Committee who criticized the court for denying a Greenpeace petition to move the trial to the bigger city of Fargo, which was not as affected by the protests. The group included Martin Garbus, a prominent First Amendment lawyer, and Steven Donziger, who is well-known for his yearslong legal battle with Chevron over pollution in Ecuador. After the verdict, Mr. Garbus called it “the worst First Amendment case decision I have ever seen” and expressed concern that an appeal that reached the Supreme Court could be used to overturn decades of precedent around free-speech protections. The group also took issue with the number of jurors with ties to the oil industry or who had expressed negative views of protests during jury selection. But Suja A. Thomas, a law professor at the University of Illinois and an expert on juries, said the precedent in North Dakota courts was not to use “blanket disqualifications of jurors just because they might have some kind of interest,” whether it’s financial or based on experience or opinion. Rather, the judge has to determine whether each individual juror can be impartial. “There can be interest; they have to determine whether the interest is significant enough such that the person cannot be fair,” Ms. Thomas said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Natali Segovia is the executive director of Water Protector Legal Collective, an Indigenous-led legal and advocacy nonprofit group that grew out of the Standing Rock protests. Ms. Segovia, who is also a member of the trial monitoring group, said her organization was involved with about 800 criminal cases that resulted from the protests. The vast majority have been dismissed, she said. What had gotten lost during the Greenpeace trial, she said, was the concern about water that had spurred so much protest. She said she saw a larger dynamic at play. “At its core, it’s a proxy war against Indigenous sovereignty using an international environmental organization,” she said.

LONDON — Artificial intelligence that can match humans at any task is still some way off — but it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a reality, according to the CEO of Google DeepMind. Speaking at a briefing in DeepMind’s London offices on Monday, Demis Hassabis said that he thinks artificial general intelligence (AGI) — which is as smart or smarter than humans — will start to emerge in the next five or 10 years. “I think today’s systems, they’re very passive, but there’s still a lot of things they can’t do. But I think over the next five to 10 years, a lot of those capabilities will start coming to the fore and we’ll start moving towards what we call artificial general intelligence,” Hassabis said. Hassabis defined AGI as “a system that’s able to exhibit all the complicated capabilities that humans can.” “We’re not quite there yet. These systems are very impressive at certain things. But there are other things they can’t do yet, and we’ve still got quite a lot of research work to go before that,” Hassabis said. Hassabis isn’t alone in suggesting that it’ll take a while for AGI to appear. Last year, the CEO of Chinese tech giant Baidu Robin Li said he sees AGI is “more than 10 years away,” pushing back on excitable predictions from some of his peers about this breakthrough taking place in a much shorter timeframe. Some time to go yet Hassabis’ forecast pushes the timeline to reach AGI some way back compared to what his industry peers have been sketching out. Dario Amodei, CEO of AI startup Anthropic, told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January that he sees a form of AI that’s “better than almost all humans at almost all tasks” emerging in the “next two or three years.” Other tech leaders see AGI arriving even sooner. Cisco’s Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel thinks there’s a chance we could see an example of AGI emerge as soon as this year. “There’s three major phases” to AI, Patel told CNBC in an interview at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona earlier this month. “There’s the basic AI that we’re all experience right now. Then there is artificial general intelligence, where the cognitive capabilities meet those of humans. Then there’s what they call superintelligence,” Patel said. “I think you will see meaningful evidence of AGI being in play in 2025. We’re not talking about years away,” he added. “I think superintelligence is, at best, a few years out.” Artificial super intelligence, or ASI, is expected to arrive after AGI and surpass human intelligence. However, “no one really knows” when such a breakthrough will happen, Hassabis said Monday. Last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted that AGI would likely be available by 2026, while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said such a system could be developed in the “reasonably close-ish future.”

Federal prosecutors are appealing a federal judge’s ruling in Wisconsin that possessing child sexual abuse material created by artificial intelligence is in some situations protected by the Constitution. The order and the subsequent appeal could have major implications for the future legal treatment of AI-generated child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, which has been a top concern among child safety advocates and has become a subject of at least two prosecutions in the last year. If higher courts uphold the decision, it could cut prosecutors off from successfully charging some people with the private possession of AI-generated CSAM. The case centers on Steven Anderegg, 42, of Holmen, Wisconsin, whom the Justice Department charged in May with “producing, distributing, and possessing obscene visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and transferring obscene material to a minor under the age of 16.” Prosecutors alleged that he used an AI image generator called Stable Diffusion to create over 13,000 images depicting child sexual abuse by entering text prompts into the technology that then generated fake images depicting non-real children. (Some AI systems are also used to create explicit images of known people, but prosecutors do not claim that is what Anderegg was doing.) In February, in response to Anderegg’s motion to dismiss the charges, U.S. District Judge James D. Peterson allowed three of the charges to move forward but threw one out, saying the First Amendment protects the possession of “virtual child pornography” in one’s home. On March 3, prosecutors appealed. In the decision, Peterson denied Anderegg’s request to dismiss charges of distribution of an obscene image of a minor, transfer of obscene matter to a person under 16 and production of an image of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct. Anderegg’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment. The Justice Department declined to comment. Many AI platforms have tried to prevent their tools from being used in creating such content, but some safety guardrails can easily be modified or removed, and a July study from the Internet Watch Foundation found that the amount of AI-generated CSAM posted online is increasing.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The European Union’s law enforcement agency cautioned Tuesday that artificial intelligence is turbocharging organized crime that is eroding the foundations of societies across the 27-nation bloc as it becomes intertwined with state-sponsored destabilization campaigns. The grim warning came at the launch of the latest edition of a report on organized crime published every four years by Europol that is compiled using data from police across the E.U. and will help shape law enforcement policy in the bloc in coming years. “Cybercrime is evolving into a digital arms race targeting governments, businesses and individuals. AI-driven attacks are becoming more precise and devastating,” said Europol Executive Director Catherine De Bolle. “Some attacks show a combination of motives of profit and destabilization, as they are increasingly state-aligned and ideologically motivated,” she added. The report, the E.U. Serious and Organized Crime Threat Assessment 2025, said offenses ranging from drug trafficking to people smuggling, money laundering, cyber attacks and online scams undermine society and the rule of law “by generating illicit proceeds, spreading violence, and normalizing corruption.” The volume of child sexual abuse material available online has increased significantly because of AI, which makes it more difficult to analyze imagery and identify offenders, the report said. “By creating highly realistic synthetic media, criminals are able to deceive victims, impersonate individuals and discredit or blackmail targets. The addition of AI-powered voice cloning and live video deepfakes amplifies the threat, enabling new forms of fraud, extortion, and identity theft,” it said. States seeking geopolitical advantage are also using criminals as contractors, the report said, citing cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure and public institutions “originating from Russia and countries in its sphere of influence.”

About 14 hours before the Eaton fire started on Jan. 7 on the hills above Altadena and Pasadena, Calif., power lines in the area had signs of being under strain from intensifying winds. New data from a company that maintains electrical sensors suggests that the transmission network of Southern California Edison was stressed long before the most severe winds bore down on the Los Angeles region, adding to growing criticism that the electric utility did not do enough to prevent the blaze. Edison is already under review as the possible cause of the Eaton fire, which killed 17 people and destroyed more than 9,400 buildings. The data comes from Whisker Labs, a technology company in Maryland, and suggests there were faults, or electrical malfunctions, on Edison’s transmission lines at 4:28 a.m. and 4:36 a.m. on the day of the fire. Wind speeds at the time were sustained at 60 miles per hour, with gusts as high as 79 m.p.h. — strong enough for engineers to consider cutting power. Later in the day, Whisker identified two faults just minutes before the fire started, at about 6:11 p.m., on the transmission network near Eaton Canyon, where fire investigators have said the Eaton Fire began. Those faults matched flashes on the transmission lines recorded by a video camera at a nearby Arco gas station. Southern California Edison, which supplies power to several communities near Eaton Canyon, including Altadena, did not cut power to the transmission lines despite the early morning faults. Nor did the utility cut power on the transmission lines after the second set of faults in the evening when winds reached 100 m.p.h. “They’re very similar,” Bob Marshall, co-founder and chief executive of Whisker Labs, said of the morning and evening faults. “We believe they are in the same area. They are definitely transmission faults.” Mr. Marshall said his company informed Edison of its latest findings, which it identified after the firm’s experts analyzed more data. Whisker Labs operates sensors in homes to help predict and prevent residential fires. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Critics of the utility contend that the massive faults, which were so strong that sensors as far away as Portland, Ore., and Salt Lake City registered them, suggest that Edison should have cut power to the transmission lines as weather conditions worsened. “I think we have a great picture of what happened,” said Robert McCullough, principal of McCullough Research in Portland, which has been reviewing data and information about Edison, including from Whisker Labs, at The New York Times’s request. “Too many people didn’t respond quickly enough,” he added. Although investigators have not determined a cause of the Eaton fire, residents and local governments have filed lawsuits against Edison, contending that the utility’s equipment ignited one of the worst wildfires in California history. In its lawsuit against Edison, Los Angeles County cited the gas station video as evidence. The video was first reported by The Times. Kathleen Dunleavy, an Edison spokeswoman, said the decision to cut power was based on many factors, including wind speed and wildfire threat in a particular area. Electrical faults alone would not warrant a decision to cut power, she said. But the National Weather Service had issued red flag fire warnings leading up to Jan. 7 for Southern California, noting extreme weather conditions coupled with dry vegetation. Under Edison’s guidelines, engineers should consider cutting power to transmission lines when winds are between 68 and 90 m.p.h. Ms. Dunleavy said the conditions did not warrant cutting electricity to power lines, known as public safety power shut-offs, a step that utilities consider a last resort in wildfire prevention. “We did not meet the P.S.P.S. threshold, based on wind speed and fire threat,” Ms. Dunleavy said. But wind speeds registered above the utility’s threshold multiple times that day, government data shows. Gusts in the San Gabriel Mountains in the Altadena area exceeded 68 m.p.h. at least 20 times between 2 p.m. on Jan. 6 and 1 a.m. on Jan. 8, according to a Times analysis of National Weather Service data. The utility did have faults on transmission lines at the times Whisker Labs recorded on the morning of Jan. 7, but Ms. Dunleavy said that the faults early in the day were not related to the lines in Eaton Canyon. She acknowledged that the utility had been speaking with Whisker Labs about its findings. “These two faults did not occur on any line that traverses the canyon,” Ms. Dunleavy said. “They’re not relevant for any line in Eaton Canyon.” Initially, the utility made similar statements about the faults Whisker Labs recorded around 6:11 p.m. But the gas station video showed the faults coincided with the flashes on transmission lines in the Altadena area, and Edison told state regulators that seeing the visual evidence prompted the utility to expand its own investigation into the cause of the fire. Edison did cut power before the fire began to three low voltage circuits that serve the Kinneloa Mesa community on the opposite side of Eaton Canyon from Altadena. But none of the high voltage transmission lines in Eaton Canyon nor the low voltage lines in Altadena were shut off as the wind speeds picked up and the fire started. On Monday, Edison began physical and video inspections and testing of electrical equipment in Eaton Canyon in the area where fire investigators said the Eaton fire started. The utility said this phase of field testing would last several weeks, followed by lab and engineering analysis, as part of the investigation into the cause of the blaze. “We owe it to the public here, and I’ve said from the very beginning I want to make sure we’re being fully transparent here,” said Pedro Pizarro, president and chief executive of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison. The Eaton fire was one of several wildfires that started in the Los Angeles area on Jan. 7. They include the Palisades fire, which destroyed much of the coastal community of Pacific Palisades, and the Hurst fire, which began north of the Eaton fire. Edison has told state regulators that its equipment may be involved in the cause of the Hurst fire. Three large faults were identified on the transmission network near Hurst before that fire began, Whisker data shows.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has returned home to Dubai, he said Monday, seven months after being arrested in France over charges that the platform was being used for criminal activity. “I’ve returned to Dubai after spending several months in France due to an investigation related to the activity of criminals on Telegram. The process is ongoing, but it feels great to be home,” Durov posted on his Telegram channel Monday. A spokesperson for the Paris prosecutor’s office told NBC News that Durov remains under investigation. “I want to thank the investigative judges for letting this happen, as well as my lawyers and team for their relentless efforts in demonstrating that, when it comes to moderation, cooperation, and fighting crime, for years Telegram not only met but exceeded its legal obligations,” Durov said. Durov, an enigmatic Soviet-born tech entrepreneur who has long claimed to be a champion of free speech, was arrested in Paris in August. The Paris prosecutor’s office said he had been detained as part of a larger investigation into the platform’s “complicity” in alleged crimes related to child sex abuse material (CSAM), among other accusations. Last fall, after being released by law enforcement but required to stay in France, Durov announced plans to “significantly improve“ Telegram’s response to criminals who abuse the platform. Headquartered in Dubai, Telegram is rare among global social media platforms for not having overt ties to either the United States or China. It’s particularly popular in the Middle East, eastern Europe and Russia, and in recent years has also become popular among some in the American far right.

As President Trump works to blunt the growth of wind and solar power and expand fossil fuel production in the United States, the renewable energy industry is making a new pitch: You need us. Wind and solar developers are increasingly pointing out that America’s demand for electricity is soaring, driven by a boom in data centers, and it’s proving difficult to build enough new gas plants to supply all the extra power that the nation needs. Wind, solar and battery storage are relatively quick and cheap to construct. That could help avert energy shortages and keep prices low, an argument that renewable energy firms are making to policymakers. “Our message to the administration is, let’s be realistic about this,” John Ketchum, the chief executive of NextEra Energy, one of the country’s largest power producers, said in an interview. “If you take renewables and storage off the table, we’re going to force electricity prices to the moon.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT These are tough times, politically, for the renewable energy industry. Mr. Trump has been a blistering critic of wind turbines for years and openly promotes fossil fuels like oil and gas, riding into office on a promise to “drill, baby, drill.” He has halted federal approvals for wind farms, placed a moratorium on large solar arrays on public lands and frozen billions of dollars in spending for battery factories and electric grid upgrades. At the same time, Republican leaders in Congress are talking about ending federal subsidies in the form of tax credits for low-carbon electricity, which have been expected to supercharge the growth of wind and solar power. Uncertainty around those credits has paralyzed the renewable energy industry, with companies delaying projects and laying off workers. The chaos could make it harder for the United States to slash its planet-warming emissions, even as scientists warn the risks from climate change are escalating. But an environmental argument won’t get far with a president who dismisses global warming. So, many wind and solar companies are now casting their industries as essential to achieving U.S. energy abundance. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “The focus is, what do we need to ensure that we have enough energy to retain our dominance in manufacturing, in electrification, in artificial intelligence?” said Sandhya Ganapathy, chief executive of EDP Renewables North America, a leading wind and solar developer. Over the next 15 years, U.S. electricity demand could increase by up to 50 percent as tech companies build massive data centers for artificial intelligence, factories expand and millions of people plug in electric cars, according to a new study by S & P Global Commodity Insights. Renewable companies say they are well positioned to help meet that growth in the near future. This year, wind, solar and batteries are projected to make up 93 percent of new electric capacity added to American grids — with the rest coming from power plants that burn natural gas. In many places, building new wind turbines or installing solar panels are often the cheapest ways to generate additional electrons. But data centers need power around the clock, something wind and solar power alone can’t provide. That’s why, at the nation’s biggest annual gathering of the energy industry in Houston last week, many executives insisted that demand would have to be largely supplied by natural gas plants today and perhaps in the future by advanced nuclear reactors or enhanced geothermal plants, which can generate electricity at all hours. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “The A.I. revolution is coming, it’s going to be big, it’s going to take a lot of power,” said Ryan Lance, chief executive of the oil giant ConocoPhillips. “And gas is going to be right at the forefront of driving that power demand.” Mr. Ketchum of NextEra had a different view. His company already owns a fleet of 19 gas-fired power plants, one of the nation’s largest, and plans to build even more gas units as the need for electricity grows. But Mr. Ketchum said that wind, solar and batteries will be just as important for meeting rising demand over the next few years. A big reason, he explained, is that power companies now have to wait up to five years to order new gas turbines as manufacturers struggle to keep up with global demand. Any new gas projects that aren’t already under development are unlikely to come online before 2030, he said. Other nascent technologies like advanced nuclear power are even farther off. By contrast, many wind and solar projects can be built within 12 to 18 months. The cost of building new gas power plants has also nearly tripled since the inflation shock of 2022, Mr. Ketchum said, while wind and solar prices have increased only modestly. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Ketchum added that the intermittent nature of renewables isn’t always a problem, since wind and solar are just one component of a larger electric system. Some regions might have gas turbines that don’t currently run much at night, so ramping those up and then adding solar and batteries for the daytime could help provide additional round-the-clock power. “Look, nobody’s built more gas-fired generation in the last 20 years than we have, and we agree we’re going to need more gas,” Mr. Ketchum said. “But there’s a time problem and there’s a cost problem. So our message is, don’t pull away from renewables, because they’re the only thing we have as a country that we can build to meet the demand that’s here right now and that’s really low cost.” Some tech titans echoed that view. Microsoft, which has said it will spend $80 billion on new data centers this year, may need new gas generation in Wisconsin and is paying a hefty sum to reopen the shuttered nuclear plant at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. But the company still says it wants as much wind and solar power as it can get. “It would have been a different conversation a decade ago when wind and solar weren’t as cost-competitive, but now they’re actually the most cost-competitive option” in places like the Southwest or Great Plains, said Bobby Hollis, Microsoft’s vice president of energy. Jim Robb, chief executive of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the nation’s grid monitor, has long warned that an overreliance on renewable energy could cause new problems for electric utilities — a wind drought during hot summer months, for example, can raise the risk of blackouts. But even Mr. Robb agreed that there aren’t many other options for rapidly expanding energy supply over the next few years. “To the extent that we’re going to unleash abundant energy in North America in the near term, it’s going to mostly be wind and solar,” Mr. Robb said at a panel on grid reliability in Washington last month. That message is starting to catch on with some conservative lawmakers. As Republican leaders search for trillions of dollars in offsets to pay for tax cuts, at least 21 G.O.P. House members signed a letter this month urging the preservation of incentives for low-carbon power sources — including wind, solar, hydropower, nuclear and geothermal — that were part of a 2022 climate law signed by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. One recent study commissioned by ConservAmerica, a conservative environmental group, estimated that repealing those tax credits could cause U.S. electricity costs to rise by $51 billion per year by 2035, largely because wind and solar additions would decline by 50 percent and become more expensive. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “Common sense tax credits that preserve all-of-the-above options for reliable energy are essential to American energy dominance and keeping costs low,” Representative Gabe Evans, Republican of Colorado, said in explaining why he signed the letter. Mr. Evans’ district has several factories that make wind-turbine components. For now, many Trump administration officials remain deeply skeptical of renewables. In Houston last week, Chris Wright, the new U.S. energy secretary, said that wind and solar power weren’t nearly as useful as natural gas, and often trigger local opposition. “Wind has been singled out because it’s had a singularly poor record of driving up prices and getting increasing citizen outrage, whether you’re a farm or you’re in a coastal community,” Mr. Wright said. “Everywhere wind and solar penetration have increased significantly, prices went up,” Mr. Wright said. (That isn’t always true: While California’s electricity rates have jumped as rooftop solar panels have proliferated, Texas has seen its prices decline even as wind and solar now provide one-quarter of the state’s power.) Some renewable energy proponents said they hoped the attacks on wind and solar power would subside once the reality of America’s need for more electricity sunk in. They compared it to the early years of the Biden administration, when White House officials blocked new drilling leases only to soften after Russia invaded Ukraine and global oil prices spiked. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “We saw the last administration condemn American oil and gas until gas prices went up — and then they said, um, guys can you please produce more oil and gas,” said Jason Grumet, chief executive of the American Clean Power Association, a renewable industry trade group. “We do believe that once the emotion moves through the system and the economics start to come into focus, we’ll have a truly all-of-the-above energy policy.”

Greenpeace is among the most well-known environmental organizations in the world, the result of more than 50 years of headline-grabbing protest tactics. Its activists have confronted whaling ships on the high seas. They’ve hung banners from the Eiffel Tower. They’ve occupied oil rigs. A (fictional) activist even sailed with Greenpeace in an episode of “Seinfeld,” in hopes of capturing Elaine’s heart. Now, Greenpeace’s very existence is under threat: A lawsuit seeks at least $300 million in damages. Greenpeace has said such a loss in court could force it to shut down its American offices. In the coming days, a jury is expected to render its verdict. The lawsuit is over Greenpeace’s role in protests a decade ago against a pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. The pipeline’s owner, Energy Transfer, says Greenpeace enabled illegal attacks on the project and led a “vast, malicious publicity campaign” that cost the company money. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Greenpeace says that it played only a minor, peaceful role in the Indigenous-led protest, and that the lawsuit’s real aim is to limit free speech not just at the organization, but also across America, by raising the specter of expensive court fights. The suit comes at a time of immense challenges for the entire environmental movement. Climate change is making storms, floods and wildfires more frequent and more dangerous. The Trump administration has commenced a historic effort to overturn decades of environmental protections. Many of the movement’s most significant achievements over the past half-century are at risk. And in recent years the potential costs of protest have already risen. The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law has tracked a wave of bills proposed since 2017 that toughen penalties against protesters. Many became law in the wake of the demonstrations against the pipeline at the center of the Greenpeace case (the Dakota Access Pipeline) and also the Black Lives Matter movement, which rose to prominence after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 by a police officer in Minnesota. More recently, the Trump administration has moved to deport international students who protested the war in Gaza. Sushma Raman, interim executive director of Greenpeace USA, has called the trial in North Dakota “a critical test of the future of the First Amendment.” Energy Transfer, one of the biggest pipeline companies in the country, has said that the lawsuit is over illegal conduct, not free speech. “It is about them not following the law,” the company said in a statement. Founded in Vancouver in 1971, Greenpeace was hugely successful early on at what is now called “branding,” with its catchy name and daredevil stunts. But it has also faced major challenges: infighting, missteps, legal battles and questions about how to widen its base and remain relevant as it became an institution. The larger environmental movement has grown, but also has struggled to gain attention in an increasingly fractured media landscape and as it has pivoted to the issue of climate change, which can be less tangible than previous targets of activism, like say opposing logging or oil-drilling in specific places. “What they made their name on was the media spectacle, especially the ability to conduct a high-profile action that requires incredible tactical organization,” said Frank Zelko, a history professor at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa and the author of “Make It a Green Peace! The Rise of Countercultural Environmentalism.” That became “less efficacious” over time, he said, as competition for eyeballs grew and spectacular images, whether real or not, abound. Greenpeace was founded as an offshoot of the Sierra Club based on the principles of ecology and anti-militarism. But pulling off daring stunts in pursuit of those principles, while also operating as a worldwide professional network, has always been a delicate balancing act. After friction and fights for control of the organization in the late 1970s, Greenpeace International was established in the Netherlands as the head office, coordinating the activities of independent Greenpeace offices around the world, including Greenpeace USA. The activities of its American branch are at the center of the lawsuit. Greenpeace International says its role was limited to signing one open letter. Greenpeace International has also countersued Energy Transfer in the Netherlands, seeking to recoup its legal costs under European laws that essentially allow it to challenge the Energy Transfer lawsuit as a form of harassment. In Greenpeace’s Washington office, the Energy Transfer case has contributed to turbulence in the group’s highest levels. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In early 2023, the organization celebrated the appointment of Ebony Twilley Martin as sole executive director, calling Ms. Twilley Martin the first Black woman to be the sole director of a legacy U.S. environmental nonprofit. But she left that role just 16 months later, a development that two people familiar with the matter said was in part over disagreements about whether to agree to a settlement with Energy Transfer. Born in ’60s upheaval Greenpeace was born out of a moment of fear and upheaval, amid the Vietnam War, the nuclear arms race, acid rain and smog blanketing cities. Rex Weyler, 77, an early member, chronicled the history in his 2004 book “Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists and Visionaries Changed the World.” In Vancouver, Mr. Weyler met Bob Hunter, a columnist for The Vancouver Sun, and Dorothy and Irving Stowe, older Quakers who had left the United States in protest over war taxes and weapons testing. They were meeting like-minded people who saw a need for an ecology movement that would employ nonviolent direct action, following the examples of Mohandas K. Gandhi in India and the civil rights movement in the United States. They would soon become an offshoot of a more traditional environmental group, the Sierra Club, after a disagreement over protest tactics. Their first campaign was a mission to block U.S. nuclear weapons tests on Amchitka, a volcanic island in Alaska. An idea this group had floated within the Sierra Club — to sail a boat to stop the bomb — had been reported in The Vancouver Sun, though the head office of Sierra Club in San Francisco had not approved that plan. “The Sierra Club was not amused when they saw this story, because they said, ‘You know, a lot of our members are just tree-huggers, and they don’t care about nuclear disarmament,’” said Robert Stowe, son of Dorothy and Irving and a behavioral neurologist. “Had the Sierra Club agreed to do this, Greenpeace could probably never have been founded.” The name Greenpeace came up during a planning meeting, when Irving Stowe said “peace” at the end of the gathering and another activist, Bill Darnell, replied offhandedly, “Make it a green peace.” “Greenpeace” was emblazoned on the fishing boat they used. Irving Stowe organized a concert by Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and Phil Ochs to raise money for the trip. The boat set sail in September 1971. The Coast Guard intercepted it, and the vessel never reached Amchitka. But the stunt garnered considerable public attention, a core part of the group’s strategy in the years since. ‘Save the whales’ era Greenpeace’s next campaign is perhaps its most well known: saving the whales. The idea came from Paul Spong, who had studied orca whales and argued that the highly intelligent creatures were being hunted to extinction. That led to a copiously documented, dramatic sailing expedition to confront Soviet whaling ships. A worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling has been in place since 1986. Greenpeace and other groups who worked on the issue have claimed it as a major victory. The group also tried to stop seal hunting in northern Canada, a controversial move that alienated a large number of residents, including in Indigenous communities. Greenpeace Canada apologized to the Inuit people for the impacts of the campaign in 2014, and the organization said it did not oppose small-scale subsistence hunting. The ship Rainbow Warrior, a crucial vessel in the anti-whaling campaign, was added to the fleet in 1978. That ship was protesting French nuclear testing in the Pacific in 1985 when it was bombed by agents for the French spy agency D.G.S.E., killing Fernando Pereira, a photographer, and igniting international outrage. France later apologized and was ordered to pay $8 million in damages to Greenpeace, and reached a separate settlement with Mr. Pereira’s family. A new Rainbow Warrior is now one of three Greenpeace vessels in operation. It is sailing this month in the Marshall Islands to “elevate calls for nuclear and climate justice,” the group said, and to support research on the effects of past nuclear weapons testing. Growing pains By the 1990s, Greenpeace’s attention-grabbing environmentalism was capturing the imagination of a new generation of people like Valentina Stackl, 39, who learned of its exploits as a girl in Europe. She worked with Greenpeace USA from 2019 to 2023. “The idea of Greenpeace ships, and save the whales and hanging off a bridge or something like that was truly magical,” she said. “And on the best days Greenpeace really was like that. Of course, there’s also the slog of the day-to-day that is less sparkly.” One constant concern was fund-raising: Greenpeace USA is largely funded by individual donations, which can fluctuate. Tax filings show its revenue has been stable in recent years. The group’s priorities shifted to climate and how to incorporate what is known as “environmental justice,” the fact that pollution and other environmental hazards often disproportionally affect poor and minority areas. The historically mostly white and male-dominated organization had to grapple with how to increasingly collaborate with a diverse range of other groups. And it had to reckon with historical tensions with Indigenous communities over its whaling and sealing campaigns, as well as other missteps. One of those mistakes occurred in Peru in 2014, when there was an uproar over a Greenpeace action that damaged the Nazca lines, ancient man-made patterns etched in the desert. Activists from Greenpeace Germany entered the restricted area to place a protest message about renewable energy. The Peruvian cultural minister called it an act of “stupidity” that had “co-opted part of the identity of our heritage.” The organization apologized, and the episode prompted Greenpeace USA to adopt a formal policy on interactions with Indigenous communities, according to Rolf Skar, the group’s campaigns director. In short, Greenpeace would not get involved in struggles led by Indigenous people unless specifically asked to do so. That policy has come up in this month’s trial in North Dakota. Greenpeace argued that it had offered support in the Dakota Access Pipeline protest only after it was asked to do so by Indigenous leaders, and did not seek any major role in the demonstrations. On Monday in a courtroom in the small city of Mandan, N.D., jury members are expected to start hearing closing arguments, after which they will consider Greenpeace’s fate.

As voters returned Donald Trump to the White House in November, many had the economy top of mind. Candidate Trump vowed to bring down prices right away and foresaw boom times for the market. That’s not the case nearly two months into the administration, however. Instead, markets turned south this week amid a slew of data showing the economy looking increasingly precarious — with federal cuts led by Elon Musk’s DOGE group heightening worries about the state of the job market and tariff threats adding to cost worries for inflation-weary shoppers. On Thursday, the S&P 500 benchmark plunged into correction territory, meaning it closed 10% below its most recent highs. It was its fourth negative week in a row — the time since such a streak occurred was last summer. The decline came as Trump ramped up his tariffs strategy, allowing duties on steel and aluminum to come into effect — and incurring retaliatory tariffs — while continuing to threaten higher levies on Canadian goods and bringing new tariff warnings for European champagne and wine imports. Stock prices largely reflect expectations about future earnings. And CEOs and analysts alike are suggesting U.S. consumers are undergoing a major reorientation of their outlook. “I do think it’s just a bit of an uncertain world out there right now,” Ed Stack, the chairman of Dick’s Sporting Goods, told CNBC this week when asked about the company’s expectation that its profits will be lower this year. “What’s going to happen from a tariff standpoint? You know, if tariffs are put in place and prices rise the way that they might, what’s going to happen with the consumer?” Trump vows he's 'not going to bend at all’ on tariffs despite stock market corrections 08:17 On Friday, the University of Michigan reported the year-ahead outlook business conditions fell to its lowest level ever. The survey’s readings for future inflation and unemployment, meanwhile, surged. Those results are part of a broader trend. The New York Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Expectations, released Monday, showed “notably” worsening outlooks for unemployment, consumers’ ability to make minimum debt payments, and credit access expectations, while the outlook for stocks a year from now fell to its lowest level since December 2023. The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), which tends to lean more conservative, reported this week that its uncertainty index climbed to its second-highest recorded reading last month. “Uncertainty is high and rising on Main Street, and for many reasons,” said NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg in a statement. “Those small business owners expecting better business conditions in the next six months dropped and the percent viewing the current period as a good time to expand fell, but remains well above where it was in the fall. Inflation remains a major problem, ranked second behind the top problem, labor quality.” A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on the worsening outlook. But the president is showing no sign of abandoning his tariffs strategy, while members of his administration are now actively preparing the electorate for a potential downturn. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said this week that a recession would be “worth it” in order to get Trump’s economic policies in place while adding that it would be “Biden’s economy” until the fourth quarter. White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said trade policy uncertainty would be “resolved” in early April and that the economy would “take off” in the second quarter.