While the Trump administration in Washington was cutting environmental programs, delegates at U.N. biodiversity talks in Rome made modest progress Thursday on a series of measures to support nature. Governments gathered to tackle global biodiversity losses that are unprecedented in human history, driven by the ways people have transformed the world. The seismic geopolitical changes of recent weeks loomed over the talks as countries negotiated in a large conference room, fighting for small steps toward consensus. Delegates painstakingly negotiated the language of diplomatic texts even as Britain announced reductions to its overseas development aid and as the United States continued cutting its international aid programs. “We have sent a light of hope,” said Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s departing environment minister, who presided over the meeting. “The common good — the environment, the protection of life and the capacity to come together for something bigger than each national interest — is possible.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Many developing countries are rich in biodiversity but poor economically, and three days of tense negotiations centered on whether a new fund would be part of a plan to mobilize $200 billion a year for nature funding by 2030. African and Latin American countries have demanded a new fund, arguing that the way they currently gain access to multilateral money is unfair and inefficient. But many donor countries have fought their proposed fund, saying it would be expensive to set up and manage, diverting money that could otherwise be spent on conservation itself. In the end, delegates agreed on a process to decide whether a new fund would be created. Still, it was a hard-won compromise and the room erupted in applause. Delegates also approved a framework for monitoring nations’ progress on biodiversity commitments made in Montreal in 2022, which included an agreement to conserve 30 percent of the world’s land and water. “We now have a road map to secure the finances required to avert the biodiversity crisis, and the means to monitor and review progress,” said Martin Harper, chief executive of BirdLife International, a science and advocacy group. “These crucial steps must now be backed up with real money from developed nations.” Countries have recognized a biodiversity financing gap of $700 billion a year. In a landmark agreement in 2022, they agreed to mobilize at least $200 billion a year by 2030 from public and private sources and to find an additional $500 billion a year by 2030 by phasing out or reforming subsidies that harm nature. It’s a huge amount of money to find in five years, even in the most favorable political climate. The talks unfolded with one country conspicuously absent: the United States. “I can’t remember the last time the U.S. didn’t show up, but it’s been a very, very long time,” said David Ainsworth, a spokesman for the secretariat that manages the United Nations biodiversity treaty that underlies the talks, the Convention on Biological Diversity. The United States has long held an awkward but nonetheless influential role in global biodiversity negotiations. It is the only country in the world, with the exception of the Vatican, that has not ratified the treaty. Still, the United States has long wielded considerable influence from the sidelines of the talks. Now, all that has been thrown into question. In recent years, at least $385 million of U.S. biodiversity funding was funneled through the Agency for International Development, which is being dismantled by the Trump administration. Other streams of U.S. biodiversity funding are also at risk. The White House did not answer questions on its plans for biodiversity funding or why it did not send delegates to the talks. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Monica Medina, who served as biodiversity envoy in the Biden administration, called the American absence in Rome “a deafening silence” and said cuts to biodiversity funding could result in devastating extinctions. “U.S. funding has been a very important part of how we have kept some of the biodiversity we all love — elephants, whales, rhinos and polar bears — from going extinct,” Ms. Medina said. “We might not be able to keep some of these amazing animals around for our kids and grandkids without some of this funding.” The meeting in Rome was a resumption of talks held last fall in Cali, Colombia, officially called the 16th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP16. After reaching a groundbreaking agreement in overtime on a new way for companies to compensate countries for their use of genetic material, the talks lost quorum and were suspended. One promising outcome of the Rome talks, according to stakeholders, was a move to begin an international dialogue of environment and finance ministers from developed and developing countries. Over the course of the negotiations, some delegates made impassioned pleas for nature. “Biodiversity cannot wait for a bureaucratic process that lasts forever while the environmental crisis continues to get worse,” a government delegate from Bolivia told the gathered nations on Wednesday. “Forests are burning, rivers are in agony and animals are disappearing.”

Formaldehyde, the chemical of choice for undertakers and embalmers, is also used in products like furniture and clothes. But it can also cause cancer and severe respiratory problems. So, in 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency began a new effort to regulate it. The chemicals industry fought back with an intensity that astonished even seasoned agency officials. Its campaign was led by Lynn Dekleva, then a lobbyist at the American Chemistry Council, an industry group that spends millions of dollars on government lobbying. Dr. Dekleva is now at the E.P.A. in a crucial job: She runs an office that has the authority to approve new chemicals for use. Earlier she spent 32 years at Dupont, the chemical maker, before joining the E.P.A. in the first Trump administration. Her most recent employer, the chemicals lobbying group, has made reversing the Environmental Protection Agency’s course on formaldehyde a priority and is pushing to abolish a program under which the agency assess the risks of chemicals to human health. In recent weeks it has urged the agency to discard its work on formaldehyde entirely and start from scratch in assessing the risks. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The American Chemistry Council is also seeking to change the agency’s approval process for new chemicals and speed up E.P.A.’s safety reviews. That review process is a key part of Dr. Dekelva’s purview at the agency. Another former chemistry council lobbyist, Nancy Beck, is back alongside Dr. Dekleva at the E.P.A. in a role regulating existing chemicals. The council’s president, Chris Jahn, told a Senate hearing shortly after the Trump inauguration that his group intended to tackle the “unnecessary regulation” of chemicals in the United States. “A healthy nation, a secure nation, an economically vibrant nation relies on chemistry,” he said. It is not unusual or unlawful for industry groups to seek to influence public policy in the interest of their member companies. The A.C.C. estimates that products using formaldehyde support more than 1.5 million jobs in the United States. What has been extraordinary, health and legal experts said, is the extent of the industry’s effort to block the E.P.A.’s scientific work on a chemical long acknowledged as a carcinogen, and how the architect of the effort was back at the agency as a regulator of chemicals. At the same time, the Trump administration has moved to sharply reduce the federal scientific work force. “They already have a track record of ignoring the science,” said Tracey Woodruff, director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at the University of California, San Francisco. “Now, they’re in charge of government agencies that decide the rules.” While leading the chemistry council’s fight to limit formaldehyde regulation, Dr. Dekleva called for investigations of federal officials for potential bias. The industry group used freedom of information laws to obtain emails of federal employees and criticized them in public statements for what they had written. It submitted dozens of industry-funded research papers to agencies that minimized the risks of formaldehyde. The A.C.C. also sued both the E.P.A. and the National Academies, which advises the nation on scientific questions, accusing researchers of a lack of scientific integrity. Allison Edwards, a chemistry council spokeswoman, said officials from the group had regularly met with E.P.A. staff members “to share critical science and to try and ensure an assessment of any chemistry is objective, employs rigorous scientific standards, and is reflective of real-world human exposure.” She said, “We’re asking to be one of many stakeholders at the table.” Molly Vaseliou, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A., said the agency would continue to make sure it “ensures chemicals do not pose an unreasonable risk to human health or the environment.” At the same time, the agency would also work to approve “chemicals that are needed to power American innovation and competitiveness,” she said. Formaldehyde’s cancer risk Formaldehyde’s fumes can cause wheezing and a burning sensation in the eyes, especially when they accumulate indoors. That danger was apparent when formaldehyde in plywood used to build temporary trailer homes for victims of Hurricane Katrina sickened dozens of people. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT And there are longer-term dangers, namely several types of cancers. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded in 2004 that the chemical is a human carcinogen, and the U.S. Department of Health listed it as a human carcinogen in 2011. The chemical is restricted in the workplace, in certain composite wood products, and in pesticides. Yet efforts to strengthen overall regulations in the United States have stalled in the face of industry opposition. President Biden, whose “cancer moonshot” program had made reducing cancer deaths a priority, revived in 2021 an E.P.A. assessment of the health effects of the chemical, and published a draft the following year. That effort, under the agency’s Integrated Risk Information System, was the first step toward regulating formaldehyde. The chemistry council led a coalition of industry groups, including the Composite Panel Association and Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers, arguing that formaldehyde had already been rigorously studied and that strict industry controls were in place. In a half-dozen letters to the E.P.A., Dr. Dekleva, on behalf of a formaldehyde panel at the industry group, raised a list of complaints about the way the agency was carrying out its assessment. She questioned research linking formaldehyde to leukemia, or cancer of the blood, and accused the agency of not relying on the best available science. There was a dose, she said, at which formaldehyde did not cause risk. There was also research, she said, that showed inhaled formaldehyde did not easily travel beyond the nose to cause harm to the body. In light of these issues, Dr. Dekleva wrote, agency’s draft assessment was “flawed and unreliable without significant revision.” To bolster its case, the industry group enlisted experts at consulting firms to submit opinions and studies to the E.P.A. minimizing formaldehyde’s risks. The firms included those previously commissioned by tobacco companies to help defend cigarettes. The A.C.C. also submitted 41 peer-reviewed studies that it said refuted a link between formaldehyde and leukemia. A New York Times review found that the majority of the studies were funded by industry groups, including at least 11 from the Research Foundation for Health and Environmental Effects, an organization established by the American Chemistry Council. David Michaels, an epidemiologist and professor at George Washington University School of Public Health and assistant secretary of labor under President Barack Obama, said the industry strategy was to create the appearance of disagreement among scientists. While it’s true, he said, that inconsistencies can always exist in studies on humans, “there’s little disagreement among independent scientists that formaldehyde causes cancer.” Scientists targeted For more than 150 years, the National Academies has advised the U.S. government on science. In 2021, it was asked to weigh in on the E.P.A.’s work on formaldehyde. It became a target of the American Chemistry Council. The industry group used freedom of information laws to obtain internal emails of members and support staff of a panel assessing the E.P.A.’s formaldehyde review, and it accused one staff of showing “bias in favor of disputed research claiming formaldehyde causes leukemia.” The staff member, a former Environmental Protection Agency scientist, had for example described as “wonderful” the news that Congress might try to replicate an influential Chinese study that had shown formaldehyde could cause leukemia. Wendy E. Wagner, professor at the University of Texas School of Law and an expert on the use of science by environmental policymakers, said she did not see how the comment reflected bias. “After all, they don’t know what the results will be, do they?” she said. “I would expect all scientists to be enthusiastic about potential future research.” Dr. Dekleva called for investigations at both the E.P.A. and the National Academies, and for the removal of potentially biased panel members and staff. That included scientists who had previously accepted federal research grants. In July 2023, the industry group sued the E.P.A., as well as the National Academies, accusing researchers of a lack of scientific integrity. The chemistry council said that lack of integrity made the use of the National Academies research in regulating formaldehyde “arbitrary, capricious, and unlawful.” “It was relentless, and beyond the pale,” said Maria Doa, a scientist at the E.P.A. for 30 years who is now senior director of chemicals policy at the Environmental Defense Fund. “They really ratcheted up their attacks on federal employees.” The National Academies stood its ground, issuing a report the following month affirming the E.P.A.’s Integrated Risk Information System findings that formaldehyde is carcinogenic and increases leukemia risk. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Those conclusions are shared by other global health authorities. Mary Schubauer-Berigan, the evidence-synthesis head at the World Health Organization’s Agency for Research on Cancer, said there was “sufficient evidence in humans” that formaldehyde causes leukemia as and nasopharynx cancer. Mikko Vaananen, a spokesman for the European Chemicals Agency, said that while some questions around specific links to leukemia remained unanswered, evidence was sufficient to classify formaldehyde as a carcinogen. Formaldehyde “cannot in principle be placed on the E.U. market,” he said. In March 2024, a federal judge dismissed the chemistry council’s lawsuit. And early this year, near the end of the Biden administration, the E.P.A. issued a final risk determination, under the Toxic Substances Control Act: Formaldehyde “presents an unreasonable risk of injury to human health.” Mary A. Fox, an expert in chemical risk assessment at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and a member of a committee that reviewed the E.P.A.’s research on formaldehyde, said agency scientists had accurately reflected the uncertainties around the links between formaldehyde and leukemia. But they had documented many other streams of evidence that indicated that link, Dr. Fox said. “It’s an inevitable progress of science, that as we learn more over time, we generally learn that health effects appear at lower concentrations than we had thought,” she said. Following Mr. Trump’s re-election, the American Chemistry Council signed onto a letter from a range of industry groups calling for broad changes to policy, specifically citing formaldehyde. “We urge your administration to pause and reconsider” the E.P.A. findings on formaldehyde, the Dec. 5 letter said. The E.P.A. “should go back to the scientific drawing board,” chemistry council said in January. The group was particularly concerned about the workplace limits the agency was suggesting, which it said ignored steps companies were already taking to protect workers, like the use of personal protective equipment. The A.C.C. is also supporting a bill from Republican members of Congress that would end the Integrated Risk Information System. Soon after, Trump transition officials said Dr. Dekleva would be returning to the E.P.A. to run a program assessing chemicals for approval. The chemistry council, which has long complained of a backlog, is pushing the agency to speed up approvals. During the first Trump administration, agency whistle-blowers described in an inspector general’s investigation how they had faced “intense” pressure to eliminate the backlog, sometimes at the expense of safety. Shortly after the inauguration, the Trump administration fired the inspector-general who carried out the investigation. On Jan. 20, the A.C.C. welcomed President Trump. “Americans want a stronger, more affordable country,” said Mr. Jahn, the group’s president. “America’s chemical manufacturers can help.”

President Trump said on Wednesday that he would revoke a Biden-era policy that allowed more oil to be produced in Venezuela and exported, dealing a blow to the country’s government and Chevron, which produces oil there. Mr. Trump did not mention Chevron in his post on Truth Social, saying only that he would reverse concessions granted on Nov. 26, 2022. That’s when the Treasury Department gave Chevron permission to expand operations in Venezuela. The license is up for renewal on March 1. “The regime has not been transporting the violent criminals that they sent into our Country (the Good Ole’ U.S.A.) back to Venezuela at the rapid pace that they had agreed to,” Mr. Trump said. A spokesman for Chevron said the company was reviewing the implications of Mr. Trump’s statement. Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company, has long operated in Venezuela. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Asked about Venezuela last month, Chevron’s chief executive, Mike Wirth, said the company was focused on keeping staff safe and following the law. “We don’t set policy,” he said on the company’s year-end earnings call. “We engage with the government to help inform them of the potential impacts of policy choices, and we’ll continue to do so.” Oil is the backbone of Venezuela’s deeply troubled economy. The country is believed to have the world’s largest oil reserves, but the government of President Nicolás Maduro has struggled to take advantage of those resources because of mismanagement and underinvestment in its state-owned oil company. Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, called Mr. Trump’s move “a harmful and inexplicable decision” in a post on social media. She added that by “seeking to harm the Venezuelan people, in reality it is inflicting harm to the United States, its population, and its companies.” She added that the decision was likely to drive up the migration of Venezuelans, with “widely known consequences.” The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment. U.S. oil prices were little changed Wednesday afternoon, hovering around $69 a barrel. The United States stopped importing oil from Venezuela for several years after Mr. Trump placed sanctions on the country’s state-owned oil company in 2019, during his first term. Imports resumed after the Biden administration gave Chevron permission in late 2022 to export oil it produced in Venezuela. But the United States is far less reliant on Venezuelan oil than it once was. It imports roughly 226,000 barrels a day from the country, equivalent to about 1 percent of U.S. demand, according to the Energy Information Administration. Venezuela produces a denser, more viscous type of oil that is not common in the United States. Refineries in the United States are designed to run on a mix of that heavier oil and lighter varieties produced domestically.

Lawyers for the pipeline company Energy Transfer and Greenpeace fired their opening salvos in a North Dakota courtroom Wednesday morning in a civil trial that could bankrupt the storied environmental group. The suit revolves around the role Greenpeace played in massive protests against construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline nearly a decade ago. The pipeline, which carries crude oil from North Dakota across several states to a transfer point in Illinois, was delayed for months in 2016 and 2017 amid lawsuits and protests. The trial commenced on Wednesday with opening arguments in a quiet county courthouse in Mandan, N.D. Greenpeace says Energy Transfer, which built the Dakota Access Pipeline, is seeking $300 million in damages. Energy Transfer, one of the largest pipeline firms in the country, accused Greenpeace of inciting unrest that cost it millions of dollars in lost financing, construction delays, and security and public-relations expenses. Trey Cox, its lead lawyer, told the nine-person jury that his team would prove that Greenpeace had “planned, organized and funded” unlawful protests. He called the trial a “day of reckoning.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Everett Jack Jr., the lead lawyer for Greenpeace, gave a detailed timeline to rebut aspects of that account, saying Greenpeace played a minor role in the demonstrations, which drew an estimated 100,000 people to the rural area.

Kelly Brunt wasn’t the only federal employee to be laid off this month while traveling for work. But she was almost certainly the only one whose work trip was in Antarctica. Dr. Brunt was a program director at the National Science Foundation, the $9 billion agency that supports scientific advancement in practically every field apart from medicine. As part of the Trump administration’s campaign to shrink the federal government, roughly 10 percent of the foundation’s 1,450 career employees lost their jobs last week. Officials told staff members that layoffs were just getting started. Yet the office where Dr. Brunt worked has an importance that goes beyond science. The Office of Polar Programs coordinates research in the Arctic and Antarctic, where the fragile, fast-changing environments are of growing strategic interest to the world’s superpowers. By treaty, Antarctica is a scientific preserve. And for decades, U.S. research — plus the three year-round stations, the aircraft and the ships that support it — has been the bedrock of the country’s presence there. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Of late, though, “countries such as Korea and China have been rapidly expanding their presence, while the U.S. has been sort of maintaining the status quo,” said Julia Wellner, a marine scientist at the University of Houston who studies Antarctic glaciers. The Office of Polar Programs has long been understaffed, said Michael Jackson, who worked as an Antarctic program director for the agency until retiring late last year. Aging planes and facilities, plus flat budgets for science, have snarled the pace of research. “Right now we are capable of doing maybe 60 percent of the science that we were capable of doing” 15 years ago, Dr. Jackson said. If the Trump administration slashes science funding, American researchers could collaborate more with other nations’ polar institutes, as many already do, Dr. Wellner said. “But those other countries have their own scientists,” she said. “I don’t think South Korea or the U.K. is just going to make room for all of us.” When asked how the layoffs of polar scientists would affect the National Science Foundation’s work, an agency representative declined to comment. When the agency fired Dr. Brunt and other employees last week, she was heading home after spending over a month at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Another program director who was laid off, David Porter, had been supporting scientists embarking from New Zealand on a 10-week expedition in the Southern Ocean. Other teams were gearing up to drill ice cores, take seismic measurements, measure ultraviolet radiation and more. Foundation program officers help decide which projects like these are most worthy of federal funding. Often they are seasoned scientists themselves: Dr. Porter is an expert in atmospheric and oceanic science who has worked at Columbia University. Dr. Brunt’s N.S.F. employment was probationary because she became a permanent worker only six months ago, she said. Before that, she spent three years at the agency on temporary assignment from NASA and the University of Maryland. In total, she has 25 years of experience as a glaciologist and 15 Antarctic field seasons under her belt. “I want to dispel this rumor that this is a bunch of people who are sitting around sucking off the government milk bottle,” Dr. Jackson said. “These are people that had well-established careers in academia, and they decided that they wanted to come to N.S.F. and give something back to the U.S. taxpayers.” Dr. Jackson also doesn’t buy the idea that eliminating federal workers will root out fraud and abuse. “By removing the program officers at the front lines, you’re actually removing the very thing that you want to have there in place to make sure that no fraud and abuse is happening,” he said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT For scientists in the field, their program officer might also be their first point of contact when issues arise, said Twila Moon, the deputy lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. “Maybe you’re having trouble with some of the logistics,” Dr. Moon said. “Maybe your instruments aren’t getting to you on time, or there’s been changes in the field flights that you need to think about.” Fewer officers mean more scientists at risk of snags or challenges, she said. The geopolitical significance of Antarctica might help shield it from the administration’s most severe cost-cutting, said Dawn Sumner, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Davis, who studies microbes in Antarctic lakes. “The only way you can have a presence in Antarctica is through science,” Dr. Sumner said. Even so, much of that science is motivated by the need to address human-caused global warming, a subject that President Trump and his allies have long denigrated as a nonissue. Dr. Wellner of the University of Houston finds it “appalling” that Antarctic scientists might someday have to avoid mentioning climate change to receive federal funding. Still, she said, researchers in Texas, Florida and other states long ago figured out how to sidestep official taboos around climate. “We talk about sea-level rise in Texas all the time,” Dr. Wellner said. “You don’t have to talk about ‘climate.’ It’s just ‘sea-level rise.’”

As the Trump administration imposes deep cuts on foreign aid and renewable energy programs, the World Bank, one of the most important financiers of energy projects in developing countries, is facing doubts over whether its biggest shareholder, the United States, will stay on board. While the Trump administration has voiced neither support nor antipathy for the bank, it has issued an executive order promising a review of U.S. involvement in all international organizations. And Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for overhauling the federal government, has pressed for withdrawal from the World Bank. If the United States were to withdraw, the bank would lose its triple-A credit rating, two credit-rating companies warned in recent weeks. That could significantly reduce its ability to borrow money. Roughly 18 percent of the bank’s funding comes from the United States. In an interview, Ajay Banga, the bank’s president, said his institution was fundamentally different from the aid agencies, such as U.S.A.I.D., that the Trump administration has been cutting. And he used some of the administration’s own talking points to argue the case: Investment in natural gas and nuclear power is good, he said, and the development projects funded by the bank can help prevent migration. He also said that the bank makes money and shouldn’t be seen as charity from U.S. taxpayers. “The World Bank is profitable,” he said, noting that it more than covers its own administrative costs even if most of its projects are designed to yield slim returns. “It’s not as though we take money every year from taxpayers to subsidize us and our salaries.” The concern about the bank’s future is heightened as the second Trump administration doubles down on its repudiation of climate projects and promotes an accelerated expansion of U.S. oil and gas projects. The United States wields enormous influence over the bank and effectively chooses its leader. David Malpass, nominated by President Trump in 2019, doubled the bank’s climate financing. But he resigned shortly after wavering during a 2023 public event at The New York Times on whether he accepted the scientific consensus that fossil fuels drive climate change. Mr. Banga was then nominated in 2023 by President Biden. He committed to channel 45 percent of the bank’s funds on climate related projects, an increase of 10 percentage points from his predecessor. The World Bank, created in 1944 to rebuild postwar Europe, is the world’s largest multilateral lender. It funds a range of projects for poor countries and emerging economies, such as the development of high-yielding crop seeds, the installation of school roofs that better withstand cyclones, and the construction of roads, bridges and all sorts of energy projects. The Bank has long been criticized by environmental advocates for supporting projects that harm communities and ecologies, including hydroelectric dams and gas pipelines. The bank faces an immediate problem. In December, Congress authorized the Biden administration’s pledge to contribute $4 billion in grants and loans for the world’s poorest countries through the bank. But a new, Republican-controlled Congress will need to agree to include annual tranches of that money each year in its budget. Mr. Banga said he expected the money to come through as part of normal country-to-bank transfer process. He also said he has met with lawmakers in Congress and with some current administration officials before they took their posts, but declined to say with whom. The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the Senate Appropriations Committee, now Republican-controlled. The House Financial Services Committee, also Republican-controlled, declined to comment. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT But the bank also faces a more existential problem: Will the Trump administration continue its support for the institution, and if it does, will it back Mr. Banga’s goal to channel nearly half of its money into helping developing countries adapt to the hazards of a warming planet and build energy systems that contribute less to climate change? Mr. Banga said he did not know what the administration’s plans were. Nor has he yet had a direct discussion with anyone at the White House, nor with Elon Musk in his role as looking for ways to sharply reduce government spending. “Who knows what they’ll decide tomorrow? I’m trying to show them — I’ve been showing this for the past two years — what is it that I do that is useful to you,” he said. “What I do is I take your dollar and I multiply it.” Kevin Gallagher, director of the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, said that the White House could do one of three things. It could pull out and withdraw its money. It could pull out but keep its money in the bank. Or, it could stay in and demand that projects focus on fossil fuels. For the current financial year, about a half-percent of the bank’s $97 billion in investments are in gas, compared with about 3 percent for renewable energy projects. While gas burns more cleanly than coal or oil, its increasing use is contributing to a continuing rise in global greenhouse gas emissions, the primary driver of global warming. In any event, the uncertainty is likely to be felt this week at a meeting of finance ministers of the world’s 20 largest economies in Cape Town, South Africa. The theme for the G20 meetings this year is “solidarity, equality, sustainability,” which the administration considers at odds with its views on climate change and diversity policies. The Times reported last week that Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, would not attend the meetings.

President Trump’s policies could threaten many big green energy projects in the coming years, but his election has already dealt a big blow to an ambitious California effort to replace thousands of diesel-fueled trucks with battery-powered semis. The California plan, which has been closely watched by other states and countries, was meant to take a big leap forward last year, with a requirement that some of the more than 30,000 trucks that move cargo in and out of ports start using semis that don’t emit carbon dioxide. But after Mr. Trump was elected, California regulators withdrew their plan, which required a federal waiver that the new administration, which is closely aligned with the oil industry, would most likely have rejected. That leaves the state unable to force trucking businesses to clean up their fleets. It was a big setback for the state, which has long been allowed to have tailpipe emission rules that are stricter than federal standards because of California’s infamous smog. Some transportation experts said that even before Mr. Trump’s election, California’s effort had problems. The batteries that power electric trucks are too expensive. They take too long to charge. And there aren’t enough places to plug the trucks in. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “It was excessively ambitious,” said Daniel Sperling, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who specializes in sustainable transportation, referring to the program that made truckers buy green rigs. California officials insist that their effort is not doomed and say they will keep it alive with other rules and by providing truckers incentives to go electric. “We know we have a lot of work to do, but we also have tools to accomplish this,” said Liane M. Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board, the state body that sets clean air standards, at the ceremonial opening of a truck charging station near the Port of Long Beach in January. California requires truck manufacturers to sell an increasing number of zero-emissions heavy trucks in the state. This rule is more protected from any challenge by the Trump administration. In an agreement struck after the rule was introduced, the manufacturers committed to comply with its requirements regardless of the outcome of any future litigation, and California agreed to soften the rule. In theory, California’s plans to first electrify port trucks had a lot going for it. Fumes from such vehicles contribute to well-documented health problems like childhood asthma in neighborhoods near the ports and warehouses. Heavy-duty transportation in California is estimated to emit as much carbon dioxide, the main cause of climate change, annually as New Zealand. Also, these trucks travel distances that battery-powered semis can handle on one charge, roughly 200 miles. The hope was that — with the right regulatory sticks and carrots — carriers, truck manufacturers, charging companies and utilities would create an electric trucking network that would serve as springboard for a broader effort to remove diesel rigs from the state by 2045. It was not that simple in practice. Port truckers are overwhelmingly small operators that earn only slim profits. They typically prefer used diesel rigs that sell for as little as $40,000 and are reluctant to take on the financial risk of acquiring electric tractor-trailers, which can cost around $150,000 after government incentives. Without that aid, the trucks cost $500,000. Truckers make money by wringing as many hours as possible out of trucks. But electric rigs can take up to two hours to charge. “The reality is we don’t really expect to make much money with these trucks right now,” said Erick Gordon, vice president of Redefined Transportation, whose fleet of 25 diesel rigs moves containers from the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles to warehouses in the area. He is weighing whether to lease five electric trucks. The state had hoped to require newly registered port trucks to be zero-emissions vehicles — most such trucks today run on batteries. Since port truckers must retire diesel vehicles after a certain number of years, the rule would have gradually removed all diesel trucks from ports. California had sought a waiver for the rule from the Environmental Protection Agency because the regulation is stricter than federal standards. But the Biden administration did not approve the request in its final weeks. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Still, some trucking executives said they intended to keep deploying electric trucks. “It doesn’t really have any impact on where we’re going,” said Jessica Cordero, a vice president at NFI Cal Cartage, a large logistics company. “We have our own initiatives and goals.” NFI has 70 electric and 50 diesel trucks operating in California, and used grants to cover the cost of the vehicles. The electric fleet is turning a profit, Ms. Cordero said, in part because it costs less to fuel and maintain the vehicles. Rudy Diaz, chief executive of Hight Logistics, a port trucking company in Long Beach with 20 electric semis and chargers in its yard, said he, too, had achieved significant cost savings. But now that port truckers aren’t required to buy green vehicles, he fears that competitors deploying much cheaper diesel vehicles will have an advantage. “It makes me nervous — we invested in this infrastructure and these new trucks hoping that the waiver will pass,” he said, referring to the E.P.A. waiver. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Because regulators can no longer force truckers to go green, the financial carrots available to truckers are even more important. Climate United, a group of environmental nonprofits specializing in green investments, plans to spend $250 million it received in August from the Biden administration on 500 electric trucks that it intends to lease to small trucking firms through Forum Mobility, a company that also provides charging. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach impose fees on diesel trucks. Some of those funds have been used to subsidize electric trucks and chargers. And last year, the California Air Resources Board decided that some of the money that electricity utilities get from selling clean energy credits would also be used to subsidize zero-emission trucks. Some people involved in the push think technological advances will help increase use of electric trucks. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Salim Youssefzadeh, co-founder and chief executive of WattEV, a truck charging company, said new, higher capacity chargers could allow trucks to charge in just 30 minutes, allowing truckers to get back on the road quickly. In some of its locations, WattEV is building solar and battery storage, which reduces its cost of electricity. Lower prices for electric trucks will also help. Wen Han started an electric truck company, Windrose Technology, in 2022 in China. He aims to start selling his vehicles in the United States this year for around $250,000 — well below the cost of those sold by more established manufacturers. He said he could make money at that price, even with U.S. tariffs, which are 40 percent for the truck Windrose makes, because of his low manufacturing costs. “Our job is to make diesel trucks obsolete,” he said, “and that happens with or without any sort of subsidies.” Bianca Calanche, whose company, Jaspem Truckline, operates at ports in the Los Angeles area, said it would be hard to deploy electric trucks because she didn’t have chargers in her truck depot. But she is still considering them, because she is worried that subsidies for electric trucks will run out and that the state will try to force companies like hers to electrify once Mr. Trump has left office. “This will still come back to us,” she said. “It’s California.”

As the Trump administration continues to withhold billions of dollars for climate and clean energy spending — despite two federal judges ordering the money released — concerns are growing that the United States government could skip out on its legal commitments. Typically, when the federal government spends money through a grant or a loan program approved by Congress, it signs a legally binding agreement, known as an obligation, to deliver the money. Companies, states and other recipients often spend millions of dollars to buy equipment, hire workers, build facilities and more, fully expecting that the federal government will make good on its promise to reimburse the funds. That expectation has been upended by the new administration. Following an order by President Trump, federal agencies, including the Energy Department, Environmental Protection Agency and the Agriculture Department, have paused funding for a wide range of obligated grants related to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, sweeping laws that provided billions for climate and energy programs. In just a few weeks, the consequences have begun to be felt nationwide. School districts that planned to use promised federal dollars to buy electric school buses have seen their accounts frozen. Farmers and store owners that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money to replace old refrigeration systems or install solar panels are finding their requests for reimbursements delayed. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Two federal judges have explicitly ordered the Trump administration to end its freeze and let the money flow again. On Monday, one of those judges, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island federal court, said the White House was defying his order by withholding funds. Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law at the George Washington University Law School, said the administration’s actions had jeopardized the integrity of federal contracting. “They’ve taken a process that is longstanding, stable and reliable and turned the government into an unreliable business partner,” Ms. Tillipman said. “Who wants to do business with an individual or entity that doesn’t pay its bills, that doesn’t pay for work already performed and, in some instances, completely ceases communications?” Lawsuits filed in recent days have challenged the Trump administration’s actions, with companies arguing that the government freeze has hurt their businesses. On Monday, the sustainable development company Chemonics International sued the federal government alongside other plaintiffs for freezing its work with the U.S. Agency for International Development. The company said in a court filing that the agency owed roughly $103.6 million in outstanding invoices for work performed last year. In a statement, Chemonics said it had been forced to furlough more than 600 staffers in the United States and reduce the hours of 300 employees. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. While some agencies have said that the pause is temporary and that they are reviewing funds approved by the Biden administration to make sure they comply with the law, others have gone further. On Wednesday, Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, said in a video posted on X that $20 billion in agency funding meant to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in low-income communities were a “rush job with reduced oversight” under the Biden administration. Mr. Zeldin suggested he would try to claw back money that had already gone out the door. Mr. Zeldin appeared to be referring to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a program established by Congress in 2022. Under the program, the Biden administration had awarded $20 billion to eight organizations and deposited the money in Citibank accounts, with legal limits on how it could be used. In the video, Mr. Zeldin said, “The financial agent agreement with the bank needs to be instantly terminated.” “The days of irresponsibly shoveling boatloads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over,” Mr. Zeldin said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Zealan Hoover, who directed the implementation of Inflation Reduction Act programs at the E.P.A. under the Biden administration, said that the arrangement with Citi had been thoroughly vetted by the agency’s inspector general at the time, and that the federal government has been using private banks as financial agents since the 1800s. If either E.P.A. or Citi cuts off access to the funds, that could trigger further lawsuits. Some of the program’s recipients have already made their own agreements to lend money to other organizations for clean energy and energy efficiency projects. Mr. Hoover said that the fact that agencies were defying courts on the spending freeze — and threatening to claw back obligated funding — was a “major area of concern.” “It really calls into question the full faith and credit of the U.S. government as a counterparty to financial agreements,” he said. Aram Gavoor, a law professor at George Washington University, said many of the questions being argued in the courts aren’t clear-cut. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “There isn’t an immediate Supreme Court case or series of circuit cases that are recent that make it very clear what the outcome of litigation will be,” he said, adding that the administration’s actions and resulting lawsuits had “injected a strong degree of regulatory uncertainty” into federal contracting. At the Energy Department, officials have ordered an internal review of potentially billions of dollars worth of climate and infrastructure spending that was awarded by the Biden administration after the Nov. 5 presidential election, according to a memo sent to agency staff. The memo, dated Feb. 7, says that all Energy Department actions during the “transition period” before President Trump’s inauguration would be reviewed, and that financial transactions that used funds from the Inflation Reduction Act or bipartisan infrastructure law would have to be “reviewed and approved” by senior political appointees. Christopher S. Johns, the agency’s deputy chief financial officer, wrote in the memo that this review process followed recent district court orders on federal funding. But the document, which was first reported by E&E News, did not say what would happen if political appointees reviewed certain transactions and did not approve of them. It is not uncommon for a new administration to review existing programs, experts said. But it is unusual for agencies to halt a wide swath of obligated grants. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In the months after Mr. Trump’s election, the Biden administration raced to commit billions of dollars in climate and clean energy spending, thinking that would make it hard for Mr. Trump to block the money. In January, the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office closed a $6.6 billion loan to help Rivian build an electric car factory in Georgia, and offered $22.9 billion in conditional loan guarantees to help eight electric utilities around the country modernize their power grids. Republicans criticized those moves at the time. Vivek Ramaswamy called the Rivian loan a “shot across the bow” to Tesla, a rival electric carmaker owned by Elon Musk. In December, three House Republicans sent a letter urging the Energy Department to “cease its campaign to quickly distribute federal funding before the incoming administration takes office.” Experts said it wouldn’t be easy for a new administration to revoke loans that have been closed. Under the Biden administration, the Energy Department’s loan office closed roughly $60.6 billion in loans and financial guarantees, while another $47 billion were conditional commitments that still need final approval. Kennedy Nickerson, a former policy adviser to the loan office and now a vice president for energy at Capstone, a research firm, said it would be “legally challenging and time-consuming” for the Trump administration to try to cancel final loan agreements. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Attempts to go after finalized loans could deter companies from doing business with the federal government, former agency officials said. Companies typically spend millions of dollars to go through an exhaustive vetting process by the loan program office. “If we get to conditional commitment with a loan program recipient, that’s the government’s credibility,” David Turk, the deputy secretary of energy during the Biden administration, said in a statement. “That’s the American people’s credibility on the line to follow through and make sure that we are providing that certainty for investment.” Mr. Trump’s energy secretary, Chris Wright, has said that he wants to use the hundreds of billions of dollars in remaining loan authority to advance the president’s agenda of affordable, reliable electricity. In an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday, Mr. Wright was asked whether he might cancel loans that were already in place. “We will follow the law,” he replied. At least one project was exempted from the administration’s freeze. Montana Renewables had secured a $1.67 billion loan guarantee from the Biden administration to expand a plant in Great Falls, Mont., that converted vegetable oils and fats into diesel and jet fuel. Initially, the Trump administration had blocked the first scheduled $782 million payment while it reviewed the loan. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT But Senator Steve Daines, Republican of Montana and an ally of President Trump, said in a statement that he had pressed the White House to approve the payment because the project would “provide high-paying jobs, boost our economy and provide efficient biofuel production.” Energy Department officials didn’t explain why they allowed the Montana Renewables loan to go forward. Montana Renewables also declined to comment. “The Department of Energy is continuing to conduct a departmentwide review of all funding, including grants and loans, to ensure all activities are consistent with the law and in accordance with President Trump’s executive orders and priorities,” said Andrea Woods, an agency spokeswoman. “As part of this review process, the Department approved the scheduled disbursement of a loan for the expansion of a biofuels facility in Great Falls, Montana.”

Federal electricity regulators on Tuesday approved a proposal from the nation’s largest electric grid operator that could effectively give new natural gas power plants priority in connecting to the grid over renewable energy sources like solar and wind. The decision, by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, comes as the United States faces the prospect of the largest increase in electricity demand in recent decades. Technology companies are building hundreds of energy-hungry data centers across the country to power artificial intelligence models and other services. The ruling represents a win for companies involved in extracting natural gas and burning it to generate power — a group that strongly supported President Trump during last year’s election. Environmental groups and renewable energy developers criticized the decision by the five-person commission, which has a Republican chairman but a Democratic majority. The commission said it was approving the plan because it “reasonably addresses” a potential shortfall in the supply of power as demand for electricity increases. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “The proposal neither mandates nor prohibits the development of any particular generating facility, and it neither authorizes nor requires the adoption of a specific mix of generation resources,” the commission said in approving the proposal from PJM Interconnection, which runs the country’s largest electric grid, serving 65 million people in 13 states including Illinois, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Many electric utilities and grid operators have been arguing that the country needs more natural gas power plants, saying they can provide electricity more reliably throughout the day than wind and solar farms that are more dependent on weather conditions. The plan approved by the energy commission will allow PJM to give 50 new power plants a priority in securing a connection to its grid based on the plants’ size and ability to provide electricity around the clock. “Basically, it’s opening a window to allow projects — the high-reliability projects that can be built quickly — come online and help us address the short-term reliability issue,” said Jeffrey P. Shields, a spokesman for PJM. In practice, analysts said, the proposal will give natural gas plants a leg up over wind and solar projects.The plants that receive priority are “most likely going to be natural gas projects,” said Patrick Finn, a senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie, an energy consulting firm. “On a national level, we really haven’t had to deal with demand growth and its impacts on the grid in decades.” Renewable energy developers and environmental groups said the 50 new power plants “would jump the queue” and prolong the yearslong wait that new wind turbines and solar farms typically encounter when they try to join PJM and other regional electric grids. “PJM is not supposed to put its finger on the scale,” said Megan Wachspress, an environmental lawyer at the Sierra Club. Some developers said PJM’s proposal could lead to cost increase and derail their projects. That is because plants given priority will take up grid capacity that renewable developers had hoped to use. New suppliers of electricity to the grid are often required to pay for upgrades if their addition might strain the network. “PJM could torpedo existing projects while setting up new projects to fail,” said Evan Vaughan, the executive director at the Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Coalition, whose members include developers of wind, solar and battery projects. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT As the political wind shifts in Washington and electricity demand soars, utilities and grid operators around the country are delaying their transition to clean energy and increasingly leaning on fossil fuels. Georgia Power, which serves nearly three million customers in the South, said in January that it would delay the retirement of some coal and gas power plants into the late 2030s. Talen Energy is also keeping coal and oil power plants online until 2029, four years longer than its previous plan. At least two grid operators, Southwest Power Pool and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, are considering similar proposals to PJM’s. Timothy Fox, a managing director at the consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners, said the daunting task of transitioning away from fossil fuels in the power sector had become more difficult with the recent surge in power demand. Renewables gained traction as their prices fell lower than those of fossil fuels, he said, but regulators and utilities are now more concerned about grid reliability. “It’s a lot easier to green up the grid when you’re not growing,” Mr. Fox said. “The U.S. is facing a significant power demand — the question is just how much.”

The warnings, on thousands of products sold in California, are stark. “Use of the following products,” one label says, “will expose you to chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.” Now, new research shows the warnings may be working. A study published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Science & Technology found that California’s right-to-know law, which requires companies to warn people about harmful chemicals in their products, has swayed many companies to stop using those chemicals altogether. As it turns out, companies don’t want to sell a product that carries a big cancer warning label, said Dr. Megan Schwarzman, a physician and environmental-health scientist at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health and an author of the study. Combine that with the threat of lawsuits and reputational costs, as well as companies just wanting to do the right thing for health, and “it becomes a great motivator for change,” she said. California maintains a list of about 900 chemicals known to cause cancer and other health effects. Under the 1986 right-to-know law, also known as Prop 65, products that could expose people to harmful amounts of those chemicals must carry warning labels. Critics had long mocked the measure, saying the warnings were so ubiquitous — affixed to cookware, faux leather jackets, even baked goods — that they had become largely meaningless in the eyes of shoppers. But the latest study found that companies, more than consumers, may be most influenced by the warnings. To assess the law’s effect, researchers carried out interviews at 32 global manufacturers and retailers that sell clothing, personal-care, cleaning, and a range of home products. Almost 80 percent of interviewees said Prop 65 had prompted them to reformulate their products. Companies can avoid the warning labels if they reduce the level of any Prop 65 chemicals below a “safe harbor” threshold. A similar share of companies said they looked to Prop 65 to determine which chemicals to avoid. And 63 percent said the law had prompted them to also reformulate products they sold outside California. The American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical makers, said its members had “long strived to be good stewards of human health and the environment.” It said the Prop 65 list identified chemicals of concern without fully considering how likely they were to harm people using any specific product. “The mere presence of a chemical in a product does not necessarily mean there is a potential for harm,” said Andrew Fasoli, a spokesman for the group. No other state has a law quite like Prop. 65, requiring warnings on such a wide range of products about cancer or reproductive harm. New York enacted a more limited law in 2020 that requires manufacturers to disclose certain chemicals in children’s products and that bans the use of certain chemicals by 2023. Other states have laws geared toward disclosure of ingredients on labels. California, meanwhile, is pushing ahead. A 2018 change to Prop 65 has meant products are starting to carry even more specific labels. Some food and beverage cans, for example, may carry labels that warn that they “have linings containing bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical known to the State of California to cause harm to the female reproductive system.” The latest research is part of a larger effort to analyze Prop 65’s effect on people’s exposure to toxic chemicals. In a study published last year, researchers at the Silent Spring Institute and UC Berkeley found that in the years after certain chemicals were listed under the law, levels of those chemicals in people’s bodies decreased both in California and nationwide. That research came with a caveat, however. In some examples where levels of a listed chemical decreased, a close substitute to that chemical, potentially with similar harmful effects, increased. Prop 65 has no mechanism to check the safety of alternative chemicals. It suggested that stronger policies were needed at both the federal and state levels to study and regulate the thousands of chemicals on the market, Dr. Schwarzman said. “This is so much bigger than the individual consumer and what we choose off-the-shelf,” she said.