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.

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.

Tariff threats. Growing uncertainty about the economy. And a push for much lower oil prices. For all of their bravado about U.S. energy dominance and enthusiasm for deregulation, American energy executives are beginning to worry about President Trump’s agenda. Their concerns crept into conversations in hotel meeting rooms and over private meals this week in Houston, where industry magnates gathered for their most important annual conference. Surely, some hoped, the president would cut oil and gas companies a break on tariffs. Surely, the administration was not serious about pushing oil prices down another 25 percent. Surely, the turmoil of the last two months would soon pass. And just as soon as those glimmers of frustration or doubt slipped out, they were gone, overshadowed by praise for Mr. Trump, his cabinet and the administration’s aim to unshackle American energy companies — at least the ones in the business of producing oil, natural gas and nuclear power. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Such is the energy industry’s delicate dance these days. Companies are trying to balance fighting for their interests, which often include free trade, with a strong desire not to offend the president. The oil and gas industry spent more than $75 million to elect Mr. Trump. “We’re hopeful that as we continue these conversations on trade, that the energy dominance agenda becomes more important than the tariff agenda,” Mike Sommers, chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry’s main trade group, said in an interview at the conference, CERAWeek by S&P Global. Oil and gas executives are set to meet with Mr. Trump at the White House next week. “There’s a lot of uncertainty right now — I understand the angst about all that,” Chris Wright, Mr. Trump’s energy secretary, said in an interview with The New York Times after he had meetings with energy executives this week. “But I think we’re going to get to a very good place.” Just this week, 25 percent tariffs took effect on imported aluminum and steel, both used widely by the energy industry. Mr. Trump also said he would impose heftier fees on metals purchased from Canada, only to backtrack hours later after securing a concession. Worries about tariffs and the economy were the main reasons that the S&P 500 index slid into a correction on Thursday, down 10.1 percent from a recent high. U.S. oil prices settled at $66.55 a barrel, down nearly 15 percent since just before Mr. Trump took office. Peter Navarro, a White House aide who has long advised Mr. Trump on trade, has been publicly musing about crude prices dropping to $50 a barrel, saying such a tumble would tame inflation. In most U.S. oil fields, companies generally need prices above $60 a barrel to make money on new wells, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “You’re not going to find anybody in the industry to criticize the Trump administration,” said Scott Sheffield, who last year sold his large oil company, Pioneer Natural Resources, to Exxon Mobil. Instead, Mr. Sheffield posed questions for Mr. Trump: “Does he really want $50 oil? Does he know the impact? What it’ll do to the industry?” Executives who are still managing companies or representing them were generally not as blunt. Many heaped praise on Mr. Trump and his cabinet choices, expressing support for an “all of the above” approach to developing energy. “It’s refreshing,” Toby Rice, chief executive of natural gas producer EQT, said after attending a dinner that Mr. Wright and Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, had with energy executives. “It’s very clear that this administration is focused on lowering energy bills for consumers.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT At times, people sprinkled in gentle requests for more certainty and less volatility. “I’m going to say this in about two and a half seconds and move on: We need a common-sense trade policy,” Jay Timmons, chief executive of the National Association of Manufacturers, said over breakfast near the conference. Many laughed as Mr. Timmons quickly returned to more comfortable territory. His trade group has asked the White House for more predictability and time to adjust to new trade policies. Many manufacturers are growing concerned about rising costs because they often rely on imports for parts or raw materials and are worried about tariff retaliation by other countries. Ryan Lance, chief executive of ConocoPhillips, one of the largest U.S. oil and gas producers, said he viewed energy as a “poster child” for Mr. Trump’s efforts to create jobs and return manufacturing to the United States. “I hope they take that into mind as they think about what they’re going to do on the tariff side,” Mr. Lance said. “Whether you exempt energy or not I think is something people ought to look at.” Mr. Trump has gone back and forth on plans to tax energy from Mexico and Canada. The United States relies heavily in particular on Canadian oil, which refineries combine with domestic crude to make gasoline and diesel fuel. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Other executives were more sanguine about trade policy. “There is anxiety around the tariffs,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, who leads the Solar Energy Industries Association. “But it is not full-fledged panic like it was in the beginning of the first Trump administration.” In 2018, during his first term, Mr. Trump placed a 30 percent tariff on imported solar cells and modules, which are the building blocks for panels that turn sunlight into electricity. Like other renewable energy leaders, Ms. Hopper sought to frame her sector in terms that might resonate with the Trump administration. “There’s nothing unique about solar manufacturing,” Ms. Hopper said. “It’s just like if you were manufacturing pencils. If nobody needs pencils anymore, then the pencil manufacturer is going to go out of business.” Many energy companies have set their sights on lowering barriers to securing permits for pipelines, power lines and other infrastructure that can be very difficult to build in many places. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Alan S. Armstrong, chief executive of a pipeline company, Williams, said that tariff-related price increases paled in comparison to the costs and risks associated with permitting. “If we could pay 25 percent on the pipe to get the permitting, we would take that trade all day long,” Mr. Armstrong said.

President Trump’s cabinet has been busy rolling back regulations that will make it far easier to extract and produce fossil fuels. But who will buy them? Nearly everyone, it turns out, particularly under the threat of tariffs. At an annual energy-industry conference in Houston, executives spoke openly about how companies from around the world are seeking to buy American liquefied natural gas as a way of placating Mr. Trump’s demands to either balance trade or face punitive measures. Nations with a trade imbalance with the U.S. are “all asking themselves, ‘What can we do to try to level the playing field?’” said Meg O’Neill, chief executive of Woodside Energy, Australia’s biggest oil and gas company. They are cutting deals now, she said, in large part “so their government can say, ‘We’re taking action. We hear you, Mr. President.’” Her characterization was echoed by Ryan Lance, chief executive at ConocoPhillips, one of the largest U.S. oil and gas producers, and other speakers at the conference, known as CERAWeek by S&P Global. Since President Trump took office, oil and gas companies from nearly every continent have dangled the possibility of investing billions of dollars in the United States. This month Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean companies revived a $44 billion idea — long considered all but financially impossible — to build pipelines and a giant terminal in Alaska that would export natural gas to Asia. Ukraine, eager to preserve its weapons supply from Washington, has signaled it will buy more American gas. South Africa, its aid frozen by Mr. Trump, is trying to cut a deal to expand U.S. companies’ drilling rights in its waters. Whether all this will translate into firm deals is not yet clear. But the potential deals would lock in decades of investment in fossil fuels at a time when the global energy transition to cleaner energy sources is faltering. The burning of fossil fuels is the main contributor to greenhouse gas emissions that are dangerously warming the planet. South Africa, which had its U.S. aid frozen by an executive order that accused it of discriminating against its white citizens, is trying to negotiate a new trade deal with Washington. In that deal, the United States would get more access to gas exploration in the region, and South Africa would buy more of its gas from America, according to a government spokesman. Ukraine, which is desperately trying to gain Mr. Trump’s support as negotiations for a peace deal with Vladimir Putin develop, is signaling to Washington that it will buy U.S. gas in addition to trying to cut a deal on mineral revenues. Ukraine’s moves mirror a wider push in Europe to buy more gas from the U.S. as Mr. Trump engages the European Union in tit-for-tat tariffs. The state-owned gas company in India, one of the world’s fastest growing markets for gas, said it would either buy a stake in an American L.N.G. plant or enter into a new contract for long-term supply. Speaking at the conference in Houston, the head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, Sultan al Jaber, who just a year and a half ago presided over the annual climate-change negotiations in the United Arab Emirates, said his company would also soon announce a major investment in U.S. gas production. “Make energy great again,” he told a room full of oil and gas executives. The negotiations Mr. al Jaber shepherded in 2023 were the first in which all nations agreed to “transition away” from fossil fuels by midcentury. But a key clause in the agreement noted that “transitional fuels” — widely acknowledged as a euphemism for gas — would be key to making the transition “orderly.” The potential deals pit climate concerns against foreign-policy strategy. Expanding gas consumption — purchasing contracts are usually for decades worth of fuel — would in many cases complicate carbon-neutrality pledges that companies and countries have made. Gas emits less carbon dioxide than oil and coal when burned, but is nearly entirely made up of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas. U.S. methane emissions have been steadily rising as its gas industry has grown to dominate the world’s trade in the fuel. The new U.S. energy secretary, Chris Wright, is a former fracking executive. In an interview in Houston he said the Biden administration’s temporary pause in early 2024 on federal approvals for new export terminals had made countries wary of investing in U.S. gas, despite the fact that L.N.G. exports soared under President Biden. Mr. Wright said he had been meeting with prospective buyers in Europe and Asia and they had all been asking him, “Can you assure me that the United States is going to be a long-term reliable supplier?” Xi Nan, who heads Rystad Energy’s L.N.G. research team, said that because of the long timelines for developing any gas project, announcements shouldn’t be taken as inevitabilities. “Fundamentally, our forecasts haven’t changed in terms of long-term L.N.G. demand,” Ms. Xi said. “What’s changed is that the forecast for renewable energy demand is lower.” As a result, the energy transition “is going to take longer than we thought,” she said.

The U.S. power grid added more capacity from solar energy in 2024 than from any other source in a single year in more than two decades, according to a new industry report released on Tuesday. The data was released a day after the new U.S. energy secretary, Chris Wright, strongly criticized solar and wind energy on two fronts. He said on Monday at the start of CERAWeek by S&P Global, an annual energy conference in Houston, that they couldn’t meet the growing electricity needs of the world and that their use was driving up energy costs. The report, produced by the Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie, a research firm, said about 50 gigawatts of new solar generation capacity was added last year, far more than any other source of electricity. Mr. Wright and President Trump have been strongly critical of renewable energy, which former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. championed as a way to address climate change. The energy secretary, Mr. Trump and Republicans in Congress have pledged to undo many of Mr. Biden’s climate and energy policies. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “Beyond the obvious scale and cost problems, there is simply no physical way wind, solar and batteries could replace the myriad uses of natural gas,” said Mr. Wright, who was previously chief executive of an oil and gas production company. Yet solar energy and battery storage systems appear to have significant momentum and may not be easily thwarted. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, which is part of Mr. Wright’s department, said last month that it expected solar and batteries to continue leading new capacity installations on U.S. electric grids this year. Proponents of clean energy celebrated the milestone for solar power as the world moves to increase electricity production to meet the needs of energy-hungry data centers to support the growth of artificial intelligence. “There’s wild agreement that in order to do that, we have to have enough electricity, and there are facts that show that the fastest way to do that and the cheapest way to do that is through the deployment of solar and storage,” Abigail Ross Hopper, president and chief executive of the solar association, said in an interview at CERAWeek. In a panel discussion, the leader of one of the nation’s largest utility companies acknowledged solar’s ability to deliver new electricity generation quickly and cheaply. “Renewables are ready to go right now because they’ve been up and running,” said John Ketchum, president and chief executive of NextEra Energy, the largest U.S. producer of renewable energy and the parent company of Florida Power & Light, a utility that owns power plants that burn natural gas. But Mr. Wright said the growing use of solar and wind power was driving up the cost of electricity, which has steadily increased the last couple of years. Some of that increase has been due to the sharp jump in the costs of oil and natural gas after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and to upgrades to grids that experts say utilities had put off for many years. “Wind and solar, the darlings of the last administration and so much of the world today, supply roughly 3 percent of global primary energy,” Mr. Wright said. “Everywhere wind and solar penetration have increased significantly, prices on the grid went up and stability of the grid went down.” Electricity rates across the country reached their highest levels in 2024, rising an average of 4 percent nationally to $162.60 a month in December for the typical 1,000 kilowatt-hours of usage, up from $156.90 a year earlier, according to the latest federal data. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Even as prices rise, electricity demand is expected to increase drastically. Mr. Ketchum projected a 55 percent increase in electricity demand over the next 20 years, almost a fifth of that related to the growth of data centers, with manufacturing and industrial growth accounting for much of the rest. Given the projections for the increased electricity demand, energy experts said governments should focus on affordability, reliability and safety of domestic and global energy while not losing sight of concerns about climate change. “There’s going to be bumps in the road,” Ernest Moniz, who was energy secretary in the Obama administration, said on a panel discussion at CERAWeek. “We are moving to this low-carbon future.”

Before a packed crowd of oil and gas executives on Monday, Chris Wright, the new U.S. energy secretary, delivered a scathing critique of the Biden administration’s energy policies and efforts to fight climate change and promised a “180 degree pivot.” Mr. Wright, a former fracking executive, has emerged as the most forceful promoter of President Trump’s plans to expand American oil and gas production and dismantle virtually every federal policy aimed at curbing global warming. “I wanted to play a role in reversing what I believe has been a very poor direction in energy policy,” Mr. Wright said as he kicked off the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston, the nation’s biggest annual gathering of the energy industry. “The previous administration’s policy was focused myopically on climate change, with people as simply collateral damage.” Mr. Wright’s speech was greeted with enthusiastic applause. It was quite different from a year ago, when Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary during the Biden administration, told the same gathering that the transition to lower-carbon forms of energy like wind, solar and batteries was unstoppable. “Even as we are the largest producer of oil and gas in the world,” Ms. Granholm said, “the expansion of America’s energy dominance to clean energy is striking.” Mr. Wright, however, was dismissive of renewable power, which he said played only a small role in the world’s energy mix. Natural gas currently supplies 25 percent of raw energy globally, before it is converted into electricity or some other use. Wind and solar only supply about 3 percent, he said. He noted that gas also had a variety of other uses — it could be burned in furnaces to heat homes or used to make fertilizer or other chemicals — that were hard to replicate with other energy sources. “Beyond the obvious scale and cost problems, there is simply no physical way wind, solar and batteries could replace the myriad uses of natural gas,” Mr. Wright said. Mr. Wright has argued that there is a moral case for fossil fuels, saying they are crucial for alleviating global poverty and that moving too quickly to cut emissions risks driving up energy prices around the world. He has denounced efforts by countries to stop adding greenhouse gas to the atmosphere by 2050, calling that a “sinister goal.” At a conference in Washington last week, Mr. Wright said that African countries needed more energy of all kinds to lift themselves out of poverty, including coal, the most polluting fossil fuel. “We’ve had years of Western countries shamelessly saying don’t develop coal, coal is bad,” he said. “That’s just nonsense.” In Houston on Monday, other oil and gas executives echoed Mr. Wright’s remarks, pitching oil and gas as the best solution for impoverished people in developing nations around the world. “There are billions of people on this planet that still live sad, short, difficult lives because they live in energy poverty, and that’s a shame,” said Michael Wirth, chief executive of Chevron. “It should be unacceptable but affordability had left the conversation, at least in the West.” In recent years, much of the world has been investing heavily in renewable energy. Last year, nations invested roughly $1.2 trillion in wind, solar, batteries and electric grids, slightly more than the $1.1 trillion they spent on oil, gas and coal infrastructure, according to the International Energy Agency. But Mr. Wright warned against a shift to renewable energy that he said was likely to prove costly. “Everywhere wind and solar penetration have increased significantly, prices went up,” he said. That is not always true. Texas has seen its electricity prices decline slightly over the past decade as wind and solar have grown rapidly and now supply more than one-quarter of the state’s power. The costs of wind turbines and solar panels have dropped precipitously in the last decade. But some places, like California and Germany, have seen electricity prices rise significantly at the same time they ramped up their use of renewable energy. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Some energy executives at the conference were more optimistic about renewable energy. John Ketchum, the chief executive of NextEra Energy, the largest producer of wind and solar power in the United States, said that renewables were essential for meeting growing demand for electricity in the United States over the next few years — especially since there was a large backlog for new turbines that burn natural gas. Renewable energy “is cheaper and it’s available right now,” Mr. Ketchum said. “When you look at gas as a solution, as an example, to get your hands on a gas turbine and to actually get it built throughout the market, you’re really looking at 2030, or later.” In his speech, Mr. Wright sharply criticized the Biden administration for slowing the growth of natural gas exports. Last year, the Energy Department paused approvals of new terminals that export liquefied natural gas, saying that it was concerned about the environmental and price impacts of shipping more gas overseas. Despite the pause, the United States was still the world’s largest exporter of natural gas in 2024. On Monday, Mr. Wright signed the fourth export approval since Mr. Trump took office, extending an approval for the Delfin terminal off the coast of Louisiana. He said the Biden administration’s review of gas exports had found only modest impacts on global emissions and domestic U.S. prices. On the topic of climate change, Mr. Wright said he didn’t deny that the planet was warming, calling himself a “climate realist.” But he added that rising greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels — which have increased global average temperatures to their highest levels in at least 100,000 years — were a “side effect of building the modern world.” “We have indeed raised global atmospheric CO2 concentration by 50 percent in the process of more than doubling human life expectancy, lifting almost all of the world’s citizens out of grinding poverty, launching modern medicine,” he said. “Everything in life involves trade-offs.” Mr. Wright did not dwell on the downsides of climate change, which include the growing risks of heat waves, drought, floods and species extinction. He also did not address the costs of adapting to a hotter planet, which experts estimate could reach trillions of dollars for developing countries alone this decade. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Instead, Mr. Wright rebuked Britain for slashing its greenhouse gas emissions faster than any other wealthy country, saying that doing so had driven key industries overseas. “I find it sad and a bit ironic that once mighty steel and petrochemical industries of the United Kingdom have been displaced to Asia where the same products will be produced with higher greenhouse gas emissions, then loaded on a diesel powered ship back to the United Kingdom,” Mr. Wright said. “The net result is higher prices and fewer jobs for U.K. citizens, higher global greenhouse gas emissions, and all of this is termed a climate policy.” Mr. Wright said he was not against low-carbon energy and supports advanced forms of nuclear power and geothermal power, which multiple startups in the United States are pursuing. But he said that the administration’s “all-of-the-above” approach to energy likely would not extend to wind farms, citing opposition in some communities. President Trump has railed against wind farms, saying falsely they cause cancer. The administration has stopped approvals for wind farms on public land and in federal waters and has threatened to block projects on private land. “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. “So wind is a little bit of a different case.” The Trump administration’s policies are not uniformly popular among oil and gas producers. Many companies have warned that Mr. Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum could raise prices for essential materials like pipes used to line new wells, while the constant threat of tariffs on Canadian oil could raise prices for refineries in the Midwest. Mr. Wright mostly sidestepped questions on the tariffs, saying that “it’s very early on” and pointing out that inflation was low during Mr. Trump’s first term.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the nation’s premier agency for weather and climate science, has been told by the Trump administration to prepare to lose another 1,000 workers, raising concerns that NOAA’s lifesaving forecasts might be hindered as hurricane and disaster season approaches. The new dismissals would come in addition to the roughly 1,300 NOAA staff members who have already resigned or been laid off in recent weeks. The moves have alarmed scientists, meteorologists and others at the agency, which includes the National Weather Service. Some activities, including the launching of weather balloons, have already been suspended because of staffing shortages. Together, the reductions would represent nearly 20 percent of NOAA’s approximately 13,000-member work force. Managers within NOAA have been told to draw up proposals for layoffs and reorganizations to trim the agency’s staff by at least 1,000 people, according to eight people who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the plans publicly. The effort is part of the “reductions in force” that President Trump required as part of an executive order last month, as he and the billionaire Elon Musk make rapid, large-scale cuts to the federal bureaucracy. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT NOAA managers have been asked to complete their proposals by Tuesday, one of the people said. The proposals are likely to involve eliminating some of the agency’s functions, though managers have received little guidance about which programs to prioritize for cutting. Representatives for NOAA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. The recent employee departures have already affected NOAA’s operations in many realms: predicting hurricanes and tornadoes, overseeing fisheries and endangered species, monitoring the changes that humans are bringing about to Earth’s climate and ecosystems. NOAA, a $6.8 billion agency within the Commerce Department, has been singled out for cuts by some of Mr. Trump’s allies. Project 2025, the policy blueprint published by the Heritage Foundation that is echoed in many of the Trump administration’s actions, calls NOAA “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” The document calls for the agency to be dismantled and some of its functions eliminated or privatized. Organizations including the American Geophysical Union, which represents earth and space researchers, have called on Congress to oppose the administration’s actions. “Undermining NOAA’s operations could risk the safety of millions of Americans and destabilize countless industries, from farming and fisheries to energy and finance, threatening job losses and economic downturn,” the organizations wrote in a letter. They pointed out that, as the planet warms, extreme weather is becoming more frequent and more damaging, making NOAA’s work more critical. The idea that private companies could replace NOAA in forecasting the weather is a “gross misunderstanding,” said Keith Seitter, a distinguished visiting lecturer in meteorology and climate science at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. “The app on your phone or what you’re watching on TV, those are private-sector companies, but those private-sector companies depend critically on NOAA for all the information that they’re using to create those forecasts,” Dr. Seitter said. “It’s a coordinated effort.” Employees who are still working at NOAA describe feelings of deep anxiety. Their colleagues have been let go unannounced, meaning they have no idea who might simply not show up for work. With their government-issued credit cards frozen, they can’t buy supplies for research projects or travel to retrieve instruments that have been installed at sea. They are scrambling to back up their scientific data, fearful that programs might be shuttered or leases on buildings canceled. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT At least three NOAA facilities were on a list of federal properties that the Trump administration flagged last week for possible sale. The list was later taken down, replaced by a web page that said a new inventory was “coming soon.” The firings of scientists at NOAA and other agencies, plus potential cuts to federal funding for research at universities and hospitals, have fed worries that the administration is undermining the foundations of America’s modern scientific leadership. On Friday, crowds gathered at “Stand Up for Science” rallies in cities around the nation including Austin, Birmingham, Ala., Boston, Chicago, Denver, Nashville and Washington. “This is the most challenging moment I can recall for science,” Michael Mann, a climate researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, told the rally in Washington, where the crowd peaked at 5,000 people, according to the organizers. “Science is under siege,” Dr. Mann said. The National Weather Service has faced budget cuts, hiring freezes and calls for privatization before, Dr. Seitter said. “But nothing where you’ve just arbitrarily whacked whole chunks out of the work force, or potentially taken away whole chunks of budget that support mission-critical things,” he said.

For the past two days, under the soft lights of chandeliers in a Marriott basement a block from the White House, energy ministers and tech founders from across Africa gathered to discuss how best to bring electricity to more than 600 million people on the continent who have none. Much of their hope, and fear, came from the whirlwind of change President Trump has brought to U.S. foreign policy, including the termination of Power Africa, a major initiative that had supported them for a decade. Was Mr. Trump abandoning them? Or might his promises of “global energy dominance” be a boon? Attendees got at least a part of their answer on Friday morning. Chris Wright, the new administration’s energy secretary, took the stage and gave an impassioned speech on how concerns over climate change should not prevent Africa from charging ahead with fossil fuel development. “This government has no desire to tell you what you should do with your energy system,” he said. “It’s a paternalistic post-colonial attitude that I just can’t stand.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT His remarks came just weeks after the administration shuttered Power Africa, which had financed tens of millions of electricity connections since its start under President Barack Obama in 2013. Africa, like the rest of the world, faces an immensely consequential choice: exploit fossil fuels that contribute to global warming, or forge a new path with renewable energy. Mr. Wright said Africa simply needed more energy of all kinds, including and even especially coal, one of the most polluting fossil fuels. “We’ve had years of Western countries shamelessly saying don’t develop coal, coal is bad,” Mr. Wright said. “That’s just nonsense, 100 percent nonsense. Coal transformed our world and made it better.” And while Mr. Wright said climate change was a “real, physical phenomenon,” he said it wouldn’t make a list of his top 10 problems facing the world. Mr. Wright’s appearance on Friday was met with roaring approval. His remarks were in line with what many African energy developers have been urging for years. They say the persistence of energy poverty is a blight on the continent’s development, and Western skittishness to invest in energy projects, whether because of concerns over governance or greenhouse gas emissions, is akin to keeping Africa down. Africa’s population is growing faster than current electrification rates. Officials often buck at the suggestion they should opt for clean-energy technologies to help fight climate change, instead of using their own abundant supplies of fossil fuels, given that their countries have contributed nearly nothing historically to the emissions that cause global warming. Other countries used fossil fuels for generations to build prosperity, the argument goes, so why shouldn’t they? Other U.S. officials speaking at the summit said that, with Mr. Trump in office, the days of shying away from fossil fuel investment in favor of renewables were over. “When we say ‘all of the above,’ you might ask, is that code for carbon? And yes, it is code for carbon,” said Troy Fitrell, a senior State Department official and former ambassador to Guinea. “There are no restrictions anymore on what kind of energy we can promote.” African executives in their own speeches said that they hoped they would get more investment and fewer regulatory hurdles. “We can’t wait for three years, or even half that time,” to do environmental or social impact assessments on a project, said Akinwole Omoboriowo II, who leads Genesis Energy, a company focused on renewable energy. “People are dying without the chance to watch TV,” he said, to a murmur of chuckles. “I just think we should think about that.” Mr. Wright’s remarks left major questions unanswered and did not detail how much or where the U.S. government would invest in African energy access. Would he seek to revive Power Africa but change its mandate? Might he bring its responsibilities under his own department? (Previously, Power Africa’s budget fell under the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the Trump administration has all but eliminated.) What he did offer was a pro-Africa message at a time when his boss has unnerved Africans. Mr. Trump froze aid to South Africa last month and accused its government of using a new land law to discriminate against white citizens. Many African officials fear his administration will end the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a decades-old trade agreement that allows 32 African countries to send billions of dollars of goods to the United States duty-free. And in his speech to Congress on Tuesday, Mr. Trump made a dismissive mention of Lesotho, saying “nobody has ever heard of” the country. Conspicuously missing from the gathering were representatives of the American agencies that had taken a lead on energy initiatives in Africa: U.S.A.I.D. and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, which Mr. Trump created in his first term but whose billions of dollars of investments are currently frozen. The meeting rooms were full of former Power Africa officials, however, and they questioned whether the Trump administration would muster much follow-through. “The biggest question is whether the U.S. can be a credible partner when we’ve just dismantled our main mechanism for investing in African energy,” said Katie Auth, the former deputy director of Power Africa. She and others acknowledged that an increasing focus on low-carbon energy made the program a target for an administration that is hostile to what its officials often call the “climate change alarm industry.” But Ms. Auth also noted that not only did Power Africa invest in gas, but that the plummeting cost of renewable energy technology has made those forms of power the fastest and cheapest to deploy in many African countries. “I think they don’t realize that Power Africa was never a climate initiative,” Ms. Auth said. “It was driven by economic viability and driven by U.S. firms.” She added, “If anything, this is the encapsulation of the kind of assistance this administration should want to do.” Planet-warming emissions aside, gas investment also collides with an additional hurdle: weak power grids. Building more gas-burning power plants would require building far more electrical transmission lines. That’s a key difference with solar, which can be built on a much smaller scale locally, so it doesn’t necessarily require huge, sprawling networks of power lines. Rosemary Oduor, a top official at Kenya Power and Lighting Company, the country’s state-owned utility, described African grids as “old trees growing heavy with fruit.” Without huge investment in their modernization, and without major subsidies, she said, bringing new power sources online might only make them more likely to fail.

The Trump administration has moved to rewrite rules designed to prevent disasters at thousands of chemical facilities across the country. The Environmental Protection Agency filed a motion in federal court on Thursday saying it was pulling back the safety regulations, introduced last year under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. The rules, which took effect in May, require sites that handle hazardous chemicals to adopt new safeguards including explicit measures to prepare for storms, floods and other climate-related risks. They also require some facilities to scrutinize their use of particularly dangerous chemicals and switch to safer alternatives as well as to share more information with neighbors and emergency responders. In addition, facilities that have suffered prior accidents also must undergo independent audits. President Trump’s E.P.A. intends to rewrite those rules, the agency said in a filing with the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. That essentially makes moot a legal challenge launched last year by a group of Republican Attorneys-General, as well as the chemicals industry, which argued that the rules imposed undue burdens on companies with little safety benefit. The American Chemistry Council, a main industry group and participant in the legal challenge, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Earthjustice, a nonprofit law group that sued the first Trump organization more than 200 times in support of environmental rules, condemned the move. “Chemical explosions force entire neighborhoods to evacuate. First responders have died rushing into disasters they weren’t warned about,” said Adam Kron, an attorney at the advocacy organization. “Workers have suffered burns, lung damage, and worse, all because companies cut corners to save money.” The move comes as the Trump administration has embarked on a broad dismantling of climate and environmental policy across the federal government. The E.P.A. did not detail in its filing the specifics of its planned rewrite, and Molly Vaseliou, an agency spokeswoman, said the agency would not have comment beyond the filing. While the rule took effect last May, some requirements were to be phased in over several years, which means some of the practices it requires might not yet be in place. In a letter sent to the agency’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, in January, industry groups including the American Chemistry Council asked for a reconsideration of many of the rules’ main components. “The facilities affected by this program are vital components of the U.S. economy, supporting millions of jobs, driving innovation and maintaining our global competitiveness,” the groups said. “It is imperative that E.P.A. take immediate action to fix critical areas of this rule.” They also asked the agency to immediately shut down a public data tool that had allowed communities to look up details of local sites that store hazardous chemicals, including information on past accidents. The planned rewrite is the latest in a prolonged policy tussle over strengthening what is known as the Risk Management Program. First introduced in 1996, the RMP regulates nearly 12,000 facilities that handle hazardous chemicals, including factories, wholesalers, oil refineries, natural gas plants, wastewater treatment plants and fertilizer distributors. Many of those facilities are critical infrastructure, but also a risk to nearby communities, storing large quantities of highly hazardous substances like chlorine, anhydrous ammonia and vinyl chloride. More than 130 million people live within three miles of sites that handle hazardous chemicals that were covered by the Biden-era rule, the E.P.A. has estimated. A 2020 Congressional Research Service report said that a “worst-case scenario” accident at any of 2,000 of the most hazardous sites could endanger 100,000 people or more. Former President Barack Obama tried to strengthen the rules after a deadly 2013 explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas killed 15 people and injured more than 160. The first Trump administration halted the tougher requirements before they took effect. President Biden then reintroduced tougher rules in 2021, and finalized them last year.