Fire and wind are certain to shape the future of Los Angeles as the world warms. Los Angeles had started taking steps to prepare. But there are lessons it can learn from other cities adapting to extreme fire weather: managing yards; taking care of neighbors; making it easier to get out of harm’s way. One big challenge, among many, is that plans like these need to be widely adopted. One home is only as safe as the home next door. “If your neighbor doesn’t do anything, and you do, if that home burns it will create so much radiant heat, yours will burn too,” said Kimiko Barrett of Headwaters Economics in Bozeman, Mont., a company that advises cities on reducing wildfire damage risk. Neighbors matter. Building codes and zoning rules matter. But perhaps most of all, money matters. Building for an age of fire can be expensive, and often out of reach for many homeowners living in fire-prone communities. Look hard at the landscape Boulder County, Colo., has learned some big lessons from recent fires. Pine needles and debris around a house quickly spread flames. Juniper bushes explode in fire. In fact, county officials call junipers “gasoline plants.” Firewood stuffed under a deck can ignite and destroy a house. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The county has spent several years persuading people to clear debris and rip out junipers. Voters have agreed to a sales tax hike to help pay for it. Los Angeles has its own problem plant: palms. Many palm species, once they catch fire, are very hard to put out. In fire-prone areas, they should be avoided entirely, according to the Los Angeles County fire department. San Diego county prohibits greenery — even shrubs — around a five foot perimeter of a building and requires that tree canopies be at least 10 feet away. Berkeley, Calif., sends fire inspectors into its most fire-prone neighborhoods to suss out signs of danger: dead brush less than five feet from a house; flammable vegetation that leans over the fence line and threatens a neighbor’s property; high shrubs that can send flames racing up a tree. There are constraints. Live oaks are protected by law, which means they can’t be cut down. And local communities like Berkeley are still waiting for California state officials to issue regulations to implement a 2023 law designed to minimize fire damage by prescribing landscape-management standards. The city is due to tighten its regulations in the coming weeks, requiring homeowners to keep a five-foot fireproof perimeter around every house in the most fire-prone neighborhoods in the hills. That means no shrubs, no propane tanks, no wood mulch. Violations will be fined; the City Council has yet to determine how much. “If I can hold a lighter to it and it can smoke and flame, it shouldn’t be there,” said Colin Arnold, the assistant fire chief responsible for the city’s most fire-prone areas on the edge of the wilderness, known as the wildland urban interface Build safer houses Houses are flammable, but it’s possible to make them less flammable. Concrete, stucco, and engineered wood are better than old-fashioned wood frames. A few architects, including Abeer Sweis, in Santa Monica, work with compressed soil, also known as rammed earth, which offers both protection from fire and avoids the emissions of concrete. Roofs made of clay tiles, concrete or metal hold up well to flames. Laminated glass windows can reduce the radiant heat that presses up against a house during a fire. Design matters, too. Eaves and overhangs can trap embers, which is why architects building in fire-prone areas like them to be sealed. At a time when insurance coverage is becoming increasingly hard to procure in fire-prone communities, Mitchell Rocheleau, an architect based in Irvine, Calif., says fortifying your home is a “physical insurance policy.” Vents are frequent culprits. Low-cost fixes, like fire-resistant vents with mesh screens, can keep big embers from flying in, but they’re not always effective, Ms. Sweis said, which is why she prefers vents that are coated with a material that melts in the heat and closes up. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Building codes increasingly mandate noncombustible roofs and siding. (California has among the strictest.) The problem, though, is that most homes in the United States were built before modern building codes. Upgrading an existing house for the age of fire means getting rid of flammable siding and roofs. That’s an expensive proposition. Boast about improvements Think of it as a fire-smart version of keeping up with the Joneses. Boulder County has a way for homeowners to get certified by a county program, Wildfire Partners, for fireproofing practices like junking junipers, choosing less flammable shrubs, installing a fire-resistant roof or slathering fire-resistant sealant on a deck. Certification comes with a yard sign to display. It’s a way to nudge others in the neighborhood to adopt similar practices. There’s also a potential reward. Certification can be a way to not lose homeowner’s insurance, which is increasingly a risk in many communities in the American West. “The cost of retrofitting is very real,” Ashley Stolzmann, a county commissioner said. “The cost of losing insurance is also very real.” Upgrade dangerous power lines Power lines and utility poles have been responsible for some of California’s most destructive fires in recent years. Much of that infrastructure was built in the 1960s and 1970s and is in urgent need of repair. Utilities have faced a barrage of lawsuits in the aftermath of some of those fires, including in recent days when residents of Altadena sued Southern California Edison claiming that the utility’s equipment set off the Eaton Fire that destroyed 5,000 buildings in the area. (Edison said it is investigating the cause of the fires.) A range of fixes are possible, from fire-resistant poles to burying electricity lines (very expensive) to covering them in a protective layer (less expensive but less safe). The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law set aside $3.5 billion for electricity grid upgrades. That’s a fraction of the $250 billion price tag of the latest Los Angeles fires. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Rethink roads Cul-de-sacs and narrow, winding streets are a hallmark of many neighborhoods pressed up against wilderness, including the Berkeley Hills. That’s a problem when people need to get out, and first responders need to get in. “There’s nowhere to put new roads,” Mr. Arnold said. “It’s a very densely packed community built without evacuation in mind.” If you can’t widen roads, you can keep them clear for first responders to get in and out. The Los Angeles Fire Department prohibits street parking in some neighborhoods on windy days, when fire risk is high. Rancho Santa Fe, a wealthy suburb of San Diego, has tried to solve the problem by keeping most of its residential roads clear at all times. No street parking is allowed if the street isn’t wide enough for fire trucks to get in and out. Know when to leave Bushfires have long been common in hot, dry southeastern Australia. But none scarred its people like the Black Saturday fires that broke out in Victoria state in February, 2009. The blazes killed more than 170 people and led to a rewriting of the state’s evacuation protocols. On days of high fire risk, people who live in forested communities are encouraged to leave their homes before there are signs of smoke and flame. Warnings are broadcast on television. Residents are encouraged to have the official state-government emergency-preparedness app, which highlights what areas should empty out when. A look at the app on a recent Thursday morning showed 10 notices across the state, from “leave immediately” warnings in some places to “monitor conditions” elsewhere. Los Angeles residents, by contrast, received erroneous evacuation warnings by text message on the some of the worst fire days. More reliable was a private app built by a nonprofit group. “We want people making good decisions before the fire rather than bad decisions during the fire,” said Luke Heagerty, a spokesman for the state control center. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT A handful of schools and fire stations are designated as community fire refuge facilities. And for those people who stay behind until a fire reaches their homes, there is the ominously named Bushfire Place of Last Resort. Usually it’s an open field with no trees or structures to catch fire. But as the county fire authority starkly warns on its website, the Bushfire Place of Last Resort sites “do not guarantee safety.” Build more homes Los Angeles has long faced an acute need for more housing. For years, it’s met the demand by allowing development in fire-prone areas and allowing homeowners to rebuild after fires have swept through those areas. The latest fires supersized the need. An estimated 10,000 homes were destroyed, leaving tens of thousands of people in need of shelter and driving up rents and home prices in one of the country’s most expensive real estate markets. And so among the toughest choices facing Los Angeles now is where to build homes that won’t easily go up in flames. “You have two options, both of which are politically very difficult, especially right after the fires,” said Michael Manville, a professor of urban planning at the University of California Los Angeles. One is to restrict development in fire-prone areas. The other is to allow more dense housing in less hazardous areas in the flatlands, in neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes. That’s been “a political non-starter,” Mr. Manville said.

Oil and gas companies in the United States are bracing for the possibility that President Trump will thrust their businesses into disarray and will drive up prices at the pump by imposing 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico. The United States is the world’s largest oil producer, but the country’s refineries are designed to turn a mix of different types of oil into fuels like gasoline and diesel. Roughly 60 percent of the crude oil that the United States imports comes from Canada, and about 7 percent comes from Mexico. Many refineries are set up to use those particular imports and cannot easily switch to oil from other places. Analysts are not sure just how Mr. Trump’s tariffs might ripple through the oil market — and who would bear the added expenses. The costs may not be significant if the tariffs are in place only temporarily, or if the administration makes it easy for refiners to obtain waivers to keep buying Canadian or Mexican crude without paying extra. Mr. Trump has said that the tariffs would take effect on Saturday. He has indicated at various points that oil might be subject to less severe penalties. On Friday, in response to a question about oil imported from Canada, Mr. Trump said he probably would reduce the planned tariff to 10 percent for that commodity. He previously suggested that he might exempt oil from the tariffs entirely. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The oil and gas industry was one of the biggest supporters of Mr. Trump during the 2024 election, giving more than $75 million to his campaign, and the president has made helping the industry, such as by loosening regulations, a key policy priority. He also promised to reduce energy costs for consumers. A White House spokesman did not directly address how placing tariffs on energy imports would align with Mr. Trump’s goal of reducing prices. “His promises focus on building on the achievements of his first term and reversing the setbacks of the previous four years,” the spokesman, Harrison W. Fields, said in a statement before Mr. Trump’s Friday remarks. Among those likely to take a hit if Mr. Trump does not exempt fossil fuels are Canadian oil producers and U.S. refiners, particularly those in the Midwest that process a lot of Canadian oil and lack a ready substitute. American consumers in regions that depend on oil from Canada also could see slightly higher prices at the pump, particularly if fuel makers were to respond by cutting production. If Mr. Trump were to move forward with 25 percent tariffs on oil, gasoline prices in the Midwest could climb 15 to 20 cents a gallon, with more muted effects in other parts of the country, said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service. The United States also buys natural gas, electricity and uranium — an element used to make fuel for nuclear power plants — from Canada. “It’s going to be very, very messy” if Mr. Trump moves ahead with tariffs, Mr. Kloza said. “We haven’t dealt with something like this, certainly not in the modern era.” Editors’ Picks Help! How Do I Make Sense of All These Trends? A Long Life in Harlem, Made Possible by an Affordable Apartment Kristen Stewart Thinks the Critics at Cannes Are Being Too Nice Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Already, refining is a tougher business than it was a couple of years ago, partly because U.S. demand for diesel has weakened. Lower profit margins in fuelmaking weighed on the fourth-quarter results of the two largest U.S. oil companies, which reported earnings on Friday. Exxon Mobil’s profit for the final three months of 2024 inched lower to $7.61 billion, from $7.63 billion a year earlier. Production growth in places like West Texas helped to offset a more challenging market for refining. The company’s results exceeded forecasts from analysts surveyed by FactSet. “We have done the hard work to make sure that we’re competitively advantaged, and that’s going to hold us in good stead in any market environment,” Kathy Mikells, Exxon’s chief financial officer, said. Chevron’s fourth-quarter profit rose around 43 percent year-over-year, to $3.24 billion, but it came up short of Wall Street’s expectations. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The average price of regular gasoline on Friday was $3.11 a gallon nationally, according to AAA, the motor club, in line with prices this time last year. In the Midwest, gasoline is generally cheaper than the national average. Mr. Trump, in his first two weeks in office, has repeatedly invoked the threat of tariffs. Some policy analysts say that he is using the threats as a negotiating tool to spur countries to do what he wants. Last weekend, he announced 25 percent tariffs against another U.S. ally, Colombia, after its president balked at accepting U.S. military planes carrying deported immigrants. Within hours, Colombia acceded and Mr. Trump reversed course. The American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry’s main trade group, has urged the administration to exempt fossil fuels from any tariffs. It said in a December letter that such tariffs “would directly undermine energy affordability and availability for consumers while eroding the U.S. oil and natural gas industry’s competitiveness.” Most oil produced in the United States is, in the telling of industry experts, akin to a light beer, while the crude imported from Canada and Mexico is more like a thick molasses. Refineries are set up to use a combination of the light and heavy oils. U.S. fuel makers did not appear to be stocking up on Canadian oil, Mr. Kloza of OPIS said. Valero Energy, one of the largest U.S. oil refining companies, has been planning for a wide range of scenarios and has flexibility because many of its refineries are along the Gulf Coast, near ports where oil can be imported from around the world, Gary Simmons, the chief operating officer, told financial analysts on a conference call on Thursday. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Eventually, though, the company might need to cut production if buying heavier oil were to become difficult, Mr. Simmons added. Chevron also said on Friday that it recognized $715 million in severance charges in the final three months of the year, signaling job cuts on the horizon. “We’ll see some organizational restructuring, and that will result in some changes to our work force,” Mike Wirth, the company’s chief executive, said in an interview. Chevron has not disclosed how many employees could be affected. Employment in the U.S. oil industry has fallen roughly 25 percent over the past decade, even as oil and gas production have soared to record highs. Darren Woods, Exxon’s chief executive, provided an update Friday on the company’s plans to supply power to data centers, saying Exxon could have a power plant running by 2028. On Tuesday, Chevron said that it, too, planned to sell electricity to data centers, saying it could have a power plant operating by the end of 2027.

Doug Burgum, a promoter of oil and gas, was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday to lead the Interior Department, a role in which he will oversee drilling and mining policies on federal lands and waters. The 79-18 vote for Mr. Burgum puts him in charge of nearly 500 million acres of public land, 1.7 billion acres of offshore waters, and more than 70,000 employees across the country tasked with protecting wildlife and endangered species, managing national parks and maintaining tribal lands. He is expected to be a key player to implement President Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda that calls for making it easier and cheaper for oil companies to operate, and loosening protections for wildlife as well as easing limits on air and water pollution. In addition to leading the Interior Department, Mr. Burgum is also to run a White House council charged with encouraging more oil and gas development. The role of the council is still undefined but it is expected to help meet Mr. Trump’s goal of selling more American oil and gas to Europe and Asia. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT During the presidential campaign, Mr. Burgum acted as a conduit between Mr. Trump and the oil and gas industry. He helped gather fossil fuel executives at Mar-a-Lago for a now-famous dinner, during which Mr. Trump suggested that industry leaders raise $1 billion for his campaign. He told the executives they would save far more than that in tax breaks and legal fees after he eliminated climate policies, according to several attendees who requested anonymity to discuss the private event. Mr. Burgum’s role and his close ties to oil billionaires, including Harold Hamm, the founder of oil giant Continental Resources, drew criticism from many Democrats. In written responses to lawmakers, Mr. Burgum sidestepped a question from Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, about whether he played a role in meetings between oil executives and Mr. Trump during the campaign where both public policy and campaign contributions were discussed. Mr. Burgum wrote that Mr. Trump’s “energy dominance message is consistent regardless of venue.” Republicans expressed relief that Mr. Burgum would reverse policies of the Biden administration that were designed to reduce drilling and mining while increasing conservation. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah and chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, accused the Biden administration and former Secretary Deb Haaland of “throttling” fossil fuels. “Governor Doug Burgum understands what Secretary Haaland apparently forgot, that abundant affordable energy is a fundamental pillar of our national security,” he said. Several Democrats said Mr. Burgum’s vision for unleashed fossil fuels threatens the nation. “The Trump administration’s climate and energy policies are not a mystery; it is to exacerbate the climate crisis,” said Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, who spoke against Mr. Burgum yet voted for him. Kierán Suckling, executive director at the Center for Biological Diversity, was unsparing in his words for Democrats. “It’s alarming that so many Senate Democrats were duped into voting for an oligarch who is now charged with stewarding the nation’s public lands and wildlife,” he said. “If Democrats want to know why so many people are disillusioned, they need to look no further than this vote.” A multimillionaire former Microsoft executive who served two terms as governor of North Dakota, Mr. Burgum ran briefly for the White House before dropping out of the race to endorse Mr. Trump and become his adviser on energy issues. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT During his confirmation hearing Mr. Burgum said he viewed America’s public lands and waters as part of the country’s financial “balance sheet,” with potentially trillions of dollars worth of oil, gas and minerals waiting to be extracted beneath the surface. “We have all this debt,” Mr. Burgum said. But “we never talk about the assets,” he said. “It’s our responsibility to get a return for the American people.” “Not every acre of federal land is a national park or a wilderness area,” Mr. Burgum said, adding, “Some of those areas we have to absolutely protect for their precious stuff, but the rest of it, this is America’s balance sheet.” Mr. Burgum declared that any curbs on energy production posed a national security threat and endorsed Mr. Trump’s vision of “energy dominance,” a phrase that is shorthand for more fossil fuel production. He also insisted that the United States was in the midst of an energy crisis, even as it is producing more oil than any nation at any time in history and is the world’s leading exporter of liquefied natural gas. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Burgum said he would pursue an “all of the above” strategy but also said he would cut incentives for what he called “intermittent” power projects, referring to renewable energy like wind and solar power. He said there has been too much so-called “intermittent” power built in recent years and not enough baseload, referring to gas or coal that can be stored and burned to produce electricity. Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels produced on federal lands and waters account for nearly 22 percent of U.S. greenhouse gases.

For years, the fossil fuel industry and its allies have tried to overturn one of the most important federal rulings in the history of climate policy: the one that requires the government to limit greenhouse gases. They lobbied. They sued. And so far they’ve failed. But in President Trump, they have a new ally in their campaign against the rule, known as the endangerment finding. The finding empowers the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, because they endanger human life. On his first day in the White House, Mr. Trump ordered the E.P.A. administrator and other agency leaders to make a recommendation within 30 days on the “legality and continued applicability” of the endangerment finding, setting up an early clash over the science of climate change. Since the E.P.A. has an obligation to regulate pollutants that harm human health, eliminating the endangerment finding would debilitate the agency’s authority to curb emissions from automobile exhaust, power plants, oil and gas wells, factories and more. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “This is going to happen,” said Steven J. Milloy, a former Trump transition adviser, referring to the overturning of the endangerment finding. Mr. Milloy, who denies the established science of climate change and has been encouraging the new administration to reverse the finding, said that without it, “all the federal government climate stuff kind of melts away.” Lee Zeldin, Mr. Trump’s pick for E.P.A. administrator, did not address the matter head-on during his confirmation hearing. In written answers to the committee, reviewed by The New York Times, he pledged to “learn from E.P.A. career staff about the current state of the science on greenhouse gas emissions and follow all legal requirements,” and said, “I acknowledge that there are many who endorse the endangerment finding and others who have concerns about it.” Legal experts said the administration’s chances of successfully overturning the finding were slim. It was challenged in more than 100 lawsuits and was previously upheld by a federal appellate court. And as recently as 2023, the Supreme Court, with its majority of six conservative jurists (three appointed by Mr. Trump), declined to review the case. “It’s a finding about greenhouse gasses based on science. It will be hard to convince a court — even a court with Republican-appointed judges — that the science somehow isn’t there to support this finding,” said Jody Freeman, director of the Environmental & Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School. And in a notable shift, many of the staunchest corporate critics of the E.P.A.’s finding, as well as others who challenged it in court more than a decade ago, have abandoned the effort. Over the past decades of record-breaking heat and weather disasters, businesses have become more aware of the risks to their bottom lines posed by global warming. Europe and other foreign markets also have moved to aggressively regulate carbon emissions, which means that American companies must plan for regulations even if they don’t apply in their home market. Public opinion has also shifted significantly. Evidence of climate dangers, already clear in 2009, is overwhelming in 2025 amid supercharged wildfires, droughts, floods and deadly heat waves. When the endangerment finding was issued, just 35 percent of Americans saw climate change as a serious problem, compared with more than 60 percent today. “We are not calling for reversing the endangerment finding, which has been settled law for over a decade, as we believe that we can both unleash America’s energy potential and continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Marty Durbin, president of the Global Energy Institute at the United States Chamber of Commerce. That said, industry groups are eager to restrict the government from imposing regulations on their companies, and many support Mr. Trump’s agenda of weakening air and water protections. Few groups, however, are interested in a battle that would require them to publicly endorse Mr. Trump’s false claim that climate change is a hoax. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “I don’t think that’s an easy message for industry to embrace,” said Kyle Danish, a partner at Van Ness Feldman, a Washington law firm that advises energy clients. “They’re beyond the point where they can say greenhouse gases don’t endanger public health and welfare,” he said. The endangerment finding was born out of a 2007 Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. E.P.A. that stated that the Clean Air Act obligated the agency to address pollutants that harm public health indirectly by warming the planet. The ruling forced the agency to weigh in on whether six greenhouse gases harmed public health, which the agency did, in the affirmative, in 2009. That assessment set off a legal mandate to regulate those emissions. To do so, the agency developed more than 200 pages of findings that outlined the science and detailed how increasingly severe heat waves, storms, floods and droughts were expected to contribute to higher rates of death and disease. While President Trump’s election appears to have offered opponents of the endangerment finding their best new shot at ending the rule, any attempt to do so would be not only a gamble, but also perhaps an inefficient way to reduce government regulation. The Edison Electric Institute, which represents some of the biggest electric utilities in the country, told the Supreme Court in 2023 that if the endangerment finding were overturned, power plants across the country could be exposed to lawsuits and a patchwork of decisions. “This would be chaos,” the group said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Several attorneys who represent electric utilities and other energy companies said their clients had not expressed a desire to overturn the endangerment finding. “They want sensible regulatory reforms,” said Jeffrey R. Holmstead, an energy attorney with Bracewell, a Washington law firm. Ms. Freeman noted that the first Trump administration did not seek to overturn the finding, despite calls for it to do so. Instead, it weakened existing rules and made enforcement a low priority, which led to legal challenges that were handled case by case. An overturning of the endangerment finding would allow the administration to stifle all greenhouse gas regulation in one fell swoop. “That’s the big payoff for them, and why they might, for ideological reasons, for performative reasons, or because they calibrated the legal risk, say, ‘Let’s, let’s try it.’ You never know, with this Supreme Court, right?” Ms. Freeman said. One possible avenue for the E.P.A. today would be to reprise arguments that failed to sway the court in 2007. None of the justices who voted in the 5-4 majority in the case are still on the court. The Trump administration could be betting that the court is more likely to favor their arguments this time around. Nathan Richardson, a law professor at Jacksonville University, said that Massachusetts v. E.P.A. was a landmark decision that today’s court would most likely view very differently. But the goal of weakening regulations could still be achieved by the much easier strategies of inaction or lax enforcement. The administration may also believe there is a political benefit to arguing against the existence of climate change in court. “Climate change, to many in the Trump administration, seems to be more of a culture-war issue than a science one,” Mr. Richardson said. The administration could also seek to weaken E.P.A. regulations in other ways, rather than in a central assault on the endangerment finding, he said. “There’s plenty of vehicles to do that — this would just be a particularly high-profile and brazen one,” he said. “Normally that’s not a good litigation strategy. But maybe strategy is different when you feel like the court is really, really on your side.”

After declaring a national energy emergency on his first day in office, President Trump said Thursday that coal could be a fuel source for new electric generating plants. He announced a plan to issue emergency declarations to build power plants to meet a projected increase in electricity demand for artificial intelligence. “They can fuel it with anything they want, and they may have coal as a backup — good, clean coal,” Mr. Trump said in a virtual appearance at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He added that if gas and oil pipelines get “blown up,” coal could be used as a backup energy source. “We have more coal than anybody,” Mr. Trump said. “We have more oil and gas than anybody.” While the United States is the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas, and while it has more coal reserves than any other country, it’s only the fourth-largest producer of coal, behind China, India and Indonesia. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT But reliance on fossil fuels like coal made the United States one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane, which have irreversibly heated the planet and driven global climate change. Despite Mr. Trump’s talk about building coal plants, the United States has drastically reduced its coal generating capacity in recent years. Most of the decline came because natural gas, and now renewables like solar and wind, were cheaper sources of energy. A 2023 study showed that 99 percent of U.S. coal plants were more expensive to run than renewable replacements. By 2023, the 206 coal plants remaining in the United States supplied roughly 16 percent of the nation’s electricity, far below natural gas and less than both renewables and nuclear power. Almost a quarter of current coal generation is slated for retirement by 2040, according to data compiled by the Energy Information Administration in October 2024. Those reductions cross 51 coal plants. The pace of those retirements slowed last year while energy demand increased. Utilities predict a 20 percent increase in demand for electricity by 2035, according to data compiled by RMI, a nonprofit group focused on energy research. Experts said that the rise in electricity use was expected under a clean energy transition and that coal generation wouldn’t be required to meet it. “Utilities are skipping a step and asking everyone to take it as a foregone conclusion that if there’s demand growth from manufacturing, onshoring, and data centers or A.I., then it has to be met with coal, when in fact it’s one of the most expensive resources left for them to operate,” said David Pomerantz, the executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, a research and advocacy group. But industry groups said that under Mr. Trump, it might be possible to increase coal exports and build smaller coal plants. “There’s a sense of optimism with the new administration,” said Emily Arthun, chief executive of the American Coal Council. While the coal industry could experience a small bump under Mr. Trump, experts said coal was simply too expensive to make a comeback. “Coal is fundamentally uneconomic,” said Sean O’Leary, senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute, an energy think tank. “Any need that isn’t met by wind or solar or battery storage will for the most part be met with natural gas, and coal will still be a distant fourth resource in that mix.” The Trump administration’s unwavering commitment to fossil fuels could hinder the country’s competitiveness in the energy transition. China dominates the United States in virtually every aspect of clean energy, and fossil fuel generation has reached a historic low in the European Union. Last year, solar overtook coal for the first time, and wind overtook both coal and gas, according to a new report by Ember, an energy think tank.

A major power provider in South Carolina started accepting bids from buyers on Wednesday to finish two nuclear reactors, hoping to take advantage of the recent interest in the energy source from technology companies. The utility, Santee Cooper, wants to sell the reactors that were mothballed in 2017 before they were half complete. Its decision comes as the tech industry, which is rapidly building power-hungry data centers, has begun looking to nuclear plants for their ability to provide lots of electricity around the clock without releasing emissions responsible for climate change. But delays and cost overruns have dogged nuclear power in recent decades in the United States. When Santee Cooper halted construction of the two reactors, at the V.C. Summer power plant, it left them less than 40 percent built and stalled a project once billed as a notable step forward for nuclear power generation in the United States. The company and a partner, South Carolina Electric & Gas, spent about $9 billion on the incomplete reactors. Santee Cooper said it was working with the investment firm Centerview Partners to field proposals from potential buyers until May 5. The company added that it did not intend to own or operate the reactors once they are complete. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “We are seeing renewed interest in nuclear energy, fueled by advanced manufacturing investments, AI-driven data center demand, and the tech industry’s zero-carbon targets,” Jimmy Staton, Santee Cooper’s chief executive, said in a statement. Initially proposed in 2007 — at a time when industry officials were predicting a resurgence in nuclear power — the South Carolina project grappled with a shifting energy landscape before it stalled a decade later. Improvements in energy efficiency caused demand for electricity to plateau nationwide during those years, while a hydraulic fracturing boom flooded the country with cheap natural gas, a lot of which is burned in power plants to generate electricity. V.C. Summer has one large operating nuclear reactor that was built in 1982 and is run by Dominion Energy, a utility company in Richmond, Va., that bought South Carolina Electric & Gas in 2019. That reactor is not part of the sale of the two incomplete reactors owned by Santee Cooper. The energy landscape has shifted again in recent years. Several tech giants, including Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet, have said they would help fund nuclear reactor construction to support their artificial intelligence expansion. The federal government also stepped in to support the resurgence of interest in nuclear power. In September, the Energy Department said it had finalized a $1.52 billion loan guarantee to help a company restart a shuttered nuclear plant in Michigan. Congress and the Biden administration offered billions of dollars in subsidies to keep older nuclear plants running and to build new reactors. While President Trump has opposed and sought to repeal many of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s energy and climate policies, he has said he supports nuclear energy. Globally, demand for nuclear power has been growing in recent years alongside mounting concern about climate change. Nuclear reactors can generate electricity without emitting planet-warming greenhouse gases. But environmentalists and some other critics note that building reactors can be very expensive and that the United States still has not settled on a strategy for long-term storage of the radioactive waste produced by reactors. Some other countries have developed places for such storage.

President Trump launched a broad attack on the wind power industry in the United States, with a sweeping executive order that could block not just new offshore wind farms in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans but potentially many smaller wind farms on federal land and even on private property across the country. The order, which Mr. Trump signed in the Oval Office on Monday night, would halt all leasing of federal lands and waters for new wind farms pending a fresh government review of the industry. It also directs federal agencies to stop issuing permits for all wind farms anywhere in the country for the time being, a move that could disrupt projects on private land, which sometimes need federal wildlife or other environmental permits. While the order does not call for a freeze on wind projects that are already under construction, Mr. Trump directed the U.S. Attorney General and secretary of the interior to explore the possibility of “terminating or amending” any leases that have already been issued. That means projects that have already received federal approvals could face new hurdles. Taken together, the moves could prove crippling for the U.S. wind industry, which provides 10 percent of the nation’s electricity and is a major source of power in Republican-led states like Iowa, Oklahoma and Texas. The wind industry currently has nearly 40 gigawatts worth of projects — enough to power tens of millions of homes — under development in the Atlantic Ocean and in states like Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The Biden administration approved permits for 11 commercial-scale wind farms along the Atlantic Coast. Five of those are under construction and one has been completed. But Eastern states like New York and Massachusetts were hoping to build even more offshore wind projects to meet their renewable energy targets. Those goals are now in peril. The wind industry sharply criticized Mr. Trump’s order, saying that it ran counter to another declaration the president made on Monday that the nation was in an “energy emergency” and needed all the electricity it could get to power new data centers and factories. “Wind power is an essential element of our ability to serve soaring electricity demand for manufacturing and data centers that are key to national security,” said Jason Grumet, chief executive of the American Clean Power Association, a renewable industry trade group. “The possibility that the federal government could seek to actively oppose energy production by American companies on private land is at odds with our nation’s character as well as our national interests.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Trump has been a fervent critic of wind power for years, ever since he unsuccessfully tried to stop an offshore wind farm from being built in view of one of his Scottish golf courses. In a speech shortly after his inauguration on Monday, the new president launched into a lengthy diatribe against wind turbines. “We’re not going to do the wind thing,” Mr. Trump told a crowd of supporters at the Capital One arena in Washington. “Big ugly windmills, they ruin your neighborhood.” His order for a broad crackdown on new wind farms adds to the mounting challenges for the industry. While wind power remains one of the fastest-growing sources of electricity in the United States, that growth has slowed in recent years in the face of soaring costs and high interest rates. Many wind companies are now facing delays in securing connections to the grid as well as opposition from rural communities worried about disruptions from new turbines the size of skyscrapers. More than 400 counties have imposed local restrictions or bans on wind turbines to date, including much of Tennessee and Kentucky. Developers of offshore wind projects — which are larger, more complicated and more expensive — have also struggled with increased expenses and supply-chain hurdles. On Monday, even before Mr. Trump signed his executive order, Orsted, the world’s largest offshore wind developer, said that it would write down roughly $1.7 billion on projects off the eastern coast of the United States. The company attributed the setback to higher interest rates in the United States, which have raised the costs of the company’s projects, as well as construction delays on Sunrise Wind, a large project off Montauk, N.Y. On a call with analysts on Tuesday, Mads Nipper, Orsted’s chief executive, blamed the write-down on “the immature and nascent industry” in the United States, which has not completed large offshore wind farms, compared with many such projects in Europe. Mr. Trump’s order will make it even harder, experts said. The possibility that Mr. Trump could try to undo leases and projects already approved by the Biden administration could also create a longer-lasting drag on the industry. The order “could have negative implications beyond Trump’s term because project developers may be wary of investing in a capital-intensive sector that faces demonstrable high election risk,” said Timothy Fox, a managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, a consulting firm. Monday’s executive order told federal agencies to conduct a “comprehensive” review of federal wind permitting practices, including studying the ecological effects of wind turbines on birds and marine mammals. Mr. Trump has insisted that offshore wind farms are killing endangered whales in the Atlantic Ocean, although scientists have said they haven’t found evidence to support that. The order also adds fresh legal uncertainty for the industry. The Biden administration had been defending wind projects that are facing legal challenges from local opponents, including Revolution Wind and South Fork near Rhode Island, the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project and the Maryland Offshore Wind Project. But Monday’s executive order makes it unlikely the Trump administration would continue to defend those projects vigorously in court, Mr. Fox said. “Many offshore wind projects have been approved or are close to approval after undergoing years of reviews,” said Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents oil, gas and wind companies working offshore. “In any emerging industry, even minor delays can lead to multiyear setbacks, resulting in bottlenecks and higher costs that ultimately impact energy consumers.”

At the height of the Los Angeles County wildfires, atmospheric concentrations of lead, a neurotoxin, reached 100 times average levels even miles from the flames, according to early detailed measurements obtained by The New York Times. Levels of chlorine, which is also toxic at low concentrations, reached 40 times the average. The spiking levels underscore the added danger from wildfires when cars, homes, and other structures burn, researchers said. Lead is often present in paint and pipes used in older homes, while chlorine and other chemicals are generated when plastic melts or combusts. These fires were “a wake-up call,” said Haroula Baliaka, a Ph.D. candidate in atmospheric chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, who is part of a new nationwide effort to monitor airborne chemicals in real time. They are “no longer just about burning trees and grass,” she said. “They are urban wildfires, fueled by the very materials that make up our homes and cities.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT As climate change, combined with new development, increases the chances that wildfires strike more densely populated parts of the world, concerns over toxic releases are likely to grow. For Los Angeles, the toxic smoke means that the eventual death toll from the fires, as well as longer-term health burdens, is likely to grow. Breathing in lead can damage the brain and nervous system, particularly in children. Levels of lead in the air during the fires briefly but dramatically exceeded the long-term safety levels set by the Environmental Protection Agency. Chlorine can damage the lungs and respiratory tract. Overall, high levels of particle pollution in wildfire smoke have been linked to increased risk of cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses and death. A study published last year found that wildfire smoke may have killed as many as 12,000 Californians prematurely in 2018, when the Camp fire burned the town of Paradise and other communities in Northern California. Wildfire smoke is starting to erode the world’s progress in cleaning up pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks, as climate change supercharges fires, scientists have said. The latest measurements come from a new federally funded, national monitoring network called ASCENT, begun last year to measure a wide range of air pollutants in real time. The readings from the Los Angeles area fires were captured at the network’s monitoring station in Pico Rivera, several miles from the active fires. Wildfires are becoming a bigger focus for scientists that study air pollution, said Nga Lee Ng, who also uses the given name Sally, an atmospheric scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and network’s principal investigator. The urban nature of many of these fires means the smoke “is going to have very different components, a lot more toxic particles,” Professor Ng said.

The Federal Reserve said on Friday that it had withdrawn from a network of global financial regulators focused on climate change risks just days before President-elect Donald J. Trump returns to power. The central bank formally joined the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System in December 2020, shortly after President Biden was elected. Democrats praised that decision, arguing that regulators needed to make sure financial institutions were adequately managing the risk they faced from extreme weather events. Republican lawmakers, however, immediately blasted the Fed for joining the network, saying the central bank was overstepping its congressional mandate, which requires it to keep inflation stable and the job market strong. They expressed concern that the Fed, which oversees the nation’s biggest banks, might try to discourage financial institutions from lending to oil, gas and coal producers or other fossil fuel-intensive companies. The Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System, or N.G.F.S., was formed to help central banks and other regulators exchange ideas and research as they figure out how to account for climate-related risks in the financial sector. The network also aims to “mobilize mainstream finance to support the transition toward a sustainable economy.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT While the Fed initially supported the network’s goals, the central bank said in a statement on Friday, it decided to leave after the group’s work “increasingly broadened in scope, covering a wider range of issues that are outside of the board’s statutory mandate.” The decision was not unanimous. Five of the seven governors on the Fed’s board voted to withdraw from the network, including the Fed’s chair, Jerome H. Powell. Adriana Kugler and Michael S. Barr abstained. Mr. Barr recently announced that he would step down from his role as vice chair for supervision by Feb. 28. The network said it “regrets but respects” the Fed’s decision to depart its “coalition of the willing.” Yann Marin, the network’s secretary general, wrote in an email that it was true that the scope of the group’s work had broadened “as our understanding of the financial stability risks stemming from climate and nature events has improved.” He added that its work was driven only by financial risks and their consequences for financial and price stability. The network was created in December 2017, months after Mr. Trump announced, during his first term as president, that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord. “We are facing political headwinds again, and the work of those traditional international organizations is becoming more difficult,” Mr. Marin said. “The N.G.F.S. will lead the way fulfilling its mandate, despite the bumps in the road.” The Fed’s move to join the network was a seen as a sign of the central bank’s recognition that it had to begin taking into account the impact of extreme weather events as they occurred more frequently and posed a greater risk to the financial system. The Fed had been informally participating in the network for more than a year. Republicans have sharply critiqued the central bank’s increased attention to climate-related risks in recent years, accusing the Fed of “climate activism.” Days before the Fed formally joined the network, a group of Republican lawmakers expressed concerns about the Fed’s involvement with the group. Its recommendations “could significantly limit access to capital for crucial industries and place harmful restrictions on regulated entities,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Fed officials in December 2020. In contrast to the European Central Bank, which has embraced a role in the transition to a low-carbon economy, Mr. Powell himself has long maintained that dealing with climate is the responsibility of Congress, not the Fed. In November, the Fed refused to back a plan designed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, a global financial standard-setter that includes the world’s largest central banks, that would have pushed lenders to disclose the climate risk in their portfolios. In 2021, Fed staff wrote that “a lack of transparency around climate-related risks can increase vulnerabilities related to asset valuations, financial and non-financial leverage, and contagion risk.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT News of the Fed’s decision to leave the network was met with dismay from experts on the relationship between climate change and the financial system. Lisa Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Center on Sustainable Investment, noted that membership did not compel the Fed to take actions outside its statutory mandate. “The Fed’s withdrawal reflects a growing trend of U.S. retreat from positions of leadership and cooperation in multilateral fora, sidelining the U.S. and ceding leadership to other nations that will take up the mantle,” Ms. Sachs wrote in an email. Sarah Bloom Raskin, a former Fed governor, called the move “both substantively and symbolically significant.” “Withdrawing Fed participation from the climate conversation among the world’s central bankers further undermines our country’s prospects for assessing and managing climate risk without having our ideological blinders on,” Ms. Raskin wrote in an email. “The symbolism of this move at the beginning of 2025 is ominous.”

Chris Wright, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for energy secretary, tried to reassure Democrats at his confirmation hearing on Wednesday that he believed climate change was a “global challenge that we need to solve” and that he would support the development of all forms of energy, including wind and solar power. The founder and chief executive of Liberty Energy, a fracking firm, Mr. Wright has been a longtime evangelist for fossil fuels like oil and gas. He has frequently shrugged off the risks of global warming, saying in 2023, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either.” He has also criticized renewable energy sources like wind and solar power, calling them “unreliable and costly.” Appearing before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, however, Mr. Wright struck a more diplomatic tone. In his opening statement, he said his top priority was to “unleash” domestic energy production, including liquefied natural gas and nuclear power. Yet under questioning from Senate Democrats, he suggested that he agreed with many of their priorities as well. At one point, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat of Nevada, told Mr. Wright that “the conversation around energy should be balanced and not just focused on fossil fuels.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “I agree entirely,” Mr. Wright replied, going on to talk about the importance of less-polluting sources of energy like nuclear, geothermal, hydropower, wind and solar power. The greenhouse gases from burning oil, gas and coal are the main driver of global warming, which made last year the hottest in recorded history. In one tense exchange, Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, brought up this month’s catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles. He noted that Mr. Wright had once written in a social media post, “The hype over wildfires is just hype to justify more impoverishment from bad government policies.” “Do you still believe that wildfires are just hype?” Mr. Padilla asked angrily. Mr. Wright said that “climate change is a real and global phenomenon” but did not disavow his past writing. Later, however, he clarified that the Energy Department had an important role to play in tackling global warming. “Do I wish we could make faster progress? Absolutely,” he said. “Are there things we can do, investments together, through the Department of Energy, to accelerate development of new energy technologies that are really the only pathway to address climate change? Absolutely.” Yet Mr. Wright also promised to enthusiastically support Mr. Trumps’s energy plans, saying, “I will work tirelessly to pursue his bold agenda.” Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly called global warming a “hoax,” wants to dismantle existing U.S. policies to reduce emissions and has promised to “drill, baby, drill.” If confirmed, Mr. Wright would run the Energy Department, which plays a central role in developing new energy technologies. The agency oversees a network of 17 national laboratories that conduct cutting-edge research as well as a $400 billion lending program that under President Biden backed dozens of projects, including battery factories in Ohio and Tennessee and a novel rooftop solar expansion in Puerto Rico. Mr. Wright would also imanage approvals of liquefied gas export terminals, which the Biden administration has tried to slow, angering industry groups. Managing an agency so sprawling can be challenging. About 80 percent of the Energy Department’s $52 billion annual budget goes toward maintaining the nation’s nuclear arsenal, cleaning up environmental messes from the Cold War and conducting research in areas like high-energy physics. At his hearing, Mr. Wright declined to go into details about how he would run the department, seeming to signal to Republican and Democrats alike that he was on their side. Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest at the agency’s Loan Programs Office, the $400 billion lending program that has been an engine of Mr. Biden’s clean energy agenda. The senator asked Mr. Wright to freeze new loan activity on Day 1. Mr. Wright declined to promise that and merely said he would “immediately engage” with the concerns. Democrats asked Mr. Wright about proposals by conservative groups to dismantle the agency office that works to expand high-voltage power lines across the country. Those lines can greatly benefit wind and solar power, though experts say they are also critical for avoiding blackouts and keeping electricity prices low. Mr. Wright sidestepped the question but said that building new transmission lines was “very important.” When asked by Democrats if he would try to rescind spending for clean-energy programs funded by laws passed under the Biden administration — as many of Mr. Trump’s allies have urged — Mr. Wright said that he would follow the law, but he did not elaborate. On podcasts and in speeches, Mr. Wright frequently makes a moral case for fossil fuels, arguing that the world’s poorest people need oil and gas to realize the benefits of modern life. Researchers have accused him of downplaying the risks of a warming planet: He said on a podcast last year that climate change would have “a slow-moving, modest impact two or three generations from now.” Mr. Wright graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and did graduate work on solar energy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1992, he founded Pinnacle Technologies, which created software to measure the motion of fluid beneath the Earth’s surface. The software, which Mr. Wright has called “super nerdy,” helped bring about a commercial shale-gas revolution. Mr. Wright started Liberty Energy in 2011, and the company has worked with others on geothermal energy and small, modular nuclear reactors. Mr. Wright holds 2.6 million shares in the company, which are worth more than $55 million based on the current stock price. He has said he intends to step down from Liberty Energy and divest his holdings if confirmed. While the hearing at several points was interrupted by protesters, who accused Mr. Wright of ignoring climate change while Los Angeles burned, the exchanges were mostly devoid of drama. Republicans, who have a 53-47 majority in the Senate and are confident they can confirm Mr. Wright, praised the nominee’s experience in the energy sector. But even many Democrats seemed to find him acceptable. At the start, Senator John Hickenlooper, Democrat of Colorado, introduced Mr. Wright, saying the two men had been friendly for years despite often disagreeing on issues like global warming. “Some people would be surprised that I’m introducing him here,” said Mr. Hickenlooper. “He is indeed an unrestrained enthusiast for fossil fuels in almost every regard.” But, he added, Mr. Wright was “also a scientist who is open to discussion.”