The Endgame: Climate News - December 2025
- Thomas Panton
- 4 days ago
- 5 min read
Signals of acceleration, friction, and structural shifts in the climate transition.
December showed that the climate transition is not a smooth curve but a landscape of accelerating deployment, persistent bottlenecks, and large structural shifts in policy and markets.
The European Union moved to scale decarbonisation technologies with major funding; multilateral processes like COP30 delivered politically significant goals on adaptation finance; and nascent carbon management infrastructure is moving toward real industrial deployment.
At the same time, political and infrastructure headwinds - from diluted sustainability standards to grid shortfalls - highlight how transition execution continues to lag ambition and physics.
This edition looks at what’s progressing, what’s stressing, and the emerging signals set to shape 2026 and beyond.
The Good 👇🏻
🔋 Europe opens €5.2bn Innovation Fund calls for net-zero and industrial heat
The European Commission has opened three major funding calls under the Innovation Fund with a total of €5.2 billion - including a €2.9bn net-zero technologies call, a €1.3bn hydrogen auction, and a €1bn industrial process-heat auction.
These calls are designed to catalyse investment in industrial decarbonisation, renewables manufacturing, energy storage, and low-carbon hydrogen deployment, and to attract both public and private capital into large-scale deployment.
Why it matters: This is one of the largest consolidated funding efforts in the EU’s climate industrial strategy - moving beyond targets to tangible financial signalling and project pipelines that can help bridge the “valley of death” for net-zero industrial technologies.
🔗 Source: EU Business
🌍 COP30 adaptation finance goal targets at least triple finance by 2035
At COP30 in Belém, Parties agreed to an updated climate finance goal aimed at tripling adaptation finance by 2035 - part of the broader effort to scale support for vulnerable countries’ resilience, risk reduction, and climate adaptation.
The decision calls on countries to accelerate climate finance flows in support of the broader US$300 billion per year climate finance goal agreed at COP29, with adaptation representing a central pillar.
Why it matters: While not as fast as developing countries wanted, tripling adaptation finance by 2035 signals growing international traction around “adaptation as infrastructure”, helping shift global climate finance conversations from mitigation alone to resilience and loss-and-damage support. It also maintains pressure on wealthy nations to deliver on long-standing pledges.
🔗 Source: COP30 Belém
⚗️ North Sea offshore carbon storage moves toward real projects
Plans are progressing to repurpose legacy North Sea oil and gas infrastructure for large-scale carbon dioxide storage, representing a tangible step toward offshore sequestration.
Under this approach, decommissioned platforms and subsurface reservoirs would be retrofitted to receive captured CO₂ from industrial clusters, potentially delivering permanent geological storage while managing infrastructure costs.
Why it matters: Commercial offshore CO₂ storage is a key lever for industrial decarbonisation - especially for hard-to-abate sectors like cement and chemicals. Moving from pilot projects to real operational hubs in the North Sea could become a model for carbon management infrastructure elsewhere.
🔗 Source: Phys.org
The Challenges 👇🏻
📉 EU dilutes corporate sustainability rules, critics warn it jeopardises climate action
Amendments to the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive are drawing criticism from NGOs and climate advocates, who argue the changes weaken climate and human-rights standards.
By narrowing scope and introducing exemptions, the revisions may allow poorer performers to avoid stringent climate responsibility requirements, raising concerns that regulatory teeth are being blunted ahead of crucial implementation phases.
Why it matters: When core sustainability standards are weakened, it introduces ambiguity into corporate climate accountability, risks greenwashing, and undermines investor confidence in Europe’s decarbonisation trajectory.
🔗 Source: Climate Home News
🌲 EU delays and dilutes its landmark anti-deforestation law
After years of negotiation, the European Parliament adopted targeted revisions in December 2025 that postpone the EU’s anti-deforestation regulation (the EUDR) by a full year and simplify key requirements - effectively delaying the law’s implementation until December 30th 2026 for large companies and June 30th 2027 for smaller enterprises.
The changes streamline due-diligence obligations, reduce scope for certain product categories, and grant extended compliance timelines amid industry pushback and concerns about enforcement systems.
Why it matters: The EUDR was designed to ensure products sold in the EU do not contribute to deforestation - a major climate and biodiversity lever. Postponing and weakening its implementation pushes major climate and supply-chain outcomes further into the future, undermining consistency in policy signals just as tropical forest loss continues and global carbon budgets tighten.
🔗 Source: Reuters
🛢 ‘Trump EPA’ deregulation continues to roll back protections
Under the 2025 EPA regulatory agenda, broad deregulatory actions on air, water, and climate enforcement are advancing, generating concerns about environmental and public health backsliding.
These rollbacks affect emissions oversight, permitting conditions, and enforcement practices - creating uncertainty for clean technology deployment and community resilience planning.
Why it matters: Regulatory erosion at the federal level reduces clarity and risk mitigation for utilities, industrials, and climate-aligned investors. Rolling back protections also shifts the burden of climate action to states and cities, fragmenting the U.S. climate market.
🔗 Source: AP News
Ones to Watch 👇🏻
🌍 EU CBAM went live January 1st 2026 with global trade implications
The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) entered into force on 1st January 2026, requiring importers of high-carbon goods like steel and cement to start accounting for embedded emissions. This marks a major structural shift in carbon pricing that could ripple across global industrial supply chains, trade relationships, and competitiveness strategies.
Why it matters: How CBAM is implemented and enforced will influence production decisions for exporters worldwide and could shape where and how clean technologies are adopted at scale.
🔗 Source: The Guardian
⚖️ COP30-linked “Open Coalition on Compliance Carbon Markets” gains attention
A voluntary coalition formed around COP30 - known as the Open Coalition on Compliance Carbon Markets - aims to establish a harmonised global emissions cap with declining caps over time and shared governance among participants like the EU, China, Brazil, and others. The coalition’s progress in 2026 could influence coordinated compliance markets and international carbon pricing frameworks.
Why it matters: Carbon markets that span multiple jurisdictions could reduce leakage, improve price stability, and create deeper liquidity - all key factors for robust decarbonisation investment signals.
🔗 Source: Reuters
📈 2026 renewable industry outlook highlights tax credit and investment headwinds
New analysis from Deloitte suggests that 2025 clean energy investment and tax credit policies will be a crucial determinant of 2026 deployment economics. With certain tax incentives uncertain (especially in North America) and project finance conditions tightening, the renewable sector could see varied growth rates depending on policy clarity and capital costs.
Why it matters: Renewables are not immune to macroeconomic and policy shifts. Investment headwinds and changing credit conditions can materially affect deployment timelines and price curves - making this a key bellwether for industrial decarbonisation progress.
📘 Final Word
December reminded us that the climate transition is neither linear nor evenly distributed.
The good news: public capital is flowing into deployment-oriented innovation, international multilateral processes are elevating adaptation finance, and infrastructure shifts such as offshore carbon storage are moving from concept toward implementation.
The bad news: regulatory backsliding, infrastructure bottlenecks, and political compromise on standards show that ambition is still often ahead of delivery.
Industrial decarbonisation now depends on systems - finance, grids, trade, and markets - working in concert.
At Endgame Capital, we see this as a defining inflection.
Markets will keep moving - even when policy drifts.
The winners will be those solving real bottlenecks, scaling clean infrastructure, and delivering across capital, regulation, and deployment.
Stay sharp. Stay pragmatic. The momentum is still real.
