The Endgame: Climate News - November 2025
- Thomas Panton
- 18 hours ago
- 7 min read
Signals of momentum, friction, and inflection points across the climate transition.
November underscored a widening gap: clean technologies continue to advance, yet political headwinds - especially in the U.S. and EU - are beginning to drag on execution.
Still, the direction of travel remains clear.
Markets are moving faster than institutions, and the world’s largest economies are navigating the strain between energy security, industrial competitiveness, and climate ambition.
This edition covers what’s accelerating, what’s stalling, and what’s emerging as critical leverage for the decade ahead.
The Good 👇🏻
☀️ IEA forecasts renewables will outpace all other energy sources - signalling an irreversible shift
The International Energy Agency’s flagship annual report projects that renewables will grow faster than any other major energy source over the next decade, marking what it calls an “inevitable” transition away from fossil fuels. The world is set to build more renewable capacity in the next five years than in the previous forty, driven by surging demand for electric vehicles, clean heating, cooling, and rapidly expanding AI datacentres.
The report highlights a boom in low-cost solar, particularly across the Middle East and Asia, and notes a parallel “renaissance” in nuclear as tech firms seek stable low-carbon power. Even with U.S. federal rollbacks, global renewables continue their rapid expansion under all IEA modelled scenarios.
Why it matters: The IEA’s analysis reinforces that the economics of clean energy are now self-propelling. For policymakers and investors, it signals a structural market shift: renewables are not just competitive - they are becoming the backbone of future electricity systems.
🔗 Source: The Guardian
🌳 COP30 secures $7bn for forest protection & a pledge to triple adaptation finance
COP30 delivered one of the largest coordinated nature-finance commitments seen at a climate summit, with nearly $7 billion mobilised for tropical forests through the new Tropical Forests Forever Facility - a mechanism designed to reward forest-rich countries for keeping ecosystems intact.
The fund will support more than 70 developing nations and direct 20% of financing to Indigenous Peoples, recognising their central role in conservation. Governments also agreed to triple global adaptation finance by 2035, aiming to scale nature-based solutions that protect communities from escalating climate impacts.
Why it matters: Nature finance is finally moving into deployment mode. These multi-country pledges represent a material shift from symbolic commitments to operational capital - supporting forests that deliver an estimated $150 trillion in ecosystem services. For investors and policymakers, this signals that nature protection is becoming a core pillar of climate risk management, not an optional add-on.
🔗 Source: Business for Nature
🇺🇸 Massachusetts considers expanding its all-electric buildings program
Massachusetts lawmakers are moving to expand the state’s all-electric construction pilot, potentially allowing 10 additional municipalities to ban fossil-fuel hookups in new buildings. Cities like Salem, Somerville, Worcester, and even Boston have signalled interest in joining the program, which supporters say is already demonstrating measurable benefits: lower emissions, healthier indoor air, and reduced household energy bills - all without slowing housing development.
None of the current 10 participating towns have seen construction delays; in fact, Lexington permitted 1,100 new housing units in two years, including 160 affordable homes.
Why it matters: This is one of the clearest state-level signals that all-electric buildings are moving into the U.S. policy mainstream. With research showing that all-electric homes in Boston are already cost-competitive and often cheaper to operate, Massachusetts is testing a scalable, politically viable pathway for local decarbonisation - even as national policy winds shift.
🔗 Source: Canary Media
The Challenges 👇🏻
🇪🇺 EU weakens its proposed 2040 climate target
EU climate ministers approved a diluted 2040 emissions-cut package after late-night negotiations, allowing member states to use foreign carbon credits for up to 5% of the 90% reduction requirement. This effectively lowers the domestic ambition to 85%, with an option to consider another 5% credit allowance in future.
Ministers also agreed to delay the launch of the EU’s new carbon market by one year - a further concession aimed at easing political resistance from countries citing competitiveness and energy-cost pressures. Nations including Poland, Italy, and the Czech Republic argued the original target was too restrictive for industry, while others such as Spain and the Netherlands pushed to maintain higher ambition.
Why it matters: This marks one of the clearest signs of political pushback against the EU’s climate agenda. The compromise injects uncertainty into Europe’s long-term regulatory trajectory and weakens the signal for domestic industrial decarbonisation. For investors and corporates, it reinforces a growing tension: climate ambition remains high on paper, but implementation is increasingly constrained by economic, geopolitical, and competitive pressures.
🔗 Source: Reuters
🌍 COP30 ends without a fossil-fuel phase-out plan
COP30 concluded with a deal that makes no direct reference to phasing down or phasing out fossil fuels - despite more than 80 countries, including the UK and EU, pushing for stronger language.
Oil-producing nations held firm that they should retain the right to develop their reserves, and negotiations were further complicated by the absence of the U.S. delegation, which the BBC notes left a “hole” in the talks during critical overnight sessions. The final text instead “calls on” countries to voluntarily accelerate action - a sharp contrast to the binding framework many had sought.
Why it matters: With cost curves making clean alternatives increasingly competitive, the lack of a global fossil-fuel framework widens the gap between economic reality and international policy. For governments, corporates, and investors, this removes the clarity needed to plan long-term transitions and highlights how geopolitical fragmentation is now one of the biggest barriers to coordinated decarbonisation.
🔗 Source: BBC
🔥 U.S. DOE moves to force more coal plants to stay open
A draft policy direction from the U.S. Department of Energy signals a broader push to keep aging coal plants online past their planned retirement dates - an unprecedented federal intervention in the power sector. The DOE has already issued repeated emergency orders to prevent the shutdown of Michigan’s 63-year-old J.H. Campbell plant, costing customers $80 million by September.
Officials have now indicated similar orders are likely for Colorado’s Craig Station Unit 1, despite utilities having already determined that closure would not compromise grid reliability. These forced operations often lead to high, unplanned costs, fuel rush-orders, and deferred maintenance - all of which ultimately fall on ratepayers.
Why it matters: The move contradicts market economics: many of these coal units are among the most expensive and least reliable generators on the U.S. grid. By slowing retirements, the DOE injects uncertainty into long-term investment plans for storage, renewables, and modern grid infrastructure - and risks locking in higher system emissions just as cleaner alternatives are becoming cheaper and more dependable.
🔗 Source: Canary Media
Ones to Watch 👇🏻
🏭 EU’s “Clean Industrial Deal” and Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA)
The European Commission is preparing a major December package to convert its competitiveness strategy into delivery. The Clean Industrial Deal will launch the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) - a framework to modernise Europe’s industrial base by improving conditions for clean investment and creating predictable lead markets for low-carbon products.
The package is expected to sit alongside a strengthened CBAM and the new European Grids Package, which aims to ease permitting, reduce congestion, and improve regional coordination to support large-scale electrification.
Why it matters: If executed well, this could become the EU’s most significant industrial-policy intervention since the Green Deal - providing clearer investment signals for hydrogen, storage, advanced materials, and industrial decarbonisation at a moment when European industry is facing high costs and fierce global competition.
🔗 Source: E3G
🌧️ Early deployment of the Copernicus attribution service
The EU’s new climate-attribution service is now moving into its first operational phase, with results expected to inform early case studies during the coming winter season. The Copernicus team will run continuous modelling to estimate how extreme weather - from heatwaves to severe rainfall - is influenced by climate change, producing two rapid assessments per month, each issued within a week of an event.
The project is funded with €2.5 million over three years and is being delivered with national weather services, the UK Met Office, and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.
Why it matters: Attribution science is already shaping insurance risk models and climate litigation. Embedding this capability inside an EU institution could standardise how governments, financial markets, and courts quantify climate risk - influencing everything from insurance premium to sovereign debt exposure.
🔗 Source: Reuters
⚖️ U.S. legal challenges escalate over White House cuts to clean-energy funding
Legal pressure is mounting over the administration’s decision to terminate roughly $7.5 billion in clean-energy and climate projects during the October shutdown. A coalition of clean-energy groups and the city of St. Paul filed suit arguing that the cuts - which eliminated 321 awards across 223 projects, all located in Democratic-led states - amounted to intentional partisan discrimination.
The lawsuit cites public statements from senior officials acknowledging that the shutdown created an opportunity to make “irreversible” cuts to programmes in states viewed as politically hostile. The plaintiffs are now seeking judicial intervention to restore the funding, warning that many projects will be impossible to restart even if the shutdown ends.
Why it matters: This case could set a precedent on whether federal climate and energy spending can be targeted along partisan lines. A ruling in favour of the plaintiffs would not only restore cancelled awards but also shape future guardrails for U.S. clean-energy deployment - influencing hundreds of state-level projects tied to EV charging, methane reduction, and consumer energy-cost programmes.
🔗 Source: New York Times
📘 Final Word
November reaffirmed a dual reality: clean technologies are delivering, but the political scaffolding around them is wobbling.
U.S. wind sets records. EU industrial policy inches forward. COP30 mobilises real money for nature - but stalls on fossil commitments. And regulatory noise continues to cloud long-term planning for utilities, manufacturers, and investors.
For us, the signal is simple: industrial decarbonisation now depends on execution, not ambition. Markets will keep moving - even when politics stutter.
The winners will be those building real systems, solving real bottlenecks, and scaling technologies that stand on economic merit.
At Endgame Capital, that’s the lens we bring to every deal.
Stay sharp. Stay pragmatic. The momentum is still real.