Today’s newsletter looks at chaotic work experiences for young scientists as President Donald Trump cuts research funding and fires federal workers. You can read and share a full version of this story on Bloomberg.com. For unlimited access to climate and energy news, please subscribe. 

Tumultuous times for R&D

By Zahra Hirji

For weeks, my colleagues and I have been emailing researchers at universities nationwide asking if their work is already being directly impacted by President Donald Trump’s funding freeze and other sweeping policy changes — and if so, how?

Their answers were a resounding yes, even as legal challenges to Trump orders wind their way through the courts. At a time when climate change’s impacts are increasingly acute, US scientists are having to divert some of their attention from studying them to focus on if their grants have been canceled and if they’ll be able to bring on grad students.

When I spoke with Kristie Ebi, a climate health researcher at the University of Washington, in late February, she’d just learned that the website had been taken down for one of her grants through the National Institutes of Health.

“I know the website’s down,” she says, and the Department of Health and Human Services has said it will not support the program. But is it officially dead? She’s not sure.

Demonstrators hold signs during a "Stand Up For Science" rally at the Lincoln Memorial last Friday. Photographer: Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg

Each week, the Trump administration has made new cuts or threats of cuts to federal funding for universities. In response, institutions are increasingly cutting back on their own spending in ways that will impact their operations over the next few years. Harvard announced this week that it was temporarily pausing the hiring of faculty and other staff. Ebi says her school has also recently implemented a travel ban for staff. That means researchers won’t be able to go to conferences where new research ideas are hatched and knowledge is shared.

Early career researchers are facing limbo, too. West Virginia University says it’s limiting admission to its doctoral programs in health sciences, due to “unforeseen budgetary challenges” from proposed cuts to research funding. Iowa State University officials say they have rescinded offers to some graduate students who hadn’t formally accepted their spots, citing “uncertainties with funding” and high acceptance rates.

At California Institute of Technology some professors are already considering “drastically reducing admissions next year” or “possibly not even admitting any graduate students at all in many areas of science and math,” Fiona Harrison, the chair of Caltech’s division of physics, mathematics and astronomy, writes in an email. 

Reducing graduate student spots threatens to cut into the pipeline of US-grown talent, experts warn. And should Congress enshrine science budget cuts, it would radically alter a system that’s allowed the US to become a world-leading hub for research since World War II.

The potential backsliding on government climate work and support for the scientific community comes as the nation is facing more and intensifying climate impacts, such as the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles earlier this year. 

“The situation is jeopardizing our nation’s ability to stay at the forefront of science and engineering by reducing or eliminating a generation of young technical talent,” Harrison says.

Get the full story on Bloomberg.com — and subscribe for more news on how the Trump administration is approaching climate and energy.

A key year for climate science

The future for bright young minds

Worth a listen

In the time since she became Prime Minister of Barbados in 2018, Mia Mottley has become known as a moral force for action on climate change. The Bridgetown Initiative, which she launched at COP26 in 2021, transformed the conversation around climate finance – pushing rich nations to do more to support developing countries struggling with the impact of climate change. But as the US retreats from climate action, her bold vision faces new challenges. At the Sustainable Energy for All Global Forum in Barbados, she tells Akshat Rathi why she remains optimistic. Mottley also spoke about the role of pragmatism in tackling the climate challenge.

Listen now, and subscribe on Apple,  Spotify, or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday.

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners has raised over €12 billion ($13 billion) for its latest green power fund, making it one of the largest ever investment vehicles dedicated to renewable energy.

The flagship fund — CIP’s fifth and biggest to date — will invest in projects spanning wind farms, to solar parks and grid-connected batteries. 

It’s a significant moment for a sector that’s been battered in recent years by rising inflation, higher interest rates and investor skepticism. It also shows that private markets are still able to rake in huge sums of money for renewables projects, even as publicly traded green stocks struggle. 

“It’s a really, really good market to be a buyer of renewable energy projects,” Jakob Baruel Poulsen, co-founder of CIP, said in an interview. “When people are leaving the sector, we usually buy stuff from them cheaply and a few years after when they want to get in again, we usually sell some of it back to them at a higher price.”

Other renewable infrastructure specialists are making similar bets. Last month, Brookfield Asset Management agreed to buy a portfolio of onshore renewables assets in the US for $1.7 billion.

Turbines at Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners' Changfang and Xidao Offshore Wind Farm off the shore in Taichung, Taiwan, in May 2024.  Photographer: An Rong Xu/Bloomberg

Indonesia is set to bolster the offsets market. The country plans to resume allowing its massive forestry sector to sell carbon credits after a three-year hiatus, a move that could help embattled offset markets to recover. 

Zara outfits now have a bigger CO2 footprint. The annual report of Inditex SA, the Spanish owner of the apparel chain, shows that its transport-related carbon emissions grew twice as fast as product volume.

Emissions will make Europe’s winter storms worse. Global carbon emissions are amplifying a North Atlantic wind pattern that drives northern Europe’s biggest winter storms, new research shows.

Brazil is planning to launch an ambitious $125 billion fund to protect tropical forests when it hosts the COP30 climate summit this November. The investment vehicle is part of a broad strategy to turn the talks into action after a US withdrawal from climate diplomacy threatens to slow progress.

It’s also one way officials are looking to make COP30 a landmark event — with additional plans to kick-off discussions on a multilateral carbon market and a common framework for defining sustainable investments. The summit, being held in the Amazonian city of Belém, marks the 10th anniversary of the historic Paris Agreement, a global accord that commits nearly every country in the world to keeping warming to well below 2C, and ideally 1.5C, relative to pre-industrial levels.

Yet COP30 also follows a recent series of lackluster UN summits that have added to a sense of backsliding. US President Donald Trump is pulling the world's second-largest emitter out of the Paris accord for the second time and slashing international aid. Europe, meanwhile, has begun to focus more of its foreign aid on defense spending to support Ukraine’s war against Russia. Brazil now must work extra hard to prove that multilateralism can still address climate change amid geopolitical distractions and the US retreat.

“Our COP starts a new decade,” Ana Toni, chief executive officer of COP30 and Brazil’s vice minister for climate change, said in an interview in Brasilia. 

Read the full story on Bloomberg.com. 

An environmentally protected area near Sao Felix do Xingu, Para state, Brazil. Photographer: Jonne Roriz/Bloomberg

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