The climate pivot: 2025 impact highlights

At Clean Air Task Force, we’ve spent nearly 30 years championing pragmatic, evidence-based solutions to the climate challenge. We have always understood that the world needs more energy, not less, more climate solutions, not fewer, and that climate action won’t happen unless it’s consistent with affordability, security, and access.

What used to seem like heresy to some now looks like common sense. Everywhere you look, it seems climate action is hitting up against the hard realities of national interests. Geopolitical fragmentation and economic headwinds are testing the limits of climate ambition – with many targets and pledges being walked back or conceded.

While jarring, at Clean Air Task Force, we see also this reckoning as an occasion for some useful recalibration. The sooner reality bites, the sooner advocates for climate action can adjust their approach, explore new avenues and ideas, and tailor our strategies to the world as it exists — reality-proofing climate action as we go.

The challenge now is to translate these strategies into durable, real-world results – and to not let a pragmatic approach be confused with a less determined one.

Here’s what that looks like right now:

• Securing and defending common sense emission limits that can be implemented at sustainable costs
• Commercializing and driving down the cost of advanced low carbon technologies
• Scaling up clean firm power to ensure that decarbonized power grids are reliable and affordable

Importantly, this must all be done in a way that flows with, rather than against, regional economics and geopolitics, and can work in developing economies.

Here are just a few examples of how we’ve gone about accomplishing that in 2025.

Securing and defending regulations that directly reduce pollution

• Holding polluters accountable through Article 23 of the Net Zero Industry Act (NZIA). Passed in spring 2024, the EU took the groundbreaking step of requiring oil and gas companies to develop carbon dioxide injection capacity in proportion to their fossil fuel production. Now, CATF – which played a key role engaging the EU Commission over the NZIA – is stepping up to continue to apply pressure to ensure that these rules are fully implemented through a live storage tracker and regular policy briefs.
• Defending the EU Methane Regulation. With continued efforts by European and U.S. industry – supported by the U.S. government – to delay and weaken the EU Methane Regulation, CATF is working with the European Commission to buoy support for the standard and ensure strong enforcement. The regulation has huge potential to hold polluters accountable and cut methane emissions across the globe – a major opportunity to limit near-term global warming.
• Cutting methane emissions from waste in Brazil. At COP30, Brazil announced a new national effort to detect and reduce methane emissions from the country’s waste sector – one of the largest sources of methane in Brazil. The initiative, developed by the Ministry of Environment in partnership with CATF, Carbon Mapper, and local governments, will use cutting-edge satellite and remote sensing technologies to identify and address super-emitting landfill sites.
• Defending Clean Air Act protections in the United States. As the EPA attempts to roll back and eliminate dozens of long-standing clean air and climate safeguards – including the reconsideration of the endangerment finding, vehicle regulations, carbon pollution standards, and air toxic standards for power plants – CATF is pushing back to defend both the legal record and scientific evidence that underpin these regulations that protect public health and the environment.

Commercializing and driving down the cost of advanced low-carbon technologies

• Positioning nuclear energy as a carbon-free option for power. On October 30th, the Illinois General Assembly passed the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act, lifting the decades long ban on constructing new nuclear plants in the state. Over the past two years, CATF maintained an aggressive advocacy presence throughout the state, engaging directly with lawmakers and stakeholders to underscore the importance of nuclear to meet rising energy demands and achieve Illinois’ goal of a carbon-free grid by 2050.
• Building a clean hydrogen framework. In November, the Louisiana Clean Hydrogen Task force voted to adopt a set of policy recommendations which will position the state as a leading supplier in the growing clean hydrogen economy. CATF has played a leading role with the task force over the past 18 months: we conceived the idea for the task force, cultivated a legislative sponsor, and built industry support for this idea as we shepherded supportive legislation in Baton Rouge.
• Changing the global commercial ecosystem for nuclear energy. Through the Nuclear Scaling Initiative, in partnership with EFI Foundation and the Nuclear Threat Initiative, CATF is catalyzing an effort to build a new nuclear energy ecosystem to scale to 50 or more gigawatts per year by the 2030s – a tenfold increase of the current deployment rate.

Scaling up clean firm power to keep power grids reliable and affordable

• Providing foundational research to advance superhot rock geothermal energy. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) created a dedicated research and development program for superhot rock geothermal, which will be critical to accelerating the commercialization of this innovative clean firm energy source. CATF has extensively engaged ARPA-E on the importance of establishing this program. Notably, this funding will be targeted at the very barriers that CATF identified as most important in our Bridging the Gaps series.
• Shaping legislation that brings down costs and provides reliable power in California. Research on public financing for transmission in California – finding the potential for ratepayer savings of $3B annually – shaped SB 254 which established the California Transmission Infrastructure Accelerator that will facilitate public-private transmission financing in the state.
• Developing recommendations to scale fusion energy. The U.S. Department of Energy announced its Fusion Science and Technology roadmap, which strongly align with CATF’s recommendations and identify key steps the United States must take to overcome remaining science and technology gaps to ensure the U.S. leads the world in commercial fusion energy deployment. CATF has also developed recommendations to scale fusion energy in Europe and in U.S. states.
• Advancing coordinated, forward-looking power grid planning in Europe. With the publication of the European Commission’s Grids Package, the EU is marking a positive shift toward coordinated, EU-wide infrastructure planning and permitting. After months of direct engagement and detailed recommendations from CATF, several core elements of the proposal reflect CATF’s inputs – ensuring the Grids Package includes a EU-level framework for energy infrastructure and electricity grids to provide reliable, clean energy for Europe with the upgrades needed to meet future energy demand.

Working within systems

• Raised the bar on land-based climate solutions by combining rigorous science with policy advocacy – strengthening oversight and integrity in carbon markets, advancing high-quality forest carbon protocols, shaping state-cap-and-invest offset rules, and promoting responsible biomass carbon removal pathways in California.
• Paired rigorous analysis with targeted advocacy to advance decarbonization across the marine shipping, aviation, freight, and fuel sectors: from pushing for enforceable global shipping decarbonization standards to defending U.S. clean truck rules, scrutinizing 45Z fuel tax credits, and elevating the climate impacts of contrails.
• Provided new tools and recommendations to clean up industry, including decarbonization pathways for the U.S. steel sector, policy approaches to drive cement decarbonization, a tool to navigate the complexities of direct air capture, an interactive map that identifies opportunities to decarbonize the U.S. pulp and paper industry, and best practices for social acceptance of carbon capture and storage in Poland.   

Changing the narrative

• CATF’s Policy Impact team is tracking the benefits that innovative energy technologies bring to people’s lives and local economies across the U.S. CATF’s video series includes stories of how people and communities are benefiting from fusion energy in East Tennessee, advanced nuclear energy in Wyoming, next-generation geothermal in Utah, clean hydrogen in Texas, and more.
• CATF’s annual Utility Roundtable in Africa provided an important platform for power utilities in Africa to establish actionable plans to improve operational performance, build viable markets, deliver services more efficiently, and expand their clean energy portfolios.
• CATF’s first Central and Eastern Europe Fellowship trained a new generation of pragmatically minded climate leaders – part of the organization’s broader effort to strengthen regional capacity for clean energy deployment and evidence-based climate policymaking.
• CATF’s analysis highlighted a persistent gap between African countries’ climate commitments and their national development priorities — a gap that threatens progress on both fronts.