Climate Realism Special Issue: Climate Week 2025
As the climate world converges on NYC, a look at the issues driving the debate.
This is an excerpt from the Climate Realism Initiative Newsletter. Sign up to receive monthly insights from the initiative’s fellows and staff, including articles, videos, podcasts, events, and more.
Coming Up: Climate Week
Climate Week—the annual extravaganza of networking, deal-making, activism, and political messaging that converges in New York City each September—is taking place this year under an unusual level of uncertainty.
In the United States, clean energy deployment is facing new and potentially debilitating headwinds. President Donald Trump’s administration has slowed or even reversed the permitting process for renewable energy projects and Congress has reduced or eliminated the subsidies that were helping to lift these nascent industries off the ground. Meanwhile, the looming withdrawal of the endangerment finding—the official government recognition that greenhouse gases are dangerous—could imperil the entire ecosystem of federal climate protections.
Globally, China is pressing its advantage in low-carbon technologies, with sales of its electric vehicles, solar panel components, and other products all soaring. President Joe Biden’s administration worked to challenge Beijing through industrial partnerships with India, South Korea, and other allies. But, under pressure from U.S. tariffs, immigration policy changes, and a renewed emphasis on fossil fuels in Washington, the extent and nature of U.S. competition with China is changing fast.
Emerging economies have long resisted pressure to choose between China and the United States, hoping instead to maintain healthy diplomatic and economic ties with both major powers. Whether that strategy will survive these rapidly shifting circumstances remains to be seen, and will be a critical subtext to both Climate Week and the eightieth meeting of the United Nations General Assembly happening at the same time.
One of the rare areas of agreement in both domestic and international politics is the central importance of artificial intelligence (AI). The race to build the data centers that will undergird the next generation of powerful algorithms is mobilizing billions of dollars in new investment—enough, according to some analysts, to account for a measurable share of overall U.S. growth this year.
The energy demand from those data centers is monumental, however, threatening steep electricity price hikes for consumers and potentially undermining the stability of the grid itself. Solving the AI energy challenge will be essential to securing the benefits that might flow from this technology.
As all these stories and more play out in New York this week, CFR’s Climate Realism Initiative (CRI) will be here to provide the context and critical analysis you need. Get ready for the week with analysis from our catalog, and visit our website for insights and events over the coming days. Look for further updates in the October issue of the initiative’s monthly newsletter, Climate Realism.
Read
- What Congress’ ‘Big’ Bill Means for Global Climate Change
CRI Senior Fellows Varun Sivaram, Alice C. Hill, and David Hart dissect the landmark reconciliation bill passed by Congress this summer and its likely effects on U.S. climate policy. Read more - Trump’s Energy Innovation Retreat Is a Win for China, Loss for Climate
Senior Fellow David Hart and Research Associate Maximilian Hippold argue that the failure to follow through on promised investments in demonstration projects for new technologies will cripple the U.S. innovation pipeline and cede ground in nascent industries to China. Read more - The Future of the Summer Road Trip
The world’s cars are increasingly electric, notes CRI Deputy Director Lindsay Iversen, but too few of those cars are being made in the United States. Clinging to the internal combustion model risks losing the global market. Read more
Watch
- China Is Powering the Future. America Needs to Catch Up.
CRI Director and Senior Fellow Varun Sivaram meets with Rush Doshi, senior fellow and director of the China Strategy Initiative, to discuss the competitive challenge China poses in clean energy and how the United States can make up ground. Watch the video
Listen
- The Mechanics of Data Center Flexibility
Sivaram sits down with Shayle Kann, host of the Catalyst podcast, to discuss the challenges data centers pose to the electricity grid and how modulating their power demand could help. Listen to the podcast
About the Climate Realism Initiative
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