… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Category: Nigel Farage

Who Funds Reform UK? The Business Interests of Nigel Farage’s Major Donors
Spread the love
Article by Max Colbert republished from DeSmog.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. Credit: Reform UK / YouTube
Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne aren’t the party’s only big money backers.
Crypto billionaires Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne each recently piled £36 million into Reform UK, Nigel Farage’s political party.
The story amplified recent scandals about the party’s donors, with scrutiny mounting over the funding of Farage and his outfit.
In light of these recent developments, DeSmog has taken a closer look at the financial interests of Reform’s donors, to understand which sectors have been backing the party and why they’re interested in bringing about a Farage government.
Delo and Harborne made their money from the cryptocurrency sector, but DeSmog’s analysis shows that they – and Reform’s other major donors – have business ties spanning far beyond this one industry.
Farage’s party has taken substantial amounts of money from members of the Sunday Times Rich List, fossil fuel interests, the landed gentry, property developers, offshore investors, and has been forced to return large sums to those who aren’t allowed to donate to UK parties.
Meanwhile, campaigners and MPs continue to push Andy Burnham’s Labour government to stop a few super wealthy individuals from bankrolling our political system.
The Major Players
Excluding Reform’s new £72 million windfall, more than 72 percent of all recorded donations to the party since the 2024 election have come from just three people, including Delo and Harborne.
Harborne, who has lived in Thailand for 30 years and is worth £18 billion, is comfortably Reform’s biggest backer, having given £15 million to the party since the last general election (£47 million including his recent donation) and £25 million (£57 million) since the party’s launch in 2019.
Harborne is also responsible for a controversial £5 million undeclared personal gift to Farage prior to the 2024 general election, which is the subject of an investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner.
Delo, co-founder and former executive of the crypto trading platform BitMEX, is behind a further £8 million, while venture capitalist David Grainger has given £1.4 million.
Major donations have also been received from Reform treasurer Nick Candy, and telecoms and fintech magnate Bassim Haidar, who have collectively donated a further £1.7 million since the last general election.
Billionaire venture capitalist Sasan Ghandehari has also pledged to donate millions to the party. Though these sums have yet to materialise, he has already given over £50,000 to Farage personally.
The Crypto Barons
If the new Delo and Harborne donations are deemed to be legal, Reform will have received 90 percent of its funding since the last general election from those with ties to the crypto industry.
Harborne is a shareholder in Tether, the world’s largest ‘stablecoin’ provider, which is based in El Salvador. Tether is currently seeking an injection of private capital that would increase its value up to $500 billion – making Harborne one of the richest men in the world.
The company has ties to Donald Trump’s U.S. administration and has reportedly benefitted from the crypto-friendly policies of his regime.
Delo, meanwhile, is one of the co-founders of the crypto trading platform BitMEX. He was one of those who pled guilty to Bank Secrecy Act violations for failing to establish and maintain an anti-money laundering scheme at the company. Delo was fined $10 million and served 30 months’ probation in Hong Kong, before later being pardoned by Trump. BitMEX was ultimately fined £100 million.
Reform UK donor and crypto billionaire Ben Delo.

Credit:
Jkhildreth / Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-SA 4.0)
But they aren’t the only Reform donors with an interest in the crypto industry. Farage’s backers also include Maria Rost, behind some £130,000 across nine donations to the party, who is understood to be the wife of U.S. crypto investor John Rost, as well as Oscar Townsley, founder of Bitcoin derivatives trading platform A1X, and London-based investor Simon William Smith.
Farage has repeatedly lobbied for the industry, promising to bring about a “crypto revolution” if he becomes prime minister. He announced flagship proposals for unleashing the sector at the Bitcoin conference in May 2025 in Las Vegas, including tax breaks and government support, although the document has now vanished from the party’s website.
Farage also lobbied the Bank of England to drop plans for a state-backed stablecoin, a move that would suit Harborne – his most generous patron – by blocking a rival to Tether.
Reform was until recently the only major political party in the UK to accept donations via cryptocurrencies, having been accused of using a third party to turn crypto into cash and obscuring the original funding source.
Burnham’s predecessor Keir Starmer introduced a temporary moratorium on crypto donations earlier this year, which campaigners say should become a permanent ban.
Offshore Interests
As previously reported by DeSmog, a large part of Reform’s funding comes from those with offshore business interests.
Since the last general election, 57 percent of its income has been donated by individuals and companies featured in the Offshore Leaks database, which details information about more than 810,000 offshore companies, foundations, and trusts.
A large number of the party’s donors are also international investors – people or companies with significant financial interests abroad. In the second quarter of 2026, prior to the £72 million windfall, Reform received £5 million from 17 different international investors – including a Monaco-based former Lehman Brothers executive, an investment firm in business with the UAE, and a New York-based asset management firm linked to the owners of Chelsea Football Club.
The party has been embroiled in controversy after an undercover investigation by Verbatim Investigations, broadcast by Channel 4 in September, appeared to show the party conspiring to accept donations from foreign sources.
Two of Reform’s most senior figures have now resigned following the documentary, though both deny wrongdoing – as does the party. The Metropolitan Police has launched an investigation into whether any laws were broken.
Farage has previously said that he wants to win back high net worth individuals to the UK through a £250,000 “Britannia Card” that would allow wealthy foreigners to buy a 10-year residency permit and enter a special tax regime. Labour has called the policy a “billionaires bonanza” and tax experts have estimated it would cost the UK £35 billion over five years in lost revenue.
Fossil Fuel Interests
As reported by DeSmog in April, Reform has received two-thirds of its funding to date, not including the £72 million, from fossil fuel interests. A further £2.4 million has been donated by individuals who have publicly disputed basic scientific facts about climate change.
Harborne owns AML Global, which supplies aviation and maritime fuel to a distribution network that includes “main and regional oil companies”, according to its website.
The price of jet fuel has spiralled since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, which would benefit Harborne’s business interests.
Although Harborne doesn’t deny climate science, and recently called the issue an “existential threat”, Reform’s senior figures frequently dispute the contribution of carbon dioxide to global warming and support the mass expansion of fossil fuel production in the UK.
Fellow Reform donor Jeremy Hosking had $440.8 million (around £326.5 million) invested in oil and gas companies via his hedge fund Hosking Partners as of March – an increase of more than 50 percent from the previous three months.
Meanwhile, Reform-controlled councils have been axing net zero commitments and stating their intention to withdraw from climate emergency declarations. Farage has claimed it’s “bonkers” for carbon dioxide to be considered a pollutant.
Property Developers and Financiers
More than half (55 percent) of Reform’s corporate donors are connected to the construction, property, and development industries, which would stand to benefit substantially from the party’s policies. Of the 40 companies recorded as having donated to the party before June this year, 22 were involved in this sector.
Reform’s 2024 manifesto promised to “unleash” housebuilding across the country and “restore landlords’ rights” by reducing their taxes. Reform’s housing spokesperson and deputy leader Richard Tice is a property industry millionaire, having run the Sunley Group, a company founded by his grandfather.
Reform treasurer Nick Candy is also a property magnate, having made his money selling luxury homes to the super rich. Candy recently sold his Chelsea mansion for £265 million – the most expensive residential property in UK history.
The party has also received extensive funding from financiers. Reform’s donors include hedge fund manager Johan Christofferson, who has given £200,000 to the party, the “vulture fund” Greybull Capital, and the disgraced City of London titan Crispin Odey.
Although Farage has threatened to impose higher taxes on banks, he has also promised to deregulate the sector – including by removing regulation introduced after the 2008 financial crash.
Reform UK treasurer Nick Candy.

Credit: FII Institute / YouTube
The Rich List
As recently reported by DeSmog, Reform’s donors include aristocratic families, the owners of exclusive London clubs, peers, and members of the landed gentry.
The annual Sunday Times Rich List acts as “the definitive guide to the wealth of the UK’s richest people”, cataloguing the country’s 350 most affluent individuals and families. The entries in the 2026 edition share a combined wealth of £784 billion. Nearly a third of them no longer live on the British mainland.
Four of Reform’s donors appear in this year’s list, two of whom appear in the top 10.
Harborne ranks at number six, while the Reuben family – another Reform donor – sits at number two. The Reubens have donated to Reform through a private investment firm – Investors in Private Capital Limited – which is ultimately controlled by Omaha Business Holdings Corp, owned by the family and based in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven.
Reform’s donor list also includes a number of old money backers. Among them is Fiona Cottrell – the daughter of Rupert Watson, 3rd Baron Manton. Under her maiden name, Fiona Watson, she was a former glamour model and one-time girlfriend of King Charles III when he was the Prince of Wales.
Cottrell has given £500,000 to Reform via Britain Means Business, a company owned by the party’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, and £750,000 directly to the party. The Metropolitan Police is currently investigating the majority of these donations. Cottrell has repeatedly declined to comment when approached by media outlets.
Fiona’s son George Cottrell – nicknamed “Posh George” – is part of Farage’s inner cadre, having been UKIP’s head of fundraising and later Farage’s chief of staff. George, who was previously convicted of wire fraud after being arrested by undercover U.S. agents while attending the 2016 National Republican Convention with Farage, has also provided direct financial support to the Reform premier.
Cottrell helped to fund Farage’s anti-immigration campaign videos in 2023 and 2024, supplied him with security, and allowed the Reform leader to use an office in his five-storey London townhouse, which overlooks Buckingham Palace. Farage didn’t declare these gifts, and falsely claimed that he hasn’t received any support from George since being elected to Parliament.
Reform and policy advisers associated with the party have proposed reducing taxes for the wealthiest, paid for by dramatic reductions in state benefits for lower-paid workers and the disabled.
Impermissible Donors
Another feature of Reform’s fundraising record is the vast number of impermissible donors who have attempted to give money to the party over its relatively short existence.
Reform has been forced to return donations worth more than £295,000, on 83 occasions, since its founding in 2019. Farage’s party had to reject more unlawful donations in 2025 than any other party, including donations from Monaco, Jersey, and Germany. The party ultimately had to give back £200,000, and their benefactors made up 18 of the 23 donors turned away by UK politicians or parties during the year.
Labour’s Response
Labour is in the process of introducing a new law that would set a £100,000 annual limit on the amount that foreign donors can give to political parties.
It’s unclear if Delo and Harborne’s latest donations will fall foul of the new rules, which are currently being debated by Parliament – given they have, at least until recently, been living in Hong Kong and Thailand respectively.
However, in the meantime, campaigners and MPs are urging Burnham’s administration to strengthen the legislation by introducing a £100,000-a-year cap on all donations – including from those based in the UK.
The government has been facing pressure from the trade union movement not to introduce a blanket cap, which would limit its extensive financial contributions to the Labour Party.
After donating his latest £36 million, Delo said that he wants to create “a level playing field” between Reform and other major political parties. However, the data shows that his and Harborne’s donations would tip the scales heavily in Reform’s favour.
Last year’s accounts for political parties, published by the Electoral Commission, revealed that Labour received £44.6 million, the Conservatives £30.9 million, and Reform £31.9 million. If Reform is able to receive the full £72 million, its 2026 income would likely be far ahead of the other parties.
Delo also cited Labour’s income from trade unions as a reason for his philanthropy. However, since 2020, Labour has received almost £43 million from the unions – whereas, in roughly the same period, Delo and Harborne will have given over £100 million to Reform.
What’s more, trade unions raise money from individual workers’ membership fees. The Trade Union Congress, a federation of trade unions across the UK, represents roughly 6.6 million people.
Speaking at the annual TUC conference in Brighton in September, its leader Paul Nowak said: “The evidence is clear: Reform UK is a party for sale. Nigel Farage is a politician for sale. And given half the chance, they’d sell our country down the river.
“Make no mistake, this is a crisis for our democracy. We cannot allow our political system to be captured by corporate interests.”
He said there was no similarity “between care workers chipping in a few quid a year through their union and a party bought and paid for by billionaires” – adding: “We need a proper conversation about how we clean up our politics that doesn’t push workers to the margins – but does stop the super-rich corrupting our politics.”
Article by Max Colbert republished from DeSmog.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Reform UK 2025 Ltd’s Nigel Farage says it’s probably best to forget to mention that their sposor made his mega-fortune facilitating serioius crime by providing global money-laundering services.
Nigel Farage is scathing at the £250,000 cost to the taxpayer of his unnecessary and ridiculous Clacton-on-Sea election campaign that he caused to avoid scrutiny and acccountability for the £5MILLION ‘gift’ that he didn’t declare.
13 October 2026
Polanski’s Greens created prime minister Burnham. Holborn could yet undo him
Spread the love
Article by Russell Warfield republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
Labour Party candidate Sagal Abdi-Wali takes a selfie with supporters | Toby Shepheard / AFP via Getty Images
Labour is celebrating the by-election result, but it must not misread a tight win for a total victory
Yesterday’s Holborn and St. Pancras by-election was the latest in this year’s trilogy of high-stakes by-elections. In June was Makerfield, when Andy Burnham successfully ran for Parliament to displace Keir Starmer as prime minister. But the vote that secured the path to his premiership came four months prior, in Gorton and Denton, when Labour’s National Executive Committee blocked Burnham from running. The Greens were victorious, pushing Labour into a distant third place. Had Reform, which came second, won that seat, the Starmer electoral strategy would have limped on: able to continue to tell itself that the path to 2029 victory lay in flipping mythical Labour-Reform swing voters. The NEC would not have reversed its decision to allow Burnham to run in June, and the Parliamentary Labour Party would have remained paralysed, seemingly incapable of acting to remove Starmer. Prime minister Burnham – and Labour’s leftward lurch – is a direct consequence of Zack Polanski, and the shock he delivered to Labour’s left.
If the Green wave crested at Gorton and Denton in February, the Holborn and St. Pancras by-election was framed as the rocks into which it risked crashing. At a surface level, critics have been vindicated by a Green loss, Polanski achieving 33% of the vote to Abdi-Wali’s 45. In one sense the Greens are a victim of their own staggering success: swelling to a peak of 22% in the polls early in the year, and pushing Labour and the Tories into third and fourth respectively. Burnham’s resulting rhetorical commitment to a break from neoliberalism goes beyond what even Jeremy Corbyn ever said as Labour leader. The effects unleashed within the volatile electorate (of which around 30-40% reliably vote for precisely what Burnham is promising) were predictable, hitting the Greens hard in the immediate term. It is commonly assumed, however, that Burnham’s honeymoon will not last forever as the gap between rhetoric and reality widens over time. One wonders how the result might have panned out a year from now. Or indeed, in just a couple of weeks, after a budget trailed to contain some of the proverbial “difficult decisions” which forever plague our ruling class.
Holborn and St Pancras, a seat that has been held by Labour since its creation in the early 1980s, was not an obvious target seat for the Greens. Had a by-election taken place in some of the capital’s other constituencies, such as Hackney or Lewisham, Polanski could have started recruiting parliamentary staff from the moment it was called, but he was never likely to win in Holborn. Nevertheless, in the face of the Burnham bounce and the damp squib of the Greens’ Manchester mayoral election earlier this summer, Polanski was compelled to recapture the initiative and throw his hat in the ring.
As a result, this by-election was the latest in a series elevated to the highest reaches of national politics. This one, however, has been subjected to a misreading. The prevailing narrative surrounding the poll was the question of whether the Greens would meet electoral oblivion. Could this be the end of Polanski?
In the mouths of opponents, the question took the form of wish fulfilment; politicians and pundits who spent the last year on studio sofas pining for the days that the Greens were friendlier, more serious, less angry, actually cared about the environment, or whatever else. The barely veiled subtext to all of these complaints was that they preferred the Greens when they languished at about 5% in the polls. For Polanski to be discussed as even having a political career to “end” is a new problem for a prominent Green, and a good problem to have, attendant upon the greater power and platform he has earned the party. At previous elections, the party’s leadership figures would often dutifully achieve a commendable fourth or third place, and carry on in the full expectation of running again next time in hope of improving their result; the future of their so-called political career was never called into question. Nor was it for Nigel Farage, who tried, and failed, to run for Parliament many times.
The future of Polanski and the Greens were not, however, the real stakes of this election. Instead, it was the future of the country. Given that Polanski was a necessary precondition of prime minister Burnham and his political programme, the ability of Labour (and the political class in general) to tell itself that the Green pressure from its left has been alleviated gives political space for Labour to revert to type: triangulation, capitulation and feeding the far right.
A Green victory would have benefitted the 30-40% of the country who want a proper break from Thatcherism: full nationalisations, wealth taxes and redistribution, rent controls and price caps. Burnham’s ambition is now compromised without an ascendant Green Party pushing him further, while the political centre of gravity has swung towards the most right-wing composition of the Parliamentary Labour Party in our lifetime. We now find ourselves in something like the alternative timeline in which Reform won in Gorton and Denton. Evidence of this will shortly present itself. The decision to approve new oil and gas drilling, for example, was reportedly delayed until after the by-election. If the government now gives it the green light, we will be given a decisive indication of its complacency regarding the electoral threat from its Green left.
Such complacency would be misplaced in the long run. In reality, the Greens remain in strong electoral contention. Yes, the party will have dared to dream about running Labour much closer. But to come within a few thousand votes of winning one of the safest Labour seats in the country, when Burnham is at his peak and the Greens arguably at their lowest ebb, is not the decisive vanquishing of Polanski of which his gleeful gravediggers are boasting. In 2024, the Greens won just 10% of the vote in this seat. Today, Polanski achieved a Green swing of 22% to triple the party’s vote share. In dozens of constituencies, a swing of that size would have resulted in a Green MP.
On the other side of the coin, Labour’s majority in the seat has been reduced by more than 6,000 votes, at the height of Burnham’s bounce. Labour will overlook that and be rightly pleased with this result. But it would be a mistake for the party to conclude that the threat from its left has been eliminated. If Labour reverts to isolating and ignoring the Greens, it will only strengthen Polanski’s position by the next general election.
Article by Russell Warfield republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
How the Greens are forcing Labour’s hand on Gaza
ByAndrew Feinstein 9 Oct 2026
A progressive alliance is now critical to counter a Farage government
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.
Ed Miliband claims that he and Andy Burnham have reformulated Blair’s triangulation strategy. Their new formulation entails acknowledging that they were wrong on Israel and Palestine but entails doing absolutely nothing about it and continuing exactly the same policies hoping that you’re too stupid to notice.
11 October 2026
AI Was Supposed to Cut Emissions. Instead, Fossil Fuel Companies Are Using It to Find More Oil and Gas.
Spread the love
Article by Sarah Hofmann republished from DeSmog.
Credit: Sarah Hofmann/arbyreed via Flickr (CC-BY-NC-2.0)
A new study found AI-driven fossil fuel productivity could increase emissions. Here are examples of companies already using AI to boost production.
When United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned world leaders last week in his UN address about the unchecked power of both Big Oil and artificial intelligence, he treated them as two of the defining challenges facing governments.
The fossil fuel industry is turning to AI to map seabeds, identify new oil reservoirs, assess oil wells’ “abandonment risks”, inspect facilities, and streamline regulatory processes, potentially adding to the emissions of an industry that Guterres said governments must move away from.
At the same time, the technology companies providing these AI tools are not generally held accountable for the additional fossil fuel production and emissions their products may enable.
“The danger is not technology,” Guterres told the UN General Assembly. “The danger is technology without accountability.”
A DeSmog review of company announcements, industry presentations, and other publicly available information found that, across major fossil fuel companies — Aramco, Chevron, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Shell, TotalEnergies and others — AI is increasingly being integrated into fossil fuel operations, from seismic exploration and drilling to equipment monitoring and field development.
The examples provide a real-world look at the mechanism behind a recent study published in Nature: that AI can increase emissions not only because of the electricity required to run data centers, but because it can make fossil fuel production more productive and profitable.
The study found that AI-driven productivity gains in fossil fuel production accounted for most of the modeled increase in global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. It estimated that AI could increase global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions by between 1.2 and 4.8 percent, with productivity gains in fossil fuel production accounting for most of that increase.
In one example of AI gains, Norwegian energy company Equinor re-scanned the Norwegian continental shelf with “new seismic technology and AI,” resulting in 27 new discoveries of oil, Hege Skryseth, the company’s executive vice president, chief technology officer, said during a June presentation for Equinor’s Capital Market Day.
“By reprocessing the data, the seismic image became much sharper, leading to the discoveries,” Skryseth said. “AI was key here, from automated data interpretation to efficient well planning.”
AI saved Equinor $130 million last year, according to a January 2026 press release.
Chevron is also using AI to produce oil that was “previously considered unreachable.”
In the oil company’s recently launched podcast — in which racing driver Tanner Foust and Chevron Chief Technology and Engineering Officer Ryder Booth chat from a pickup truck tailgate — Booth said that breakthroughs at Anchor, an oil and gas development, represented the “first time unlocking kind of a new horizon around the world.”
“AI, it’s attracted to big data and big opportunities, and the oil and gas industry has big data,” Booth said. Last year, Chevron said it had improved drilling and fracking efficiency in the Permian Basin by over 30 percent.
The value of these productivity gains is significant. A recent McKinsey & Co. report estimated that, for the upstream oil and gas sector, AI can generate $65 billion in profits annually in the short term, which could increase to $230 billion when the technology is deployed at its “full potential.”
AI-driven efficiency gains have already reduced operational costs by up to 18 percent; and industry executives attribute about 5 percent of their current revenue to “AI-driven initiatives,” according to a 2025 report from IBM, which has multiple partnerships with oil and gas companies.
‘Done in seconds and live-streamed’
At Equinor’s enormous Johan Sverdrup oil field in the North Sea, “data flows up from the ground faster than the oil,” the company’s site states, at the rate of “10,000 Netflix movies a second.”
The company is also using AI to optimize the placement of subsea equipment and wells.
“What used to take 2-3 weeks and involved flying hard disks to shore with helicopter for analysis can now be done in seconds and live-streamed,” Equinor said.
ExxonMobil is also embracing enormous datasets. In 2019, ExxonMobil partnered with Microsoft to use AI in its Permian Basin operations, a move Exxon said would “generate billions of dollars in value” and produce up to an additional “50,000 oil-equivalent barrels a day by 2025.”
The oil giant also said that gains in efficiency from advanced technologies, including AI, “is a first step” towards letting systems respond to events without human intervention.
Holly Alpine, a coauthor of the Nature study, said the significance of such partnerships is easy to miss when attention focuses on the emissions produced by powering AI systems.
“For some reason, tech companies are exempt from accountability for the tech they are creating,” she told DeSmog.
Alpine and her husband, Will Alpine, another author of the Nature study, previously worked for Microsoft, but left after coming to the conclusion that the company hid how its products were harming the climate. The couple then founded the Enabled Emissions Campaign, a nonprofit that calls attention to tech’s role in fossil fuel production and advocates for better regulations.
She said that now, oil companies like Exxon pumping 50,000 barrels a day is “actually quite a small deal.”
“The deals have only grown in size, and we realized that that was not part of Microsoft’s accountability whatsoever, even though they are the company creating the technology that is making this happen.”
A recent Reuters article about Exxon’s use of automated drilling in the Permian Basin, which said the company plans to increase production in the region to 2.5 million barrels a day, didn’t mention if Microsoft was still involved with the project; on Exxon’s website, references to Microsoft partnerships still link to the announcement from 2019.
Microsoft did not confirm whether it’s still partnering with Exxon on those operations, but the tech company is the leading cloud provider for the oil and gas industry, according to Kimberlite Research, followed by Amazon and Google.
Data Centers Are Intertwined with AI
Just two years ago, fossil fuels’ share of the world’s energy supply was projected to decline in coming years. Then, AI data centers began expanding rapidly, and with them, the argument that fossil fuels must scale up, too, for the U.S. to win the “AI arms race.”
At the same time, the fossil fuel and technology industries are becoming increasingly intertwined. AI data centers require enormous amounts of electricity, and natural gas supplies more than 40 percent of the power used by U.S. data centers, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
“AI’s advance will depend not only on the design labs of Silicon Valley, but also on the gas fields of the Permian Basin,” Mike Wirth, Chevron’s chairman and CEO, said in 2024.
In the face of power grid constraints, some data centers are turning to natural-gas power plants built onsite, a setup known as “behind-the-meter” generation, like Chevron’s Kilby project with Microsoft. U.S. data centers’ investments in new gas turbines recently surpassed the total investments of every country except the U.S., according to an IEA report.
Meanwhile, the oil and gas companies are benefiting both from using AI to increase efficiency, and from supplying the additional energy that its data centers demand.
AI and Net Zero Aims
Online, Microsoft promotes AI tools as a way to “accelerate the energy transition,” “reduce emissions,” and “accelerate climate innovation.”
Instead, AI may be having the opposite effect, prolonging our reliance on fossil fuels and delaying a broader transition to cleaner energy.
“In the absence of continuous reinvestment, oil and gas production would fall by approximately 8 percent annually,” the Nature paper says, quoting IEA reports, and “technological progress has repeatedly delayed ‘peak oil’ forecasts by unlocking resources previously considered un-viable.”
Equinor’s website recognizes the growing scarcity of oil reserves, noting that undersea oil and gas discoveries have dramatically declined in recent decades. “Even with planned projects, the (production) trend is downward,” it states. “Gently at first, but more noticeably if we don’t act fast to create new resource opportunities. This will affect value creation across Norway.”
Chevron’s Booth, meanwhile, says there’s still enough oil, “and technology and innovation will unlock that,” though he also admitted we would need all forms of energy to meet the world’s demand.
In spite of concerns about future scarcity, wartime windfalls and beneficial policies have recently brought record profits for major oil and gas companies, news reports show.
After the August Nature article showing that AI helps the fossil fuel industry create more pollution, Johanna Fornberg, a Greenpeace senior research specialist, said in a statement that, while Big Tech continues to promise that AI technologies will benefit humanity and offer climate solutions, “what is hidden from that story is the aggressive support tech companies provide to fossil fuel companies to continue producing oil and gas that harms communities and the climate.”
Microsoft says it plans to “become carbon negative by 2030,” though the company’s emissions increased by 25 percent last year, driven in part by expanding data centers, according to its 2026 Environmental Sustainability Report.
Microsoft’s 2025 Responsible AI Transparency Report also said that its enterprise contracts “incorporate our AI Services Code of Conduct, which requires our customers to implement responsible practices (such as human oversight and access controls) and prohibits using our AI services in ways that inflict harm on individuals, organizations, or society, or affects individuals in any way that is otherwise prohibited by law.”
Alpine said very little action is being taken to regulate the use of AI’s climate impacts. Microsoft announced in 2022 that it would only work in certain capacities with companies with net zero targets, she said, but “they don’t follow any standards for net zero.”
That principle, which is listed on Microsoft’s website, says the company may provide “technical or engineering resources to develop or co-develop specialized subsurface exploration and extraction services” or provide products at no cost to energy customers with goals to reach net zero Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 2050.
Exxon and Chevron have both walked back their plans to reach net zero by 2050, saying that necessary advancements in technology and policy that are beyond their control haven’t materialized. Exxon now says it’s on track to achieve net zero across its Permian Basin operations by 2035, while Chevron “continues to have the aspiration” to achieve net zero, but without a timeline.
Microsoft did not respond to a question about whether the changes to Exxon’s and Chevron’s net zero goals has affected the companies’ agreements. Chevron, Equinor, and Exxon also did not respond to requests for comment.
Equinor says it intends to become net zero by 2050 “as part of its commitment to do zero harm to people, the environment, and material assets.”
Article by Sarah Hofmann republished from DeSmog.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham says ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that he’s delayed the go-ahead for Jackdaw and Rosebank North Sea oil and gas extraction until after the Holborn and St. Pancras by-election – don’t want democracy interfering with Capitalism.
Donald Trump urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
4 October 2026
UK shares findings of damning climate crisis national security report suppressed under Starmer
Spread the love
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/23/uk-climate-crisis-national-security-report-suppressed-starmer-ed-miliband
Miliband at the UN security council on Wednesday. The UK’s foreign secretary later briefed fellow foreign ministers about the UK climate report. Photograph: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images
El Niño poses critical threat to nations’ defences, says Ed Miliband in presentation to global foreign ministers
The UK has warned countries around the world that the climate and nature crises and the coming El Niño threaten their national security and defence, presenting foreign ministries with the findings of an explosive report suppressed under Keir Starmer.
Ed Miliband, the UK’s foreign secretary, made a presentation to the foreign ministers of the EU as well as Kenya and other countries on Wednesday night at a private meeting during the UN general assembly in New York, based on the report by the UK’s spy chiefs that found the collapse of natural systems around the world would lead to conflict, migration and food shortages.
Miliband told the meeting, the first such discussion among foreign ministers, that the coming El Niño, which has been supercharged by climate breakdown, would test the world’s food systems as never before.
“We face an El Niño that is already set to be the most intense in living memory,” he said. “This will intensify climate shocks that compound and cascade across borders, threatening food and water security, displacing communities, putting pressure on markets and scarring economies.”
…
With the backing of Andy Burnham, the UK prime minister, Miliband presented the research that found the collapse of global ecosystems such as in the Amazon and Congo rainforests, driven by the climate crisis and the destruction of nature, would have impacts on national security around the world.
The joint intelligence committee (JIC) report, revealed by the Guardian, was scheduled to be published last October, but was suppressed on the eve of its launch by Downing Street. A redacted version was issued in January under the Freedom of Information Act, but ministers have continued to resist calls for the full report to be made public.
…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/23/uk-climate-crisis-national-security-report-suppressed-starmer-ed-miliband
Donald Trump urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts
and reality then.
24 September 2026
Greta Thunberg Is Taking Sweden to Court Over Climate Crisis Again
Spread the love
https://novaramedia.com/2026/09/22/greta-thunberg-is-taking-sweden-to-court-over-climate-crisis-again/
Greta Thunberg. Photograph: Peter Dejong/AP
Her youth-led group has raised more than £180k to fund the lawsuit.
Greta Thunberg and Swedish youth climate organisation Aurora are suing the Swedish government over its failures to tackle the climate crisis.
While Sweden has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions at a rate faster than the EU average, the country is not on track to meet its own target of net zero by 2045.
Thunberg said on Monday that Aurora has filed a second lawsuit, arguing that Sweden is failing in its legal duty to protect its citizens – especially children and the young – from the effects of climate change.
The group is demanding that Sweden take action to limit global warming to 1.5C by cutting emissions and protecting ecosystems like forests. A third demand involves accounting for emissions that it says are currently excluded from government calculations such as burning imported biomass.
“Sweden, as a rich country with high historical and current emissions, has a legal duty to lead the climate transition,” the group wrote in its fundraiser. “A safe and just world is still possible, but only if rich, high-emitting states like Sweden stop violating their duty to protect people from the devastation of the climate crisis, and start transforming their societies before 2030.”
…
Atrticle continues at https://novaramedia.com/2026/09/22/greta-thunberg-is-taking-sweden-to-court-over-climate-crisis-again/
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Donald Trump urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
24 September 2026