DeBriefed 14 March 2025: US’s ‘moral case for fossil fuels’; Rainforest felled for ‘COP30 road’; Myanmar’s energy crisis

Carbon Neutral Regulation in AI Training

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed. An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change. This week US ‘180-degree pivot’ ‘SIDE EFFECT’: US energy secretary Chris Wright promised a “180-degree pivot” on climate policy while speaking in front of oil and gas executives, the New York Times reported. Addressing an industry conference in Houston, […]

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AI avatar generators have become useful tools for streaming and other forms of AI content creation, such as enhancing presentations, automating video production, or establishing a unique on-screen persona. These platforms enable creators to generate high-quality virtual presenters, complete with realistic facial expressions, synchronized voiceovers, and multilingual capabilities. Whether you are a live streamer, a […]

China’s climate ambition at this year’s “two sessions” (两会), which ended on 11 March, was relatively subdued, with analysts expecting economic concerns to trump climate action in the year ahead. The “two sessions”, which takes place every spring, is a major political event held in Beijing that gives an indication of China’s broad policy direction […]

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Bria, a trailblazing enterprise visual generative AI platform, has secured $40 million in Series B funding, pushing its total capital raised to $65 million. The funding round was led by Red Dot Capital, with contributions from Maor Investment, Entree Capital, GFT Ventures, Intel Capital, In-Venture, and additional support from J-Venture, Z-Venture Capital, Atinum Investment, and […]

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Ofir Krakowski is the co-founder and CEO of Deepdub. With 30 years of experience in computer science and machine learning, he played a key role in founding and leading the Israeli Air Force’s machine learning and innovation department for 25 years. Deepdub is an AI-driven dubbing company that leverages deep learning and voice cloning to […]

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A visit to OL3 in 2020 (image credit: IAEA Imagebank, CC BY 2.0 license). A leakage of reactor coolant has occurred at the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant on the west coast of Finland, according to the operator of the plant, Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) in a 10 March statement. Around 100m3 of reactor coolant* was […]

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Ross McLory (left) Head of Business Development for Industrial and Commercial at SSE Energy Solutions and Donald MacBrayne, Business Development Manager at Scottish Water Horizons (image credit: Iain Ferguson, The Write I). A new strategic partnership between SSE Energy Solutions and Scottish Water Horizons aims to develop low-carbon district heat networks across Scotland, accelerating the […]

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Collecting clothing for recycling (image credit: Getty Images/Maskot). More systematic waste prevention strategies are needed to achieve regional and national sustainability goals in Scandinavia, according to a new report. It outlines practical measures to strengthen the circular economy in the Nordics, with a particular focus on waste prevention and reuse. The Nordic Council of Ministers […]

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If 2022 was the year that generative AI captured a wider public’s imagination, 2025 is the year where the new breed of generative video frameworks coming from China seems set to do the same. Tencent’s Hunyuan Video has made a major impact on the hobbyist AI community with its open-source release of a full-world video […]

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In 2022, Randall Pietersen, a civil engineer in the U.S. Air Force, set out on a training mission to assess damage at an airfield runway, practicing “base recovery” protocol after a simulated attack. For hours, his team walked over the area in chemical protection gear, radioing in geocoordinates as they documented damage and looked for […]

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AI has been replete with false claims since its inception, fueled in part by a widespread knowledge gap. Those without a technical background may struggle to distinguish between terms like generative AI, symbolic AI, or Agentic AI, and we’ve seen technology companies take advantage of this by claiming to offer capabilities they don’t actually provide. […]

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Fraud and cybersecurity threats are escalating at an alarming rate. Businesses lose an estimated 5% of their annual revenue to fraud. The digital transformation of financial services, e-commerce, and enterprise security has created new vulnerabilities that cybercriminals exploit with increasing sophistication. Traditional security measures, which rely on static rule-based systems, often fail to keep up […]

We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight. This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here. Key developments Trump’s logging orders IF A TREE FALLS: US president Donald Trump last week signed a pair of […]

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Concerns about AI replacing humans – especially in the workplace – are not new. Many AI skeptics point to signs of the transforming workforce as justification for their hesitations around AI, like the 40% of companies that plan to reduce their workforces as AI capabilities expand. Statistics like this aren’t cause for concern – they […]

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Be sure to check out the previous articles in this series: •

The UK’s greenhouse gas emissions fell by 3.6% in 2024 as coal use dropped to the lowest level since 1666, the year of the Great Fire of London, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Major contributions came from the closure of the UK’s last coal-fired power station in Nottinghamshire and one of its last blast […]

UN Photo/ICJ-CIJ/ Frank van Beek This blog post is Part 3 of a three-part series highlighting the main legal arguments presented during the hearings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the request for an advisory opinion regarding the obligations of States with respect to climate change. Part 1 focused on discussions on applicable […]

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A product for the removal of micro-pollutants from wastewater is the Overall Winner of the Aquatech Innovation Award 2025. Aurea from consulting engineers Royal HaskoningDHV was developed in the Netherlands, and its selection for this award followed an independent review led by jury chairman Professor Cees Buisman, Scientific Director of Wetsus, a European centre of […]