(1) Presentation by Prof. OBI Michiyo“Current State of Decarbonization in the United States: The Texas Paradox and Partisan Rhetoric in Renewable Energy”

(a) The Global Climate Change Challenges and U.S. Carbon Emissions

The global emissions gap remains substantial. Even if the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement were fully implemented, the world would still fall short of the emissions pathways needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C or 2°C above preindustrial levels. The basic mitigation strategy combines electrification with decarbonization of the power sector, since electrification does not reduce emissions if the electricity is generated from fossil fuels.

U.S. electricity generation grew until the late 2000s, plateaued, and has been rising again since around 2020. Even so, U.S. energy-related CO₂ emissions fell slightly, from about 5,038 million metric tons in 1990 to about 4,904 million metric tons in 2025, although generation in 2025 was roughly 1.5 times higher. This is attributable mainly to the shift since the late 2000s from coal to natural gas, which emits less CO₂ emissions per kilowatt-hour, and, more recently, to the growth of renewables.

(b) The Politicization of Climate Policy in the United States

Climate policy and decarbonization have become a front in the “culture wars” and strongly reflect political polarization, although this is a relatively recent phenomenon. Federal policy, however, has long swung sharply with each change between Democratic and Republican administrations. President Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol, but President George W. Bush formally announced U.S. withdrawal. On the Paris Agreement, President Obama announced ratification together with China, contributing to its entry into force earlier than expected; the first Trump administration announced withdrawal soon after taking office; the Biden administration rejoined; and the second Trump administration has withdrawn again. The second Trump administration has also withdrawn from many other international institutions, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), distancing itself from international cooperation in more areas than the first.

Domestic policy shows the same pattern. The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was a large-scale climate package supporting decarbonization and clean-energy investment, but the second Trump administration scaled back or altered many IRA-related provisions through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). Yet while partisan conflict is stark at the federal level, clean-energy investment under the IRA has been pursued actively in several Republican-dominant states, so developments at the state level do not always follow party lines.

(c) Renewable Energy Growth and the “Texas Paradox”

The U.S. electricity mix is changing substantially. Natural gas has grown while coal has declined, but renewables have recently grown even more. Renewables supplied 30.2 percent of U.S. electricity in the first half of 2026, up from 27.8 percent a year earlier. Since 2024, solar, battery storage, and wind have accounted for more than 90 percent of new utility-scale capacity, showing that new investment is shifting despite continuing political conflict over decarbonization.

Texas illustrates this apparent contradiction most clearly. Although the state is strongly Republican and Governor Greg Abbott has been critical of renewable energy, Texas leads the nation in renewable generation, at about 200 TWh (200 million MWh), or 33.5 percent of the state’s electricity—more than double that of second-ranked California (88 TWh). It ranks first in wind and second in solar overall, but first in utility-scale solar. Including battery storage, it also led all other states in new clean-power capacity in the first quarter of 2026 by a wide margin.

(d) Factors behind the Growth of Renewable Energy in Texas

Texas’s renewable expansion has been driven not by climate-motivated decarbonization policy but by three factors: electricity market reform, transmission infrastructure, and market entry by large technology companies pursuing decarbonization. In 1999, Texas deregulated its electricity market and introduced a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), which requires utilities to supply a set share of their electricity from renewables. From 2005, the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) initiative built transmission lines linking wind-rich West Texas and the Panhandle to major urban demand centers. This lowered barriers to new wind projects and laid the groundwork for later renewable growth.

Major tech companies such as Google, Amazon, and Tesla have also developed renewable projects in Texas to advance their own decarbonization goals. The state’s business-friendly economic environment, including the absence of a corporate income tax, has encouraged energy-intensive facilities to locate there. These conditions explain why renewables continue to expand rapidly even amid hostile political rhetoric on climate policy.

(e) The Rapid Expansion of Data Centers and Public Backlash

The rapid expansion of data centers in the United States is creating new challenges for the electricity market. Data centers require large and reliable power supplies, and gas-fired power proposals linked to them nearly doubled, from about 97 GW in 2025 to 189 GW in the first half of 2026. Texas has seen the largest increase in gas-fired capacity under development of any state. The expansion of AI and data centers is thus creating pressure for both additional renewables and more natural-gas generation.

Meanwhile, public attitudes toward data centers have deteriorated rapidly. Across party lines, a growing share of Americans blame data centers for rising electricity prices. Criticism is especially strong among younger people, and the perception that AI threatens jobs is also spreading. Supporters argue that data centers are essential to the AI revolution, economic growth, and competition with China. Critics point to heavy electricity and water use, higher utility bills, large land requirements, and limited job creation. More than 500 counties and municipalities have already adopted measures to restrict or block new data centers.

The response in Texas shows how quickly the situation has shifted. In November 2025, Governor Abbott welcomed Google’s $40 billion investment in three AI data-center campuses and positioned Texas as a hub of AI development. In June 2026, however, he reversed course, calling for data centers to bear the full cost of power infrastructure and for tax incentives to be phased out. In August 2026, he ordered audits of grid-connection requests, and approvals of large-scale projects have effectively been frozen until after the November midterm elections. This shift is not limited to Texas; data centers are becoming a major issue in the midterm elections.

(f) Perception Gaps Regarding Decarbonization

Several “perception gaps” shape U.S. debates over decarbonization. Fossil fuels are seen as a driver of economic growth, which favors expanding their use, but also as a source of the greenhouse gases behind climate change, which favors reducing or ending their use. They are also increasingly viewed through an energy-security lens, given vulnerability to international developments such as the Strait of Hormuz crisis and the war in Ukraine. Energy security itself can mean expanding domestic fossil-fuel production, or expanding renewables, which require no imports and are not affected by global supply-chain disruptions. Data centers and AI are seen as essential to technological innovation and economic growth, yet data centers in particular are increasingly regarded as a locally unwelcome “nuisance” facility, bringing noise, water consumption, and higher electricity bills, a view that now cuts across party lines. Because new data centers tend to increase natural-gas generation, which undermines decarbonization, it will be important to watch which perceptions are reflected in policy.

(2) Presentation by Prof. Mary Alice Haddad“Politically Resilient: U.S.-Japan Environmental Cooperation at the Subnational Level”

(a) Changing Federal Language, Continuing Areas of Cooperation

U.S.-Japan environmental cooperation under Trump 2.0 remains more resilient than national political change alone might suggest, particularly at the subnational level. The most visible change has been in the language of policy. Biden-era discourse emphasized climate, decarbonization, net zero, and clean energy, while Trump 2.0 stresses energy security, advanced technology, domestic production, and supply chains, with critical minerals common to both. Many initiatives have continued, reframed around energy security, technology, industrial policy, and economic competitiveness.

(b) Resilience and Reframing in Bilateral Agreements

Bilateral agreements show a mixed but generally resilient picture. Some Biden-era initiatives, such as the Clean Energy and Energy Security Initiative and floating offshore wind cooperation, face uncertain prospects. By contrast, carbon-recycling cooperation continues under the label of carbon management, hydrogen and ammonia cooperation has expanded around energy security and supply chains, and the fusion-energy partnership has grown substantially. Cooperation on marine plastics and the circular economy, and the U.S. Mission Japan’s carbon-free operations, also appear to continue.

Trump 2.0 has also produced new or expanded cooperation in areas matching its priorities: fast-reactor fuel, advanced fuel cycles, advanced nuclear and small modular reactors (SMRs), strategic energy investment, a critical minerals action plan, and e-scrap and critical-mineral recycling. This suggests not the end of environmental and energy cooperation, but a shift toward sectors framed in terms of energy security, strategic technology, supply chains, and domestic industrial capacity.

(c) Japan-California Cooperation as a Subnational Platform

Japan-California cooperation is a prominent example of subnational environmental engagement. Their 2022 memorandum of cooperation covered a broad range of issues, including climate, renewable energy, zero-emission vehicles, and high-speed rail. Cooperation has continued beyond 2025, through initiatives such as the Port of Hueneme-NYK green shipping corridor and rail decarbonization cooperation. Even as federal political framing changes, state-level relationships sustain practical cooperation.

The Lancaster, California-Namie, Fukushima relationship is another important case. In 2021, the two municipalities established a “Smart Sister Cities” partnership centered on hydrogen. The 2023 Pacific Hydrogen Alliance linked Namie and Lancaster with Hawaiʻi, and comparable municipal collaborations have connected Kobe with Aberdeen and Tsukuba with Columbus.

When Trump took office in 2025, his administration canceled a number of key sources of funding, including $1.2 billion to the city that had previously been awarded through the Department of Energy. In spite of these cuts in federal funding, the hydrogen project and Lancaster’s connections to Namie have continued to grow.

In 2024 Lancaster established a public hydrogen corporation that helped facilitate public-private partnerships and corporate investment such as the $1.8 billion committed in 2026 by TX-based Element Resources. Lancaster’s model served as inspiration for Namie Mirai Energy, which was established in 2026. Lancaster’s relationship with Namie has also deepened through regular visits and student exchanges, and cooperation has broadened to economic and workforce development, showing how municipal cooperation is expanding into wider corporate and infrastructure networks.

(d) Broader Subnational Cooperation under Trump 2.0

Since 2025, subnational U.S.-Japan environmental and energy initiatives have continued across many regions. Examples include California-Japan rail cooperation and a 2026 memorandum; an expanded Hawaiʻi-Okinawa clean-energy memorandum; Louisiana-Japan low-carbon ammonia cooperation involving Mitsui; Tennessee-Hitachi grid modernization; Alabama’s SMR cooperation with GE Hitachi; and expansion of the Texas-Japan Hydrogen Forum. Collaboration is thus distributed across states, prefectures, municipalities, and companies rather than depending solely on national climate diplomacy.

U.S. corporate projects in Japanese localities form another layer of this network. These include SGH2 Energy’s carbon-negative hydrogen in Yamanashi, Amazon’s solar projects in Fukushima, Ube, and Hokkaido, and Google-JERA cooperation in Inzai on clean energy for data centers. The U.S.-Japan environmental relationship increasingly operates through overlapping public, private, and local networks.

(e) Energy Efficiency, Data Centers, and New Power Demand

One important lever for decarbonization is reducing total energy consumption through efficiency. Many current data-center investments run counter to this by creating large new electricity loads. At the same time, U.S. tech companies entering Japan are investing in new energy supply, mainly solar but also geothermal and hydrogen, to meet part of the demand they add to the Japanese grid.
U.S.-Japan cooperation on advanced nuclear and SMRs is also active, including plans to power data centers. However, there is not yet clear evidence that such projects are operating in either country. Assessing how quickly new technologies are changing the energy system requires distinguishing active cooperation from actual deployment.

(f) “Feathered Diplomacy” between Buffalo and Kanazawa

The Buffalo-Kanazawa sister-city relationship offers an example of environmental cooperation that does not center on large tech companies or energy-intensive infrastructure. Sister cities since 1962, Buffalo and Kanazawa have long maintained cultural and high-school exchanges. In 2026, they received support to develop a pilot model called “Feathered Diplomacy.” Both cities lie along migratory-bird routes and have active bird-watching and bird-related tourism, creating opportunities to involve civil-society groups such as the Wild Bird Society of Japan and the Audubon Society.
This case shows that U.S.-Japan environmental cooperation can remain resilient when rooted in durable local relationships, civil society, and shared community interests, even as national political language and federal priorities change.