Top Environment and Energy Topics To Watch in 2026

Special Report: Environment and Energy Topics To Watch in 2026

 

In this 2026 Journalists’ Guide to Environment + Energy — the SEJournal’s 10th annual — we look ahead to the coming year’s news a bit differently than in the past. This time around, our discerning staff writer Joseph A. Davis, with thoughtful insight from fellow SEJournal editors and the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Editorial Advisory Board, has ranged through the vast environment and energy beats to produce a list of the big stories you’ll want on your radar. It’s a smart, rapid-fire read that will ready you for the year ahead. First, an introduction. Then, our top 15 topics to watch in 2026!

 

Introduction: Sea change or stalemate?

It’s not that our crystal ball is cloudy. It’s just that the smog, smoke and dust storms make it impossible to see that far ahead, and the hurricanes have knocked out our cable. 

Still, there will be more heat, more extreme storms, more wildfires, more power plants, more environmental injustice, more economic hardship … 

Donald Trump will remain president, which means industry will keep getting wins on the regulatory front and then face judicial review. Scientific research in areas like climate and environmental health will suffer near-obliteration. The term “environmental justice” will be deleted wherever it appears in governmental publications or grantee lists.

But reporters should also prepare for a possible sea change with the 2026 midterms that could end Republican control of one or both chambers of Congress, and bring Democrats back to the table on environment and energy … or create more stalemate.

The journalism about all this is changing, too. Big media conglomerations are consolidating further. Nonprofit outlets are kicking corporate butt, but yearning for audience. Freelancers are multiplying like bunnies. And everybody has a Substack.

The boundaries of the environment and energy beat are shifting as well. There have been big changes at the climate desks of major national papers like The New York Times and The Washington Post. What used to be called the environment desk at WaPo became the climate desk — and ultimately was combined with the business section to become “futures.” 

All while petrochemical plants continue to poison the poor people living along their fencelines.

 

2026 Journalists’ Guide — Top 15 Topics to Watch

 

1

Climate Change

Even though COP30 in Brazil didn’t achieve much in reducing actual greenhouse gas emissions, climate treaty talks will continue — and continue to be indecisive and unproductive. The transition from fossil energy to green energy (solar panels and wind turbines) will nonetheless continue as well. But more slowly, driven first of all by profitability. China will lead the U.S. in installing and exporting green energy. Atmospheric concentrations of key greenhouse gases will continue to grow. Climate-driven extreme weather disasters will increase. | MORE

 

2

EPA Enforcement

You can expect less enforcement of the laws against air, water and waste pollution. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin in March 2025 announced that he was setting up an address to which companies could simply email a request to be exempted from certain hazardous air pollution laws for two years. Many did. Environmental groups later sued. Grist reported in May that enforcement by the EPA had “all but stopped.” The Washington Post in November reported that EPA enforcement cases were way down. Keeping up with the Trump 2.0 EPA’s lagging enforcement will remain a story. | MORE

 

3

EPA Deregulation

Trump EPA Administrator Zeldin on March 12 loudly announced “31 historic actions in the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history.” Hard to top. But most of those deregulatory actions are still incomplete, and most will get tangled in years of lawsuits. Because (de)regulations must be finalized first, most of those court battles haven’t even started yet. Releasing them in one big group distracted people from the lurid details. And there will be more. This, too, is a megastory. Focus on the individual actions (all 31-plus). One decent deregulation tracker is from Brookings (although it looks at all agencies). Others are from Columbia Law School, the Climate Action Campaign and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. | MORE

 

4

Endangerment Finding

The EPA will try to rescind the “endangerment finding” that undergirds any rules for controlling greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. After the Supreme Court authorized it in 2007, the Obama EPA in 2009 found that climate heating did indeed endanger health. Most EPA climate controls (and efforts to undo them) have nonetheless been stalled by lawsuits. The Trump EPA’s rulemaking to repeal the finding has been challenged as bad science by authoritative groups like the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine — but the rulemaking and court challenges will play out during 2026 and beyond. | MORE

 

5

Press Freedom

You can expect Trump 2.0 will continue to try to curtail freedom of press and speech in coming years. Worst case would be an attempt to get the Supreme Court to repeal the 1964 landmark Times v. Sullivan decision that set a high bar for libel judgments. That’s a long shot. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from flinging a $15 billion suit against The Wall Street Journal and a $10 billion suit against The New York Times for printing things that were true. These have failed. But they leave us with wisdom: The aggravation is the point. Trump’s Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr has signaled that the effort to silence Trump critics can take other routes. Although Jimmy Kimmel is back. For now. | MORE

 

6

Data Centers

Artificial intelligence may be the second coming — or an overhyped stock-selling gimmick. Or both. What’s sure is that lots of huge data centers are being built and that their hunger for gigawatts is reversing much of the recent progress toward ending fossil energy. Not all of those data centers are for AI, either. The Trump White House in September ballyhooed his woo-woo “Stargate” powerplant-building project with a three-year price tag of $400 billion. Few in Congress have started asking whether it’s a ruse to build more fossil power. Or whether the data extravaganza will mostly benefit Trump’s multibillionaire buddies. Or whether Trump himself is positioned to profit from it. | MORE

 

7

NOAA Budget

Both chambers of Congress have already signaled through their appropriations panels that they are disinclined to take the ax to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA does a big portion of the basic U.S. climate science research. The Trump 2.0 agenda, as declared in Project 2025, didn’t call for eliminating NOAA — only for downsizing it, breaking it up and “reduction of bloat.” And giving away its priceless, lifesaving data to private weather companies. Turns out NOAA does a lot of things people care about, from supporting fisheries to warning about storm surge. None of this means Trump won’t find other ways to hamstring NOAA. | MORE

 

8

Roadless Rule

Way back in the Clinton era, the U.S. Forest Service issued a rule forbidding logging in the wildest forest areas: the ones that were roadless. Some 58 million acres worth. The Trump 2.0 USFS has proposed revoking the rule. At issue are areas like Alaska's vast Tongass National Forest, where the local logging industry wants to keep logging. The repeal rulemaking has barely begun and the resulting lawsuits will last well beyond 2026. Right now, demand for U.S. timber, as well as U.S. logging activity, are relatively low. | MORE

 

9

Bird Decline

Have you noticed that there are way fewer birds around? Biologists have. It’s a real thing. Really. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology says nearly 3 billion birds have disappeared from the United States and Canada since 1970. Turns out the causes are complex: habitat loss, agriculture, window collisions, cats, pesticides, disease and more. Wind turbines are the least of it. The solutions, while possible, are not easy. They may be found all along migratory birds’ long paths. | MORE

 

10

Insect Decline

Insect populations, too, are declining globally, scientists say. Before you start cheering and scratching your mosquito bites, remember that insects (and arthropods) provide a lot of ecological services. Pollination, feeding birds, feeding a lot of other animals in the food chain. Cleaning up messes left by other species, including us. They are important because there are a lot more insects than other species. The causes are many, but start with pesticides. | MORE

 

11

Climate Migration

People leave their homes for many reasons, and climate change is one of them. The problem is harder to see because other forces create refugees at the same time: war, starvation, oppression and disaster. Climate is often a contributor to these other forces. Hundreds of thousands left New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Many didn't come back. When people flee across international borders, the current laws make it hard to treat them as “refugees” who have a right to sanctuary. But not all cross international borders. California’s Central Valley is home to many Oklahomans who came during the Dust Bowl. Tens of thousands in the Horn of Africa can’t go anywhere. So they die. | MORE

 

12

Environmental Justice

Environmental injustice will continue in 2026 — but the EPA and other agencies will not be addressing it. Trump 2.0 has defunded or repealed virtually all federal actions related to environmental justice. The EPA has fired or reassigned all staff and disbanded all offices working on it. The agency has also rescinded some 781 environmental justice grants (all it could), although the exact dollar count is unclear. It’s in the billions, likely more than $16 billion. A federal appeals court blocked a lower court’s clawback order, although a Supreme Court appeal hasn’t happened yet. | MORE

 

13

Youth Climate Suits

Many heartstrings were plucked back in 2015 when we saw the first climate lawsuit brought by young people whose future was at stake. It was Juliana vs. United States. Eventually, they lost in the Supreme Court (although they have moved on to international courts). That was a decade ago, and that one case has made headlines for all that time. The news for 2026: It’s not over. During that decade, a platoon of other youth climate suits have been filed in state and federal courts using many different arguments. So we know it will still be news in 2026 — if only because of the group called Our Children’s Trust, which has launched quite a few of them. | MORE

 

14

Seabed Mining

Some parts of the deep ocean floor are littered with polymetallic nodules containing manganese, nickel, copper and cobalt. These are important for emerging energy technologies. Most are beneath international waters. The International Seabed Authority, set up under the Law of the Sea Treaty, has long been trying to come up with rules to limit potential damage to ecosystems. Trying and failing. It may try again in 2026. The United States has not signed the Law of the Sea Treaty. Trump has signalled intent to go ahead with mining unilaterally. | MORE

 

15

PFAS “Forever Chemicals”

This family of over 15,000 chemicals is part of our economy because they do not break down for a long time. They are not just forever — they are everywhere. Many are toxic if the dose is sustained or high enough. They end up in people’s drinking water, for example, polluting people’s groundwater wells near air bases that use PFAS firefighting foam. Under Biden, the EPA finally issued rules for limiting a few of them in public drinking water. Removing them is quite expensive. But under Trump 2.0, the EPA has moved to make the rules even less stringent. The court cases won’t start until after the EPA has finalized its rollback. For those, tune in next year. | MORE

 

Parting thoughts

Prospects for ongoing legislative inaction will be strong as long as Trump 2.0 holds the White House. The outcomes of these and many other environmental struggles will depend a lot on the outcomes of the 2026 midterm elections. If Democrats gain back either chamber, Trump-proposed legislation is likely to fail. But as long as Trump retains the veto, Dems may not be able to advance their own agenda, although regaining either chamber will likely inspire Dems to hold a lot of tough oversight hearings.

[Editors Note: To keep up with the latest on these and more issues, visit the SEJournal for new stories each Wednesday, and check EJToday for weekday headlines each morning. Plus, peruse our 10 Topics on the Beat pages and our past Special Reports.]

Joseph A. Davis is a freelance writer/editor in Washington, D.C. who has been writing about the environment since 1976. He writes SEJournal Online's TipSheet, Reporter's Toolbox and Issue Backgrounder, and curates SEJ's weekday news headlines service EJToday and @EJTodayNews. Davis also directs SEJ's Freedom of Information Project and writes the WatchDog opinion column.

---

* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 10, No. 44. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.