As a yearslong stalemate in negotiations persists between the seven states that share the river, it’s become increasingly likely that the federal government will impose its own long-term plan, choosing from a range of proposals officials have outlined in recent months.

But experts and water managers across the 250,000-square-mile Colorado River basin are raising the alarm about the five plans, questioning if any of them hold up under the new climate reality. They say the federal plans won’t keep the system from crashing in critically dry years — which are becoming more frequent — and could wreak chaos on the pivotal lifeline for 40 million people in the American Southwest.

“In every one of those alternatives, under what they call critically dry hydrology, the system is failing,” said Andy Mueller, the general manager of , a taxpayer-funded agency based in Glenwood Springs that works to protect Western Slope water. “And critically dry hydrology is what we have continued to see consistently in the basin in the last 25 years and what we should expect going forward.”

Climate change and persistent drought have already sapped hundreds of billions of gallons of water from the river’s annual flow. Officials from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Friday to add more water to Lake Powell — one of the system’s two major reservoirs downstream of the river’s headwaters in the Colorado mountains — after updated projections showed that spring flows into the already-low reservoir could be less than a third of average.

Federal water managers over the next year will release hundreds of millions of gallons of water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Wyoming and Utah to keep Lake Powell above “minimum power pool” — the reservoir elevation needed to send water through hydropower turbines. Without access to the turbines, water released from the dam must flow through much smaller bypass tubes that are , choking flow from one of the West’s largest water banks.

Emergency decisions like those taken Friday illustrate some of the risks of failing to prepare for intense drought, experts say.

In extremely dry years, the longer-term plans under consideration by Reclamation would allow the water levels of the system’s two main reservoirs to repeatedly fall below minimum power pool. Federal officials then would be forced to make recurring emergency cuts to the water supplies of the three states downstream of the reservoirs, creating uncertainty for millions of people and a massive agricultural industry.

For more than two years, negotiators from the seven states that rely on the river have tried and failed to agree on that runs from Colorado’s high country to Mexico. The technical nitty-gritty of the disputes is wonky, but the key issue underlying the schism between the states is simple: Who should be forced to use less water — and how much less — as the Colorado River’s flows shrink?

Reclamation officials on Friday said they are preparing to implement their own plan this summer if the states can’t agree on answers to those questions. In January, federal officials released five potential operational guidelines — called “alternatives” in federal jargon — and asked for input.

They , including critiques from across the basin asserting that none of their plans would function well in dry years. That criticism also applied to the only plan the Bureau of Reclamation can implement without consensus from the basin states or without gaining new legal powers.

Letters from a number of Colorado entities — including the , , the Western Slope’s and county commissions from a vast swath of the state — urged federal officials to present at least one plan that would hold up in extremely dry years.

“Sound science dictates that Colorado River management must evolve to handle a permanently drier future,” Tina Bergonzini, the general manager of the Grand Valley Water Users Association, . “The current federal preference for predictability is an atmospheric impossibility given that studies indicate rising temperatures have already slashed river flows by a fifth.”

Bureau of Reclamation officials declined an interview request for this story. But they have publicly acknowledged the risk.

“In critically dry periods, all of the alternatives have unacceptable performance,” bureau engineer Rebecca Smith said during . Even imposing large cuts to water usage in those years would not keep the major reservoirs at functional levels, she said.

The conflict on the Colorado is likely one of the world’s first major water policy overhauls to grapple with the reality of climate change, said , a senior water and climate research scholar at Colorado State University’s .

In the past, Colorado River managers made operational tweaks and short-term deals to address drought. This time, it’s different.

“We’re not looking at an incremental step here,” Udall said. “We’re looking at a complete redo of how we operate this resource that affects 40 million people.”

‘Downright scary what����ap going on’

The West first wrestled with divvying up the powerful Colorado River in 1922, when delegates from each of the seven states met in Santa Fe and signed .

At its most basic, the compact divides up the 18 million acre-feet of water then estimated to be in the river — including 7.5 million acre-feet reserved for the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico, and 7.5 million acre-feet for the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada. An acre-foot of water is the volume of water it takes to cover an acre of land in a foot of water — about 326,000 gallons — and is generally considered the annual water consumption of two families.

The 18 million acre-feet was likely an overestimation of how much water there was even a century ago, but today’s river provides even less than the total amounts promised to states in 1922.

“Since 2000, the flows have been radically different,” Udall said.

The 20-year average annual flow measured in 1925 was 17.6 million acre-feet, Bureau of Reclamation data show. In 2025, it was 12.7 million acre-feet.

But even that number hides the reality of recent dry years. The five-year average amounts to only 10.9 million acre-feet. Last year’s flow measured at 8.5 million acre-feet.

This year will be even lower due to record-low snowpack across much of the basin.

The conditions this year are not a one-off, Udall said, but symptoms of a larger warming trend fueled by human-caused global climate change. Hotter temperatures not only increase water loss through evaporation but also make plants and soils thirstier, reducing the amount of water that flows downstream. Evidence is also piling up indicating that climate change is reducing precipitation across the Colorado River’s headwaters, Udall said.

“I think this is quite nerve-racking — and perhaps just downright scary — what����ap going on,” he said.

The Bureau of Reclamation acknowledges the likelihood of a hotter, drier future in its draft environmental impact statement, though it shies away from using the term climate change.

“The basin is experiencing increased aridity due to climate variability, and long-term drought and low-runoff conditions are expected in the future,” the document’s executive summary states.

Expect more critically dry years

Future hydrology is the biggest and most impactful uncertainty federal officials must reckon with while crafting plans for the river, Smith said in the January webinar.

The bureau modeled hundreds of potential future conditions and then compared how each of its five proposed plans would perform under different levels of river flow over the next 20 years, broken into three categories:

• Average (12-14 million acre-feet average over 20 years)
• Dry (10-12 million acre-feet average over 20 years)
• Critically dry (less than 10 million acre-feet average over 20 years)

If average flows over the next two decades fall in the “average” category, the plans generally would be able to keep Lakes Powell and Mead — the two big downstream reservoirs — above critical levels and eliminate the need for emergency reductions in water supplies to keep them functional.

But that’s not how recent years have gone.

Since 2020, Colorado River flows have fallen into Reclamation’s “critically dry” category in four of six water years. The repeated dry years, coupled with downstream consumption that has not changed to match the reduction in inflow, have and Mead, which are now less than a third full.

“Critically dry hydrology is what we have continued to see consistently in the basin and what we should expect going forward,” said Mueller, from the Colorado River District.

Between 2021 and 2025, the river’s flows averaged 11.2 million acre-feet — low enough to fall into Reclamation’s dry hydrology category. That average was boosted by the unusually wet 2023 year when the river delivered 17.4 million acre-feet of water, while most of the other years fell into the critically dry category.

As modeled by the bureau, if critically dry years continue, Powell and Mead will more often fall so low that their will become unusable, impacting power availability for more than 1 million people. Bureau officials would more often be forced to implement emergency water cuts to try to keep the reservoirs functional.

In , the Colorado River District urged officials to add an alternative plan that would function well in critically dry periods.

“The population of the state of Colorado and the entire Colorado River basin is best served by the Department of the Interior studying alternatives that actually bring the system into balance,” Mueller said, referring to the cabinet department above the bureau. “And recognizing that those management alternatives will have some extremely harsh realities — hydrologically and politically — up and down the basin. But that����ap what we’re best served by.”

Bureau of Reclamation’s most likely plan

Without a deal between the seven states or obtaining more legal authority from Congress or the states, federal officials will be forced to implement a plan dubbed “Basic Coordination.”

The plan mandates the least cuts for the Lower Basin states and is generally less flexible than the other proposals.

In dry periods under that plan, Lakes Powell and Mead could fall below minimum power pool 30% to 40% of the time, according to Bureau of Reclamation projections. In critically dry periods, that figure rises to more than 70%.

The federal agency estimates that Lake Powell will be vulnerable to falling below that level in the first five years under the Basic Coordination plan if the average annual flows in that period amount to less than 11.3 million acre-feet. The five-year average has fallen below that level in three of the last five years.

If the federal government enacts the Basic Coordination plan, the bureau will keep scrambling to make emergency decisions to ensure Powell and Mead are operable. Such decisions could involve cuts to Lower Basin water supplies or the sending of water from federally-managed reservoirs upstream — like Flaming Gorge or Colorado’s Blue Mesa — to keep enough water in Powell.

Federal officials could also seek water from other water sources the government owns or operates in Colorado, Mueller said, such as from irrigation projects on the Western Slope or , which delivers Colorado River water across the Continental Divide to northeastern Colorado.

“Legal uncertainty and hydrologic uncertainty would erupt,” he said. “We, as good water managers throughout our state and the basin, should try to avoid that.”

Under the Basic Coordination plan, reactive chaos will erode what certainty remains on the changing river, said , the regional policy manager for , a climate advocacy organization.

“We will be right back where we are with emergency operations,” he said, like pulling water from upstream reservoirs to prop up Powell. “But you can’t do that every single year because there isn’t enough water in the Upper Basin reservoirs.”

Bureau of Reclamation officials plan to finalize new long-term guidelines by Aug. 15, in time for the Oct. 1 start to the new water year, which generally tracks with the start of snowfall.

“You don’t want to limp through with Basic Coordination, you’d want to put everything on the table you can,” Berggren said.

“We’re facing a crisis,” he continued. “We have tools available, we know what they are — we just need to implement them.”

Water scarcity, due to exceptionally low mountain snow and soil-drying heat, looms foremost.

“If we don’t get moisture, I’m not going to plant,” said chile grower Praxie Vigil, who runs along the Bessemer Ditch, a 43-mile irrigation canal that once nourished crops across 20,000 acres east of Pueblo. He was planning to decide this weekend.

“It����ap not looking good for any of us. Usually, I just plant and hope for the best. But this year, I’m not going to. This is bad. I can barely water 20 acres,” said Vigil, who works a side job as a pipe-welder to make ends meet.

The dry conditions, compounded by federal policies and turbulence far beyond the Rocky Mountain West, are forcing Colorado farmers to scale back production this year, change the crops they prioritize and question their long-term survival. Grocery shoppers likely will see less locally grown food in produce sections.

First, the Trump administration’s tariffs and war on Iran drove up prices for fertilizer, packaging and other materials. The Mideast conflict also broke supply chains — sprinkler heads and filters needed for those peaches, made in Israel, aren’t available.

Then, Trump’s bombing that began Feb. 28 led to fuel costs spiking to $5 per gallon of diesel.

Meanwhile, the federal government’s crackdown on immigration and state limits on how many hours seasonal foreign workers with H2A visas can work have intensified agricultural labor uncertainty.

“I haven’t had anybody physically taken away. But there’s definitely fear among the workers,” Brian Crites said at , working his family’s 1890s homestead at Avondale, where he’ll leave 750 of his 1,000 acres unplanted due to high costs and lack of water. Even though workers from Mexico on his farm hold green cards, they see information online, Crites said. “I try to keep the morale up. I tell them they’re pretty safe here.”

Other challenges include retailers mislabeling produce as Colorado-grown when it’s not, which degrades the state brand. Lawmakers and Gov. Jared Polis just prohibiting the deceptive trade practice of fake local labeling.

“Agriculture is a big powerhouse of our economy. It is our No. 1 export sector. We do everything we can to support ranchers and farmers in our state,” Polis said in an interview last week. “What the government cannot do is make it rain or snow.”

‘Hit from every direction’

As summer approaches, “everybody’s looking at what their options are,” said peach grower Bruce Talbott, operator of on Colorado’s Western Slope.

His orchards depend largely on the federally run Green Mountain Reservoir, which measured 36% full last week, with streams feeding the reservoir also running low because paltry mountain snowpack had already melted away.

“We want to haul down as little water as possible and stretch what we do have as far as we can. How that����ap going to play out is unknown. …We’ve never actually shut off the canals. Right now, we’re running them low,” Talbott said.

“If there’s no more capturable water, then we’ve got enough until Aug. 1.” he said. “That����ap enough that about half the peaches would get harvested. The last half would not. The peaches would be small. And it would be awfully hard on trees. Our chances of having healthy trees headed into next year would be very compromised. We’d probably lose a lot of orchards.”

Hail this month damaged cherries, pears and apricots in the area, and crops that bloomed early in February due to warm winter temperatures need water longer and still are vulnerable to frost through May, director Jessica Burford said.

“We’re getting hit from every direction,” she said. “It’s going to be a very expensive year. Farmers are worried about our peaches being large enough to meet grocery store standards.”

Yet few were quitting.

“We are farmers. We are here to produce food. If we don’t do it, we won’t get paychecks. We would starve, our fields would go to crap, and weeds would take over. So we might as well give it a shot,” said Dalton Milberger, owner of , east of Pueblo. “Chile is our lifeline.”

As Milberger was preparing to plant chile seeds last week, his machine broke down.

A statewide crisis

Farmers statewide are wrestling with similar difficult decisions on whether to plant crops, Commissioner Kate Greenberg said.

The unprecedented warm weather has led to “an incredible lack of soil moisture,” and that, combined with the other “conflating factors,” means that — unless summer brings regular monsoon rain — some farms may die, Greenberg said.

“It’s hard to pinpoint if and when we lose farmers and what exactly the tipping point is,” she said. “Folks are now pivoting from their plans. Maybe it means cutting back on acres, maybe not growing so much. Maybe the conversation is that this is the year when we turn in our gloves and call it good. We’ve got a lot of those conversations going on right now. The combined pressures on farming and ranching families are not alleviating. It’s possible they could force out family agriculture.”

Taking a year off generally isn’t an option, “because there are payments to be made,” said Mike Bartolo, who helped develop resilient green chile seeds over 32 years of work as a research scientist for the and serves on the board of the .

Bartolo was born and raised in the Arkansas River Valley, where water rights sell-offs to Front Range cities in the 1970s decimated farm fields and towns. Aurora and Colorado Springs officials, seeing the Colorado River Basin’s water shrinking, again are pressing for control over stressed farmers’ water rights, Bartolo said.

Planting crops now — “one of the most troubling times in agriculture I’ve witnessed in my lifetime” — means taking “a tremendous amount of risk, on top of existing risks,” he said.

“Unless there’s some miraculous turnaround, we face an era of uncertainty. We don’t know what to do. You’re kind of backed into a corner. What do you do? This is your livelihood. How do you sustain yourself? In Colorado’s rural communities, we are looking at survival.”

‘Hoping to get through this year’

State leaders say they’re committed to supporting farming and rural communities. But climate change impacts “will get worse,” Polis said, anticipating “a world of scarcity of water” where “in addition to the reduced supply, there’s also increased demand” due to population growth.

Federal immigration and foreign policies aren’t helping, he said. “If you start a war with Iran, you know that prices are going to go up a lot.”

Climate warming sets off cascading changes, such as increased pests, for which a state in Palisade breeds insect natural enemies that can be deployed to manage those pests.

But worms, mites and beetles still gnaw at the crops in Olathe, where farming has become “crisis management,” said owner David Harold, who decided last week he’ll be “cutting way back” on sweet corn.

Instead of planting corn on 1,600 acres, he’ll plant on just 100 to 300 acres. That will make it harder to find the Olathe sweet corn in supermarkets, and Harold said he’ll shift to direct sales to people who pre-order online.

Tuxedo is also “losing some workers to other areas” where migrants can work more hours, despite giving them “all the extra hours and overtime I can afford,” he said.

“We are very off balance. Fertilizer prices. Diesel prices. Transportation. I cannot get equipment in and out of here like I need to. The whole thing has been coming apart. We don’t have a clear path right now,” Harold said.

“I’m not going to put the money into these crops and then hope the bugs don’t get me, hope there’s enough water, hope there’s enough truck drivers, hope the consumer can afford it. It’s been a rollercoaster. What are we going to do? Can we take the risk? We’re struggling. Big changes are here right now. I am hoping to get through this year.”

Crop-switching and reduced planting

Along the Arkansas River east of Pueblo, farmers last week were meeting with irrigators and leaning toward a strategy of prioritizing high-value crops, such as the green chiles, while reducing corn and alfalfa.

But “it’s touch and go,” said fifth-generation farmer Rocky Musso, operator of , eight miles east of Pueblo. Musso had his fields plowed and was headed to meet with a neighbor “before we make a decision” to find out who might be able to spare unused shares of water.

“We don’t want to plant too conservatively. We will cut down to about 60% to 75% of our chile planting,” he said. “We were always taught to farm every season. You get discouraged. But it does us no good to get discouraged.”

At , established in 1890, water levels in the Bessemer Ditch were roughly 70 cubic feet per second. That’s less than half the typical spring flows during planting season, due to the low snowpack in the mountains west of Leadville above the headwaters of the Arkansas River.

The family operators produce a variety of foods, including pinto beans, onions, squash, tomatoes and pumpkins — in addition to Pueblo green chiles.

While they’re facing “the worst year in recorded history,” they made some smart moves, such as anticipating the impact of tariffs and stocking up early on fertilizers before prices went up, Jayme DiSanti said.

“We’re still going to plant. We’re going to cut back on other things and focus on vegetables,” DiSanti said. “We are not going to cut back on green chiles. That’s our thing. We’re going to be short on water. But chiles like it hot and dry. So people can probably expect hotter chile.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Burning time for North American wildfires is going into overtime. Flames are lasting later into the night and starting earlier in the morning because human-caused climate change is extending the hotter and drier conditions that feed fires, a new study found.

Fires used to die down or even die out at night as temperatures dropped and humidity increased, but that����ap happening less often. The number of hours in North America when the weather is favorable for wildfires is 36% higher than 50 years ago, according Friday in Science Advances.

Places such as California have 550 more potential burning hours than the mid-1970s. Parts of southwestern New Mexico and central Arizona are seeing as much as 2,000 more hours a year when the weather is prone to burning fires, the highest increase seen in the study, which looked at Canada and the United States. The research looked at times when conditions were ripe for fire, but that didn’t mean fires occurred during all that time.

Recent big fires in LA and Hawaii burned at night

Fires that surge at night are tougher to fight and included the in 2023, the in 2024 and the in 2025, the study said. Maui’s at 12:22 a.m.

It����ap not just the clock that is getting extended. The calendar is too. The number of days with fire-prone weather increased by 44%, which effectively added 26 days over the past half century.

It����ap mostly from warmer, drier nighttime weather, with a bit of extra wind, the study authors said.

“Fires normally slow down during the night, or they just stop,” said study co-author Xianli Wang, a fire scientist with the Canadian Forest Service. “But under extreme fire hazard conditions, fire actually burns through the night or later into the night.”

And Wang said Earth’s warming atmosphere means it����ap like to get worse.

Tougher to fight fires at night

Fires that don’t “go to sleep” get a running start the next day, making it harder to knock them down, University of California Merced fire scientist John Abatzoglou, who wasn’t part of the study, said in an email.

“Nights aren’t what they used to be — that is, more reliable breaks for wildfire,” he added. “Widespread warming and lack of humidity is keeping fires up at night.”

Wildland firefighter Nicholai Allen, who also founded a firm that makes home fire prevention tools, said it����ap very difficult to fight fires at night.

“You have to understand that you have snakes and bears and mountain lions and all the stuff you have in daytime,” Allen said, noting a colleague was bitten by a bear. “But at night, they’re really scared and they’re running away from the fire.”

The Canadian researchers analyzed nearly 9,000 larger fires from 2017 to 2023 using a weather satellite and other tools to get hour-by-hour data on atmospheric conditions during the fires, such as humidity, temperature, wind, rain and fuel moisture levels. They created a computer model that correlated weather conditions and fire status and applied to historical data in Canada and the United States from 1975 to 2106.

Nights are warming faster than days

Scientists have long said heat-trapping gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas make nights warm faster than days because of increased cloud cover that absorbs and re-emits heat down to Earth at night like a blanket. Since 1975, summers in the contiguous U.S. have seen nighttime lowest temperature warm by 2.6 degrees Fahrenheit (1.4 degrees Celsius), while daytime highest temperatures have gone up 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Humidity at night “doesn’t rebound” from its daytime dryness like it used to, said study lead author Kaiwei Luo, a fire science researcher at the University of Alberta.

Wildfires often coincide with drought, especially extreme drought, which means not only drier air, but hotter drier air that sucks up more moisture from the ground and plants, making fuels for fire more flammable, Wang said. In a drought, there’s often a vicious circle of drying and when it is quite dry, a warmer atmosphere has more power to suck moisture out of fuels.

Just as warmer nights especially in heat waves don’t let the body recover, the warmer nights are not allowing forests to recover, Wang said. It can take weeks for dead fuel to recover their lost moisture and be less fire-prone, he said.

“It����ap just a stress to the plants,” Wang said. “That also increases fuel load and make fire-burning more easily.”

From 2016 to 2025, wildfires in the United States on average burned an area the size of Massachusetts (28,500 square kilometers). That����ap 2.6 times the average burn area of the 1980s, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. on average for the last 10 years is 2.8 times more than during the 1980s, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.

Syracuse University fire scientist Jacob Bendix, who wasn’t part of the research, called the study a sobering reminder of climate change’s role in driving “increased fire potential across almost all of the fire-prone environments of North America.”

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at .

HONG KONG (AP) — China is poised to benefit from the as global energy disruptions accelerate a shift away from fossil fuels and toward clean technologies and renewable power, industries that China dominates, experts say.

Most of the oil and gas from the now mostly shut Strait of Hormuz was Asia-bound. to conserve energy and bolster dwindling reserves. As a , gasoline prices in the and are spiking.

While most of , China will likely benefit from the fossil fuel disruptions despite being the biggest . China leads the world in battery, solar and electric vehicle exports, and its industries are forecast to face a rise in demand for renewable products.

Before the in late February, China’s lead in clean technologies was lengthening. The U.S. under scaled back on renewable energy and leaned on its vast oil and gas resources, promoting energy exports to achieve what Trump described as “energy dominance.”

Now Chinese industry giants like vehicle-maker BYD and battery-producer CATL are well-positioned to capitalize on growing interest in low-emissions energy products as the world confronts the fragility of fossil fuels.

“China’s approach to energy sector development and geopolitics has been completely validated by the Iran conflict,” said Sam Reynolds with the U.S.-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

Dueling visions for energy future

Over a decade ago, Chinese President merged energy security with national security. China has since stepped up its focus on renewable energy, even though fossil fuels still dominate its domestic energy mix.

China makes up over 70% of EV manufacturing and about 85% of battery cell production globally, according to the International Energy Agency. Its current five-year plan until 2030 continues to prioritize these industries.

“They are at the very forefront of this, more so than any other countries in the world, certainly more so than the United States,” said Li Shuo, director of the Asia Society Policy Institute’s China Climate Hub.

The U.S. is the world’s top oil producer and has . The American approach — summed up by Trump as “ ” — favors fossil fuels over renewables.

Markets were witnessing a “bifurcation” before the war, Reynolds said, with the superpowers pushing very different energy futures, leaving other countries with complex choices on which approach to back.

Investors bet on renewables’ growth

The Iran war is driving demand for Chinese technology, whose exports of items such as solar panels, batteries and electric cars hit a record of almost $22.3 billion in December. That was up about 47% from the year before, with much going to Southeast Asia and Europe, according to the think tank Ember.

Investment in renewable power and battery storage — designed to save energy when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing — is expected to increase in nations heavily dependent on energy imports, including European countries, according to the credit rating firm Fitch Ratings.

Investors are betting the war will boost demand for renewables. In March, CATL and BYD’s Hong Kong traded shares rose roughly 24% and 11%, respectively.

Over the past few years, Chinese automakers were already expanding EV development and production while growing exports faster than American or European rivals, offering cheaper models and gaining ground in regions like Southeast Asia.

These trends are expected to accelerate.

The energy shock is “going to help the Chinese industry globally and hurt the American car industry globally,” said Amy Myers Jaffe of New York University’s Center for Global Affairs.

Meanwhile, high U.S. tariffs have largely shut Chinese EVs out of the American market.

Rising fuel prices also may boost BYD growth in China, said Chris Liu with the research and advisory firm Omdia.

Even the world’s largest coal exporter makes a shift

Households facing higher energy costs are likely to move to clean power, said James Bowen of the Australia-based consultancy ReMap Research.

Pakistan offers an early example. Its renewable rollout in 2017 led to more than 50 gigawatts of Chinese solar panels imported by December 2025.

Pakistan still imports a third of its energy. About 80% of its oil flowed through the Strait of Hormuz, and Qatar had been supplying a quarter of its LNG. But “the shock isn’t as big as it would have been without solar,” said Nabiya Imran of Renewables First.

If prices remain high, solar could save Pakistan $6.3 billion in fossil fuel imports over the next year, according to think tanks Renewables First and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

In the United Kingdom, EV leasing demand jumped by more than a third in the first three weeks of March compared to a similar period in February before the war, according to Octopus Energy, a renewable group. Octopus also reported increases in rooftop solar sales and solar-related inquiries.

In Southeast Asia, Vietnamese EV maker is offering discounts to offset fuel price shocks.

Prolonged fuel spikes may act as a future catalyst for EVs, but it will take time to see the trend reflected in purchases, partly because customers are likely waiting to see how the conflict plays out, said Patrick Tan, with the energy consultancy Aurora Research.

Even Indonesia, the world’s largest coal exporter, is recalibrating in ways that could make it a bigger customer for China’s clean energy technology.

In March, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto announced a push into EVs, including plans to produce electric cars and expand charging infrastructure.

The dream of electrified transportation is gaining renewed attention, said Putra Adhiguna of the Jakarta-based think tank Energy Shift Institute.

Chinese firms play a major role in Indonesia’s clean energy supply chain. They signed more than $54 billion dollars’ worth of deals with the state utility in 2023 and added a $10 billion pledge during Prabowo’s in 2024.

“There will be direct financial benefits to Chinese companies,” said Reynolds of IEEFA.

Ghosal reported from Hanoi, Vietnam. Delgado reported from Bangkok. AP Business Writer contributed to this report.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at .

The on Tuesday sued the and its in Weld County District Court for taking too long to process the plant’s application, which should have been finalized in October 2023. The division is supposed to finalize air permits within 18 months of receiving an application.

This lawsuit claims the JBS-owned Swift Beef Co.’s Greeley Integrated Rendering Plant was late to file its application for a renewed permit for the meatpacking plant and is not eligible under federal law to continue operating under its old permit.

That would mean the Greeley plant has operated without a Title V permit since Jan. 27, 2021, the lawsuit stated. But the state is allowing the plant to continue to operate and to spill pollutants into the air.

JBS is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

Jeremy Nichols, a senior advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit conservation group, said his organization filed the lawsuit to urge the state health department to do its job and to send a message to JBS that it should not be allowed to operate above the law.

“The state knows they’re operating out of compliance,” Nichols said. “They’re just choosing not to do anything about it. That’s a concerning message for air quality regulators to send to polluters.”

Zachary Aedo, an Air Pollution Control Division spokesman, said department officials would not comment on the lawsuit.

In an email, JBS spokeswoman Nikki Richardson said the company was committed to compliance with all air quality regulations. She acknowledge the permit application was late but did not offer an explanation as to why.

“Since then, we have worked collaboratively and in good faith with CDPHE and believe we are meeting all current expectations,” Richardson said. “We remain committed to providing any additional information needed to support their review and determination.”

The center argues that lagging air-permit approvals harm the environment and public health by allowing companies to operate under outdated permits, which potentially allows them to pollute more than an updated permit with tighter controls would authorize.

“The state just seems to be, well, whatever, we’ll get to your permit at some point,” Nichols said. “It’s concerning to us that there don’t seem to be consequences for not being timely.”

The Swift plant’s renewal application was due Jan. 27, 2021, but the company did not file it until April 20, 2022. Under the Clean Air Act, which dictates timelines for the Title V air permit renewals, the state health department should have completed it by October 2023. That makes the permit at least two-and-a-half years overdue.

Companies that emit more than 100 tons of any pollutant in one year must apply for Title V permits. Those permits dictate how much of any pollutant the companies are allowed to release. The permits are written by state agencies and sent to the Environmental Protection Agency for approval.

The Greeley meatpacking plant releases particulate matter, which are fine particles that can be inhaled, and in the past has exceeded state limits on how much dried blood it can emit, the lawsuit stated. The plant also emits nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide, ammonia and other hazardous pollutants.

All of those pollutants can make people sick if they are exposed to them at high levels or over long periods of time.

Volatile organic compounds and carbon monoxide are the key ingredients in ground-level ozone pollution, which combine on hot days to create a smog that fouls the air. Controlling those chemicals is important because the Front Range, including Weld County, violates federal air quality standards for ozone pollution.

“Air pollution from the Greeley Integrated Rendering Plant also harms Plaintiff’s members’ interests in using and enjoying the natural environment. Ground-level ozone, which the air pollution emitted by the facility causes, harms human health, and damages plant and animal life and natural ecosystems, thus harming Plaintiff’s members’ recreational and aesthetic interests in the areas at issue in this Complaint,” the lawsuit states.

Tuesday’s lawsuit is similar to two others that the Center for Biological Diversity has filed since September against the Department of Public Health and Environment and its Air Pollution Control Division for delayed permit approvals.

The center sued the state over permit delays in September for two oil and gas facilities in Adams County and, in December, over the permit for Cargill Meat Solutions in Fort Morgan. Those permits were issued after the lawsuit was filed, Nichols said.

The two oil and gas permits are finalized. The Colorado Air Quality Control Commission is hosting an on at 6 p.m., April 28. To register, visit .

Resort officials announced the change Friday and said Vail will close for the season on Wednesday, more than a week ahead of the scheduled April 19 closure.

Despite a fresh foot of snow from a Thursday night storm, Vail officials said warm temperatures and spring conditions caused them to call the season.

“We’re incredibly grateful to our teams across the mountain who made the most of every opportunity and kept things going through a challenging winter, especially these past few weeks,” the resort said in a post on .

Vail will join the ranks of 17 ski areas that already closed or are set to close this weekend after scraping through a season marked by Colorado’s worst snowpack since statewide recordkeeping began in 1941.

Climate scientists expect Colorado’s ski season will be several weeks shorter in the coming decades, with climate change causing snow quality to worsen and precipitation to fall more often as rain rather than snow.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration will move the U.S. Forest Service headquarters out of the nation’s capital to Salt Lake City as part of an that involves shuttering research facilities in 31 states and concentrating resources in the West, the agency announced Tuesday.

Many regional offices will close in the reorganization, and their services will shift to hubs in Colorado, New Mexico, Georgia, Wisconsin, Montana and California. Fort Collins will host the Colorado-based operational service center, in addition to playing a major Forest Service research role.

Instead of maintaining multiple dispersed research stations with their own leadership, the agency will anchor its research at a single location in Fort Collins.

The Forest Service said it did not yet know how many workers in regional offices will need to relocate. A spokesperson did not answer whether the transition would involve layoffs.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the restructuring and move, which is expected to be completed by summer 2027, will bring leaders closer to the landscapes they manage and the people who depend on them.

“Effective stewardship and active management are achieved on the ground, where forests and communities are found — not just behind a desk in the capital,” Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said.

Nearly 90% of National Forest System land is in the West, though Utah is only the 11th-ranked state for national forest coverage, with about 14,300 square miles (37,000 square kilometers).

During his first term, Trump , citing many of the same reasons, including a desire to put top officials closer to the public lands they oversee. But it wasn’t long before , moving BLM headquarters from Grand Junction back to Washington, D.C., after two years.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been moving thousands of employees out of Washington over the past year and eliminating layers of management as part of Trump’s push to slim down the federal workforce and make it more efficient.

With the move to Utah, about 260 Forest Service positions currently located in Washington are expected to relocate, and 130 workers will stay put, the agency said.

Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Vaden said Salt Lake City stuck out for its reasonable cost of living, proximity to an international airport and the state’s “family-focused way of life.” It����ap a Democratic-led capital city in a red state with values rooted in the locally headquartered Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known widely as the Mormon church.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, celebrated the move Tuesday as “a big win for Utah and the West,” while environmental groups viewed it as a precursor to the agency’s dismantling.

Taylor McKinnon at the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity described the move as “a costly bureaucratic reshuffle” that will put more power in the hands of corporations and states to log, mine and drill public lands.

“National forests belong to all Americans,” said McKinnon, the environmental group’s Southwest director. “Our nation’s capital is where federal policy is made and where the Forest Service headquarters belongs.”

Josh Hicks, conservation campaigns director at The Wilderness Society, predicted that the move will lead to less access to public forests and threats to wildlife habitat, clean water and air.

“At a time when wildfires are getting worse, and access to public lands is already under strain, the last thing we need is an unnecessary reorganization that creates chaos and confusion for the land managers, researchers and wildland firefighters who help keep our forests healthy now and for future generations,” he said.

The Wilderness Society also pointed to Trump’s prior attempt with the BLM, saying that resulted in many staffers leaving who had valuable years of management experience. The group said this could end up hollowing out the Forest Service.

U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, a New Mexico Democrat who sits on the House’s Natural Resources Committee, echoed the idea that it����ap the wrong time for upheaval as the Mountain West is facing historically low snowpack, extreme heat and the prospect of a dangerous fire season.

But she expressed cautious optimism that the Forest Service reorganization could be positive if leadership and jobs are ultimately brought closer to New Mexico and other states.

A Republican on the committee, U.S. Rep. Celeste Maloy of Utah, welcomed the move to her state, saying it could improve responsiveness to wildfires and ensure decisions are informed by on-the-ground realities.

The Forest Service’s deputy chief of fire and aviation management, Sarah Fisher, said on a podcast Tuesday that there will be no changes to the agency’s operational firefighting workforce.

Montoya Bryan reported from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Denver Post’s public affairs editor Jon Murray contributed to this story.

Even more troubling, mountain snow accumulations peaked a month early and contained just half the average moisture.

As a warm winter with gave way to early springtime , snow is vanishing from all but the highest elevations in the West. It����ap a clear sign that water shortages could worsen the ongoing , barring an unexpected deluge.

Gutsch struggled to match the mood of the sunny, 56-degree weather as she stood in a section of the Rocky Mountains that����ap considered the headwaters of the Colorado River.

“We love being out here. We love being in the snow, taking these measurements. This year, it����ap kind of hard to enjoy it because it����ap slightly depressing with the conditions that we’ve seen,” said Gutsch, who is with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Department hydrologists told The Associated Press of the dismal, record-low snowpack after concluding their field assessments late Tuesday.

Cities in the region are imposing water-use restrictions, and ranchers are wondering how they will feed and water their cattle. Meanwhile, the threat of devastating wildfires looms.

High (country) and dry

Ranchers in Colorado’s scenic mountain valleys near the Continental Divide are, in a sense, among the first in the region affected by drought, being nearest to the melting mountain snowpack.

They hardly need Gutsch to tell them how parched this winter and spring have been. They remember past droughts — bad ones in 2002, 1981, 1977 — and wonder just what this dry winter will mean for their operations.

“I’ve never seen it so warm so early and no snow all winter long,” said Philip Anderson, a retired teacher who also has ranched most of his life in Colorado’s North Park valley.

The heaviest snows in the Rockies fall in late winter and early spring, including now. Snowfall isn’t unusual in the highest regions even into June.

Anderson’s place is at about 8,100 feet (2,500 meters) in elevation. There, in a typical year, a foot (30 centimeters) or more of snow will linger on his pastures until springtime, helping the grass to green up and stock water ponds to refill.

But without snow on the land, his cows are grazing his grass before it can grow high, and several of his ponds are dry. The ditch that would usually move water from the nearby Illinois River to his property is also dry — tapped already by neighbors with more senior water rights than his.

“A lot of the people which are closer to the mountains have to let the water go by and let those folks with the senior water rights have it,” Anderson said.

The last time Anderson had to haul water in his truck from a nearby wildlife refuge was in 2002. That same year, he had to sell off his herd.

North Park — about 100 miles (161 kilometers) from the South Park valley that inspired the cartoon TV show — is a headwaters of the eastward-flowing Platte River system. Thirty-five miles (56 kilometers) to the west of Anderson’s place, across the Continental Divide, is the Stanko Ranch on the Yampa River.

Jo Stanko dreads low flows because they allow her cattle to wade across the Colorado River tributary. Then they need to be rounded up and brought back home.

This year, Stanko has been watering her parched meadow earlier than ever in her 50 years of ranching. She plans to cut hay before June and is considering buying hay soon to feed her 70 cows afterward.

“Hay’s always a good investment, you know, because it might be really expensive,” she said.

Go with the flow? Not when low

An old saying in the West is that whiskey’s for drinking and water’s for fighting over. It applies all the more when water becomes scarce amid a decades-long drought driven in part by human-caused climate change.

Meanwhile, the river’s Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming remain at an impasse in negotiations with the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada to create new rules for managing the water during shortages.

Like the water itself, time is running short — the current rules expire in September.

A recent federal plan would conserve river water “completely on Arizona’s back,” Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce meeting in March.

Upper Basin states say their cities, farmers and ranchers already use far less water than they are entitled to under the existing agreements. That����ap because they honor senior water rights — some of which date to the 1880s — before those who own newer rights during droughts, Becky Mitchell, the Colorado River negotiator for Colorado, recently told other Upper Basin representatives.

“When there is less, we use less. This is not voluntary and no one gets paid as a result,” Mitchell said.

After missing multiple deadlines set by federal officials in recent months to, at least, create outlines of an agreement, the two sides are hiring more lawyers in case the dispute goes to court.

Cities cut back

After the driest and warmest winter on record, Salt Lake City announced a 10% daily cut in water use.

Reductions will be voluntary for residents, but the biggest nonresidential water users will have to consume no more than 200,000 gallons per day.

On the other side of the Rockies, Denver Water approved limits to watering lawns and other restrictions, with hopes of achieving a 20% cut.

Water officials urged even less watering. Lawns in the Front Range region are just beginning to green up and don’t need watering twice a week until at least mid-May, they pointed out.

The city gets much of its water from mountain snow that accumulates east of the Continental Divide and on the western side. Tunnels under the mountains divert half the city’s water from snow-fed streams on the western side.

“We’re 7 to 8 feet of snow short of where we need to be,” Nathan Elder, water supply manager for Denver Water, said in a statement. “It would take a tremendous amount of snow to recover at this point, so it����ap time to turn our attention to preserving what we have.”

Wildfire risk looms large

On the same day Denver approved the water restrictions, the city set a new high temperature record for March: 87 degrees (30 Celsius).

The previous record of 85 degrees (29 Celsius) was set just a week earlier.

Drought was bearing down west of the Rockies, too. In California, snowpack in the Sierra Nevada measured only 18% of the average for this time of year,

Hot, dry weather is a recipe for wildfires. While other parts of the U.S., including the South and Southwest, face higher fire risk this spring, forecasters expect the threat in the Rockies to rise as above-average temperatures and below-normal precipitation persist into summer.

This week, the region is getting a reprieve of cooler, damper weather, with snow back in the forecast by the end of the week in North Park. But Anderson said he needs a lot more — half an inch (1 centimeter) of rain every other day for several days — to get out of the drought.

Until then, he suggested that North Park senior and junior water-rights holders work together to ensure everybody has enough.

“It����ap pretty serious,” Anderson said. “If we just talk and communicate together and cooperate, we might be able to make it through this. But we’ll see.”

___

Amy Taxin in Santa Ana, California, contributed.

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at .

Denver International Airport sensors logged a record-breaking 88 degrees at 2:50 p.m., busting the of 86 degrees (set Saturday) and 85 degrees (set March 19.)

Before this year, the hottest March day on record was 84 degrees on March 26, 1971, according to the National Weather Service.

Wednesday’s weather also shattered Denver’s daily record high for March 25, which was 75 degrees in 2012.

The recent stretch of sweltering spring days is thanks to a that is moving east slowly. Meteorologists and weather historians say it may end up being one of the most expansive heat waves in American history, according to The Associated Press.

logged temperatures well into the 90s on Wednesday, including 96 degrees in Greeley and Mack; 94 degrees in Fountain, Florence and Pueblo; 92 degrees in Denver and Southglenn; 91 degrees in Loveland; and 90 degrees in Lakewood, Aurora, Longmont and Fort Collins.

Colorado is one of 14 states that have seen their hottest March day on record this month, and a group of international climate scientists called said this week a heat wave of this magnitude “would have been virtually impossible without human-induced climate change.”

Denver is set to see a , with highs in the 50s, before warm weather returns this weekend, forecasters said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday that it would temporarily allow widespread sales of a higher ethanol gas blend in a move that they hope will tamp down  since the Iran war began.

The sale of E15 is typically discontinued in the summer because it can contribute to harmful air pollution.

“President Trump is unleashing American Energy Dominance, and today’s action will directly lower prices at the pump and gives a clear demand signal to our domestic biofuels producers,” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement.

The summer waiver for E15 , and both Republicans and Democrats have called for it to become year-round and permanent to lower prices at the pump. In some states it’s already allowed.

In Kansas, Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids has requested and been granted emergency waivers for E15 for several years, from EPA administrations under presidents of both parties. This week U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, urged the Trump administration to take “a no-cost, immediate step” to curb rising domestic fuel costs amid the Iran war.

But not all are convinced the move will substantially lower gas prices. E15 isn’t available in all states and some places don’t have the necessary infrastructure or enough of a supply of ethanol to ramp up use, said Kenneth Gillingham, a professor at the Yale School of the Environment who studies the impacts of transportation regulations on prices, emissions and consumer welfare.

Gillingham also said the higher levels of corrosive ethanol in E15 can be a risk especially to older cars, boats and all-terrain vehicles.

More corn used for ethanol also means less can be used for animal feed, said Jason Hill, a professor at the University of Minnesota who studies food, energy markets and environmental consequences. That means consumers could be trading lower costs at the pump for higher costs at the grocery store.

“I think it����ap difficult to see when the ledger’s settled, how this is a benefit for U.S. consumers,” Hill said.

Hill said he thought the announcement was  hit hard by higher diesel prices used to run their equipment and by price hikes to fertilizer caused by the Iran war. He said similar announcements have been made before as a way to express support for “agriculture and those who drive.”

Gillingham also said the move comes at a cost beyond economics.

”There’s more likely to be ozone issues in the summer and some people will die,” he said. “It will lead to some earlier heart attacks and it will lead to some earlier respiratory issues that wouldn’t have been the case otherwise.”

The oil industry has generally opposed expansion of E15, arguing that biofuel blending is costly and raises gasoline prices. But a vice president at the American Petroleum Institute wrote in a statement that they supported this move. “By temporarily easing summer fuel requirements, this action helps ensure American consumers continue to have access to affordable, reliable energy,” Will Hupman said.

This story has been updated to correct U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids’ party affiliation. She is a Democrat, not a Republican.

Follow Melina Walling on X and Bluesky .

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at .