The first panel tackles what may be the most divisive topic in atmospheric science today: solar geoengineering. The concept of reflecting a small fraction of sunlight away from the Earth to blunt the worst effects of global warming has moved from the margins of academic discussion into the center of international controversy. Some researchers argue that deployment risks and moral hazard, the possibility that the promise of a technological fix could weaken the resolve to cut emissions, pose unacceptable threats that outweigh any potential benefit. Others contend that as global temperatures continue to climb, evaluating sunlight reflection is no longer optional but an urgent necessity. The panel will examine what empirical research is actually required to assess these interventions, whether international governance frameworks can realistically prevent unilateral deployment by a single nation or even a private actor, and how governments should approach the evaluation of emerging field experiments that promise real-world data but carry real-world risks.

The lineup for that discussion reflects the breadth of the debate itself. Moderated by Vijay Vaitheeswaran, Director of the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, the panel brings together Manish Bapna, President and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council; Dakota Gruener, CEO of Reflective; Professor David Keith of the University of Chicago, whose work in geophysical sciences has made him one of the most prominent voices in the geoengineering conversation; and Dr. Mark Symes, Program Director at the United Kingdom’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency, known as ARIA. The presence of both an advocacy leader and a company executive alongside academic and agency researchers signals that the event is designed to surface genuine disagreement rather than manufacture consensus.

The second panel turns from the atmosphere to the infrastructure beneath it, asking whether the world can actually build the climate-energy future that decades of climate negotiation have promised. Under the title Power, Rewired: Building the Climate-Energy Future, the session confronts trade-offs that its organizers argue are often glossed over in public discourse. The central tension is between speed and security: can advanced batteries, localized electricity generation, and clean fuels scale quickly enough to displace fossil energy without triggering severe mineral bottlenecks, supply-chain vulnerabilities, and heavy regional impacts? The question is not rhetorical. The materials that underpin battery storage and electrification, including lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements, are geographically concentrated, politically sensitive, and subject to volatile markets, and the industrial capacity required to refine and manufacture them at scale remains far short of what decarbonization pathways demand.

Moderated by Helen Burdett, Head of Planetary Solutions at the World Economic Forum, the energy panel assembles perspectives from across the innovation chain. Thomas Baker, Managing Director and Senior Partner at Boston Consulting Group, will speak to the economics of deployment and the business models that determine whether clean technologies reach the market. Ann Mettler, President of Catalyse Europe, brings experience at the intersection of European policy and industrial strategy. Cassady Walters, Vice President of Power at The Rockefeller Foundation, will address the philanthropic and development dimensions of energy access, particularly in regions where grid expansion and localized generation compete for limited capital. Evelyn Wang, Ford Professor of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, contributes the technical vantage point of a researcher whose work spans thermal systems and energy conversion, grounding the policy discussion in the physical realities of engineering.

The third panel widens the lens to the system that produces scientific knowledge itself. In a shifting geopolitical landscape, the allocation of capital increasingly determines the direction of scientific discovery, deciding which fields flourish, which stagnate, and which questions are never asked at all. Under the title Funding the Future of Science, leaders from major research institutions, funding agencies, and philanthropic organizations will discuss how to safeguard scientific independence in an era when private and national interests compete for influence over research agendas. The discussion will weigh the balance between fundamental discovery, which generates the knowledge that pays off decades later, and market-driven pressures that reward short-term, application-oriented results. It will also confront the problem of public trust: how can institutions preserve credibility when the funding that sustains them comes from sources with visible political or commercial stakes in the outcomes?

Moderated by Dr. Frederick Fenter, Chief Executive Editor at Frontiers, the funding panel features two voices from very different corners of the research ecosystem. Professor Hugh Brady, President of Imperial College London, leads one of the world’s most prominent research universities and speaks from direct experience with the financial and political pressures shaping institutional strategy. Andrew Tauhert, Chief Impact Officer at XPRIZE, represents the prize-funding model, an increasingly influential alternative to traditional grant-making that uses competition to accelerate breakthroughs in targeted areas. Their exchange is expected to probe whether philanthropic and competitive mechanisms can complement, or must inevitably distort, the public funding base on which most fundamental science depends.

The symposium is deliberately timed to coincide with the highest-stakes week on the international diplomatic calendar. The UN General Assembly high-level week and Climate Week NYC draw heads of state, ministers, investors, and civil society leaders to New York, creating a rare density of decision-makers in a single city. By situating these scientific debates within that context, Frontiers Science House is betting that the path from scientific disagreement to policy action runs through direct, unscripted conversation among the people who fund, regulate, and conduct the research. The half-day format, three panels in four hours, is designed to keep the exchanges focused and confrontational in the productive sense, allowing panelists to articulate genuine disagreements about risk, governance, and priorities rather than converging on carefully hedged statements.

Access to the event reflects its hybrid ambitions. Journalists are invited to attend in person in New York or to join a global livestream, and the organizers are making one-on-one speaker interviews available on request, a step intended to carry the debates beyond the room and into public reporting. Following the panels, a networking cocktail reception will run from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm EDT, open to all registered attendees, providing an informal venue where the scientists, executives, and policy leaders on stage can continue conversations with the journalists, funders, and researchers in the audience. For a field in which solar geoengineering experiments have been blocked by public opposition, clean energy supply chains have become instruments of geopolitical competition, and research budgets are increasingly contested, the value of such direct engagement may prove as significant as anything said on the panels themselves.

As temperatures rise and the window for effective climate action narrows, the questions before the panels at Frontiers Science House are becoming harder to defer. Whether humanity should deliberately intervene in the planet’s radiative balance, whether the energy transition can be simultaneously fast and secure, and who decides which scientific questions deserve funding are not technical details but civilizational choices. The New York roadshow will not resolve them, but by gathering the researchers, funders, and policymakers who will make those choices, it offers a rare public view of where the fault lines lie, and of the arguments that will shape science and climate policy in the years ahead.

The scientific backdrop to the geoengineering debate helps explain why it has become so charged. The most studied approach, stratospheric aerosol injection, draws on a natural experiment: large volcanic eruptions that loft sulfate particles into the upper atmosphere have measurably cooled the planet for a year or more afterward. That evidence suggests sunlight reflection could lower global temperatures, but it says little about regional effects on rainfall, monsoons, and agriculture, which vary with how and where particles are introduced. Because the atmosphere knows no borders, deployment by one country could alter climate conditions everywhere, which is precisely why questions of governance and unilateral action dominate the research agenda.

Similar physical constraints shape the energy discussion. Electrifying transport and industry multiplies demand for electricity storage and transmission, and the mining, refining, and processing stages of key battery materials remain concentrated in a small number of countries. Analysts increasingly distinguish between the total size of mineral reserves, which are large, and the pace at which mines, refineries, and factories can be permitted and built, which is often the binding constraint on decarbonization timelines.

The funding panel, meanwhile, engages a long-standing tension in research policy. Historically, breakthroughs from quantum mechanics to molecular biology emerged from curiosity-driven inquiry whose value was not apparent at the outset, yet modern budgets increasingly favor measurable, near-term outcomes. How institutions reconcile those pressures, and how they maintain credibility with a public that ultimately underwrites much of the enterprise, remains an open question that the New York discussions will only begin to answer.

Subject of Research: A New York symposium on climate intervention governance, clean energy transition, and science funding policy

Article Title: Frontiers Science House roadshow: experts meet in NY to debate sharp divides over urgent science issues

Article References: Frontiers Science House roadshow: experts meet in NY to debate sharp divides over urgent science issues. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: solar geoengineering, Climate Week NYC, climate intervention, clean energy, science funding, supply chains, UN General Assembly, research policy, batteries, governance, Frontiers Science House, New York

Ali Faridzad and Nivakan Sritharan developed the framework for Malaysia, which has pledged to achieve net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050. The country has strengthened its climate policy through updated commitments under the Paris Agreement, the National Energy Transition Roadmap and other domestic initiatives. Existing programmes, including the Green Technology Financing Scheme, already direct support toward areas such as energy, manufacturing, transport, buildings, waste and water. Yet the researchers note that allocating capital efficiently is difficult because industries are connected through purchases, sales and intermediate inputs. A shock to one sector can therefore affect businesses that are not themselves major polluters. A factory may depend on electricity and refined fuels, while wholesalers, retailers, transport providers and equipment manufacturers may depend on the factory’s output. These relationships mean that a policy aimed at cutting emissions can produce indirect losses across the economy. The study addresses this problem by treating Malaysia’s production system as a network rather than a collection of independent sectors.

The researchers used input–output tables covering 34 Malaysian industries and data for 2020 through 2023 from the Asian Development Bank. The tables were expressed in constant 2010 prices, while sectoral carbon dioxide emissions came from the bank’s Environmentally Extended Multi-Regional Input–Output database. In an input–output model, a matrix of technical coefficients describes how much each industry requires from every other industry to produce its output. The Leontief inverse, calculated as the inverse of the identity matrix minus that coefficient matrix, estimates the direct and indirect production required to satisfy final demand. This allows a change in one industry to be traced through upstream suppliers and downstream users. The study also applied the standard Hypothetical Extraction Method. In that exercise, a sector is completely removed from the economic system by eliminating its row and column from the technical-coefficient matrix and setting its final demand to zero. The resulting loss in total output provides a measure of the sector’s propagated economic importance, called Hypothetical Extraction Centrality, or HEC.

Carbon intensity supplied the environmental side of the analysis. For each sector, it was calculated as carbon dioxide emissions per unit of output. The researchers normalized both carbon intensity and HEC on a scale from zero to one, then combined them into a sector-specific transition shock. A sector with high carbon intensity received a larger shock under an emissions-focused policy, while a highly central sector received more weight under a stability-focused policy. The model tested three alternatives: a baseline assigning equal weights to carbon intensity and HEC, a carbon-focused scenario assigning 70 percent weight to carbon intensity, and a stability-focused scenario assigning 70 percent weight to HEC. The maximum imposed shock was set at 30 percent. The framework then estimated how much each sector’s output could fall through the production network before exceeding an assumed tolerable loss of 10 percent of its initial output. The resulting green finance threshold represents the model-implied financial adjustment needed to close that gap in a single period, not the cumulative investment required for the country’s 2050 transition.

The sectoral indicators reveal why emissions and economic importance cannot be treated as interchangeable. Electricity, gas and water supply recorded the highest carbon intensity in the dataset, with a value of 7.0189 and a normalized score of 1. Its HEC, however, was moderate, at 11.2320, or 0.1822 after normalization. Electrical and optical equipment showed the opposite pattern. Its carbon intensity was relatively low, at 0.1273, with a normalized score of 0.0176, but its HEC reached 60.4837, the highest in the economy. That result places the sector at the center of extensive upstream and downstream connections. Wholesale trade, food, beverages and tobacco, and retail trade also displayed high centrality, demonstrating that distribution and demand-related activities can transmit shocks widely even when their direct emissions are limited. Other non-metallic minerals and chemicals were relatively carbon intensive but only moderately central. Air transport likewise had high carbon intensity, recorded at 4.3805, but a comparatively low HEC of 2.2156. The contrast identifies distinct policy problems: some sectors primarily require decarbonization, while others require resilience and technological support to prevent disruption.

When the two indicators were combined, only a few sectors consistently occupied the high-carbon, high-centrality quadrant. Coke, refined petroleum and nuclear fuel was the most persistent example. Electricity, gas and water supply, air transport and water transport generally fell into the high-carbon, low-centrality group, making them candidates for finance focused on emissions reduction with comparatively contained network effects. Electrical and optical equipment, wholesale trade, retail trade and several manufacturing-related activities tended to occupy the low-carbon, high-centrality group. For these industries, green finance could support cleaner technology, supply-chain resilience and adaptation rather than simply targeting direct emissions. Education, health and social work, financial intermediation and other services were usually low in both carbon intensity and centrality. The overall classifications remained broadly stable when the researchers used means, medians and the 40th and 60th percentiles as alternative boundaries. That stability suggests the broad pattern was not produced by one arbitrary threshold, although individual sectors near a boundary could shift categories.

The estimated financing thresholds put the contrast between policy priorities into monetary terms. In the 2023 baseline scenario, Electrical and optical equipment had the largest threshold, approximately USD 61.6 billion. Coke, refined petroleum and nuclear fuel followed at about USD 33.1 billion, with wholesale trade at USD 19.9 billion, retail trade at USD 17.8 billion and basic and fabricated metals at USD 14.9 billion. Electricity, gas and water supply remained near USD 13.5 billion despite its much higher carbon intensity, reflecting its lower network centrality. Under the stability-focused scenario, the threshold for Electrical and optical equipment rose to approximately USD 65.6 billion. Coke and refined petroleum reached USD 39.1 billion, wholesale trade USD 24.9 billion, retail trade USD 22.9 billion and basic and fabricated metals USD 17.0 billion. Under the carbon-focused scenario, Electrical and optical equipment still led at about USD 52.6 billion, while electricity, gas and water supply reached USD 13.6 billion. Coke and refined petroleum, basic metals and wholesale trade received estimated thresholds of USD 22.2 billion, USD 10.5 billion and USD 9.4 billion, respectively.

The researchers also examined whether the rankings changed between 2020 and 2023. The relative ordering remained broadly consistent, even as absolute thresholds varied with economic conditions and output levels. Electrical and optical equipment rose from approximately USD 35.5 billion in 2020 to more than USD 61.5 billion in 2023 under the baseline scenario, and exceeded USD 65 billion in the stability-focused scenario in 2023. Coke and refined petroleum generally increased from roughly USD 25–35 billion in 2020 to more than USD 30–40 billion by 2023, depending on the scenario. Wholesale and retail trade, basic metals and electricity, gas and water supply also remained persistent priorities. In contrast, textiles, leather products, education, health and other service-oriented activities showed low or negligible thresholds across the period. The authors interpret this temporal consistency as evidence that the results reflect underlying production structures rather than a single year’s disruption. However, the model is static and covers one period at a time, so it does not simulate how industries might innovate, substitute inputs or change their relationships during a long-term transition.

The study therefore presents its thresholds as analytical benchmarks rather than forecasts or funding prescriptions. They are conditional on the selected shock size, the 10 percent acceptable-loss assumption, the weights assigned to carbon intensity and centrality, and the fixed relationships in the input–output tables. The framework does not capture technological change, behavioral responses, substitution effects or dynamic investment pathways. Nor do the values represent the cumulative capital required to meet Malaysia’s 2050 net-zero goal. Even with those limitations, the approach offers policymakers and financial institutions a way to compare competing objectives transparently. A carbon-focused allocation may prioritize power, fuels and metals, while a stability-focused allocation gives greater emphasis to industries whose disruption could spread through production networks. The central message is that effective green finance must manage both environmental exposure and systemic importance. By identifying where those risks intersect—and where they diverge—the model offers a scalable method that could be adapted to other emerging economies balancing decarbonization with economic stability.

Subject of Research: Sector-specific green finance thresholds for managing Malaysia’s carbon-transition risks

Article Title: Sectoral green finance thresholds for managing carbon transition risks: an input–output network approach with evidence from Malaysia

Article References: Faridzad, A., & Sritharan, N. (2026). Sectoral green finance thresholds for managing carbon transition risks: an input–output network approach with evidence from Malaysia. Journal of Industrial Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44498-026-00160-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44498-026-00160-7

Keywords: green finance, carbon transition, input-output analysis, Malaysia, climate risk, economic networks, carbon intensity, supply chains, Sectoral, green, finance, thresholds

The researchers describe cislunar activity as a complex network rather than a simple journey from a terrestrial supplier to a customer. It would begin on Earth, where companies obtain critical minerals, electronics, batteries, propulsion components, sensors, robotics and artificial-intelligence hardware. It would continue through launch facilities, cryogenic propellant storage, spaceports and transport services before reaching orbital manufacturing platforms, depots and staging areas. Further links would connect those systems with lunar-orbit vehicles, landers, rovers, excavation equipment, power stations and processing plants. Products or resources could then move between space platforms, remain on the Moon or return to Earth. Because every segment depends on the others, a shortage of a specialised component, a cyberattack on a ground station or a failed launch could create consequences far beyond the original point of failure.

That chain also carries familiar terrestrial risks into space. Minerals such as cobalt, nickel, lithium, rare-earth elements, aluminium and titanium may be associated with unsafe working conditions, labour exploitation, community displacement or environmental damage before they ever become part of a spacecraft. The study therefore argues that the space sector cannot treat human-rights and labour concerns as issues that end at the atmosphere. Operators should be able to trace important materials and components as far upstream as reasonably possible, assess suppliers, maintain grievance and corrective-action procedures, and document how risks are addressed. Due diligence would not simply be a public-relations exercise or an environmental, social and governance report. In the proposed approach, it would become an operational capability linking procurement, licensing, mission assurance and accountability.

Space introduces hazards that have no straightforward terrestrial equivalent. Orbital manufacturing could increase the number of objects, components and discarded materials in already congested regions, making debris mitigation, collision avoidance and end-of-life planning essential parts of mission design. On the Moon, excavation could generate dust plumes that interfere with instruments, solar panels or nearby equipment. Permanently shadowed regions may contain water ice and are scientifically significant, while other locations could possess heritage value because of earlier missions. Extraction and processing could also generate slag, excess metals, volatile releases or other waste streams. The authors propose that operators assess site selection, plume behaviour, contamination, waste containment, recycling and safe retirement before operations begin, rather than attempting to repair irreversible damage after it occurs.

The legal structure of space makes this oversight a shared responsibility. Under the Outer Space Treaty, states remain internationally responsible for national activities in space, including those conducted by private entities, and must authorise and continually supervise non-governmental operations. The treaty also prohibits national appropriation of celestial bodies, calls for exploration and use to benefit all countries, links jurisdiction and control to registration, and requires due regard for the interests of other states. The study interprets these principles as a foundation for preventive and traceable governance. A company may receive national permission to recover and use space resources without claiming sovereignty over the Moon, but its activities would still need to account for other missions, scientific interests and the broader legitimacy of industrial activity in a shared domain.

Autonomous systems make the case for continuous oversight even stronger. Orbital factories and lunar infrastructure are expected to rely on robots and software for navigation, docking, inspection, excavation, processing, repair and emergency response, often with limited real-time human intervention. Artificial intelligence could improve efficiency and reduce exposure to dangerous environments, but failures may arise from model drift, hidden software dependencies, cyber manipulation, inadequate testing or decisions that operators cannot readily explain. The proposed due-diligence model would require records of an AI system’s purpose, training and validation, operating limits, update procedures, human override capacity and incident history. Cybersecurity would likewise extend beyond spacecraft hardware to telemetry, command links, ground stations, supplier software, cloud systems and data exchanges. A corrupted command could become a collision, equipment failure or unsafe lunar operation.

To make these principles testable, the researchers propose a Cislunar Due Diligence Cycle and a benchmarking framework. The cycle begins by tracing and registering critical suppliers, materials, software, AI models, mission assets and resource transfers in digital chain-of-custody records. It then forecasts and ranks risks according to their severity, likelihood and potential irreversibility. The prevention and adaptation phase could involve supplier audits, worker protections, redundant systems, collision-avoidance procedures, cyber testing, dust controls, safe modes and stable power supplies. Finally, verification and remediation would draw on telemetry, remote sensing, digital twins, mission logs and independent analysis. The process is designed to repeat as suppliers change, software is updated and new hazards emerge, rather than ending when a launch licence is granted.

Benchmarking would allow regulators, investors, mission partners and operators to compare documented practices without reducing complex missions to a simplistic league table. The study identifies domains including traceability, transparency, supplier governance, environmental care, safety and mission assurance, cybersecurity, resilience, circularity and end-of-life management. Indicators could be scored using evidence such as licences, supplier records, environmental assessments, audit reports, cybersecurity plans, telemetry logs and disposal commitments. An illustrative comparison based on publicly available regulatory material examined authorisation and supervision, registration and traceability, environmental risk management, and digital and cybersecurity oversight in the United States, Luxembourg and Japan. The authors stress that such scores are intended to reveal weaknesses and encourage improvement, not to establish permanent rankings. They recommend that states require due-diligence plans in space-resource and in-orbit-manufacturing licences, create common checklists and develop international reporting practices that protect sensitive information while making essential safeguards visible. Their conclusion is both practical and strategic: building accountability into cislunar supply chains now could help ensure that humanity’s next industrial frontier is resilient without repeating Earth’s patterns of opacity, extraction and environmental neglect.

A useful distinction in the study is between sustainability and resilience. Sustainability asks whether an activity can avoid or reduce unacceptable environmental and social impacts over time. Resilience asks whether the connected system can continue operating, recover from disruption and adapt when conditions change. In cislunar activity, the two objectives overlap but are not identical. A supply chain could be highly redundant yet still depend on damaging extraction practices, or environmentally cautious while remaining dangerously vulnerable to a single supplier, launch provider or communications link. Due diligence is presented as the mechanism for considering both dimensions together.

This perspective also changes how risk should be prioritised. Conventional procurement may focus on cost, delivery schedules and the probability of failure. Cislunar planning must additionally consider the scale of consequences, the difficulty of intervention and whether harm can be reversed. A delayed shipment of a terrestrial component may be inconvenient; the loss of a critical orbital asset or contamination of a sensitive lunar location may affect operations for much longer. Risk assessment therefore needs to examine not only the most likely event, but also low-frequency failures with severe or persistent consequences.

Verification is especially difficult when industrial assets are remote, autonomous and distributed across jurisdictions. Operators may possess detailed telemetry while regulators control licences and suppliers hold information about materials, software or manufacturing processes. The paper’s emphasis on traceability addresses this information gap. Records should allow authorised reviewers to connect a component or service with its origin, tests, modifications, operating history and eventual disposition. Such records would support investigations after an incident, but their value is also preventive: missing or inconsistent information can identify a governance weakness before it becomes a mission failure.

Environmental assessment in this setting cannot be limited to emissions from terrestrial production. It must follow the full operational pathway, including launch-related inputs, orbital congestion, propellant handling, spacecraft disposal and changes to lunar terrain. Baseline observations are important because detecting change requires knowledge of conditions before excavation, construction or repeated vehicle activity begins. Monitoring could combine mission telemetry with remote sensing and independent review, allowing operators to compare predicted effects with observed dust, debris or surface disturbances. This creates an evidence loop in which environmental assumptions can be revised as operational experience accumulates.

The governance challenge is not solved by transferring terrestrial rules unchanged into space. The source article instead supports adaptation: familiar ideas such as risk identification, mitigation, reporting and remedy must be interpreted through state responsibility, remote supervision, registration requirements and the physical constraints of space operations. Licensing can provide the legal connection between public oversight and private activity, while contractual requirements can transmit safeguards to suppliers and business partners. Internationally compatible expectations would be valuable because cislunar chains may cross borders even when a mission is authorised by a single state.

Early standards could also reduce uncertainty for investors and engineers. Clear expectations about evidence, reporting and corrective action would make responsible design part of project planning rather than an expensive addition after hardware and contracts are fixed. They could encourage modular systems, repairability, recycling and compatible data practices where those choices improve continuity and reduce waste. The authors do not present due diligence as a guarantee that accidents or conflicts will disappear. Its purpose is more practical: to make risks visible, assign responsibility, support informed authorisation and create opportunities to correct problems before industrial activity becomes too extensive to govern effectively.

Subject of Research: Supply-chain due diligence for sustainable cislunar manufacturing and lunar resource extraction

Article Title: Supply chain due diligence in space-based manufacturing and lunar resource extraction: building sustainable & resilient cislunar operations

Article References: Lather, M., Gulati, P., Kumar, H., & Mahajan, A. (2026). Supply chain due diligence in space-based manufacturing and lunar resource extraction: building sustainable & resilient cislunar operations. Space and Planetary Resources, 2(1), Article 6. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44461-026-00011-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44461-026-00011-0

Keywords: cislunar operations, lunar resources, space manufacturing, supply chains, space sustainability, space law, AI governance, cybersecurity, orbital debris, Supply, chain, diligence