Today: Beijing’s massive manufacturing investments have driven the costs of clean energy down; an order to keep Michigan coal plant open ignites debate; what happened when small-town America became data center, USA.

Welcome back: A decade after the Paris climate accord was signed, political support for it is fraying across the West. President Trump has pulled the U.S. out again, and Europe and Canada are balking at the cost and political unpopularity of climate measures.

Yet the global shift to clean energy is barreling ahead—driven largely by China's emergence as a clean-tech superpower. China’s massive manufacturing investments in the sector have sent the cost of clean energy plummeting, making it competitive with fossil fuels in many markets with few or no subsidies, The Wall Street Journal's Matthew Dalton reports.

As governments gather in Belém, Brazil, for the annual United Nations climate conference, China sits at the center of the negotiations like never before. Beijing’s turn to clean energy is helping keep the Paris accord intact, despite developing nations’ frustration with Western backsliding on climate.

But China is also the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and it has yet to begin cutting emissions—a big reason why global warming is on pace to crash through the temperature targets of the accord.

The world’s leading target setter for corporate decarbonization is looking to offer companies more flexibility in how they lower their emissions, offering new pathways to net zero as worries grow over whether businesses remain committed to carbon goals.

WSJ Pro Sustainable Business's Yusuf Khan reports that the Science Based Targets initiative outlined a range of ways companies could decarbonize, including by using environmental certificates, which some environmentalists have opposed.

With this “menu” approach to decarbonization, companies would be able to tailor the way they lower their emissions instead of adhering to a one-size-fits-all strategy, a shift that SBTi hopes would encourage companies to stick with the emissions fight.

One of the main changes involves splitting its guidance on how companies can lower their direct and indirect emissions. Companies will be able to choose different ways to lower the emissions they generate in their own operations and those that are generated from its purchased electricity.

A 1960s coal-fired power plant in Michigan that was days away from shutting down in May has been ordered by the Trump administration to remain open, the WSJ's Joe Barrett and Jennifer Hiller write.

“We are going to stop closing existing, reliable power plants that are essential to our grid, and we are going to bring some common sense back,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said last month on Fox Business.

Now the plant sits in limbo: Keeping it open has cost $80 million through Sept. 30, or about $615,000 a day, its owner said. Closing it would require overturning an emergency order. The situation has plunged the heavily Republican area—in deeply divided Michigan—into an unusual debate.

On one side stand homeowners, environmental groups and Michigan’s attorney general. They are fighting to shut down the plant for good. Another group wants a local entity to take over the plant and use it to attract a data center instead of demolishing it.

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• Pine Gate Renewables, a developer of solar and storage projects across the U.S., filed for bankruptcy. (WSJ)
   
• Google to buy 200,000 tons of carbon offsets from Brazilian reforestation startup Mombak. (Reuters)
   
• IKEA to launch restoration project in an endangered ecosystem in Brazil with BTG Pactual Timberland Investment Group. (ESG Today)
   
• Corning’s new Michigan plant is producing solar wafers, a component for solar panels not made in the U.S. for a decade. (Barron's)
   
• What makes the nuclear renaissance consequential isn't the technology, but how it's being deployed and who benefits from it. (Trellis)
   
• Rare earths supply chains to Europe will likely be vulnerable to disruption due to U.S.-China competition. (Dow Jones Risk Journal)

WSJ Pro Sustainable Business gives you an inside look at how companies are tackling sustainability. Send comments to bureau chief Perry Cleveland-Peck at perry.cleveland-peck@wsj.com and reporters Clara Hudson at clara.hudson@wsj.com and Yusuf Khan at yusuf.khan@wsj.com. Follow us on LinkedIn at perrycp, clara-hudson and yusuf_khan.