Climate change was the main driver of the Amazon rainforest’s worst drought in at least half a century, according to a new study covered by BBC News. While droughts in the Amazon are not uncommon, last year was “exceptional”, the article adds. The analysis found that without planet-warming emissions from burning oil, gas and coal, the drought would have been far less extreme, reports the Guardian. Millions of people in the Amazon have been affected by the drought, with some rivers reaching their lowest levels for more than a century, it adds. There have been drinking water shortages, failed crops and power cuts, as hydroelectric plants were affected, it continues. The drought was agricultural, combining reduced rainfall with hotter conditions that evaporated moisture from plants and soil, reports the Associated Press. It was “heat-driven evaporation that was critical in the drought’s severity”, says the World Weather Attribution study co-author Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and Carbon Brief contributing editor, the article adds. The Amazon basin – which covers parts of nine countries, but lies mostly in Brazil – is the single biggest land-based sink of carbon on the planet, storing up to five times the world’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, notes Inside Climate News. Its survival as an intact ecosystem is “critical to stabilising Earth’s atmosphere”, the article adds. The research also found that the El Niño phenomenon had “a much smaller influence” on driving drought in the Amazon, the Financial Times notes. Many commentators pointed to El Niño to explain the worsening drought in 2023, but, while the phenomenon did lead to even lower levels of rainfall, climate change was the main driver, it adds. Increased temperatures caused by burning fossil fuels made the lack of rainfall 10 times as likely as it would have been in a hypothetical world where humans had not transformed the climate, reports the New York Times. “Global warming also made the dehydration of soil and plants as well as the reduced river flows 30 times as likely”, the article adds. 

The Biden administration is pausing a decision to approve what would be the US’s largest natural gas export terminal, a delay that could stretch past the November election and “spell trouble for the project” and 16 other proposed terminals, reports the New York Times. According to three people with knowledge of the matter, the White House is directing the energy department to expand its evaluation of the project to consider its impact on climate change, as well as the economy and national security, it adds. The Calcasieu Pass 2 project, or CP2, would be positioned on the rapidly eroding Louisiana shoreline and form part of a huge expansion of new gas infrastructure along the Gulf of Mexico, the Guardian reports. The pause has come amid concern from climate experts who have said greenlighting the project would create a “carbon mega bomb”, it adds. An comment piece by veteran climate campaigner and author Bill McKibben on his Crucial Years SubStack celebrates the decision, saying: “If it’s true, and I think it is, this is the biggest thing a US president has ever done to stand up to the fossil fuel industry.” While the delay doesn’t “guarantee long-term victory”, McKibben notes, it sets up a process where victory is possible. If developed, CP2 would have a capacity of around 20m metric tonnes per year, making it twice the size of Venture Global’s – the company developing the project – present CP site, reports Reuters. Climate activists have said that new LNG projects lock in global reliance on fossil fuels for decades and lead to emissions not just from burning gas but also leaks of methane, the article notes. By delaying the decision on CP2, Biden could spare criticism from environmentalists, it adds. 

Meanwhile, Biden has also vetoed a Republican-led effort that “could have thwarted” the administration’s plans to invest $7.5bn to build electric vehicles (EV) charging stations across the US, reports the New York Times. Biden argues that the congressional resolution would hurt domestic manufacturing, as well as the clean-energy transition, the article notes. Relatedly, in the UK, EVs “may put brakes” on a resurgence of car manufacturing, reports the Times, despite a record £24bn committed in the last year to new EV models. New figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) show that car manufacturers “picked themselves up from a near-70-year low in 2022”, producing 1.02m cars and vans last year, it continues. The SMMT is forecasting a year-on-year drop of 4% in 2024, however, as Mini and Januar Land Rover pause production in order to transition to zero-emission vehicles, the article notes. After years of curtailed spending due to Brexit uncertainty and instability at the top of government the auto sector became “investible” again, reports the Financial Times. More than a third of all UK vehicles made last year were hybrid or electric models, marking a record high, it adds. Meanwhile, a team at Harvard University has made a breakthrough with a new “solid-state” battery, which can be charged in the time that it takes to fill up a tank of petrol and can be repeated at least 6,000 times, reports the Independent. The development comes amid reports that the freezing cold weather in the US has left EV owners “in a jam”, where there are reports of fast-draining batteries, slow charging, long queues and cars being towed after running out of power, it adds. 

The EU’s fossil CO2 emissions fell by 8% in 2023, the Guardian reveals, falling to a 60-year low. More than half of this drop is due to the use of cleaner electricity, with the EU building record levels of solar panels and wind turbines and having been able to generate more power from dams and nuclear power last year than in 2022, when drought and repair works hampered them, the article continues. Lower demand and good weather also contributed to reducing emissions, the analysis from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea) found, notes the Guardian. The fall in emissions was the steepest yearly drop on record behind 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic led to factories shutting and flights being grounded, it adds. “EU CO2 emissions have finally fallen back to levels apparent in my parents’ generation in the 1960s. Yet, over this time period, the economy has tripled – showing that climate change can be combated without foregoing economic growth,” Isaac Levi, an analyst at CREA, tells the Guardian. 

Elsewhere, the French government is pressing the UK to help fill a multibillion-pound hole in the budget of nuclear power projects being built in England by France’s electricity operator EDF, reports the Financial Times in a story on its frontpage. The call for a contribution is likely to cause tensions between Paris and London, coming a day after state-owned EDF admitted its construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant in Somerset will suffer further costly delays, taking the bill to as much as £46bn, the article notes. Separately, in France, a deposit of natural hydrogen has been discovered that could be the largest ever found, reports the Guardian. Scientists at the University of Lorraine unexpectedly discovered a deposit more than 1,000 metres deep underground, produced by groundwater reacting with iron-rich minerals, splitting the water into hydrogen, possibly renewing itself indefinitely, it continues. The deposit is enough to meet global demand for hydrogen for two years, the article notes.

The National Audit Office has said that the UK government should review how it monitors the carbon footprint of biomass power plants, the Financial Times reports. The government currently relies on certified information on the sustainability of biomass supply chains supplied by the generators, it continues. Parliament’s “spending watchdog” says the government “cannot show that its current arrangements are good enough”, as it does not evaluate the data supplied, the article adds. The NAO states that this “lack of evaluation” needs to be addressed, reports Bloomberg. Currently, ministers are consulting on extending biomass subsidies beyond 2027 and the NAO report recommends an impact assessment should be published before this decision is made, the article adds. The NAO’s report follows a probe announced last September, at which point shares in the UK’s largest biomass generator Drax fell 10%, reports Sky News. BusinessGreen quotes Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, in its coverage of the report, saying: “If biomass is going to play a key role in the transition to net-zero, the government needs to be confident that the industry is meeting high sustainability standards. However, the government has been unable to demonstrate its current assurances are adequate to provide confidence in this regard.” The UK government has “handed energy companies £22bn in billpayer-backed subsidies to burn wood for electricity despite being unable to prove the industry meets sustainability standards”, reports the Guardian. The article highlights that the government put forward plans to offer Drax extra subsidies for biomass running till the end of the decade last week. Drax’s sustainability claims are also under investigation by energy regulator Ofgem, reports the Daily Telegraph, which opened an enforcement case last May to examine how it was reporting the data used to calculate green subsidies.

Relatedly, Drax is planning to spend tens of millions of pounds over the next two years “beefing up its presence” in the US, as it looks to capitalise on Biden’s green tax incentives, reports the Times. It has set up a new subsidiary based in Houston, Texas, that will “accelerate the energy group’s push into America” and will become the global headquarters for its bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) business. Drax is planning to build two BECCS plants in the US by the end of the decade, it continues, which it claims will be able to capture and store six million tonnes of carbon a year. 

India’s net annual emissions in 2019 “stood at 2.6bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), a 4.56% increase from 2016 levels and a 115% increase since 1994”, Down to Earth reports, based on the country’s third “national communication” which it submitted to the UNFCCC last month. The country’s increase in emissions between 2016 and 2019 was “largely driven by burning of fossil fuels particularly associated with industrial processes and product use sector”, the outlet writes. The energy sector remained “the highest contributor” and accounted “for three-fourths of total GHG emissions in 2019”, with emissions from fossil fuels burned for power generation rising 10%, but “the second most prominent culprit” was industrial-sector emissions, “increasing by 16% since 2016, mainly due to the increase in the production of cement, aluminium and lime.” Meanwhile, India states that its land use and land-use change and forestry sector (LULUCF) “removed 20% of India’s CO2 emissions in 2019”, but “the absolute emissions from the agricultural sector saw a 3.2% increase” and “wildfires affected the net balance of GHG emissions”.

Meanwhile, the Hindustan Times covers a new report by the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) which shows that India’s renewable energy supply “is increasing, rapidly raising the share of clean-energy sources in the energy mix even as the country battles a severe air pollution crisis”. The report finds that “the share of renewable energy (wind, solar and other RE) increased to 30.1% in 2023 compared to 27.5% in 2022 with the share of coal-based power plants decreasing from 51.1% to 49.3%”, the article adds.

In other energy news, Business Standard reports that India is considering “reinstat[ing] crude oil shipments from Iran as Houthi insurgents step up attacks on maritime trade in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden”. Separately, state-run miner Coal India Limited “plans to acquire rare earth and critical mineral mines including lithium directly from the government, in addition to bidding for Jammu and Kashmir’s lithium reserves in upcoming [critical mineral] auctions”, Mint reports. 

Separately, Bloomberg reports that the government in “New Delhi plans to raise the potential impacts of the EU carbon border adjustment mechanism, or CBAM, on domestic industries at the seventh round of negotiations on a proposed free trade agreement…to try and shield its companies from the full impact of the levy”. The Indian government, according to unnamed official sources, has several proposals it plans to raise with the EU, including “a tax exemption for small and medium-sized enterprises, to enable credits generated by a local fossil fuel tax to be regarded as equal to Europe’s emissions allowances, and that Brussels recognises Indian-accredited energy auditors”.

Finally, a snow drought combined with a lack of rainfall could impact India’s economic growth in this financial year “by 7.3%”, according to an advance estimate by the country’s national statistics organisation, says the Hindustan Times. “A crop failure for the second year would be a death knell for farmers,” says apple farmer Harish Chauhan, speaking to the paper. The Press Trust of India reports on a new study that predicts that “labour productivity could fall as low as 40% in countries like India and Pakistan by the end of the century due to climate change, threatening global food production”. 

EDF’s “travails” at the Hinkley nuclear power plant construction site may offer a gift to other electricity rivals, including Drax, suggests a Lex comment piece in the Financial Times. A deficit in expected nuclear generation capacity towards the end of the decade caused by further delays in the development of EDF’s Hinkley Point C plant could raise the chances that UK ministers will extend renewable energy subsidies for Drax, it notes. But an investment in Drax is “not for the faint-hearted” it adds, given environmental campaigners “vehemently oppose” woody biomass and policial announcements can “knock the share price about”. 

Writing for Reuters, the Energy Saving Trust’s chief executive Mike Thornton argues the UK has “dropped the ball on climate”, but that it can get back on track, pointing to a need for focus on reducing demand, public awareness and moving away from fossil fuels. In the Financial Times, columnist Alan Beattie explores why Biden’s “green spending splurge” is a hard model to copy, stating it is too expensive and China-sceptic to become a global standard. 

Concurrent drought and heat events, known as “hot droughts” have become more common in North America due to rising temperatures, but identifying events in the historical record is challenging because of a lack of independent soil moisture and temperature data, according to a new study. The research reconstructs summer temperatures across western North America back to the 16th century. Evaluating these measurements alongside existing hydroclimate reconstructions reveals an “increasing association” between maximum temperature and drought severity in recent decades, relative to the past five centuries. The authors conclude that the frequency and extent of hot droughts in the 21st century is “likely unprecedented since at least the 16th century”.