The global oil-and-gas industry faces a “moment of truth” at the COP28 climate summit next week, according to Dr Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), in comments reported by BBC News. According to the broadcaster, he said that when nations meet in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), the fossil-fuel sector must choose between contributing to climate change or “becoming part of the solution”. His comments come as the IEA launches a new report showing that, last year, fossil-fuel companies contributed just 1% of global investment in clean energy, the broadcaster says. It adds that the report has been launched because the agency wants “to put pressure on governments attending the conference to get an agreement on reducing the use of fossil fuels”. The IEA report concludes that oil-and-gas companies spend about 2.5% of their total capital expenditures on clean-energy technologies, compared with 97.5% on “traditional business areas”, according to the Guardian. Birol said they should be spending closer to 50% on low-carbon energy by 2030, while seeking to cut emissions from their fossil-fuel operations, the newspaper adds. The Financial Times says the new intervention from the IEA is its “starkest since it shocked the fossil fuel industry in 2021 by saying that there would be no room for new oil and gas exploration projects if climate targets were to be met”. It adds that the warning comes after “several oil-and-gas producers have dialled back clean-energy commitments in the past two years”. As the Times notes, only a handful of companies are making such commitments in the first place. It says 60% of the industry’s “green spending” is made by just four European companies – Shell, BP, Equinor and TotalEnergies – each of which devoted between 15% and 25% of their budgets last year on low-carbon energy.

In other COP28 news, US climate envoy John Kerry tells NHK World-Japan that the US and China agree that “we all need to be doing more, faster”, pointing to deploying more renewables and tackling methane emissions as key areas. Separately, Climate Home News reports that non-binary campaigners are planning to avoid COP28 due to fears over how they will be treated by the host nation. It cites cases where non-binary foreigners, including those from nations whose passports allow them to identify as such, have been detained at the UAE’s borders and deported. DeSmog has a piece on “key narratives to watch out for at COP28”, and Energy Monitor has an article about why the conclusion of the first “global stocktake” makes the event “the most important COP since the Paris Agreement”. Reuters has a profile of COP president Sultan Al Jaber. 

Green groups have criticised UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt for “tinkering at the edges” of the net-zero transition in his autumn statement, by failing to announce sufficient climate-related financial measures, according to the Press Association. The newswire notes that Hunt had previously said he “would respond to the US Inflation Reduction Act and the EU’s Green Deal, which are both aimed at stimulating domestic investment in renewable industries”. While the chancellor included a reference to £4.5bn of spending on UK manufacturing, including funds for zero-emissions vehicles and clean energy, the article says he “used the majority of the autumn statement to set out cuts to tax and national insurance ahead of an expected election next year”. In its analysis of the new measures, the Guardian says the “consensus by environmental groups is that the UK will not, at this rate, catch up with the rest of the world on green investment”. In a piece on what the statement means for net-zero, the i newspaper reports on dismay from campaigners that Hunt did not announce any new funding for home energy efficiency improvements, “despite policymakers arguing that it could support thousands of families who continue to grapple with high energy bills”. Separately, the Times reports that energy regulator Ofgem is expected to announce today that energy bills will rise by around 5%, or about £100 annually, in the new year as it updates the energy price cap. This means most households will pay more for energy than they did a year earlier at the height of the energy crisis, it notes. [Ofgem announced a £94 rise this morning.]

The Press Association highlights a pledge in the autumn statement to pay people up to £10,000 if they live near new power lines “in order to avoid local protests against the vital infrastructure”. It says this is a response to warnings that the rollout of new windfarms and nuclear power plants “could be meaningless without the cables to connect them to the grid”. The Financial Times notes another commitment in the statement to make new, low-carbon power projects, such as windfarms, exempt from the UK’s windfall tax on the sector “as part of government measures aimed at boosting investment”. The move is described in the article as “one of several steps taken by the government aimed at boosting investment in clean energy as concerns mount that the UK is set to miss its ambitious targets for low-carbon generating capacity”. (As Carbon Brief explained at the time, the last government renewable energy auction did not secure any new contracts for offshore wind.) In its coverage, BusinessGreen says tax relief on capital spending announced by Hunt was welcomed by businesses, with Treasury documents noting that it  “could prove particularly beneficial to capital intensive clean energy and low carbon infrastructure projects”. The news outlet quotes Climate Change Committee chief executive Chris Stark, who described the decision as “a very welcome step” because “of course net-zero is generally a pretty capital intensive thing”. Another BusinessGreen article highlights “five key takeaways for green businesses”.

Meanwhile, the Press Association reports on Stark appearing before the Environmental Audit Committee of MPs, where he highlighted the inequality in the distribution of net-zero benefits across the population.  It quotes him telling the committee: “If you are rich enough to afford a heat pump and drive your Tesla, you can escape many of the charges that others in society cannot. And that is for me the biggest of the policy challenges that we face in net zero.” Separately, according to the Guardian, the latest forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which was released alongside the autumn statement, “downgraded its forecasts for the takeup of electric cars over the next seven years”. It says the OBR notes that the government’s recent rollback of the ban on petrol-and-diesel car sales “may also be dissuading car buyers from going electric”. Sky News reports that Nissan is committing to manufacture future electric versions of two best-selling models at its plant in Sunderland after months of talks with the government.

Finally, the Daily Telegraph reports that Scotland’s only oil refinery is to halt operations by 2025, “amid surging energy costs and fears that a Labour crackdown on the North Sea will make it unviable”. In contrast, the Times reports: “The energy giant Petroineos announced on Wednesday that its oil refinery in Grangemouth will close in spring 2025 because it could no longer compete with overseas rivals.” Similarly, BBC News reports: “The company said Grangemouth had been facing significant challenges because of global market pressures.”

A record-breaking heatwave in Madagascar last month would have been “virtually impossible” without global warming, according to a new study covered by the Guardian. This marked the first such study to link a prolonged heatwave in sub-Saharan Africa to climate change, according to the newspaper. Temperatures were 2.5C higher than the recent average and millions of “very poor people” were affected, “but the damage to their lives was not recorded by officials or the media”, the article continues. It notes that many governments in Africa lack the capacity to record climate impacts and this lack of information can make implementing measures to avoid deaths very difficult. (See Carbon Brief’s recent analysis of extreme weather in Africa, which also examines why African extremes often go unreported.) Meanwhile, South African news website News 24 reports that heat records are currently being broken in parts of South Africa as an “extreme heatwave” settles on the nation, as well as Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi.

In Brazil, another study has concluded that the heatwave implicated in the death of Ana Clara Benevides Machado, a fan at a Taylor Swift concert in Rio de Janeiro, can also be linked to climate change, according to the Independent. Separately, an article in the Washington Post considers what drought could mean for the future of the Amazon.

India’s power ministry has said that the country plans to expand its coal generation capacity by adding “at least 80 gigawatts (GW) by 2031-32”, Mint reports. The outlet quotes RK Singh, India’s minister for power and renewable energy, saying: “Thermal energy was written off a few years ago, which was premature. Thermal cannot be written off until energy storage becomes viable. So, thermal is going to stay until energy storage becomes cost-effective for round-the-clock supply through renewable energy.”

With just a week before COP28, “New Delhi won’t bow down to any pressure to take coal phasedown targets”, says the Economic Times. According to the paper, India’s coal ministry has set production targets of 1.4bn tonnes of coal per annum (Gtpa) by 2027 and 1.6Gtpa in 2030 from current levels of about 1Gtpa. These plans “will far exceed the likely domestic requirement of thermal power plants in the country, including that for likely additional capacity”, it added. However, experts that ET spoke to “feel that at COP28, India could build on its success at G20 and further the discussions on climate finance, tripling of renewables, doubling energy efficiency, and phasing down fossil fuels”. India’s former union power secretary Alok Kumar tells the paper that “India yielded to coal phasedown three years ago [at COP26], but other fossil fuel-reliant countries are very upfront that no way they will agree to phase down oil and gas”, adding that “the country cannot accelerate renewable energy beyond a point as it will hit the wall of affordability and we know the track record of nuclear and hydropower”.

Mongabay India, meanwhile, reports on a new study that shows that “most developing countries are yet to achieve decent living standards, which will generate an additional 8.6bn of carbon emissions compared to 2019 levels”. Another Mongabay story reports on a study that compares expenditures on environmental protection in 33 countries, including India, versus spending on national security, the former slowing from “8% in 2000-2010 to 1.1% in 2010-2020”, while the latter “spiked steeply [from] 2015 onwards”.

Separately, the Deccan Herald reports that as many as 15 Indian cities “experienced a minimum five days of extreme heat in 2023”, according to a new study by Climate Central. Meanwhile, newswire Press Trust of India examines the draft agreement on the loss and damage fund “that will be up for final approval at [COP28], and dissatisfaction from both wealthy and developing nations could block approval or require additional negotiations”. According to the story, developing countries “were disappointed that the agreement didn’t specify a scale for the fund” and that the World Bank is slated to host it temporarily, given that the bank’s  “president is typically appointed by the United States, as part of a global finance system that has often saddled them with crushing loans that make it more difficult to cope with the costs of climate change”. India’s former lead climate negotiator RR Rashmi tells the newswire that “this arrangement won’t provide the new fund with true independence, will obstruct direct access to vulnerable communities, and will lack full accountability to governments and those most affected by climate change”.

Senior campaign officials and advisers to Donald Trump tell the Financial Times that the former president is “planning to gut US president Joe Biden’s landmark climate law” – the Inflation Reduction Act – if he is elected next year. They also say Trump would aim to “maximise fossil fuel production” during a second term, the paper reports. The article notes that he has previously referred to the IRA as the “biggest tax hike in history”. It says Republican officials in a Trump administration “would come armed with a mandate to overhaul or abolish government agencies, purge officials, cut spending on clean energy programmes and repeal restrictions on the fossil-fuels industry”. Separately, DeSmog says that US oil-and-gas production is expected to rise even under the Inflation Reduction Act, according to a new report.

Elsewhere, Politico has a piece titled “Trump looms over EU-Canada summit”, noting that both parties “fear” the prospect of a second Trump presidency. At the summit, both sides are set to double down on bilateral commitments, including a “green alliance” and more cooperation on raw materials, the outlet says. 

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports on a new US federal policy that requires states and urban areas to set goals to reduce emissions from cars and trucks on their roads. The newspaper describes it as “part of the Biden administration’s efforts to link tens of billions of dollars in highway funding from the infrastructure law to its environmental priorities”.

The Australian government will “supercharge” its goal to raise renewables to 82% of the electricity mix by 2030 by “dramatically expanding its underwriting of green generation and storage”, according to the Australian Financial Review. Climate minister Chris Bowen will present state and territory counterparts with an expanded “capacity investment scheme” on Friday, the paper says. Under the scheme, which is “worth many billions of dollars”, low-carbon energy sources will be funded by the federal government while fossil fuels will be excluded, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The newspaper says the government is aiming to add another 32 gigawatts (GW) of power to the electricity grid by 2027, with the first bids under the new auctions set to begin in April. According to the Guardian, the capacity investment scheme was originally aimed to support 6GW of batteries and other storage, but is now expanded to 32GW, with 23GW for new wind-and-solar projects and 9GW for storage.The newspaper explains how the new system works, noting that “should market prices exceed a ceiling, the commonwealth could make money, and if they fall below a floor, taxpayers would have to make up the difference”.

China’s top economic planner the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has issued a policy document which says that “by 2025, about 50 key products’ carbon footprint accounting rules and standards will be introduced at the central level”, reports Wall Street News, a Chinese financial outlet. It says the document calls for “the establishment of a preliminary carbon footprint background database for key industries” and for a “national product carbon labelling certification system to be basically in place”. Once implemented, the policy will promote “industrial upgrading”, as well as “address trade barriers” and “enhance the competitiveness of export products”, it adds. Meanwhile, the Chinese energy outlet BJX News reports that the China Iron and Steel Industry Association has issued a list of “best available technology”, which is aimed at “further advancing the high-quality transformation of the iron and steel industry towards ultra-low emissions”. 

Elsewhere, the Legal Planet blog quotes Prof Alex Wang, faculty co-director at the UCLA Emmett Institute, as saying that the recent US-China climate agreement is representative of “the way the Paris Agreement was supposed to work, with each country responding to changed conditions on the ground to, hopefully, issue targets and action plans with greater ambition”. The outlet quotes Wang adding that the silence on areas of geopolitical tensions, such as supply chain risk and industrial competitiveness, in the statement “is deafening”. The Financial Times carries a letter from Clyde Prestowitz, former counsellor to the secretary of commerce in the US Reagan administration, who argues that “the main problem [in addressing climate change] is not lack of coupling among countries, it is resistance by virtually all countries, including China as well as the US, to taking even the necessary unilateral steps”. Solar industry newspaper PV Tech reports that the European parliament’s newly-passed version of the net-zero industry act was “met with both approval and some trepidation by representatives in the European solar industry”. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reports that environmental activists “have stepped up a pressure campaign in East Africa amid reports that China is considering backing a major oil pipeline”. 

In other news, the state-run industry newspaper China Electric Power News reports that the southern electricity spot market has been in “continuous settlement trial operation for two full years”, with total electricity volume reaching approximately 1,074 terawatt-hours. The spot market has effectively addressed challenges such as “tight energy supply, high prices, urgent shifts in electricity supply and demand, and typhoon weather”, it adds. In a comment, Prof Ye Ze from Changsha University of Science and Technology writes in digital outlet Dianlian Media that China’s electricity market reform has “fallen into a dilemma between price stability and full competition”. Finally, China Energy Net quotes the Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organisation’s Liu Zehong as saying China should “build a strong AC-DC hybrid power grid” and use flexible DC power to enhance “efficient consumption of clean energy”.

In the climate newsletter Heated, Emily Atkin and Arielle Samuelson reflect on the death of 23-year-old Ana Clara Benevides, who collapsed at a Taylor Swift concert in Rio de Janeiro on a “historic and dangerously hot day” in Brazil, where temperatures had reached 48C. They note that “what has been less discussed, at least thus far, is the fact that the day Benevides died was also a historic and dangerously hot day for the whole world”. They note that, last Friday, Earth’s average surface temperature rose more than 2C above pre-industrial levels [according to one model-based “reanalysis” product that carries significant uncertainty] “for the first time since humans began keeping temperature records”. The authors argue that Swift has a responsibility, not only to help protect her fans from the dangers of extreme heat, but also to use her position to sound the alarm about climate change.The write: “If megastars like Taylor Swift want to keep touring the ever-warming planet to bring tens of thousands of people in close outdoor quarters together, without deadly consequences, experts say they not only have to take more seriously the dangers of extreme heat – they have to be more vocal about the reason it’s so hot in the first place.”

Droughts that originate over the oceans and migrate onto land are a recently identified phenomenon with severe consequences for water resources, agriculture and ecosystems, according to new research. Using the difference between precipitation and evaporation, the study finds that the occurrence of “ocean-onto-land droughts” has increased in the past 60 years in response to rising greenhouse gas emissions. Under a high emissions scenario, the results suggest that globally, these kinds of droughts will become more frequent (+40%), persistent (+54%), widespread (+449%) and severe (+613%) between 2021 and 2100.