UN secretary general António Guterres has warned that the “world is still underestimating the risk of catastrophic climate breakdown and ecosystem collapse” in the run-up to COP29, reports the Guardian. Guterres tells the publication that a newly elected US president pulling the country out of the Paris Agreement for the second time would “risk crippling the process but said the accord would survive”. He further urged greater coordination on the interlinked environmental crises and pointed to tipping points such as the collapse of the Amazon rainforest and the Greenland ice sheet, the article notes. “The risk of these tipping points accelerating climate change is something that must be taken very seriously,” Guterres told the publication in an interview on the sidelines of the COP16 biodiversity summit. 

In other COP29 news, German chancellor Olaf Scholz has announced that he will no longer attend the climate summit, reports Bloomberg. Scholz will miss the summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, while he “grapples with a political crisis at home” the article notes, adding that his absence will add to the “European leadership vacuum at this year’s talks”. The Scottish government has also confirmed that their first minister John Swinney will not be attending COP29, reports the Scotsman. The Guardian has an article that explores Papua New Guinea’s decision to pull out of the upcoming summit due to frustration over “empty promises and inaction”. Meanwhile, Reuters discusses how Trump’s presidential win has “darkened the outlook for a strong deal at the COP29 climate summit”. 

Meanwhile, a senior COP29 official “appears to have used his role to arrange a meeting to discuss potential fossil fuel deals”, BBC News reports. A secret recording of the chief executive of Azerbaijan’s COP29 team, Elnur Soltanov, shows him discussing “investment opportunities” in the state oil and gas company, with a man posing as an investor, it explains. A former head of the UN body responsible for the climate talks tells the BBC that Soltanov’s actions were “completely unacceptable” and a “betrayal” of COP. An investigation by DeSmog finds that the UK pavilion at this year’s conference is being co-sponsored by an industrial software firm that “has worked for some of the world’s biggest polluters”. Software company AVEVA, indicated in December 2023 that it had more than 600 oil and gas customers, the article notes. In a feature in the Guardian, environment editor Fiona Harvey says that the “prospects of a strong outcome at [the summit] appear dim”, as the “odour of oil and return of Trump hang heavy over COP29 in Baku”.

Investors who were running bets against renewable energy stocks have “racked up profits of more than $1.2bn from the heavy sell-off that swept the sector in the wake of Donald Trump’s US presidential election victory”, reports the Financial Times. Data from Breakout Point shows companies such as Arrowstreet Capital and Qube Research & Technologies were among those that built up short positions against renewable energy firms such as Norwegian hydrogen firm Nel and German wind turbine manufacturer Nordex, the article explains. Shares in these renewable companies fell sharply on Wednesday amid concerns that the president-elect will “terminate” the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) brought in by current president Joe Biden, it continues. If Trump does move against the IRA, this could “result in a halt to tax credits and pull the plug on offshore wind development”, notes the FT.

In the UK, industry leaders and analysts have said that the country could “capitalise if the US president-elect cut investment in renewable energy”, reports the Times. It notes that Trump has claimed he would “rescind all unspent funds”  of the $370bn investment for wind farms, solar power and other green schemes contained in IRA. It remains uncertain whether Trump will “follow through on his promises”, with some noting that it will depend on who is in his administration, the Times notes. Other UK industry leaders have said there is a potential upside for the country, however, with the article quoting Greg Jackson, chief executive of Octopus Energy, who says: “Investors could very well see the UK as a safer bet given turmoil surrounding the climate agenda in the US, but it would be wise for them – and for policymakers – to learn lessons from the Inflation Reduction Act.”

BBC News reports that officials have begun restoring power in Cuba after Hurricane Rafael caused a nationwide blackout on Wednesday. The hurricane brought winds of up to 185km/h (115mph), causing the county’s electricity system to shut down for the second time in weeks, the article continues. At least 70,000 people were evacuated from their homes before the storm made landfall, with warnings Rafael could bring storm surges, flash flooding and mudslides, it adds. BBC News notes that no fatalities have been reported. Reuters reports that the Hurricane has now “spun off westward into the Gulf of Mexico where it no longer posed an immediate threat to land, the Miami-based US National Hurricane Center said”. Progress is being made to restore power to pockets of central and eastern Cuba, but the process in the hardest hit areas of the west of the country will be slow, the article adds. Hurricane Rafael follows a “one-two punch” of disaster that hit Cuba in October, when the island’s energy crisis led to blackouts that lasted days and then a hurricane hit the eastern part of the island killing at least six people, reports the Guardian. The article adds that “human-caused climate breakdown has increased the occurrence of the most intense and destructive tropical cyclones because warming oceans provide more energy, producing stronger storms”.

In other extreme weather news, Typhoon Yinxing has “battered the northern Philippines” reports the Associated Press. The typhoon caused floods and landslides before blowing away from the country on Friday, leaving airports damaged and “aggravating a calamity caused by back-to-back storms that hit in recent weeks”, the article continues. Typhoon Yinxing, locally called Marce, is the 13th major storm to hit the Southeast Asian archipelago this year, it adds. There have been no reported fatalities, notes the article. However, officials have warned that “life-threatening conditions persist” in areas of Cagayan and the neighbouring provinces of Apayao and Ilocos Norte, says the New York Times. Storm surges surpassed 10ft, trees were uprooted and winds reached 180 miles per hour, it adds.

New research has found that carbon dioxide emissions from jets have “soared” by almost 50% over the past four years, reports the Financial Times. This has been driven by a shift in the post-pandemic travel habits of the wealthy, with the most frequent private flyers generating hundreds of times the average person’s total annual emissions, the article continues. The study, which looked at 25,000 aircraft between 2019 and 2023, highlights the hundreds of flights taken during this period to high-profile events, such as the UN climate summits, the FT notes. The Guardian reports that half the jets studied travelled less than 500km, while 900,000 were used for trips of less than 50km, “like taxis”. While private fights are used by just 0.003% of the world’s population, they are the most polluting form of transport, the article adds. The 8.7 million flights studied over the four years led to emissions of 15.6m tonnes of CO2, or as much as Nepal emits, the Times reports.

Trina Solar will “sell its US solar manufacturing operations” amidst “intensifying concerns” about Chinese companies “benefiting from clean-energy tax incentives created under President Joe Biden’s signature climate law”, Bloomberg reports. It adds Freyr Battery will pay $340m for the 5GW solar assembly facility, but Trina will retain minority ownership. Economic news outlet Jiemian also covers the story, quoting industry insiders that the decision may have been taken to “effectively cope with the policy fluctuations”. Industry news outlet BJX News assesses the potential impact of the second Trump administration on the energy sector, saying Trump may “increase oil drilling on public lands, provide tax breaks for [fossil fuel] producers and speed up approvals of natural gas pipelines”. Jiemian says Trump’s “core goal [is] to pursue US energy independence”. Li Yan, director of the Institute of World Political Studies at China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), urges “the US [and] China to jointly face global issues”, including climate change, in the state-run newspaper China Daily.

Elsewhere, Finland’s president Alexander Stubb has urged the EU and China to “engage in dialogue…to discover if they can find a solution” to EU tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), economic news outlet Yicai reports. State news agency Xinhua quotes a commerce ministry spokesperson saying China and the EU are “currently engaged in intensive consultations on the specific details of the price commitment plan on Chinese EVs”. Another comment article in China Daily says the “EU puts trade war with China on the cards”, given the bloc’s trade chief-in-waiting Maros Sefcovic’s “tough stance” on China. Chinese and UK scientists (including the director of the UK Met Office Hadley Centre) have called for “increased cooperation to combat climate change”, reports Xinhua. Experts said that Chinese automakers “still face challenges in the high-quality and sustainable development of the industry”, says Shanghai-based news outlet the Paper. 

Meanwhile, the Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily covers a new report on climate action by the minister of ecology and environment (MEE), which states that last year, “China’s non-fossil energy accounted for 17.9% of total energy consumption” and 51.9% of “total installed capacity”. China installed 75 GW of clean energy capacity in the third quarter of this year, a year-on-year increase of 17.5%, reports China News, which added that “clean-energy power generation” in the same quarter “accounted for about 33.5%” of the total. China issued a draft plan for “development of ultra-long duration energy storage”, Jiemian reports, aiming to “develop a globally competitive…manufacturing industry chain” for the sector by 2027.

A wind-driven wildfire has “roared through rural and residential communities” in Los Angeles, charring more than 20,500 acres, destroying 132 homes and damaging 88, says the Guardian. Hundreds of firefighters have been battling the Mountain fire in Ventura county, California, which is now around “5% contained”, the article notes. In a statement, California governor Gavin Newsom confirmed that more than 10,000 evacuation orders had been issued, reports BBC News. It adds that 3,500 homes and other structures were under threat from the wildfire and that federal funds had been secured to help fight it. Officials in several southern California counties have “urged residents to be on watch for fast-spreading blazes, power outages and downed trees during the latest round of notorious Santa Ana winds”, reports the Associated Press. The region has seen some of California’s most destructive fires in recent years, such as the 2018 Woolsey Fire, which killed three people and destroyed 1,600 homes near Los Angeles, notes the Times. This story is also covered by the Los Angeles Times, Reuters, Le Monde, NBC News and others.  

Writing in Bloomberg, opinion editor and columnist Mark Gongloff argues that, “for the climate, the best we can hope is that the aftermath of the 2024 [US] election will remain just short of catastrophic”. He points to progress made towards transitioning from fossil fuels towards clean energy, which has a “natural momentum that survived Donald Trump’s first term in office and will likely survive his second”. With the window to curb the worst of climate change closing, “it’s up to the Americans who claim to care about such things to join the rest of the world in doing everything they can to push in the other direction”, concludes Gongloff. 

In a separate comment piece in Bloomberg, columnist Liam Denning says that “Trump’s win is neither an oil gusher nor a green crusher”. Policy correspondent Megan Kenyon writes in the New Statesman that Trump’s election is “a climate disaster” and “his return could unravel the global consensus on emission reduction”. Columnist George Monbiot writes in the Guardian that it will take a “progressive revolution to stop” the war Trump will “wage…on planet Earth”. For Politico, Karl Mathiesen states that Trump’s second term will be nothing like his first, as “no leaders remain to check Trump’s climate wreckage”. In Heated, a range of experts tell Arielle Samuelson that Trump’s election is “the final nail in the coffin” for 1.5C, but that we “can still limit the damage”.

An editorial in the Financial Times states that the “implosion of Olaf Scholz’s [German] coalition is badly timed but inevitable”. It continues to explore the triggering factors for the collapse of the German government, including that “when the constitutional court ruled against the coalition’s off-budget spending schemes for climate and energy projects in November 2023…the money ran out and the divisions opened up, playing out in public view”. However, the “implosion of the coalition is both a blessing and a curse” argues the FT, and a snap election could provide “much-needed political reboot and a more coherent government capable of taking decisions”.

A “policy forum” warns against misusing the alleged lack of measurability of climate change adaptation strategies to cut funding. The authors note that climate adaptation discussions often centre on issues including the risk of maladaptation and the challenge of accurately measuring adaptation success. However, they warn that “the scientific disagreements about how to identify good and bad adaptation have infiltrated policy and practice, creating extended negotiations over definitions, subsequently constraining implementation”. They argue that adaptation needs to be rethought, and designed, implemented and evaluated better.

Annual emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from private aviation increased by 46% between 2019 and 2023, according to a new study. The authors analyse more than 18m private flights over 2019-23. They find that almost half of all flights are shorter than 500km and more than two thirds of private aircrafts are registered to the US. The authors also identify significant emissions peaks around certain international events, including COP28 and the 2022 FIFA World Cup.