Yesterday, the European Union launched the “first phase of the world’s first system to impose CO2 emissions tariffs on imported steel, cement and other goods as it tries to stop more polluting foreign products from undermining its green transition”, reports Reuters. The newswire adds: “The planned tariff has caused disquiet among trading partners and, at a forum last month, China’s top climate envoy Xie Zhenhua urged countries not to resort to unilateral measures such as the EU levy. The bloc will not begin collecting any CO2 emission charges at the border until 2026. Sunday, however, marks the start of an initial phase of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) when EU importers will have to report the greenhouse gas emissions embedded during the production of imported volumes of iron and steel, aluminium, cement, electricity, fertilisers and hydrogen. Importers will from 2026 need to purchase certificates to cover these CO2 emissions to put foreign producers on a level footing with EU industries that must buy permits from the EU carbon market when they pollute.”

The Financial Times features the story on its frontpage under the headline: “UK exporters face hefty EU carbon tax bill after Sunak weakens climate policies.” The article begins: “Rishi Sunak’s weakening of UK climate targets has left British exporters facing hundreds of millions of pounds in EU carbon border taxes within the next decade – revenues that otherwise would have flowed to the Treasury. The UK carbon market, which sets the price large manufacturers and energy companies must pay for every tonne of CO2 released, has collapsed after the Conservative government weakened a number of green initiatives. UK emissions prices have fallen to less than half the EU equivalent in recent months, having previously traded near parity. The EU’s forthcoming carbon border tax regime will seek to penalise countries with substantially lower carbon costs than the bloc’s. As a result, the drop in UK emissions prices means that British exporters to the EU will become liable for the EU tax when it comes into force in 2026. The lower emissions price also means that the UK Treasury will generate less revenue from carbon pricing; in effect the changes will divert a portion of companies’ carbon bills from Westminster to Brussels.”

Politico says “the EU’s effort to become climate neutral is kicking into high gear – as of Sunday the bloc’s carbon border tax enters a trial period, which is likely to raise tensions with key trading partners”. It adds: “The impact is likely to be the most severe on the EU’s biggest trading partners – Russia, China, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Ukraine, India, South Korea, and the United States, according to a report by the Carnegie Europe thinktank earlier this year. Brazil, South Africa and India, have all accused the EU measure of being ‘discriminatory’. New Delhi announced last week that it is planning its own carbon tax, taking particular aim at the EU’s exports. China has called on the World Trade Organization to assess the measure.”

The Economist has published a feature about the launch of the CBAM today headlined: “How carbon prices are taking over the world.” It concludes: “There is a domino effect to carbon pricing. Once an industry is subject to a carbon price its businesses will naturally want their competitors to face the same rules. Therefore owners of coal power plants will lobby to ensure that gas power plants operate on a level playing-field. Governments in exporting countries also have an incentive to ensure that their domestic firms pay a carbon price at home rather than a tariff abroad. If Asia’s factories are pressed to reduce their emissions anyway by schemes such as CBAM, then its governments are leaving money on the table by not levying a carbon price of their own. The question is whether the dominoes will fall fast enough.”

The UK media continues to report on the fallout from Rishi Sunak’s recent political pivot away from environmental policies and towards, in particular, the “motorist”. The Guardian carries new polling showing that “almost nine in 10 voters who intend to switch their support from Conservative to Labour candidates in the next general election believe that ‘green growth’ is important for the future of Britain’s economy”. The newspaper adds: “Carried out by pollsters Opinium, the survey found that 82% of all respondents backed the growth of Britain’s green industry to boost the economy, in the same week that the prime minister announced a series of U-turns on the government’s green commitments in an attempt to create a dividing line with Labour before the election. The survey of more than 5,000 adults found support for the green economy was even stronger among swing voters who supported the Conservatives in 2019 and are now planning to switch to Labour, at 88%.” In contrast, the Daily Mail claims “an exclusive poll for the Daily Mail finds the public support his bold policies [such as his climate policy U-turns] that create clear blue water with Labour. It adds: “The Survation poll found that half of the public supported the government’s decision to delay some of its targets to reach net-zero to help household finances, with just 36% opposed.”

The Spectator focuses on an interview Sunak gave to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg yesterday as the annual Conservative party conference began in Manchester. It says he came “out fighting on net-zero in tetchy…clash”. The Sun says “Sunak unloads on his ‘extreme’ net-zero critics as he opens his first [conference] as PM”. The conference has seen various Conservative politicians – many of whom are viewed by the media as jockeying for position as potential leadership candidates, should the Tories lose the next election – seeking to have their say on the recent policy shifts. The Sunday Times features an interview with business secretary Kemi Badenoch headlined: “We can’t bankrupt ourselves getting to net-zero.” The Times covers how “one of the Conservatives’ most prominent business supporters is to quit the party after concluding that the government has shown an ‘inability to deliver’ and ‘drifted out of touch with business, the economy and with the everyday needs of British people’”. Richard Walker, executive chairman of Iceland, who had been expected to stand as a Conservative MP at the next election, said the country was “in a considerably worse state” after 13 years of Tory rule, the paper says, adding that he saw the “final straw” as Sunak’s U-turn on the government’s net-zero plans. Walker has also penned a comment piece for the Guardian in which he says: “I am certainly not willing to make compromises with a party which has clearly lost its way on its approach to net-zero and the environment in particular.”

In other UK news, the Times reports that “a network of super-pylons across the country will be fast-tracked under planning reforms designed to rewire the electricity grid to hit net-zero”. It continues: “A blueprint is being drawn up for a network of 400,000-volt cables, landing stations and transformers to bring renewable energy from Scotland and the North Sea to England’s towns and cities to power electric cars, heat pumps and other green technologies.” BBC News says “the company which operates the electricity grid in Northern Ireland says it does not expect any disruption to supply this winter despite the closure of the last coal-fired power station [Kilroot, north of Belfast]”. The Daily Telegraph reports that “the NHS is banning an anaesthetic gas to meet net-zero targets in a move that a leading climate expert has warned lacks any scientific basis”. The Daily Telegraph also covers the latest comments by the climate-sceptic owner of budget airline Ryanair: “Michael O’Leary has praised Rishi Sunak for watering down Britain’s ‘unrealistic’ net-zero targets as he criticised the City’s ‘frankly mad’ approach to ethical investment.” Finally, the Times covers new analysis by NGO Global Witness showing that “five of the world’s biggest private oil and gas companies, including BP and Shell, are planning to spend an average of $14m an hour on fossil fuels until 2050”. 

Germany’s climate-finance spending for developing countries reached “a new record level” last year, surpassing its €6bn target set for 2025, reports Clean Energy Wire. The outlet quotes the government’s statement to the EU: “Germany is, therefore, doing its fair share of the industrialised countries’ promise to mobilise $100bn per year to combat climate change in developing and emerging countries.” Germany’s economy and climate minister Robert Habeck is also quoted: “Ultimately, it is about enabling the countries of the global south to meet their own climate-protection commitments.” However, Oxfam has criticised wealthier countries, stating that their reported climate-finance support is three times higher than the actual value, the outlet adds. N-tv quotes Svenja Schulze, Germany’s minister of economic cooperation and development, emphasising the importance of other industrialised countries also fulfilling their “fair share” of the joint $100bn commitment.

Meanwhile, Tagesschau reports that German chancellor Olaf Scholz and foreign minister Annalena Baerbock have met with the heads of state from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in Berlin to discuss issues connected to strengthening energy security and creating alternative energy supply routes aimed at bypassing the “strong dependence” on deliveries of gas and oil from Russia. “The availability of natural resources in the Central Asian states is of particular interest to Germany,” notes the outlet. Süddeutsche Zeitung explains that with Russia’s absence as a gas and oil supplier, Kazakhstan is willing to step in to partially fill the gaps. The Financial Times reports that Angela Merkel’s former chief economic adviser “has acknowledged that her policies left Germany overly dependent on Russian gas”. 

Finally, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) carries an article about the growing water scarcity issue facing Berlin, primarily due to the declining water levels in the River Spree, which supplies the city’s drinking water. FAZ notes that climate change and over-pumping of groundwater have contributed to the region’s water woes. 

The  European Commission will announce tomorrow the “critical technologies” it plans to include in plans to “de-risk” its ties with China for “refining the parameters of its economic security strategy”, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. The move follows an EU investigation into China’s subsidies for electric vehicle manufacturers, it notes. Another article in the South China Morning Post reports that Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s special representative for international climate policy, was “given the cold shoulder during a trip to Beijing” this week, saying sources believe this is “retaliation” for German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock’s description of Chinese president Xi Jinping as a “dictator”. Bloomberg’s Hyperdrive newsletter argues that tariffs alone will not “counter” the dominance of China’s electric cars, adding that “closing the gap in supply chain readiness, engineering expertise and technological innovation” in Europe is needed. 

Meanwhile, Bloomberg has published a feature about a researcher monitoring satellite data that could reveal significant methane emissions – with China a “likely focus”. The South China Morning Post reports that researchers in China have developed a method of converting methane to methanol in a development that “could revolutionise the way a key source of green energy is produced”. In Indonesia, France24 covers protests held by villagers who face eviction for the construction of a factory by “one of the world’s biggest glass and solar panel makers”, Xinyi Glass. Elsewhere, the Communist Party-affiliated newspaper Guangming Daily carries a comment piece by Wang Yiwei, a deputy dean at an academy at China’s Renmin University which is focused on “Xi Jinping thought”, who writes that the Belt and Road Initiative has “lit up the world” through building “competitive green and low-carbon technologies and sustainable development models”.

The United Arab Emirates is “proffering itself as host of a second annual UN climate summit, as negotiations over who will lead the next round of critical discussions on global warming remain deadlocked by geopolitical tensions following Russia’s war in Ukraine”, reports the Financial Times. The newspaper adds: “The move would give the UAE, which will host the UN COP28 in Dubai later this year, a large influence over global climate policy during a key two-year period when the world needs to agree on efforts to halt climate change. Next year’s COP29 is due to be hosted by a country in eastern Europe, as part of a rotation that sees various regions and countries preside over the event, which in recent years has been attended by tens of thousands of people. The 23 countries that make up the COP grouping known as the eastern European states must unanimously agree on the host country.  Russia, however, has pushed back against any EU member country hosting the summit in the wake of the Ukraine war. Armenia and Azerbaijan were front runners until this month, but Baku’s seizure of the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh has escalated tensions between the two countries, and with Russia. Germany, as the home of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, is the default host if countries cannot agree on another option, while the UAE would remain the holder of the presidency. But several people familiar with discussions said the UAE was reluctant to preside over the negotiations unless it could also host the event.”

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that “major oil and gas company chiefs held discussions with heavy industry bosses on Sunday in the United Arab Emirates in an effort to agree a firm commitment to reduce carbon emissions ahead of a United Nations climate summit next month”. Another Reuters article notes that, following the meeting, COP28 president Sultan al-Jaber has said today that “more than 20 oil and gas companies were rallying around his calls to curb carbon emissions ahead of [COP28]”. The newswire adds: “Jaber said that more than 20 oil and gas companies had positively answered calls to align around net-zero by 2050, zero out methane emissions and eliminate routine flaring by 2030. He did not elaborate.”

There is continuing media coverage of extreme weather events around the world. The Guardian says “Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Poland and Switzerland have all experienced their hottest Septembers on record, with unseasonably high temperatures set to continue into October, in a year likely to be the warmest in human history”. A separate Guardian article reports from Australia that “Sydney has endured its hottest ever start to October on record as fire danger warnings were issued across NSW – and as two bushfires threatened campers and towns in eastern Victoria”. And numerous outlets cover the extreme flooding experience last week in New York city, with the Independent quoting Rohit Aggarwala from New York’s Department of Environmental Protection: “Our climate is changing faster than our infrastructure can respond.” BBC News says: “An estimated 100,000 New Yorkers reside in a vast network of illegal basement dwellings that the impacts of climate change are remaking into ‘death traps’.”

The Guardian carries an “analysis” piece by Carbon Brief’s Dr Simon Evans who walks through how a UK thinktank, which has a history of climate scepticism, demanded a debate last week on the “cost of net-zero in a report full of errors that even a schoolboy would be embarrassed about”, which then got covered by various right-leaning newspapers. The report was widely mocked and factchecked but, despite the thinktank noting the need to “correct” the report, most media coverage of it remained uncorrected. Compounding the problem, the Sun on Sunday then published a column by climate-sceptic commentator Tony Parsons in which he repeated the report’s false findings.

Meanwhile, in other UK comment, new-born “farmer” Jeremy Clarkson uses his Sunday Times column to return to his familiar theme of mocking climate action: “When the government was obsessed with cutting carbon emissions to zero, it actively persuaded farmers to stop growing food, which is obviously idiotic. We have a climate that’s changing, but no real idea what it will be like in the future. So do I invest in tobacco or rice?” The Sunday Times’ Oliver Shah also returns to his own routine attacks on climate action in an article headlined: “Brace for the next wave of green tape threatening to throttle bosses.”

Separately, the Financial Times carries the transcript of an interview a panel of its journalists undertook with John Kerry, the US climate envoy. The newspaper previews the interview: “In the discussion, the former secretary of state called for the oil and gas industry to ‘come to the table’ to commit to action at COP28. But he appeared frustrated at the continued burning of so-called ‘unabated’ fossil fuels (those burnt without the capture of emissions) – and concerned about the influence of oil and gas industry lobbyists on the US political process. Ultimately though, he was optimistic about the role of the private sector in driving forward the transition to green energy.”

Writing for Nature, Prof Joeri Rogelj, who is the director of research at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and Environment at Imperial College London, argues that “incoherent new climate-policy messages by prime minister Rishi Sunak will dissolve the UK’s climate leadership, stifle innovation’s momentum and cost consumers”. He continues: “On the world stage, these policy changes show that the UK is turning its back on a global leadership position while the US and the EU are using the transition to climate resilience as an opportunity to lead. The UK could confidently be a global climate leader, having spearheaded the first comprehensive domestic climate legislation in 2008, set a legally binding net-zero target in 2019 and hosted the COP26 climate summit in 2021. Instead, it has weakened its diplomatic weight and might need to brace for a cool reception when explaining its choices to low- and middle-income countries. The UK has a broad base of public and political support for climate action, so the prime minister cannot lay this decision at the feet of the public. What people want and businesses need is clear: effective climate policies to reach net-zero emissions, creating a prosperous economy and a liveable world for all.”

Meanwhile, the UK newspapers carry a range of comment times to coincide with the start of the Conservative party conference in Manchester. An editorial in the Sunday Mirror argues that Sunak’s “mind is now set on short-term electoral gain”. It adds: “Even if he is still PM in 2025, he will not be 25 years later – so [global warming is] not his problem. Why worry if London falls below sea level? Its defences mean it is unlikely to flood. The people of Leeds may welcome Melbourne’s weather. Yet for countries such as Somalia, global warming is already a matter of life and death.” In contrast, the right-leaning newspapers predictably all get behind Sunak and try to give him cover over his net-zero policy U-turns. An editorial in today’s Daily Mail says: “Pushing back net-zero bans on gas boilers and petrol and diesel cars was eminently sensible and has proved hugely popular.” [In fact, the polling is very mixed on this topic and none show that such moves have been “hugely popular”.] An editorial in today’s Daily Express says: “His sleeves are rolled up and he has shown in recent weeks that he’s prepared to make a stand – for example, pushing back on what is required to meet the 2050 net-zero deadline. He is determined to face the eco zealots head-on and has proved that he has no truck with the anti-car lobby. Inflation is falling – not fast enough, but falling nonetheless…The British love an underdog, especially one who shows real fight.” An editorial in today’s Sun says: “Narrowing polls this weekend appear to show Sunak reaping the benefits of backing the Sun in putting the brakes on net-zero. In doing so he was prepared to face the inevitable flak from the eco-lobby and their BBC cheerleaders…You have nothing to lose, prime minister. Be bold.” An editorial in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph begins: “Rishi Sunak’s shift on net-zero was particularly welcome. The decision to delay the ban on petrol and diesel cars, bringing the UK into line with Canada and the EU, was moderate and sensible, as was his relaxation of the rules governing domestic heating. As the prime minister said, his actions have spared families the ‘unacceptable costs’ that would have been inflicted by these measures, putting his party firmly on the side of the public and against the ideologues. [In fact, some of Sunak’s rollbacks will cost households billions in higher bills.] He took a risk in changing course. Environmental policy has for years been governed by an unquestioned political consensus, which demanded huge sacrifices of the public in order to meet targets that were clearly unrealistic. Sunak has since been criticised by activist groups, but he should take courage. Reports that he is preparing to launch an assault on some of the anti-motorist policies spreading across the country, including impractical and unnecessary 20mph zones, are similarly positive.” The Sunday Telegraph also attacks net-zero in its editorial: “Today’s green bureaucrats and Tory wets prefer to champion central control, ideological conformity and dependency on the state by backing ill-thought-through, loss-making schemes. Sunak has, at last, recognised what side he should be on.”

Separately, the Daily Telegraph is happy, as ever, to provide plenty of space for commentators to attack net-zero policies. For example, it carries comment pieces by Nick Timothy, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Daniel Hannan. Finally, Sam Hall, director of the Conservative Environment Network (CEN), argues in a blog post that “many conservative environmentalists will feel frustrated”, adding: “Partly this is because the government is now campaigning against policies we have been defending. But it’s also because the government has made several good policy announcements, following the advocacy of CEN parliamentarians, that have been unfortunately overshadowed. Confirmation of the zero-emission vehicle mandate, liberalisation of onshore wind planning rules, a new community energy fund, and tougher nature recovery requirements in our national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty are all welcome steps, but ministers are unlikely to get much political credit.”

Climate change is responsible for $143bn of the cost of extreme events every year, a new study estimates. The authors combine data from extreme event attribution studies with “data on the socio-economic costs of these events” to estimate the global cost of extreme weather attributable to climate change in the last twenty years. They find that 63% of the cost is due to loss of human life. “Our results suggest that the frequently cited estimates of the economic costs of climate change arrived at by using integrated assessment models may be substantially underestimated,” the authors say.