The EU must invest about €1.5tn a year from 2031 to meet net-zero by 2050, the European Commission has said in documents seen by the Financial Times. The draft document lays out Brussels’ plan for cutting emissions 90% by 2040 – the lower end of what was recommended by its scientific advisors – and reaching net-zero by 2050, the FT says. It reports: “The high level of investment would far outweigh the vast cost of inaction as the effects of global warming become increasingly apparent, the document said. Keeping temperature rises to within 1.5C above pre-industrial levels could save the EU €2.4tn in economic losses between 2031 and 2050 and cut net costs of fossil fuel imports by €2.8tn over the same period, it added.” The FT notes that some sectors have accused the EU’s climate plans of going too far, with protests from farmers in particular “spreading from the Netherlands to Belgium, Germany, France and Romania in recent weeks”. The FT continues: “An EU diplomat said other capitals are unlikely to endorse the €1.5tn figure unless it was framed as being good ‘not solely for climate, but perhaps for green tech or the like’.” The EU commission declined to comment, the FT adds. Reuters also covers the draft document, reporting that it says EU fossil fuel use could drop 80% on 1990 levels by 2040 under its climate plans. A second Reuters story reports on the results of a cross-EU opinion poll suggesting that populist, right-wing parties could surge in the next set of European elections, which “could make passing ambitious climate change policies harder”. The Guardian also reports on how populist “anti-European” parties making big gains in June’s European elections “could shift the parliament’s balance sharply to the right and jeopardise key pillars of the EU’s agenda including climate action”.

Elsewhere, Bloomberg reports that Europe’s carbon market is in turmoil after rapid growth of renewables and unexpectedly low fossil fuel use has sent carbon prices plummeting. “If power companies burn less gas and coal, they need fewer permits to account for their emissions,” the article explains. And Reuters reports that Trinidad and Tobago has begun talks with some European countries on the supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) produced from Venezuelan gas.

French energy firm EDF has announced that Hinkley Point C could be delayed by a further four years and cost an extra £2.3bn, bringing total costs up to £35bn, reports the Guardian and others. However, “the cost will be far higher once inflation is taken into account, because EDF is using 2015 prices”, the Guardian says. It continues: “The latest in a series of setbacks represents a huge delay to the project’s initial timescale. In 2007, the then EDF chief executive Vincent de Rivaz said that by Christmas in 2017, turkeys would be cooked using electricity generated from atomic power at Hinkley. When the project was finally given the green light in 2016, its cost was estimated at £18bn.” BBC News reports that the total cost is £46bn when price rises are taken into account. A government spokesperson tells BBC News that the new plant is “not a government project” and as such “any additional costs or schedule overruns are the responsibility of EDF and its partners and will in no way fall on taxpayers”. The Daily Telegraph – which trails the story on its frontpage – reports that Stuart Crooks, managing director for Hinkley Point C, said in a note to employees: “Like other infrastructure projects we have found civil construction slower than we hoped and faced inflation, labour and material shortages, on top of Covid and Brexit disruption.” Carbon Brief’s Dr Simon Evans has tweeted a thread on Hinkley C’s key numbers.

Elsewhere, Politico reports on the UK’s “great disappearing energy summit”. It explains: “The London Energy Security Conference was announced to great fanfare last August by former UK energy secretary Grant Shapps. Shapps pledged to bring together key global players, who would cut deals so that energy price shocks would never again catch the world unawares. There is just one problem. Less than a month before the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – the date with which the summit was meant to coincide – foreign diplomats and energy industry bosses say they’ve heard…next to nothing about it.” A second Politico story speaks to a UN expert who is “alarmed” by UK politicians’ attacks on climate protesters. BusinessGreen reports that five communities in England and Wales have taken ownership of eight solar farms in a deal that “has been hailed as the biggest ever transfer of community energy assets in the UK”. Finally, BBC News has a factcheck on government claims surrounding North Sea oil and gas.

Global nuclear power generation is set to reach an all-time high next year, according to the latest forecasts from the International Energy Agency (IEA) covered by the Financial Times and others. The FT reports: “Output from nuclear power plants is expected to rise by about 3% both this year and next to 2,915TWh, overtaking the previous peak of 2,809TWh in 2021, and by a further 1.5% in 2026, the IEA said. Growth will be driven by new reactors in China and India as well as the return of plants in France that were shut down last year for maintenance.” The IEA’s report on the state of global electricity markets also said that more nuclear power as well as the rapid growth of renewables such as wind and solar are helping to push fossil fuels out of the electricity system, the FT says. It continues: “It believes that growth in electricity demand over the next few years will now be met by low-emission sources, with the share of global supply delivered by fossil fuel generators set to fall to a record low of 54% in 2026.” The Guardian adds that, according to the report, electricity demand is also expected to increase around the world, fuelled largely by the move to a low-carbon economy. “Electric vehicles and heat pumps, as well as many low-carbon industrial processes, require electricity rather than oil and gas,” it explains, adding: “Continuing rapid growth in renewable energy supply means these additional demands are likely to be covered in full by generation from wind, solar and other clean energy sources. Renewables will make up roughly a third of total electricity generation globally by early next year.”

Extreme weather in 2023, including “a non-stop week of rain in Henan and severe flooding in and around Hebei”, has led to “two major grain-producing provinces’ drops in output”, reports the Chinese economic outlet Caixin. Henan province’s annual grain output fell by 2.4% to 66.2m tonnes in 2023, according to the national bureau of statistics (NBS), the newspaper adds. The state-run newspaper China Daily reports that “sweeping cold air hovering in the central and eastern areas of the country has led to steep temperature drops” in early 2024, and that “meteorologists have continued to warn of blizzards, low temperatures and strong winds”. Communist Party-affiliated People’s Daily has published a commentary saying that China’s government should “actively respond to cold waves”, and that government bodies should prioritise disaster prevention and reduction efforts related to current extreme weather. 

Meanwhile, BJX News quotes Wei Xiaowei, director of the international cooperation department of the national energy administration (NEA), the country’s top energy regulator, as saying that China should “promote the positive and stable development of Sino-Russian energy cooperation…actively participate in the Sino-US climate negotiation dialogues…[and] organise the China-Europe energy dialogue”, focusing on “emerging areas such as hydrogen energy, energy storage and offshore new energy”. People’s Daily covers a China-funded wind power project developed in Croatia, which it describes as a “model project for EU-China green energy cooperation”. An article by Climate Home News says that Chinese companies have “flocked to Zimbabwe’s untapped reserves of high-grade lithium to shore up the country’s supplies”, adding that Zimbabwe’s “poor progress on establishing robust resource governance” threatens to keep communities from reaping the benefits. The state broadcaster CGTN carries a commentary arguing that Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visits to Jamaica and Brazil “underscored China’s commitment to deepening these relations, as both nations represent pivotal partnerships for China in the region”, with areas of cooperation including renewable energy. 

Separately, China Daily reports that a recent test by the privately-owned Chinese company LandSpace has moved closer towards its “goal of building the nation’s first reusable carrier rocket”, which, according to industry observers, could lead to “environmentally friendly rockets…which will be pillars of human space exploration in the years to come”. The state news agency Xinhua reports that Junheng Biology, a private petrochemical enterprise, has developed a “sustainable aviation fuel”, which will be made “commercially available soon”. 

Finally, Xinhua says that Shanxi, a “major coal-producing province”, plans to “accelerate the intelligent transformation of coal mining and development involving new energy” this year. It adds that, in 2024, the province will “promote green mining technologies and develop 150 new intelligent coal mines”. And China Daily proposes “five priorities” for China to achieve a just energy transition, including considering “establishing a new special working group” to address just transition issues and to “strengthen existing employment policy arrangements to support workers”.

Distributed solar energy generation grew 36% in the past 12 months across Brazil, going from 19GW to 26GW of installed capacity, O Globo reports. The newspaper notes that 2.3m photovoltaic systems are now installed in residences, businesses, rural properties and public buildings, spanning more than 5,500 municipalities across all of the nation’s states.

Meanwhile, In Argentina, more than 100 organisations have criticised the “ómnibus law” proposed by the new president Javier Milei which aims to modify four environmental laws on glaciers, forests and fisheries, including an “energy transition” chapter to implement carbon markets in the country, La Nación reports. The outlet adds that, in a public statement, the organisations have called for the rejection of various aspects of the law and the creation of commissions to address the initiative. In response, government officials have acknowledged “mistakes” and promised reforms to fisheries, forests and fire control. 

Colombia’s El Espectador reports that more than 70% of the country is under a forest-fire alert. The outlet says that El Niño, climate change and a dry season are fuelling the country’s high temperatures. It notes that the Magdalena and Cauca watersheds are registering low levels, while, in contrast, some municipalities are threatened with landslides. In a separate article, the Colombian newspaper writes that from 3 November to 20 January, 237 forest fires have impacted the country, affecting more than 3,500 hectares of vegetation and 131 municipalities. Separately, Peru’s El Comercio reports that the country suffered a drop in exports in 2023 of up to 1.3%. Citing the Central Reserve Bank of Peru, the outlet says this year’s predictions will be likely similar in the South American country due to El Niño, which will also make fishery exports uncertain, according to Rafael Zacnich, economic studies manager of ComexPeru, the Peruvian foreign trade association.

An editorial in the Guardian says that Michel Forst, the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders, is right to criticise the UK government’s crackdown on climate protesters. It says: “The demonisation of environmental activists and the erosion of civil rights without adequate scrutiny from lawmakers, or protection by the courts, are undermining the UK’s guarantees of freedom and the rule of law. It had been almost unheard of since the 1930s for demonstrators to be imprisoned for peaceful protest in the UK. Last month, he said, a climate protester got six months behind bars for slow-walking on a road.” The editorial adds there has been a growing trend of climate activists being found guilty after not being allowed to speak to explain their motivations for protesting to juries. It continues: “Juries have for years acquitted activists after listening to their rationale for seemingly unlawful protest. It is Orwellian to think the answer would be to abolish their role. Yet Gail Bradbrook, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, was found guilty last year of criminal damage after the judge banned her from explaining her motivation. Worse could follow if the attorney general, Victoria Prentis, wins a test case in the court of appeal next month. She wants to narrow the defences available in climate protest cases about criminal damage. She may win.”

Elsewhere, an editorial in the Financial Times reflects on Tata Steel’s decision to close the last two blast furnaces at the UK’s largest steelworks in Port Talbot. It says: “For the UK’s net-zero goals, and Tata’s finances, the move has logic. Tata Steel UK lost almost £1.5m a day in its most recent quarter. Electric arc furnaces are less labour-intensive, cheaper to run and less carbon-intensive. Port Talbot is the UK’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide; the revamp will reduce total UK emissions by 1.5%.”

In African Arguments, a group made up of Nteranya Ginga, an international development consultant, Tshimundu, a Congolese writer and artist currently based in Brussels, Koko Ginga, a Congolese second-year political science and sociology student and J. Munroe, who is completing a PhD at the University of Oxford, responds to an article in the Atlantic that was initially titled: “War in the Congo has kept the planet cooler.” After widespread criticism, the article was given the new headline: “The grim ironies of climate change.” The African Arguments authors write: “This was perhaps an improvement, yet the headline was not the only problem. The article remains problematic in subtle but important ways for how we think – and, crucially, talk – about climate change, especially in how it relates to Africa, a continent that has alternately been pitched as unfortunate victim or unlikely saviour of the climate crisis. In these framings, both present in the Atlantic piece, African people are rendered invisible.”

Focusing on existing elements in international climate policy, new research “provides a pathway to bring the Paris Agreement climate goals within reach”. Using an integrated assessment model, the researchers look at four steps to accelerate the low-carbon transition: “1) implementing the pledged 2030 targets and net-zero targets, 2) aligning the 2030 emission targets with the net-zero targets, 3) broadening the coalition of net-zero countries, and 4) strengthening the net-zero pledges by bringing them forward in time.” Following these steps, the study finds that “the gap between a continuation of current emission trends and a Paris-aligned 1.5 C target can be reduced by about 90% by 2100”.

A new “brief communication” paper discusses the impact on Arctic research of the exclusion of Russia “from international fora” since the invasion of Ukraine. The authors note that “Russia is geographically the largest Arctic nation and is, hence, also one of eight nations within the Arctic Council…However, following the invasion of Ukraine, the work of the Arctic Council was first put on hold, and as currently resumed, it is only in part and without Russia”. The authors assess the representativeness of the largest high-latitude research station network (known as “INTERACT”) with and without Russian stations. They conclude that “excluding Russian stations lowers representativeness markedly, with some biases being of the same magnitude as the expected shifts caused by climate change by the end of the century”.