France is using ships and military aircraft to assist Mayotte, after the small French island territory off the coast of Africa has faced its worst cyclone in a century, AP reports. Cyclone Chido killed up to thousands of people in France’s poorest territory on Saturday, destroyed many of the buildings in the capital, Mamaoudzou, damaged the island’s only airport – affecting rescue efforts – and wiped out electricity across much of the archipelago, AP says. It continues: “Many people ignored the cyclone warnings in the 24 hours before the storm hit, underestimating its power…Even worse, many migrants avoided shelters out of fear of deportation.” BBC News reports that people in Mayotte have called for faster aid, saying they feel “completely abandoned” amid the devastation. Agence France-Presse reports that Cyclone Chido is “the latest in a string of storms worldwide fuelled by climate change”. The “exceptional” cyclone was super-charged by particularly warm Indian Ocean waters, meteorologist Francois Gourand of the Météo France weather service tells AFP. CNN reports that Cyclone Chido hit Mayotte as a category 4 storm, with winds above 220 kilometres per hour (136 miles per hour), according to Météo France. It was the strongest storm to hit the islands in more than 90 years, Météo France adds. The Guardian has satellite imagery showing Mayotte before and after the cyclone.

Many UK publications cover the news that one in four English homes could face flood risk by the middle of the century, according to the Environment Agency’s latest climate change projections. The FT reports that, according to the Environment Agency, a government body, 6.3m homes already face flood risk in England, with worsening climate risks set to push this to 8m by 2050. The newspaper says the Environment Agency’s latest projections are “more pessimistic” than the previous set, “mostly down to better data, modelling and technology in its own processes”. It adds: “This is the first time the Environment Agency has used the Met Office’s latest UK national climate projections to inform local flood risk models.” The Guardian reports that flood protection plans have been cut by 40% in recent years, with a quarter of major projects abandoned. There is further coverage in the Daily Mirror, Daily Telegraph and the Press Association.

In other UK news, the Times reports that the UK’s wind turbines produced a record amount of electricity on Sunday evening. It says: “The 12,000 turbines on land and at sea were generating 22.2 gigawatts of capacity at 6.30pm, providing more than half of the country’s electricity supply. The new high broke a record of 21.8 GW set in December last year. In the early hours of Monday, wind power was providing almost 70% of the country’s electricity needs.” BusinessGreen reports that the government has launched a consultation on the next phase of the carbon offsetting and reduction scheme (Corsia), a UN deal that aims to use carbon offsetting to manage emissions from international aviation. The Daily Telegraph reports that the government’s plans for carbon capture and storage could cost billpayers £520. [This is spread over 25 years. The plans were first introduced by the previous Conservative government.]

Donald Trump’s transition team is “recommending sweeping changes to cut off support for electric vehicles and charging stations and to strengthen measures blocking cars, components and battery materials from China”, according to a document seen by Reuters. The team also “recommends imposing tariffs on all battery materials globally, a bid to boost US production, and then negotiating individual exemptions with allies”, Reuters says, adding: “Taken together, the recommendations are a stark departure from Biden administration policy, which sought to balance encouraging a domestic battery supply chain, separate from China, with a rapid EV transition. The transition-team plan would redirect money now flowing to building charging stations and making EVs affordable into national-defense priorities, including securing China-free supplies of batteries and the critical minerals to build them.”

Elsewhere, a separate Reuters story says an upcoming assessment of the environmental and economic impacts of the nation’s liquified natural gas (LNG) exports could be released today. Joe Biden called for an assessment of LNG exports after pausing terminal expansion in January. Politico reports that the assessment will “warn that plans to increase exports of US natural gas risk driving domestic energy prices higher and could benefit China by delivering cheap fuel to the US rival”, but will not call for an export ban. The New York Times has seen a letter by energy secretary Jennifer Granholm, which is expected to accompany the assessment, saying that further LNG export expansion “would drive up costs for American consumers and businesses, pollute struggling communities and increase global greenhouse gas emissions”. The New York Times also says the assessment “does not provide grounds for the federal government to issue blanket denials of the final permits for future natural gas terminals”.

In addition, CNN reports that the Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up an appeal from conservative states challenging California’s ability to establish strict vehicle emission rules that effectively set the standard for the rest of the nation. E&E News reports that the assistant secretary for health for the Department of Health and Human Services told the American Geophysical Union’s annual conference last week that health officials may have to stop openly using the term “climate change” when Trump enters office.

China’s power generation from fossil fuels has “inched up” nearly 2% year-on-year from January to November in 2024, which points to “a slight increase for the full year despite a rapid build-out of renewable power plants in recent years”, Reuters reports. The newswire adds that according to the latest data released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics, power generation in the first 11 months this year has increased by 5% to 8,570 terawatt hours (TWh), while thermal power generation, mostly coming from coal, has reached 5,740 TWh. Industry news outlet BJX News cites the same data from the NBS, saying that wind power in November has dropped by more than 3% and solar power generation has increased by more than 10%, year-on-year. Another Reuters article says that China’s coal output “rose to a record daily high” in November, with “average daily production” reaching 14m tonnes, “setting the world’s largest coal industry on track for another record year”. The “all-time high” coal production – a total of 428m tonnes of raw coal were mined in November – has led to “concerns of an oversupply of the nation’s mainstay fuel”, Bloomberg reports. State news agency Xinhua reports that China’s “utilisation rates” of wind and solar power have remained above 95% this year, suggesting the “world’s renewables powerhouse has ensured both speed and quality in its green drive”, according to data from the National Energy Administration (NEA).

Meanwhile, Xinhua says a “blue book” published by Chinese universities “points out” that the EU is implementing “double standards” on “new threes” (batteries, EVs and solar panels) by providing subsidies for their own products, while “discriminately” imposing “counter-subsidy measures” on foreign companies. A trade war between the EU and China will be a “lose-lose” situation, says Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, SCMP reports. Wang Hongzhi, the newly appointed director of the NEA, says that China has become the “world’s largest producer of nuclear energy” this year, with 102 reactors “working, approved, or under construction” by the end of 2024, business news outlet Yicai reports.

Elsewhere, Jiemian reports that China’s 2025 national energy work conference was held in Beijing last Sunday. It says that “coal and coal-fired power played a full role in guaranteeing the bottom line” of energy sufficiency in 2024. The article adds that 2024 also saw 180 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired power units being upgraded and more than 8GW of coal plants being eliminated. It says the goal for new wind and solar capacity in 2025, set at the conference, is around 200GW, a “slight decrease” compared to the 300GW capacity of renewables added in 2024. 

Journalists at the Associated Press have spoken to more than 20 experts about the ability of UN negotiations to tackle the world’s environmental problems, after disappointing results were recorded at UN climate, biodiversity, land and plastic talks this year. Alden Meyer, a negotiations watcher at the thinktank E3G, tells AP that he’s been watching humanity “collectively fail as a species”, adding: “If you are not feeling some kind of grief about what’s going on, you’re obviously not understanding what’s going on.” According to AP, the experts “called multilateral environmentalism broken because of a cumbersome consensus process, the power of the fossil fuel industry, geopolitical changes and the massive size of the problems they are trying to fix”. UN Environment Programme director Inger Andersen tells AP that the process is “frustrating” and “difficult”, but the “only way” for developing countries to be able to negotiate alongside rich developed nations.

A Lex comment piece in the Financial Times says, “amid the gloom” of the current state of climate politics globally, it is “easy to lose sight of the fact that some green technologies are now cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives”. It says: “Just because things make economic sense does not mean they are going to happen on their own. Governments need to play ball – running auctions with long-term contracts to help developers find financing and building grids. Cleaning up electricity only gets the world part of the way towards climate targets. With limited exceptions, greener industrial processes and air travel (among others) will always be more expensive than the alternative. Climate technologies do have some momentum of their own but reaching net-zero will require politicians to come back to the table.”

Elsewhere, Brian Gilvary, the chairman of Ineos Energy, an oil and gas operator, writes in the Daily Telegraph that his company is being forced to drill for fossil fuels in the US because of the UK’s “over-regulation and the negative political attitude towards oil and gas”.

In South Africa’s Daily Maverick newspaper, Nicole Loser, a legal consultant working with NGOs in the climate justice sector, explains how African countries have made “compelling arguments” for a more just approach towards global efforts to tackle climate change during the recently concluded international court of justice (ICJ) hearing on climate responsibility. She writes: “An interesting, but unsurprising, trend has emerged from the ICJ proceedings, as they draw to a close, with two clear and polarised positions. On the one end we see the historic greenhouse gas emitters – the developed countries and petrostates, the likes of Germany, the UK, Canada, China, India, the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – arguing that the climate treaties already in place are the only international law mechanisms within which climate change must be regulated. They argue that international human rights law is not applicable to climate obligations, and that the suite of international laws governing state responsibility for harms caused, would not be suitable in the context of climate change. You can understand why: reparations. Historic emitters have long gone to great pains to emphasise that they have no legal obligations to pay reparations, and to ensure that any climate money paid over is through their own generosity, not because of any legal liability. On the other end, we see the countries that stand to lose the most from the effects of climate change, while having contributed the least, making compelling arguments for justice. They are calling for large emitters to be held legally accountable for climate harms. Small island states threatened existentially by sea-level rise, and developing states, including a large number from Africa (Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Namibia and Kenya, among them), have come out strongly, arguing that international customary law and long-recognised rights such as the right to self-determination, are indisputably affected by climate change, and there must be recourse for this under international law, beyond what is written in climate treaties such as the Paris Agreement. These states are arguing that there is indeed a legal duty for reparations for climate harms caused by high-emitting states, and that existing climate treaties simply don’t provide adequate remedies.”

The drying of soils is amplifying rapid increases in extreme heat in inner East Asia in recent decades, new research says. Inner east Asia has experienced a more rapid increase in extreme surface air temperatures compared to the summer mean from 2001-2020, relative to 1971-1990. The authors say: “Our analysis underscores the significant impact of local soil moisture deficits on the intensified extreme heat. Urgent implementation of grassland and livestock management strategies, coupled with drought mitigation measures, is essential for adaptation and ecosystem conservation.”