A group of nations that includes France, Spain, Ireland, Kenya and 11 other countries has called for the phasing out of all fossil fuels at preliminary talks ahead of the COP28 climate summit this week, the Financial Times report. A statement from 15 members of the “high ambition coalition” says production and use of fossil fuels must be wound down, including an “urgent phase-out of coal-fired power generation”, according to the newspaper. It adds that the coalition also said that technology such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) should not be used to delay climate action by allowing the continued use of “abated” fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the article says US climate envoy John Kerry placed emphasis on the phaseout of coal – not oil and gas – when he spoke at the pre-COP talks in Abu Dhabi on Monday, and president-designate Sultan Al Jaber has “spoken repeatedly about the need to reduce emissions rather than [fossil-fuel] production”. BBC News reports that 70 environment ministers and 100 national delegations have been at the meeting in Abu Dhabi ahead of the main COP28 event in Dubai later this month. It adds that the EU is part of a “loose coalition of about 80 nations” that say there can be “no compromise” on pushing for a fossil fuel phaseout at COP28. [It is worth noting that the EU and allies such as the UK are only calling for a phaseout of “unabated” fossil fuels – that is, those that are used without CCS technology – meaning “abated” fossil fuels could in fact still be used.] Meanwhile, despite French support for a fossil fuel phaseout, the Guardian reports that French banks have made the nation the largest supporter in Europe of major fossil-fuel extraction projects. 

In an interview with Reuters, US climate envoy John Kerry called for fossil-fuel companies to take “public responsibility” to reduce their emissions. Meanwhile, another Reuters article cites anonymous US officials who say president Joe Biden will likely not be attending COP28 – while stressing that no final decision had been made. An article in China Dialogue explores the issues that are likely to face China at COP28. Experts tell the outlet that the nation is expected to come under “increasing pressure” on topics such as enhancing its climate action and whether it should contribute to the new “loss and damage” fund, which is meant to raise finance for dealing with unavoidable climate disasters.

Indonesia aims to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from its on-grid power sector to 250m tonnes (MtCO2) by 2030 and increase its share of renewable electricity generation to 44% under its just energy transition partnership (JETP), according to a plan released by the government, Reuters reports. The JETP is a financing scheme of equity investments, grants and concessionary loans from G7 nations, multilateral banks and private lenders, which along with similar schemes in other nations is intended to help developing countries shift to low-carbon power sectors, the newswire explains. Indonesia’s new comprehensive investment and policy plan (CIPP) for its JETP does not include “captive” coal-fired power plants, which are off-grid and managed by industries for their own use, the piece continues. It notes that this is because “authorities need more time to work out how to protect the nickel smelting sector”. Separately, another Reuters story reports that, in Indonesia, around 200,000 hectares (494,210 acres) of oil palm plantations “found in areas designated as forests” are set to be returned to the state to be converted back into forests, amid efforts to fix governance in the sector. [Some 15m hectares of land in Indonesia are used to cultivate palm oil.]

In the UK, BusinessGreen reports that more than 70 NGOs and civil society groups have written to the government criticising its decision to change how it defines “international climate finance” for developing countries. The article says “critics have argued the changes open the door to the UK widening the pool of existing aid donations that can count as ‘climate finance’ rather than increasing the amount of financial support offered to such initiatives in line with the UK’s international obligations”. Carbon Brief recently calculated that this change in definition had indeed “added” £450m to the UK’s climate finance spending over the past two years.

BP’s interim chief executive Murray Auchincloss has given a “robust defence” of his company’s strategy and stated the oil giant is “focused really on transition” to net-zero emissions “and not the oil-and-gas side”, Bloomberg reports. These comments were made in his first earnings presentation since taking the job, following the surprise resignation of the former chief executive who launched BP’s net-zero strategy, Bernard Looney, the article explains. According to Bloomberg, Auchincloss rejected suggestions that the company needed to imitate the big oil deals recently done by US oil firms ExxonMobil and Chevron, questioning the wisdom of such acquisitions amid high oil prices. As the Times reports, BP will still have a major focus on fossil fuels, with Auchincloss explaining that the company still had 36bn barrels of oil that it was yet to develop. He tells the newspaper that this would enable the company to grow its oil-and-gas profits by 2025 and sustain them “well into the next decade”. The article notes that BP has already weakened its climate targets this year, reducing its planned oil-and-gas output cut to 25% below 2019 levels by 2030, from an earlier goal of 40%. S&P Global says production in BP’s “oil production and operations” unit rose 5% on the year in the third quarter this year, with plans to increase the US share of the firm’s fossil-fuel business. In its coverage, the Daily Telegraph emphasises that fossil fuels remain central to BP’s business plan, with the company planning to use its offshore wind energy in the UK and Germany to power its refineries. Recharge reports that BP is shifting its offshore wind focus to Europe amid stalled projects and an impairment charge of $540m in the third quarter of 2023 for its New York projects.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that a merger between oil exploration company Denbury and ExxonMobil has been approved by Denbury shareholders. The move is intended to “accelerate” ExxonMobil’s energy transition business with an established carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration operation, according to the newswire.

The US government has approved a plan to install up to 176 large wind turbines off the coast of Virginia, “clearing the way for what would be the nation’s largest offshore wind farm yet”, the New York Times reports. The 2.6 gigawatt (GW) Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is the fifth commercial-scale offshore wind project approved by the Biden administration, as part of a wider goal to reach 30GW of offshore wind power in the US by 2030, the newspaper reports. Bloomberg says the move comes as developers “confront a series of challenges that have cast doubt on the pace of the offshore wind buildout around the world”. These include “spiralling” costs, supply chain constraints and local opposition – including concerns about the turbines encroaching on the habitats of endangered whales, the article explains. [Linking whale deaths to offshore wind development has been popular among local activists and climate sceptics, including former president Donald Trump, but according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration there is “no evidence” for such claims.]

China’s northern provinces launched their highest warnings for “fog and haze” on Tuesday, reports Reuters, with one initiating an “anti-pollution emergency response” to minimise accidents. “Increased industrial activities, heavy trucking and crop fires had contributed to the haze” in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area, the newswire says. Chinese financial news outlet Caixin and the state newspaper China Daily also cover the air pollution in northern China, with the latter reporting that there will be traffic restrictions on polluting vehicles.

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reports that only 4% of Hong Kong and mainland Chinese companies have set decarbonisation targets that align with a specific temperature pathway, according to ratings agency Moody’s. It adds that “among 105 Chinese companies in carbon-intensive sectors…75% have not set any carbon-cutting targets…[and] are the most exposed to growing climate transition risks”. Reuters carries a commentary by columnist Gavin Maguire, who writes that “the uneven nature of economic activity [in China] in turn makes it a challenge to assess the likely toll on emissions in the world’s largest polluter”. Chinese economic news outlet Jiemian writes that in the first three quarters of 2023, the net profits of 80% of listed coal companies “declined”, although there is room for a “rebound in coal demand” and in coal prices, it adds. 

In other news, the Communist Party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily carries a commentary on US-China relations, under the name “Zhong Sheng” – the nom de plume of top Communist Party leadership – which argues that in the past the two sides worked together to “lead the way to the Paris agreement on climate change” and should continue to cooperate. Finally, ABC News reports on research by the Lowy Institute that there has been a shift to “small but beautiful” investment projects by China in the Pacific islands, but that while there was “a sharp jump” in finance for climate change-related projects on paper, many of them had only a loose connection to climate.

A Washington Post editorial looks ahead to the COP28 in Dubai later this month and considers how the US will be received by other nations. It says that while the nation’s Inflation Reduction Act constitutes a “big new global warming plan, codified in federal law” that ought to lend the nation some credibility on the world stage, in reality many other nations are “less thrilled than one might expect”. This is because key components of the strategy are policies that promote domestic manufacturing, it says – particularly at the expense of China – in favour of US job creation. “This makes the climate effort costlier and antagonises would-be partners”, including countries that the US needs to cooperate with on climate action, the editorial notes. “[US president Joe] Biden and his officials still have to convince other governments that emissions-cutting – not trade conflict – is the top US priority,” it continues. The editorial says the president could “ease protectionist rules that have upset US-aligned countries” and develop trade relationships with countries that could provide alternative sources of critical components for low-carbon technologies. “And by promising to share climate-related technology, he could signal that the US does not seek to become a China-style green-tech monopolist,” it adds. The paper concludes: “Biden can signal US commitment by stressing that this country will not just invest in new technologies but also bring them within reach of the entire world.”

An article in Yale Environment 360 by climate scientist Dr Friederike Otto explores the lack of weather stations in Africa, explaining that this results in people not receiving adequate warning about extreme weather events. She writes that her World Weather Attribution team struggled when studying intense rainfall and flooding that struck Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) earlier this year, due to the lack of data. “The implications of such scarce meteorological data are severe. If we don’t know what causes floods in the first place, for example, we can’t build infrastructure to better withstand flooding. If the weather isn’t reliably recorded or not available for research (either because it’s not digitised or it’s been sold by cash-poor governments to private customers, rather than being freely available to researchers), weather models cannot be calibrated,” Otto explains. She notes that this lack of data also makes it difficult to understand how climate change is changing weather patterns. Otto concludes that investing in early-warning systems for weather in Africa would save lives and money – citing an estimate that spending $800m on such systems in developing countries would prevent losses of $3-16bn annually. (Carbon Brief recently published an article that quantified the low weather station coverage in Africa vs other continents.)

In his newsletter, the Climate Brink, Carbon Brief contributor Dr Zeke Hausfather writes that despite the extreme heat that the world has experienced this year, the temperatures have been consistent with climate models. He says: “While there is growing evidence that the rate of warming has increased in recent decades compared to what we’ve experienced since the 1970s, this acceleration is largely included in our climate models, which show around 40% faster warming in the period between 2015 and 2030 compared to 1970-2014.”

Former spokesman for the UK Labour party, Alistair Campbell, gave a speech at the Net Zero Festival in London yesterday, which has now been published in full on his website. He explains why he thinks Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak made a “big mistake” in rowing back on his government’s net-zero plans. “Labour should make their green plans a big part of the campaign to come, because if they do win, putting them in place will be a big part of the growth agenda to which they are pledged. Mission 1 is Growth. Mission 2 is the environment. They are linked. Labour need to be out there loud and proud on this, and expose Sunak’s dreadful shift for the small politics error it truly is,” he says.

Ecosystem protection is the “most critical cost-effective climate mitigation measure” for Brazil, a new study says, whereas relying heavily on engineered solutions such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage “will jeopardise Brazil’s chances of achieving its net-zero pledge by mid-century”. Using a “detailed regional integrated assessment modelling approach”, the study shows that “full implementation of Brazil’s Forest Code (FC), a key policy for emission reduction in Brazil, would be enough for the country to achieve its short-term climate targets up to 2030”. This policy, combined with zero legal deforestation and additional large-scale ecosystem restoration, would keep Brazil “on a clear path towards net-zero GHG emissions by around 2040”, the study says. To meet and sustain its net-zero pledge, Brazil will still need “some level” of engineered solutions from the energy sector, the study notes, but the more mitigation measures from the land-use sector, the less it will be required.

The rise in global average surface temperature shows a consistent 50-year trend of 0.18C per decade, a new study finds, with an increased rate from 1990. Filtering out fluctuations in global temperature caused by natural variability, the researchers “find consistent warming rates in four major global temperature data series” between 1973 and 2022. They also identify “clear indications, in all observational series, of a step-up in warming rate since around 1990”.