Scotland’s only oil refinery Grangemouth is to close by the end of summer next year, reports BBC News. The site’s current owner Petroineos said it is unable to compete with sites in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the article adds. The decision to close Britain’s oldest refinery puts 500 jobs at risk and has been “condemned” by the Unite union as “an act of industrial vandalism”, reports the Guardian. Following the news that Grangemouth will close, the UK and Scottish governments have promised to add £20m in joint funding to the £80m currently available through the Falkirk and Grangemouth growth deal, it adds. The package aims to support the community and its workers by investing in local energy projects to create new opportunities in the region, it notes. The energy projects include plans for a bioeconomy plant, a £9mn low carbon technology centre and an employment hub to help re-skill workers, reports the Financial Times. It quotes Ed Miliband, UK energy secretary, who said: “It is deeply disappointing that Petroineos have confirmed their previous decision to close Grangemouth oil refinery. We will stand with the workforce in these difficult times.” With the closure of Grangemouth, the site will become an import and distribution terminal for finished fuels, reports Reuters. Petroineos, a joint venture between Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos and PetroChina, said it had invested $1.2bn in the site since 2011, yet the refinery had still accumulated losses of $775m over that period, reports the Times. Grangemouth, originally opened in 1924, is less efficient than overseas competitors and would require £40m investment to keep running beyond next year, it adds. This story was also covered by the Daily Telegraph, Bloomberg and others.

The news comes as the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that global oil demand growth is “slowing sharply” as China’s economy cools, reports Bloomberg. World consumption increased by 800,000 barrels a day in the first half of 2024, barely a third of the expansion seen over the same period in 2023, it adds. As such oil prices are likely to keep falling as producers continue to pump volumes that exceed global demand, reports the Financial Times. It quotes IEA executive director Fatih Birol, who said “given the current weak demand and lots of oil coming from [countries outside the OPEC cartel], mainly from America and others, we may well see downward pressure on the price”. Elsewhere, about 42% of crude oil production and 53% of natural gas production in the US Gulf of Mexico is shut in the wake of Hurricane Francine, reports Reuters.

In other UK news, the crown estate has announced plans to open up “swathes of the Celtic Sea” for renewable energy generation, reports the Daily Telegraph. The body has produced a report suggesting a stretch of water, along the coasts of North Cornwall, South Wales and out to the Scilly Isles, as well as areas off the coasts of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire are opened to renewable energy projects, it adds. The report suggests expanding the UK offshore wind capacity to 140GW by 2050 – a nine-fold increase on today, the article notes.

New analysis has found that big oil is facing a “soaring number of climate-focused lawsuits”, reports the Guardian. The report from Oil Change International and the climate research organisation Zero Carbon Analytics used data from a Columbia University database and focused on cases in which the world’s 25 largest fossil fuel producers were named as defendants, it continues. The number of cases filed against those companies has nearly tripled since 2015, with 86 cases filed and 40 currently pending, the article states. It quotes David Tong, a campaign manager at the research and advocacy group Oil Change International, who said “No major oil and gas company is pledging to do the bare minimum to prevent climate chaos, so communities are taking them to court”. A piece in the New York Times details the most prominent climate lawsuits to watch and questions if prosecutors should consider criminal charges related to climate change. 

The report comes as 21 young people asked the US supreme court to revive a novel lawsuit claiming the US government’s energy policies violate their rights to be protected from climate change, reports Reuters. In a “petition for a writ of mandamus” the activists have argued that San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals overstepped its authority by taking the “extraordinary” step of ordering a federal judge in Oregon to dismiss the case, it adds.

The Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) has warned that climate change and an ageing population are set to “deal further blows to the UK’s already dire public finances”, reports BusinessGreen. UK debt could “soar” to 300% of GDP over the next 50 years as governments “wrestle with challenges such as climate change” the OBR cautioned, reports the Times. The financial watchdog has said that policy choices and future spending pressures currently “put the public finances on an unsustainable path” as part of an assessment of the long-term fiscal risks facing the economy, it adds. The report modelled numerous scenarios and, under one that saw the risk of further pandemics and a failure to tackle the climate crisis, debt could accelerate to 385% of GDP, reports the Guardian. The OBR said a rise in temperatures of less than 2C on pre-industrial levels could have a similar economic impact on the UK as Brexit, it adds. Elsewhere, the Times reports that the Labour party raised £26m in the run-up to the general election, more than 50% of what the Conservatives raised. This was in part thanks to donations from “green backers” such as Quadrature Capital, a hedge fund, whose $325m a year donation is intended to “support policies that will deliver climate action”, it adds.

In other UK news, the country faces another autumn and winter of flooding, the Guardian reports. The Met Office has warned that there is an increased probability of a wetter-than-average winter floods season, with many areas having already received 100% of their average September rainfall at this point, it adds. The warning came at the first meeting of the UK government’s flood resilience taskforce, the article notes. Environment secretary Steve Reed hosted local government, communities and emergency services at the meeting, at the meeting designed to “bolster the UK’s resilience in the face of increasingly extreme weather”, reports BusinessGreen. 

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning has backed Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez’s call on the EU to reconsider the tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), saying it reflects “rational and objective thinking” as she urged the bloc to meet “China halfway”, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reports. China told its carmakers at home to “make sure advanced EV technology stays in the country”, Bloomberg reports, citing anonymous sources. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post says Chinese EV makers were urged against “[investing] in countries like India and Turkey”. The New Delhi-based Economic Times quotes India’s external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar saying India’s economic relationship with China has been “very unfair” and “imbalanced”. He made such comments as India’s finance ministry moved to impose tariffs between 12% and 30% on some steel products from China, reports the Economic Times in a separate article.

Meanwhile, an opinion piece in Project Syndicate notes that “the greatest obstacle to [the world’s] decarbonisation is the rising tension between the west and China”. Another opinion article in the Pakistan Observer argues that in the EV tariff battle, “the pragmatic positions of Europe’s major powers suggest that cooperation with China remains both a pragmatic and necessary approach for the continent’s future”. Slower growth and the difficulty of doing business have deterred western firms from investing in China, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Elsewhere, Bloomberg says more Chinese solar companies are “forced to restructure” as the industry “contends with massive overcapacity and deepening losses”. The state-owned Inner Mongolia Energy Group is building “a large-scale new energy storage power station in the Ulan Buh desert… to better harness new energy power for grid connection”, reports the Communist party-backed People’s Daily. Energy news outlet BJX News says the Inner Mongolia authorities have issued an implementation plan to “promote the application of solar power that would accelerate carbon reduction efforts in the construction sector”. And research by financial news outlet Nikkei Asia shows “China’s grip on the global supply chain for renewable energy [to have] tightened last year” with the combined market share of top Chinese solar companies increasing to 59.3% from 2022 levels, and nearly doubling to 44.2% for its wind turbine makers.

In related news, a feature in Dialogue Earth finds “efforts to deliver effective education” on climate change that has been incorporated into school syllabus to be “faltering due to a lack of materials, knowledge and time among teachers”. Chinese president Xi Jinping hosted a symposium to “promote the ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin”, Xinhua reports. Xinhua also quotes China’s vice-minister of commerce, Yi Xiaozhun in a separate article cautioning against “using climate action as a pretext for protectionism” at a World Trade Organisation seminar. Finally, China Energy Net reports that China’s National Energy Administration has issued 952m green electricity certificates (GECs) in August, with hydropower and wind power accounting for the biggest proportion of 44% and 34%, bringing the total of GECs issued so far to 1.8bn.

A landslide in a Greenland fjord triggered a seismic event that “shook the Earth” for nine days, reports BBC News. The landslide triggered a 200-metre wave that was then “trapped” in a narrow fjord, moving back and forth and generating vibrations that were picked up by sensors all over the world, it explains. Landslides like this are happening more frequently with climate change, as the glaciers that support Greenland’s mountains melt, the article adds. Dr Kristian Svennevig told BBC News: “We are witnessing a rise in giant, tsunami-causing landslides, particularly in Greenland. While the Dickson Fjord event alone doesn’t confirm this trend, its unprecedented scale underscores the need to carry out more research.” The landslide at Dickson fjord occurred in September 2023, when a 1.2km mountain peak collapsed and brought 25m cubic metres of rock and ice into the remote fjord – enough to fill 10,000 olympic swimming pools, the Daily Telegraph says.

More debt is not a solution for developing countries who are most at risk of suffering from extreme weather events, argues Bloomberg opinion editor and columnist Mark Gongloff. He uses Grenada as an example, as it recently triggered a “hurricane clause” in its bonds to allow it to defer payments following the devastation of Hurricane Beryl. Gongloff highlights that two-thirds of the nation’s debt is held by “multilateral” creditors, the biggest also being the world’s biggest polluters, China and the US. While wealthy nations did “scrape together” $100bn in 2022 in climate finance, the poorest were paying $70bn in debt-service payments and the same year high-income countries gave fossil fuels $2.3tn in subsidies, he explains. The priorities of developed nations are “profoundly wrong”, he continues, arguing that as well as the moral reasons for tackling climate change, it will also ultimately drive up costs for them too. “Given we all live on the same planet, when we set fire to some other country’s financial house, we’re also torching our own,” Gongloff concludes. 

Elsewhere, Daily Telegraph‘s world economy editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says green steel is a path to a new “British industrial renaissance”. Commenting on the shift to greener steel at Port Talbot in the UK, Evans-Pritchard writes: “Going green should not be the cause of industrial ruin. If we play our cards right, it could be what saves the British industrial base.” Taking a contrasting view, Times columnist Emma Duncan argues that “bailing out Tata Steel” to support greener steelmaking at Port Talbot is “pointless nostalgia”. 

In other comment, writer Karin Klein has a commentary in the Los Angeles Times in which she argues that the “public will pay the price” for the “terrible decision” that sparked a recent wildfire. And climate-sceptic oil industry veteran David Blackmon discusses US presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ “flip-flop” stance on fracking in the Daily Telegraph.

A new study finds that fishing fleets around the world will shift poleward by 2100 as they follow species that are moving to higher latitudes to mitigate the effects of ocean warming. Researchers model industrial fisheries in 82 countries and 13 common types of fishing gear to see how individual fisheries will respond to climate change. They find that polar fishers will move further into the Arctic, while those fishing in the tropics will expand “both within the tropics and poleward”. They note: “Most nations, particularly tropical ones, may struggle to track these shifts, as they largely rely on coastal and nearshore fishing gears.”