Recovery efforts from Hurricane Helene are underway across the US, with the death toll across six states rising to 128 from Florida to Virginia, according to CNN. It says many of the deaths occurred far inland, and describes how slowly receding floodwaters are revealing more neighbourhoods “obliterated” by the storm. The news website also has a live tracker covering the storm’s aftermath. The Daily Mail describes how the storm left the small mountain town of Swannanoa, North Carolina, “entirely erased”. Scientific American says the storm “shows no region is safe from climate-fuelled disaster”, explaining that “rising temperatures are fueling stronger, deadlier hurricanes with impacts that can ripple across the country”. As Helene headed inland, it “dumped record-breaking rainfall” on areas across Georgia and the Carolinas, it continues. Associated Press describes the 40tn gallons of rain that fell across the southeastern states as “an unheard of amount of water that has stunned experts”. It explains that storms are “getting wetter as the climate changes” because the warmer air holds more moisture, and notes that “meteorologists are vigorously debating how much of Helene is due to worsening climate change and how much is random”.

US president Joe Biden has said he expected to ask Congress for extra funding to provide relief, according to the New York Times. Biden referred to the storm as “catastrophic” and “history-making”, and said he might have to call Congress in for a special emergency session to settle on a response. The scale of destruction is leading to mounting pressure for more disaster funds, just “days after lawmakers left for their pre-election recess without appropriating any new disaster dollars”, E&E News notes.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump used the hurricane to attack Biden and his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris, says the Associated Press. Over the weekend, Trump also declared that “the environment” is “one of the great scams”, the Independent reports.

In broader US election news, the New York Times has an article about how climate diplomats around the world are “bracing” for a potential Trump election victory, after he largely pulled the nation out of climate diplomacy during his last presidency.

The US federal government has approved a $1.52bn loan guarantee to help a company restart the closed Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan in “the latest sign of rising government support for nuclear power”, the New York Times reports. “After years of stagnation, America’s nuclear industry is seeing a resurgence of interest. Both Congress and the Biden administration have offered billions of dollars in subsidies to prevent older nuclear plants from closing and to build new reactors,” the article states. Meanwhile, another New York Times article reports that the US is “ramping up” its search for uranium deposits in western states, in a bid to end its dependence on Russia for the nuclear fuel.

In more US news, Reuters reports that US trade officials are set to bring in new tariffs on solar panels from four Southeast Asian nations – Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia – where Chinese companies are operating. The article notes that US manufacturers complain that these companies in the region “employ unfair subsidies that make US products uncompetitive”. (See comment section, below.)

Finally, the Financial Times examines Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ chances in the pivotal US swing state of Pennsylvania, home to a major fracking industry. “To win the White House in November, Harris or Trump will probably need to win Pennsylvania – the swing state that Joe Biden won by just 80,000 votes in 2020,” it explains. While Harris has stated she does not wish to ban fracking, the article says that fears about her position on it “could be decisive”.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planner, and six other departments have issued a “guideline” on “strengthening the clean and efficient use of coal”, industry news outlet BJX News reports. The guideline covers multiple areas in China’s coal sector, including coal development, storage and transportation, production energy intensity, pollution control, as well as the establishment of a “clean and efficient coal utilisation system”, according to the outlet. It says that under the guidance, China will establish by 2030 a system for coal use that is compatible with “green and low-carbon development”. The NDRC said in a press conference that “clean and efficient utilisation of coal” refers to the application of “advanced technologies and management methods throughout the entire coal industry chain”, and the approach “plays a crucial role in ensuring coal’s foundational role in energy security and promoting the green and low-carbon transition of energy”, according to another BJX News article.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that China’s “largest coal-mining hub”, Inner Mongolia, could “spearhead the country’s energy transition with a slate of planned clean power mega-projects in the desert”, according to a new report by WaterRock Energy Economics and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. The province could “feed China’s coastal megacities with cheap, carbon-free electricity”, the news outlet adds. The Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily carries an article by Li Zheng, director of the Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development at Tsinghua University, saying that “energy security is vital to the overall development” of China’s economy and society. Chinese business newspaper Enterprise Observation News says that the pace of restructuring state-owned energy companies “accelerated” recently. 

Elsewhere, the EU is planning to vote on whether to impose tariffs “as high as 45%” on Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs) on 4 October, Reuters reports, citing Bloomberg. State-supporting newspaper Global Times and the Hong Kong-based Asia Times also cover the story. Bloomberg reports that Chinese EV sales in Europe are at the lowest level in 18 months, with “registrations falling by nearly half in August from a year earlier”.

Finally, an opinion article by Bloomberg’s energy and commodities columnist Javier Blas argues that China has “broken the market” for critical minerals as “Chinese miners boosted production to levels that were previously unimaginable”, driving down “prices of cobalt and lithium” more than 75% compared with their “most recent peak in 2022-2023”.

Writing from the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, the Guardian reports that senior Conservatives are considering pushing for a lifting of the moratorium on fracking in England. The article says shadow energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, and shadow energy minister, Andrew Bowie, both expressed an interest in lifting the ban. It notes that Conservative leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch did not rule the idea out when asked. The article explains that this comes after much criticism from the Conservatives of Labour’s election pledge to end new oil and gas licences in the North Sea. The Daily Telegraph also reports from the conference, with a piece stating that Rachael Glaving, who is responsible for energy company EDF’s nuclear fleet, told attendees that “[Labour energy secretary] Ed Miliband’s bid to move the UK on to green energy risks destabilising the National Grid”. In the quote from Glaving cited in the article, she does not mention Miliband and simply warns about losing the “strong foundation of baseload generation” as nuclear power is lost from the grid.

Meanwhile, coverage of the closure of the last UK coal plant continues. The news appears on the frontpage of City AM, as well as the frontpage of the Financial Times. On television, Monday’s BBC News at Six featured a lengthy segment about the phaseout of UK coal, which included a chart from Carbon Brief’s recent feature on the topic. Coverage of the news in Germany’s Tagesspiegel, Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald and Canada’s Globe and Mail, among others, also cited Carbon Brief’s analysis. The Guardian has a piece by energy correspondent Jillian Ambrose on the “deep history of British coal”, which covers everything from early mining by the Romans to the closure of the Ratcliffe coal plant.

In more UK news, the Times reports on plans to build Europe’s largest green hydrogen project in Scotland. Finally, another Times article covers analysis from energy consultancy Cornwall Insights that suggests “high levels of gas storage and healthy liquefied natural gas supplies will lead to lower energy bills for most households in Britain at the start of next year”.

A New York Times editorial voices the newspaper’s unequivocal support for the Democratic candidate and current vice president Kamala Harris in the upcoming US presidential election. The editorial states that it is “hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president” than her Republican challenger Donald Trump, adding that he would “degrade the values, defy the norms and dismantle the institutions that have made our country strong”. It compares the two candidates’ policy platforms, stating: “Harris recognises the need for global solutions to the global problem of climate change and would continue president Biden’s major investments in the industries and technologies necessary to achieve that goal. Trump rejects the accepted science, and his contempt for low-carbon energy solutions is matched only by his trollish fealty to fossil fuels.”

Separately, an article in the Conversation by Daniel Cohan, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, says that, in fact, despite Harris’ positive rhetoric concerning clean energy, “neither candidate has set forth a comprehensive energy plan”. He adds that “even if they do, a gridlocked Congress would be unlikely to pass it”. Cohan explains that: “Instead, the next president’s greatest influence on clean energy will come through their handling of legislation and regulations put in place since 2021 under the Biden-Harris administration.” He notes that Harris will likely maintain those policies and Trump will seek to reverse them, but concludes that, ultimately, “whoever is elected will govern within a clean energy landscape that has been reshaped by those policies, and by market forces that are beyond the control of any president”.

Former UK energy secretary Amber Rudd has a piece in the i newspaper about the closure of the UK’s last coal power plant. She says that the UK coal industry was “not sustainable” and explained how, during her time as part of the Conservative government, officials worked to show that the phaseout could be achieved without jeopardising energy security. “The Ratcliffe closure is the final step for coal power in the UK, and another vital step forward in our transition to affordable, secure, home-grown clean energy,” Rudd writes. She also says that the closure marks the early delivery of a pledge she made to get rid of coal power in the UK by 2025. “That announcement was rooted in proper Conservative values: security; economic competence; environmental stewardship; and intergenerational responsibility,” she says. Rudd adds that as Conservative party members gather for their party conference, and decide on who will be the next leader of their party following their loss to Labour in the recent election, “they will have an important opportunity to remind the leadership candidates vying for their votes that they are proud of our environmental legacy”.

An editorial in City AM notes that while the end of coal in the UK marks the end of an era it is “not an end in itself”. The article explains: “Without a truly dramatic (expensive, contentious and complex) expansion in the infrastructure and storage capacity to support renewable energy, we remain vulnerable to its vagaries. And for as long as that remains the case, gas (particularly imported gas) is ever more important.” The piece also emphasises the importance of building nuclear power as well as renewables. 

Meanwhile, Larry Elliott, the Guardian’s economics editor, writes about the closure of the blast furnace at the Port Talbot steelworks, noting the “significance” of this happening at the same time as the end of UK coal power – given the two industries’ shared history. Elliott notes that both of the main UK political parties, including the Labour government, have “bought into” the idea that new jobs in low-carbon industries will replace those lost from such closures. He writes: “Lessons must be learned from the failures of the past. If hundreds of thousands of green jobs are going to be created, the government will need to step up its net-zero investment and not flinch from its commitment to reform the planning system to allow for more low-carbon development.” The Guardian also has a feature in which it interviews former steelworkers in Port Talbot, who fear a “devastating impact in south Wales”. 

Climate-sceptic columnist Ross Clark writes in the Daily Mail about the twin closure of the Ratcliffe coal plant and the blast furnace at Port Talbot. He says: “Today Labour, in a mad rush to achieve net-zero carbon emissions, is presiding over a deindustrialisation of Britain that will leave our country poorer, more vulnerable and won’t even do anything to protect the environment.” [Both closures were initiated under the previous Conservative government, which only left office three months ago.] In the Daily Telegraph, technology journalist Andrew Orlowski has a piece with a headline that states energy secretary Ed Miliband is “ignor[ing] nuclear power”. [Miliband touted the role of new nuclear in a recent speech.]

A long comment article by Bloomberg columnist David Fickling explores how “the US lost the solar race to China” – and what it means for the current fight over tariffs on electric cars. Fickling writes: “As recently as 2010, a small town in central Michigan was the world’s biggest producer of solar polysilicon. Nowadays, the US is barely in the game, and more than 90% of the total comes from China.” He continues: “Washington blames China’s dominance of the solar industry on what are routinely dubbed ‘unfair trade practices’. But that’s just a comforting myth.” He concludes: “Successive waves of tariffs have done little more than create a Potemkin solar industry, while putting a tax on clean power as the climate crisis festers…If America wants a sort of small-batch, artisan solar sector to give the impression it’s doing the work of staving off climate change, while going all-in on expanding petroleum production instead, then it’s hit on the right policy.”

The natural drawdown of CO2 by marine ecosystems, sometimes called the “biological carbon pump”, is likely to keep increasing in a scenario where CO2 removal technologies are used to bring Earth’s temperatures back down to target following an overshoot caused by a lack of sufficient action to cut emissions, a new study says. The research uses a range of Earth system models to examine how CO2 uptake by the ocean could change under a range of temperature-overshoot scenarios. The authors conclude: “Our findings imply that excess carbon that is attributable to the biological carbon pump needs to be considered carefully when quantifying and projecting changes in the marine carbon sink.”