It is still possible to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures thanks to record growth in clean energy technology, Reuters reports. This is according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) updated net-zero roadmap, which sets out a path to reaching net-zero emissions in 2050, the newswire says. However, it adds that the agency says investment in the transition to cleaner energy would need to reach nearly $4.5tn per year by 2030, up from spending of $1.8tn expected in 2023. Solar power and electric cars “are set to provide a third of the emissions reductions between now and 2030 while innovation has opened new possibilities and lowered costs,” the Press Association says. It notes that in the original roadmap, published in 2021 report, the IEA identified technologies that are not yet on the market as providing 50% of the emissions reductions required by 2050. However, it says this number has now fallen to 35%. The newswire continues: “Actions [the IEA] sees as necessary this decade are a tripling of global renewable power capacity, a doubling of the annual rate of energy efficiency improvements, a sharp rise in sales of electric cars and heat pumps and a 75% reduction of methane in the energy sector. Taken together, these measures could account for 80% of the emissions reductions needed by 2030.” The New York Times says meeting the IEA’s targets “would require vast transformations”. It continues: “This year, all countries would have to stop approving new coal plants beyond those currently under construction. By 2025, governments would largely phase out the sale of new oil and gas furnaces to heat buildings, shifting to cleaner electric heat pumps. By 2030, electric cars would make up 65% of new sales globally and the amount of wind, solar and other renewable energy installed around the world would triple from levels today.” The Financial Times adds that according to the IEA, fossil fuel demand would have to fall by one quarter by the end of this decade. It continues: “The agency’s latest projections come at a time of rising tensions with oil producers ahead of UN climate talks in the UAE in 10 weeks, with the OPEC cartel accusing the IEA of stoking ‘volatility’ and scaring off investors from the sector. The oil and gas industry has also attempted to undermine the IEA projections, stepping up the rhetoric last week at a biennial conference in Calgary.” The Guardian quotes IEA executive director Fatih Birol: “Despite the scale of the challenges, I feel more optimistic than I felt two years ago…Solar photovoltaic installations and electric vehicle sales are perfectly in line with what we said they should be, to be on track to reach net-zero by 2050, and thus stay within 1.5C. Clean energy investments in the last two years have seen a staggering 40% increase.” Edie says the IEA’s new net-zero pathway “means ending fossil fuel expansion now”. The Associated Press reports: “Rich and developing nations alike must sharply improve their net-zero targets, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday, warning that a clean energy surge was the main reason the world’s climate goals are still within reach.” Montel reports: “1.5C goal only feasible with multi-trillion investment – IEA.”

French president Emmanual Macron has laid out a new plan to halve the country’s emissions by 2030, Politico reports. According to the outlet, Macron is focusing on “providing incentives rather than imposing outright obligation”. It continues: “France is putting €7bn of extra cash in next year’s budget to bring France closer to its climate goals, which include €2.2bn to making buildings energy-efficient, €1.8bn to stoke energy technologies such as hydrogen and biomethane and €1.4bn to French farmers and forest development…Macron confirmed that France will shut down its two last coal plants by 2027. The two plants were meant to permanently close in 2022, but they remained active during the energy crisis when almost a half of France’s nuclear reactors stopped producing electricity amid maintenance and technical problems.” The Guardian reports that Macron announced an acceleration of electric car production. It adds that the companies responsible for 50 of the dirtiest industrial sites in France will also sign an agreement to reduce pollution by 45% before 2030. The Daily Telegraph says that Macron has promised a “pain-free, supply-side green transition”. The Financial Times says: “In his climbdown on the one big policy change that was under consideration – a ban on the installation of gas-fired boilers from 2026 – Macron reasoned that this would give France more time to develop domestic manufacturing of heat pumps instead of relying on imports. It would boost production to one million by 2027 and train 30,000 installers.” Macron also announced that the government will “take back control” of electricity prices by the end of the year, according to Reuters. The newswire continues: “Without spelling out what steps he would take to do so, Macron said state ownership of utility EDF and France’s nuclear fleet would help achieve this.” Separately, Reuters reports that France wants the European Union to publicly set out dates for phasing out fossil fuels ahead of COP28.

In other European news, the Guardian reports that German vice-chancellor and Green politician Robert Habeck “has called on supporters of environmental reforms to shed their reputation for ‘moral superiority’ and focus on having ‘the better arguments’ amid a backlash against climate policies across Europe”. Habeck “said environmental parties had to push back against their instincts if they wanted their climate agenda to succeed in the long run”, the paper adds. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that German chancellor Olaf Scholz has set out the country’s ambitions to become a strategic production centre for sustainable jet fuel. And Bloomberg reports that the EU is “planning to unveil measures to help its ailing wind sector next month”.

Manufacturing groups have described Rishi Sunak’s decision to water down Britain’s net-zero policies as a “huge setback” to the sector, the Financial Times reports. The prime minister’s decision sent “entirely the wrong signal” and suggested that “we are simply going backwards”, said the leaders of 15 manufacturers’ trade bodies in a letter to the newspaper. Elsewhere, the Daily Telegraph reports that former chair of the Climate Change Committee, Lord Deben, has called Sunak “unconservative” for rolling back Britain’s net-zero pledges, adding that the policy reversals destroy trust in the government. The paper quotes Deben: ““The government has failed the offshore wind industry, it has failed the motorcar industry, just like it once failed the housebuilding industry… I am a Conservative because I think that free enterprise works and that you have to work with industry and the private sector to make this country richer and better so you can help the poorest.”

In other UK news, the Times reports that a team of scientists at the University of Oxford estimate that solar and wind farms could “easily” power the UK by 2050. The paper finds that 73% of the energy would come from offshore wind farms, with solar providing 19%. “Solar on rooftops would provide less than 1%, because it was assumed the technology would be largely confined to the south of Britain and only for south-facing rooftops,” it adds. ​​​

Car manufacturer Nissan has announced that it will sell only electric cars in Europe from 2030, BBC News reports. The broadcaster says: “The announcement comes despite the UK postponing its 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars to 2035.” It continues: “In an interview with the BBC, [Nissan’s chief executive Makoto] Uchida said the company was aiming to bring down the cost of electric vehicles for customers, so that they were no more expensive than petrol and diesel cars… Uchida also said that the company was fast-tracking a different kind of battery technology, known as all-solid-state batteries (ASSB), which are lighter, cheaper, and quicker to charge.” The Daily Telegraph notes that Nissan employs more than 7,000 staff across the UK at three sites. The outlet quotes Uchida: “Nissan will make the switch to full electric by 2030 in Europe – we believe it is the right thing to do for our business, our customers and for the planet.” Sky News adds that the commitment “brings Nissan into line with its French partner Renault and joins rivals including Volvo and Ford”. Reuters also covers the news.

This comes as the Times reports on polling which finds that fewer than half of drivers want to buy an electric car, which it says is mainly due to the perceived barriers of cost and charging infrastructure. “The proportion who intend their next vehicle to be electric has fallen to 8% from 11% two years ago,” the paper adds. Elsewhere, the i newspaper reports that British drivers may have to pay some £3,000-5,000 more for electric vehicles, thanks to Brexit trade barriers. The Times reports: “Brussels is resisting an ‘urgent plea’ for the European Union to extend zero-tariff Brexit trade rules on electric vehicles amid car industry concerns over a deadline of New Year’s Day that could lead to job losses.” And Reuters says that EU ministers have agreed to “dilute” a European Commission proposal on new vehicle emissions, after eight states said the changes could “divert investment from the electric vehicle industry”.

US president Joe Biden pledged $200m in funding to Pacific islands at a White House meeting with leaders from the region, the Guardian reports. The paper calls Biden’s move a “charm offensive aimed at clawing back influence in the region from China”. It continues: “The Pacific leaders were expected to push for more support for the climate crisis among other matters at the talks, and were due to meet the US climate envoy, John Kerry on Monday, where they will raise their fears that their nations will be wiped off the map. In his remarks, Biden said the US heard their concerns about the ‘existential threat’ posed by the climate emergency. ‘We hear your calls for reassurance that you never, never, never will lose your statehood or membership at the UN as a result of a climate crisis,’ the president told the Pacific leaders.” However, the paper notes that the Solomon Islands prime minister, Manasseh Sogavare, is now “closely aligned with Beijing” and did not attend the White House meeting. The Associated Press adds: “Kiribati signed onto a $29.1m partnership with the US-backed Millennium Corporation Challenge. The group will assist the island country with dozens of low-lying atolls and help boost its workforce.”

In other US news, the Hill says the share of Americans attributing extreme weather to climate change jumped 10 points this summer. Elsewhere, the Guardian reports that students from more than 50 high schools across the US are proposing a green new deal for schools, “demanding that their districts teach climate justice, create pathways to green jobs after graduation and plan for climate disasters, among other policies”. The paper adds that the campaign is organised by the Sunrise Movement – a youth-led climate justice collective – in response to rightwing efforts to ban or suppress climate education and activism at schools. Elsewhere, Reuters says Democratic senators including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to the US treasury department last week, urging it to “offer more guidance to financial institutions on addressing climate change risks threatening the US financial system”. And Bloomberg says: “A federal court left in place an order forcing the Biden administration to expand an upcoming sale of offshore drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico, while giving the government more time to hold the auction.”

Antarctic sea ice has reached a new record low winter maximum of 16.96m square kilometres (km2), ​​more than one million km2 below the previous record set in 1986, the Times reports. The reason for the extreme melt is an “active research area”, the paper says, adding that Antarctic water has been up to 0.5C warmer than average in recent months. The Guardian adds: “Antarctica’s sea ice had been relatively stable until a new record summer low was broken in 2016. Since then, further record lows have been set, including this February that broke the record for the lowest summer minimum.” The Washington Post notes that the annual maximum was reached on 10 September, about 13 days earlier than average. It adds that sea ice extent around the Arctic was the sixth lowest on record as well. Reuters reports that the figures are still preliminary and the US National Snow and Ice Data Center will release a full analysis later this month. Al Jazeera and Bloomberg also cover the news.

Writing in the Times, former Conservative leader William Hague calls UK prime minister Rishi Sunak’s speech “rational”, adding that “the parts ramping up the national effort on climate change – more trained workers, bigger grants for changing your boiler, faster connections to the grid for renewable energy projects and a lot more money to help developing countries – did not receive the same attention as those slowing it down”. He praises Sunak’s call for “honest debate about the long term”, adding that “the world is so far off meeting its goals on climate that conventional wisdom about the technology we need will have to change as well”. Hague continues: “It is green activists as well as governments who need new, long-term thinking. An example is the idea of a group of British academics, including the Oxford net-zero initiative, for a ‘carbon takeback obligation’. This would place a steadily escalating requirement on fossil fuel producers to take the carbon they produce out of the air and put it back in the ground. The technology to do so – direct air capture – is not yet operating on an economic scale but is under serious development in the US. The idea goes against the orthodoxy that we have to ‘stop oil’ by saying what really matters is removing the emissions of oil. It would place more onus on innovation in the private sector and less reliance on taxes and regulation to change people’s behaviour. It is a fallback we will need, unless we are completely confident that current ideas, and the struggling COP process, will save the planet.” Sunak’s announcement has “been met with a divided response and at most just tweaked the popularity dial” writes John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University in the i newspaper.

Elsewhere, Joss Garman, UK director of the European Climate Foundation (ECF) – which funds Carbon Brief – writes on his blog that “by overreaching with a plan centred on scrapping fantasy, non-existent policies (like ‘meat taxes’ and ‘seven bins’) that nobody in politics supported in the first place, the prime minister exposed the thinness of his case for his bonfire of net-zero policies”. He adds: “Ministers are legally obliged to update MPs in the House of Commons on how they intend to make their carbon numbers add up by the end of next month. (The energy minister confirmed last week they will set out their response to the CCC’s latest progress report ‘by the end of October.’) Soon after, Sunak will head to the UN climate summit in the UAE where he could face questions from other world leaders on this point.”

Meehra Khan, the economics editor of the Times, says that Sunak’s “flip-flop” risks Britain having no climate strategy. Khan calls Sunak’s announcement “riddled with contradictions”. She adds: “Beyond the cognitive dissonance, there is a more serious failure to understand what kind of economy the UK wants to be. Sunak thinks some relative outperformance on reducing emissions compared with other countries is an excuse to slow down and let the laggards catch up. This entirely misses the point and the potential economic gains to be won from the climate transition. It’s a lesson the Biden administration has grasped by trying to build the emissions-reducing technologies that will create jobs at home and be exported by US companies to the rest of the world. Under Sunak, the UK is destined to be a recipient rather than an active agent in this vast industrial change.” The journal Nature has published an editorial calling Sunak’s decision to delay the country’s to net-zero pledges “misguided”. The problem, according to the editorial, is that Sunak “sees the 2030 deadlines as a burden, rather than an opportunity”. It continues: “Sunak also said, without citing proof, that slower decarbonisation will still allow the country to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, a target enshrined in UK law. The government’s own expert advisers do not agree. The speech also displayed a lack of awareness of research on what pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is already doing to the planet and to vulnerable people.” The editorial argues that Sunak’s announcement “could have been written 20 years ago” and says it “sadly also reintroduces politics into climate policy, ending a carefully constructed cross-party, cross-sector, science-based consensus”. For the Guardian, financial editor Nils Pratley writes under the headline: “The next UK net-zero battleground is electricity pylons.”

In the Sun, political editor Harry Cole writes that Sunak’s decision to delay the ban on petrol cars “has seen him catch up eight points in the polls”, narrowing the gap between the Tories and Labour. Elsewhere, climate-sceptic Brendan O’Neill has been given a full page in the Daily Mail. He writes that he has “long been a Rishi Sunak sceptic”, but says his recent actions have changed his mind. He says: “But it was his swipe at the dishonesty of the green-leaning establishment that felt genuinely bold. The elites, he said, ‘have not been honest about the costs and trade-offs’ of net-zero. And he’s absolutely right. This green drive has been dressed up as a progressive, charitable initiative.” Assistant comment editor at the Daily Telegraph, Sherelle Jacobs, writes that “the Tories may yet be able to end the sense of inevitability around a Labour victory”. She says: “The Tories are no longer willing to go along with the fairy tale that the only way to prevent capitalism’s eco-collapse is by forcing people to rip out their boilers, while condemning petrol cars to the scrap yard. [Neither of these was ever government policy.] Inevitably, there has been much scrutiny of Sunak’s bid for a more sensibly paced approach to carbon reduction. Some think that it will hurt him in the polls, although the initial signs are that it will not. But in the grand scheme of things, the Tory U-turn begins to rupture Starmer’s environmental prospectus. The creation of an actual political dividing line on green policy invites a fresh interrogation of the sanctimonious contradictions that riddle Labour’s green plan – one that giveth with its promise of green jobs and taketh away with the reality of higher energy bills.”

The former Indian ambassador to the United Nations, TS Tirumurti, writes in the Hindustan Times that developing countries are “shifting their responsibility for climate finance to larger developing countries, private sector, and market forces”. He says the focus at the recent Africa climate summit should have been adaptation, since the African continent has contributed only around 3% of global carbon emissions, but instead the focus was mitigation since this “suited the developed countries”. He continues: “The UK has just now back-tracked on its climate goals saying that it imposes ‘unacceptable costs’ on its people. On the other hand, imposing ‘unacceptable costs’ on development of the global south is kosher.” He says there was “very little progress” on the “crucial question of debt burden on Africa” at the summit.

Some 17% and 18% of new wind power projects faced local opposition in the US and Canada, respectively, between 2000 and 2016, a new study finds. The research finds that opposition was concentrated in the north-eastern states in the US and in Ontario in Canada. The authors add: “In the US, opposition was more likely and more intense in areas with a higher proportion of White people, and a smaller proportion of Hispanic people. In Canada, opposition was more likely and more intense in wealthier communities. The most common tactics used to oppose wind energy were court cases, legislation, and physical protests.” They add: “When wealthier, Whiter communities oppose wind projects, this slows down the transition away from fossil fuel projects in poorer communities and communities of colour, an environmental injustice we call ‘energy privilege’.”