The International Energy Agency (IEA) says in a new report, covered by several outlets including BusinessGreen, that “global electricity use is forecast to rise significantly in the coming years, hitting an annual growth rate of around 4% through to 2027 on the back of the wider electrification of industry and transport and increased demand from power hungry data centres and air conditioning units”. Reuters frames it slightly differently, saying: “Global electricity demand is expected to grow by more than the total consumption of Japan each year through 2027, but the expansion of low-emissions energy sources should help offset the trend.” The newswire adds: “Emerging and developing economies are expected to account for 85% of global demand growth, with China forecast to make up more than half of the gains with a 6% growth rate year-on-year to 2027, the IEA report said.” Bloomberg says: “The US, European Union and Japan are all set to see growth in demand, the IEA found. America alone is set to see power demand growth over the next three years equal to the annual consumption of California, its most populous state. But the more significant increases will still come from developing countries, particularly China. An increasing portion of China’s economy is running on electricity, with roughly 28% of final energy consumption coming from power, compared to 22% in the US. To pump out solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles, Chinese factories used as much power as Italy did last year. Industry will continue to be the main driver of power growth in China, along with increasing demand for air conditioning and charging EVs.” The Guardian runs its article under the headline: “EVs and datacentres driving new global ‘age of electricity’, says watchdog.” (See separate coverage of the IEA’s monthly oil market report below.)

Lee Zeldin, the new head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, is “seeking to end contracts agreed by the previous administration to distribute $20bn in grants to fund clean energy and transportation projects in disadvantaged communities”, reports Reuters. Zeldin posted on social media that “he will ask the inspector general, Congress and justice department to work with the agency to end the contracts agreed with eight regional organisations that were named financial agents, and to rescind grant money awarded under the Biden EPA’s greenhouse gas reduction fund”. The newswire adds: “Across the government, [Donald] Trump’s orders have restrained at least tens of billions of dollars of funding for clean energy projects, conservation initiatives and transportation projects across the country, even violating a court order that required the funding freeze to be lifted. Democratic lawmakers and groups suing the administration say that dismantling the funding will likely require congressional backing.”

The Financial Times reports that “institutional investors with $1.5tn in funds have told asset managers to step up on climate action or risk being dumped, in a sign of a split in the investment industry over how to deal with the financial risks of global warming”. The newspaper continues: “A group of 26 financial institutions and pension funds from Australia to the US, including Scottish Widows, the People’s Partnership and Brunel Pension Partnership, have asked their asset managers to more actively engage with the companies they are invested in about their climate risk. The election of Donald Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, and a pushback against so-called environmental, social and governance investing by US Republican governors, has prompted many large asset managers to back away from public support for corporate action on global warming. But the asset owners group argued that climate change was a long-term financial risk, particularly for pension funds that [would] need to pay out retirement incomes for decades to come.”

The Guardian says it has “learned” that “13 more oil and gas licences could be cancelled as ministers decide new guidance for fossil fuel extraction after a landmark court case”. The newspaper adds: “The admission that many more licences may ultimately be unlawful comes on the back of cabinet tensions over the future of two major oil and gas fields – Rosebank and Jackdaw – whose licences were last month found to have been unlawfully granted. A judge ruled their applications did not take into account the emissions that arise from burning the oil and gas extracted from the projects…It can now be revealed there are more oil and gas projects whose futures hang in the balance. In an exchange with the Green MP Carla Denyer, the energy minister Michael Shanks was forced to admit that 13 oil and gas fields currently at consent phase are subject to the recent court ruling.” [For background, see Carbon Brief’s “Analysis: UK could approve 13 new oil and gas projects despite North Sea pledge”, which was published last August.]

In other UK news, Reuters reports that “Britain plans over the coming months to introduce a faster way to connect new power projects to the grid, the energy regulator said on Friday, as it seeks to accelerate progress towards a goal to decarbonise electricity by 2030”. The newswire adds: “Under the existing system, projects are dealt with in the order they enter a queue regardless of how advanced the projects are. The new system would seek to give priority to projects that are ready or in locations where more generation capacity is needed.” The Independent reveals that the UK transport secretary Heidi Alexander has met, “in a ‘constructive’ meeting, with the car industry to discuss the zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate and 2030 petrol and diesel car phase out”. A consultation on the 2030 phase out ends next week.

Elsewhere, the Guardian has an “exclusive” revealing that the “Reform MP Rupert Lowe installed solar panels on his farm to save money on energy bills, despite his party pledging to tax solar energy and claiming renewables are more expensive”. It adds: “The Nigel Farage-led party has been accused of hypocrisy as Lowe also runs a company that installs batteries for renewables projects, which has described solar energy as a good way to reduce electricity bills.” The Daily Telegraph has a frontpage story breathlessly claiming that a “giant gas field discovery could power Britain for a decade”. The newspaper also claims that “it is likely to reignite the debate about fracking”. [See Carbon Brief’s factcheck from 2022 on “why fracking is not the answer to the UK’s energy crisis”.] The government has responded to the newspaper’s claim: “We intend to ban fracking for good and make Britain a clean energy superpower to protect current and future generations. The biggest risk to our energy security is staying dependent on fossil fuel markets.” Finally, the Scotsman reports that “oil and gas chiefs have warned the Labour government it could usher in a strategy of deindustrialisation if Scotland’s carbon capture project has its funding cut”.

The Financial Times reports that “major insurers face billions of dollars in losses from the Los Angeles wildfires, they said this week, despite dropping clients in California before the catastrophe”. The article continues: “AIG and Allstate are among the national insurers that warned of losses even after they cut their exposure to the state in recent years. AIG expected losses of about $500m from the firestorms, which destroyed more than 16,000 homes and businesses in January, the New York-based insurer said on Tuesday…Travelers also on Tuesday said it projected $1.7bn in losses from the fires, while Zurich-based Chubb last month pegged its losses at $1.5bn. Allstate, which last week announced $1.1bn in losses, said it had more than halved its California market share since 2008. Risk modellers say the wildfires will cost the global insurance industry about $40bn out of more than $250bn in total losses. The widespread scope of the losses underscores the scale of the crisis in California’s insurance market, where insurers have fled as a result of tight consumer regulations and more intense disasters related to climate change. Insurers in recent weeks stressed they had avoided heftier payouts by paring back policies in risky areas.” The Times reports: “The wildfires in California that destroyed swathes of Los Angeles will inflict a hit of as much as $165m on a leading Lloyd’s of London insurer. Lancashire Holdings told stock market investors on Thursday that it expected net losses from last month’s disaster of between $145m and $165m, although it cautioned that this was a preliminary estimate and the final figure could change.” [Carbon Brief recently covered the LA fires and their connection to climate change in a “media reaction” article.]

BBC News reports that Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has hailed a “mega partnership” between the US and India, as he and US leader Donald Trump “wrapped up a meeting in which they announced a deal for Delhi to import more US oil and gas in an effort to shrink the trade deficit between both countries”. The outlet continues: “Trump added that India would be ‘purchasing a lot of our oil and gas’ in an effort to close the trade deficit between both countries. ‘They need it. And we have it,’ Trump said. With India already being reliant on imported oil, which it sources from multiple countries, the energy deal with the US ‘presents a relatively low hanging fruit for both parties’, Radhika Rao, a senior economist at Singapore’s DBS bank told the BBC.” The Indian Express says: “Washington hopes to become top oil and gas supplier to New Delhi, says Trump.” Separately, Forbes has an article headlined: “India won’t clobber consumers to meet climate targets, says oil minister.”

China’s adoption of “alternative transport” and shifts in its economy are driving a slowdown in its fuel growth that is “without historical precedent”, with the usage of gasoline, kerosene and gasoil – the nation’s three most important fuel products – declining to “below 2021 levels and narrowly above 2019 use”, Bloomberg reports, citing the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) latest monthly oil market report. The IEA attributes the country’s “less oil intensive” recent economic gains to a “slump in the construction sector” and “persistently underwhelming consumer spending”, the newswire adds. Reuters also covers the IEA’s new report under the headline: “China’s fuel demand may have passed its peak, IEA says.”

Meanwhile, China has started drilling on the “largest ultra-deep” oil well in the depths of the Taklamakan desert in Xinjiang province as it “seeks to ramp up domestic oil and gas production”, reports the state-supporting newspaper Global Times. All provincial governments have released plans for thermal power projects this year, with “multiple key projects involving coal power plants”, says industry news outlet BJX News.

Separately, China has “diversified its energy imports enough” that it is now “less likely” to launch the “controversial” Power of Siberia 2 pipeline with Russia and may instead “buy more liquefied natural gas from the US”, to address a “bilateral trade imbalance”, reports Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP). Another SCMP report quotes a “prominent China-watcher” saying that “China’s continued outreach to western economies”, signalled by foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit in London this week, shows how UK businesses may “gain an edge in attracting Chinese investment” by maintaining an “independent trade approach, such as avoiding EV tariffs”. Mark Brown, prime minister of the Cook Islands, says his visit to China has “opened the door to new areas of collaboration”, such as “enhancing national climate resilience efforts, particularly in weather forecasting and climate change adaptation”, according to the Global Times. 

In other news, China has issued its fifth catalogue on the “promotion of key national key low-carbon technologies”, including solar and offshore wind technologies, according to the state-controlled energy media outlet China Power News Net. The 21st Century Business Herald says Tesla’s energy-storage gigafactory that began production in Shanghai this month may “trigger profound industrial changes” and provide “new problem-solving ideas for the Chinese energy storage industry”. Financial news outlet Caixin has an article explaining China’s “plan to let the market set wind and solar prices”. State-owned newspaper the Economic Daily also talks about the “influence” of the move. Finally, the Economist says that “Chinese cars are taking over the global south”, but “petrol engines, not batteries, are powering their growth”.

Germany wants the European Union to “make its gas storage targets less rigid because of worries over their cost, the economic affairs and climate ministry said [yesterday]”, according to Reuters. The newswire continues: “The targets, introduced in response to the supply disruption caused by the Ukraine war, require all EU countries to refill their storage caverns to 90% of capacity by November, with intermediate targets for February, May, July and September. The cost was highlighted as benchmark European gas prices rose to two-year highs this week.” Germany goes to the polls next week, with energy prices one of the key issues concerning voters. [For more on the climate and energy commitments made by each of the main parties, see Carbon Brief’s election grid.]

Meanwhile, Deutsche Welle has published a news feature under the headline: “What’s next for Germany’s climate movement?” It says: “Climate action has been sidelined in the lead up to Germany’s federal election and many policies are facing political backlash. Can activists navigate the challenges ahead?” And the climate-sceptic comment page of the Wall Street Journal carries a column by Joseph C Sternberg under the headline: “Germany’s election dodges its climate debacle: The mainstream parties tiptoe around the green fiasco that is devastating the country’s economy.”

There is continuing coverage of the investor pressures facing BP, with the Times reporting that the “famously aggressive” New York hedge fund Elliott Investment Management, which “has amassed a £4bn position in BP”, is “pushing for the British oil giant to emulate Shell’s strategy in cost-cutting and ditching green investments”. The newspaper adds: “Elliott hopes to see BP scale back its capital investment, pursue the highest-return prospects and sell off significant parts of the group to cut debt and ditch ‘ideological’ investments, the source said…Both BP and Shell made strategic shifts towards renewable power generation under their previous chief executives, after setting goals of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.” The Financial Times says: “Activist Elliott Management has become BP’s third-largest shareholder after building a near-5% stake worth almost £3.8bn, as it seeks to force the troubled UK oil major to cut spending on renewable energy and make big divestments, according to two people close to the situation.” The Guardian also covers the story.

The Daily Telegraph’s world economy editor writes: “Donald Trump’s economic and strategic vision is riddled with contradictions. None is greater than the clash between his plan to flood the world with American oil and gas, and his other plan of bringing Russia in from the cold. The only reason why Europe is importing so much US shale gas today…is because Russian flows to Europe have slowed to a trickle. The world market has lost 120bn cubic metres (BCM) of supply trapped in western Siberia.” He continues: “Markets are starting to price a post-war settlement…Ukraine has its own trump card in peace talks. It is sitting on a legacy infrastructure of 160BCM of gas pipelines from Russia, enough to restore Gazprom’s entire lost flows to Europe. If just half of this Siberian gas returns to Europe it would displace imported LNG from Texas. ‘The price would crash and infuriate Trump,’ said Thierry Bros, a professor at Paris Science Po and a former energy planner for the French government…The world cannot absorb the extra 250BCM in the project pipeline over the next five years…One thing is clear: Xi Jinping does not need or want Trump’s gas. The oil and gas industry has embraced the hope of a fossil fuel supercycle over the last three years, the span of Putin’s war. The majors have torn up their strategies, shuffled off green bunting, and bet their corporate futures on business as usual. Donald Trump has been their champion. The partition of Ukraine and the rehabilitation of Russia will test whether this supercycle is real, or whether they are all living in a fool’s paradise.”

Wang Yi, a reporter working for the Global Times, a state-supporting newspaper in China, reacts defensively to a new report covered by Carbon Brief yesterday which found that “China’s construction of new coal-power plants ‘reached a 10-year high’ in 2024”. Wang (who is not to be confused with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi) writes: “Needless to say, such scepticism regarding China’s green transition and its efforts to reduce carbon emissions is misplaced. The report focused primarily on the newly added coal power capacity in the context of short-term fluctuations driven by economic activity, and failed to capture the broader scope of China’s massive energy transition.” Wang adds: “More importantly, despite the growth in electricity generation from coal, China’s carbon emissions did not increase in the third quarter of 2024. An analysis by Carbon Brief, based on official and commercial data, indicates that the figures for the third quarter suggested that China’s total carbon emissions for the year may still have declined. After China’s carbon dioxide emissions decreased in the second quarter of 2024, carbon dioxide emissions in the third quarter remained flat or slightly lower compared with the same period last year, according to Carbon Brief. This fully demonstrates that while China is building some new coal-fired power plants, it is also gradually phasing out outdated coal power capacity. Looking at the overall capacity of coal power, a more accurate statement would be that China is upgrading its coal power plants.” [Both reports cited by Wang are, in fact, the result of work, in part, by the same thinktank, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.]

Meanwhile, in other comment from China, the Communist party’s People’s Daily has published an article under the byline of “Jin She Ping” – a pseudonym used for “important economic and social comments”, which is often viewed as representing the voice of the party – hailing China’s 5% GDP growth last year. It says the growth was driven by a determination for “green and low-carbon development”, and was achieved through “government policies resonating with the markets”, as they “establish new productive forces and break old ones at the same time”. Guo Wei, professor at the Communist party’s Central Party School, writes in a commentary for the Economic Daily about how to “collaboratively promote a comprehensive green transition”. 

A new study finds “alarming patterns” of deforestation in Brazil’s Atlantic forest, including losses in protected areas and on Indigenous lands. Researchers use satellite data on land use and land cover to assess deforestation in the Atlantic forest from 2010 to 2020. They identify more than 14,000 instances of deforestation and a corresponding loss of 186,289 hectares of forest – “most of it with a high likelihood of illegality”.  The authors note that the forest loss “is concentrated in two hotspots” and warn: “This pattern could lead to species extinctions, ecosystem service losses and a weakened capacity to address climate change.”