Clean-energy advisor John Podesta has been appointed as the US’s top climate diplomat, reports the Financial Times. He will move swiftly to fill the vacancy despite a looming presidential election, as the appointment comes at a “critical time for US climate and international energy policy”, the article notes. Podesta will succeed John Kerry as US president Joe Biden’s representative on climate, taking on the international role in addition to his current White House job of overseeing $370bn in spending on clean energy under the Inflation Reduction Act, reports the New York Times. Podesta, whose new title will be senior adviser to the president for international climate policy, will remain at the White House rather than move to the state department in his new role, reports the Washington Post, which first broke the story. His title and placement will “presumably avoid a Senate confirmation battle”, reports Axios, since the 2022 defense policy bill requires confirmation of state department special envoys. Podesta is a veteran Democratic strategist with a long history in climate politics, including on the international stage, reports Politico. Responding to the appointment, Kerry said Podesta is a “longtime climate ally and advocate,” as well as noting that he played pivotal roles in the Obama administration’s climate strategy, including engagement with China, the article adds. Kerry, who marked his 80th birthday at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai in December, announced he was stepping down from the role last month, reports the Independent. He played a key role in negotiations surrounding the 2015 Paris Agreement and is one of the “better-known and most high-profile delegates at global climate conferences”, the article adds. Kerry stepping down followed his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua retirement in December, reports the Associated Press. “Over the years, Kerry and Xie forged a remarkable level of trust and respect in the world of international climate negotiations”, notes the article, resulting in a series of agreements on climate despite rising tensions between the US and China. Podesta brings decades of experience and close contacts with climate diplomats in China to the role, says Reuters. He played a central role alongside Kerry and former US climate envoy Todd Stern in brokering the first US-China bilateral agreement on climate change in 2014, the article adds, a diplomatic breakthrough credited for paving the way for the Paris Agreement. Bloomberg quotes White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, who said in a statement yesterday: “In three years, Secretary Kerry has tirelessly trekked around the world – bringing American climate leadership back from the brink and marshalling countries around the world to take historic action to confront the climate crisis. We need to keep meeting the gravity of this moment, and there is no one better than John Podesta to make sure we do.” This story is also reported by CNN, the Guardian, among others.

In other US news, the House of Representatives will vote on overturning the Biden administration’s “pause” on liquefied natural gas export approvals, according to a top republican, Bloomberg reports. (Carbon Brief has looked at what the pause in LNG approvals could mean for global emissions.) The vote will take place the week after next, according to representative Cathy McMorris Rogers, the article adds. Senator John Kennedy has said he will block some of Biden’s nominees over the policy that could delay the buildout of new natural gas export projects, reports the Hill. Elsewhere, three Senate democrats have joined Marco Rubio in a call for increased tariffs on imported Chinese solar panel components, a separate article in the Hill reports. They argue that Chinese products are undercutting the US solar industry, with Chinese-made panels costing as little as 15 cents per watt, less than half of the cost of a panel produced in the US, the article adds.

The UK government has granted 17 oil companies the right to drill for fossil fuels in 24 new licence areas across the North Sea as part of its “mission to extend the life of the ageing oil and gas basin”, reports the Guardian. The awarding of these new licences in the Central North Sea, Northern North Sea and West of Shetland areas follows an initial tranche of 27 licences offered in October last year. The article adds that the move could see oil and gas produced before the end of the decade, according to the North Sea Transition Authority. The move has angered MPs and environmental campaigners, who have called it “grossly irresponsible” and accused the government of overstating the economic benefits of the North Sea, as well as sacrificing the UK’s climate leadership for a “pipe dream”, the Guardian adds. The bulk of the licences have gone to foreign operators, including Equinor, the Norwegian state oil company, Malaysian-based Ping Petroleum and Dana Petroleum, a subsidiary of the Korea National Oil Corporation, reports the Daily Telegraph. The biggest clutch of the licences have gone to New Energy (Zex), a company controlled by HitecVision, a Norwegian private equity investor, the article adds. Foreign ownership means any profits will go to investors abroad, with the main benefit to the UK being the taxes collected on those profits plus any jobs generated directly or in the supply chain, the article adds. (A factcheck on North Sea oil and gas by Carbon Brief highlights how large sums of money are provided to oil and gas producers to support production in the North Sea through subsidies and tax relief.) The licences, along with those issued in October, form part of the North Sea Transition Authority’s 33rd licensing round, which was opened in October 2022 with more than 900 blocks being made available, reports the Press Association. The application window closed in January last year, with 115 bids received from 76 companies, it adds. The 24 new exploration licences announced yesterday form part of 74 blocks and part-blocks offered as part of this 33rd round, with the remaining blocks, the majority in the Southern North Sea and East Irish Sea set to be offered when the environmental evaluations have been finalised, the article notes. The announcement of the new licences comes despite recent analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit that found handing out further licences to drill in the North Sea and UK continental shelf will do little to improve the country’s energy security, reports BusinessGreen. Regardless of new drilling licences, 99% of oil-based road and aviation fields used in the UK in 2030 will still come from international sources, it adds. 

Elsewhere in UK news, Jürgen Maier, the former UK head of German industrial giant Siemens, has warned that the Labour party’s proposed £28bn investment in the low-carbon economy is an absolute minimum, reports the Guardian. According to Maier, massive investment is needed to rebuild the UK economy and make it fit for the future, and this should concentrate on low-carbon energy, transport and industry, the article notes. “These are the growth areas of the future. The £28bn is not a cost, it’s an investment. If you make this investment, business will return to the UK,” says Maier, who is advising Labour on transport and infrastructure, and formerly gave advice to the Conservative government, it adds.

Climate Home News examines India’s solar manufacturing industry and finds that, even as “India’s module production capacity more than doubled between 2020 and 2023”, its production of polysilicon, ingots and wafers “must be scaled up from virtually zero at the start of 2023”. It finds that “cell and module exports rocketed more than 1,000% in April-July 2023” driven by US demand, with solar PV researcher Harshul Kanwar describing this as Indian module manufacturers “capitalising on the US-China trade tensions and government incentives”. However, India remains “heavily reliant” on Chinese imports, with “two-thirds of India’s imports of cells and 100% of wafers” coming from China, and, even with high customs duty taxes of 40% and 25%, “imported Chinese modules remain slightly cheaper than Indian ones”. Solar industry leaders, the article adds, have “raised concerns that the lack of maturity of domestic solar production, the curb on imports, and growing exports to the US at the expense of domestic use could make it more difficult and expensive for India to meet its renewable energy goals”.

Separately, India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has announced “a basket of measures towards meeting India’s [net-zero by 2070] commitment” in parliament, unveiling the country’s interim budget in a crucial poll year, the Hindustan Times reports. These measures “include coal gasification and liquefaction, viability gap funding for offshore wind [for an initial capacity of 1 GW] and a boost to rooftop solar”, the story adds. 

Elsewhere, Reuters reports that India’s low-sulphur diesel exports to Europe “are poised to hit a fresh two-year low in January…as Red Sea security risks drive up freight costs”. Mint reports that “the output of eight core infrastructure sectors, which accounts for two-fifths of India’s industrial output, expanded by 3.8% in December – the slowest monthly pace in 14 months”, with coal output at its lowest since May. 

In biodiversity news, Mongabay India reports that, “even though greening in India has increased over the last two decades, carbon uptake by forests has reduced”, based on a new study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. The study finds that “areas which experienced the greatest warming also saw the steepest declines in carbon uptake” and that the “most biodiverse and pristine forest regions”, such as the Western Ghats and the Eastern Himalaya, saw the most prominent declines. India’s Supreme Court “has agreed this week to hear arguments in a challenge to a controversial new forest law”, which scientists tell Nature “makes it easier to clear forests for development and erodes the rights of millions of people who depend on these ecosystems”. The law passed through parliament “against a backdrop of protest from scientists, environmental groups and tribal people” and was due to “come into force in December, but is paused pending the outcome of the hearing”, the story adds. Separately, New Scientist reports that India’s first-ever snow leopard survey estimates that there are just “718 of the big cats living in the country’s six mountainous regions.”

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has linked the worst outbreak of cholera in three years to climate change, warning adverse weather is raising the risk of the disease, reports Time. Outbreaks of cholera have swept across more than a dozen countries in the region over the past year, causing hundreds of deaths “from rural Zambia to the outskirts of the capital of South Africa, the continent’s most developed nation”, the article notes. “Cholera in Africa is a climate change issue,” said Jean Kaseya, director general of Addis Ababa-based Africa CDC, the article adds.

Elsewhere, heat deaths are surging in Texas, Arizona and across the US, with researchers noting the disproportional impacts suffered by the elderly and people of colour, reports Inside Climate News. In recent years it has become clear that “our warming planet has begun to exact a heavy death toll”, it continues, with a 2021 study finding nearly 40% of heat-related fatalities could be linked to climate change, and nearly 1,700 people dying of heat-related causes in 2022, a sharp increase from 950 in 2018. Many who work in the intersection of health and climate change and now placing an increased emphasis on answering questions about the impacts of heat on the human body, the article continues. Relatedly, in the UK, a cross-party group of MPs have warned the nation is not prepared for the “silent killer” of heatwaves, which could claim up to 10,000 lives annually without concerted action, reports Forbes. A new report by the Commons’ environmental audit select committee has warned that there is a “clear-cut” economic and social care case for accelerating heat adaptation measures in the UK. 

Sales of “new energy” vehicles (NEVs, mostly electric vehicles) in China rose 92% year-on-year to reach 596,000 units between 1-28 January, according to an announcement from China’s Passenger Car Association, economic outlet Caijing reports. The state-run newspaper China Daily says that Chinese NEVs are “popular in overseas markets”, due to their innovative use of advanced technologies. It adds that Europe “is becoming a big incremental market” for China, with the share of Chinese-produced cars among Europe’s imported vehicles jumping from the tenth largest to second largest by 2022. Caixin reports that Chinese EV manufacturers see Thailand as a promising market for future exports, due to Thai policymakers seeing “vehicle electrification as a big part of the solution” to tackle the country’s air-pollution challenges. Bloomberg quotes US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo saying that Chinese NEVs are “collecting a huge amount of information about the driver, the location of the vehicle [and] the surroundings of the vehicle”, adding that “the Biden administration [is weighing] additional tariffs on [Chinese cars]…as well as a separate measure to protect Americans’ personal information”. China Daily publishes an article saying that despite the US’s “suppression of…China in fields such as science and technology”, the two countries have, nevertheless, “conducted high-standard, multitiered cooperation in dozens of areas including…energy [and] environmental protection”.

Meanwhile, China’s ministry of ecology and environment (MEE) has held a press conference in which MEE officials pledged to focus on the department’s “key tasks” for 2024, which include “actively promot[ing] the construction of the first ‘Beautiful China’ [pilot] zone…[and] green low-carbon high-quality development”, reports energy news outlet China Energy Net. A separate China Energy Net article also covers the press conference, quoting another MEE official saying that “now and the immediate future are important periods for the construction of a Beautiful China”. The Communist party-backed People’s Daily reports that the MEE pointed to the role of technology at the press conference, with one official saying “technology is an important support for the construction of a Beautiful China” that has helped “empower ecological and environmental governance”. Finally, China Daily reports on a village that, after switching from prioritising industry to prioritising environmental protection, saw “booming business and growing income [from tourism], showcasing the idea that green mountains and clear waters are equal to mountains of gold and silver” – a reference to a political slogan that means that environmental protection can also bring economic prosperity.

The UK Labour party needs to provide more detail of its plans “in several crucial areas”, if it is to win over the private sector, argues an editorial in the Financial Times. Labour’s “boldest bet” within its growth agenda is its Green Prosperity Plan, a rough equivalent to the US’s Inflation Reduction Act that would see debt-funded public investment into the low-carbon economy increasing over time in the next parliament to £28bn a year, the article notes. The timescale to hit this figure has already been pushed back, which makes sense “given the state of public finances”, the FT notes, but “goaded by Tory accusations that a Labour government would be profligate, it now seems poised to water down the commitment even further”. This risks undermining the very consistency that the business sector hoped a Labour government could bring, the article continues. “Business will want reassurance that component parts of the package remain intact, and clarity on the specific technologies it will seek to boost,” adds the editorial. 

In other UK comment, John McTernan, political secretary to Tony Blair when he was prime minister and now a political strategist for BCW, argues in an article in the Guardian that the Labour party must communicate the Green Prosperity Plan better. “The only real problem with the green prosperity fund is its name. It is an industrial strategy. Name it plainly and sell it,” he writes. In the Spectator, political editor Katy Balls examines whether Labour party leader Keir Starmer is facing a “green threat”. In the Daily Telegraph, the climate-sceptic financial columnist Matthew Lynn argues that it is not Brexit that is destroying the UK, but decarbonisation. 

Following a “groundbreaking” change to the law in Norway in January, there is now a dramatic difference in how oil and gas is approved in the North Sea, writes Tessa Khan, executive director of climate action organisation Uplift, in the Guardian. The decision by the Oslo district court now means that the government must take into account the emissions that come from burning the oil and gas reserves in addition to the impact of getting the reserves out of the ground, she writes. In the UK, the government only considers the emissions created in getting the oil and gas out of the ground, but “there is hope among climate campaigners that this position will become untenable”, writes Khan. The judgement in Norway has “set an example that provides fertile ground for the government’s position to be challenged in UK courts”, she continues, highlighting the upcoming Supreme Court decision on the Horse Hill development in Surrey where only production emissions were taken into account when permission was granted to drill. “If Norway can do it, then so can we. Case by case, field by field, the legitimacy and legality of continuing to drill for oil and gas during the climate crisis is being successfully challenged,” concludes Khan.

A high proportion of future extreme heat events are likely to be followed by heavy precipitation, a new paper finds, compounding the “lethal” threat that these events pose individually to human health, sustainable development and ecological security. The highest socioeconomic and ecosystem risks, according to six global climate models, are found in Central America, northern and central South America, western and southeastern Africa, central Asia, western India, southern China, south-east Asia, and south-eastern Australia. The atmospheric conditions during extreme heat effectively “set the stage” in these areas for heavy precipitation to follow, the paper explains, whereas the risk decreases in Greenland, north-eastern Russia and the Sahara.

A new machine-learning model can help estimate global emissions of ammonia, a product of crop production that poses risks for air quality and human health, according to new research. Based on a global dataset of field observations, the machine-learning model suggests that ammonia emissions from rice, wheat and maize in 2018 were lower than previous estimates suggest and that optimising fertiliser management, as guided by the model, could potentially reduce total ammonia emissions by about 38%. Under future climate change scenarios, ammonia emissions are projected to increase but targeted fertiliser management “has the potential to mitigate these increases”, the authors conclude.