More than 1.4m homes and businesses are still left without power in the US following Hurricane Helene, Reuters reports. According to data from PowerOutage.us, outages were down from around 2m on Monday afternoon as utilities continued to restore power after the hurricane struck on 26 September, the newswire says. The Associated Press says the US south-east remains a “powerless mess” following the storm and the New York Times reports on why restoring electricity after Helene “is complicated”. The Guardian reports that former president Donald Trump visited Hurricane Helene victims on Monday evening, yet will court oil executives during meetings held today. It comes as “a preliminary study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published on Monday night, found that climate change caused 50% more rainfall during the hurricane in some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas”, the Guardian adds. The Hill reports that a Helene victims fundraiser started by Trump has raised more than $3m. The Independent reports that “a Florida county is warning homeowners about potential dangers from electric vehicles” after a Tesla caught fire in the floodwaters from Helene. The Guardian reports on a North Carolina town once considered a “haven” from climate impacts, but now devastated by Helene. The New York Times reports on why Helene was able to cause so much damage inland from the coast. The US National Hurricane Center has warned that a storm over the eastern tropical Atlantic has an 80% chance of becoming a cyclone in the next 45 hours, Reuters reports.

In other US news, the Associated Press reports that the government will award nearly $32m for a large-scale solar project in Arkansas. E&E News notes this is the first loan from president Joe Biden’s “green bank”, launched under the Inflation Reduction Act. The Associated Press also reports that the government gave a “key approval” for a New Jersey offshore windfarm on Tuesday. Bloomberg reports that the US commerce department has set preliminary new duties on solar imports from south-east Asia, “after an initial finding the equipment is benefiting from illegal government aid”. The Hill reports on the vice presidential debate between Trump’s running mate JD Vance and Kamala Harris’s pick Tim Walz, in which Vance “expressed scepticism about the scientific consensus behind climate change”. According to the Hill, Vance said: “One of the things that I’ve noticed some of our Democratic friends talking a lot about is a concern about carbon emissions. This idea that carbon emissions drive all the climate change. Let’s just say that’s true, just for the sake of argument, so we’re not arguing about weird science. Let’s just say that’s true.” The Hill adds: “When asked by a moderator, Vance also did not say whether he agrees with former president Trump’s infamous false assertion that climate change is a ‘hoax’.” The Associated Press reports that California school children are “sweltering” without air conditioning in rising temperatures. And the Guardian reports on how roofers in Florida are struggling to work amid extreme heat.

Jay Shambaugh, the US Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, has said the “continued dialogue” between China and the US has helped “avoid Chinese retaliation” against tariff hikes from the US, Reuters reports. Shambaugh told the Marketplace public radio yesterday that the Chinese officials now have a “‘more nuanced understanding’ of the Biden administration’s [tariff] decision” after meetings with their US counterparts, added the newswire. Chinese state news agency Xinhua reports that the two countries’ commerce ministries will have “an in-depth exchange of views” in affairs including electric vehicles (EVs) on phone soon. 

Meanwhile, Reuters says that the European Commission has told EU countries that “it will continue negotiations with China even after they vote on its proposal to impose final import tariffs” on China-made EVs. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) calls the voting day 4 October the “D-Day” for Chinese exporters. Bloomberg reports that Joerg Kukies, German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s chief economic adviser, says that “Germany hasn’t decided how it will vote on introducing tariffs as high as 45%” ahead of the vote. At the same time, US lawmakers yesterday urged Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum to address “national security concerns posed by internet-connected vehicles produced by Chinese automakers in Mexico”, Reuters reports. Another Reuters report says that Turkey is “in the final stages of talks on a possible investment” by Chinese auto manufacturer Chery. Another Chinese EV giant BYD has “set a new record for monthly deliveries, selling more than 400,000 vehicles in September for the first time”, another Bloomberg report says.

Elsewhere, Xinhua says that China’s installed capacity for new energy generation reached 1,270 gigawatts at the end of August, accounting for almost 41% of the country’s total installed power generation capacity, according to data from the China Electricity Council. A new report by Australia-based thinktank Climate Energy Finance says that China’s “clean energy companies”, including solar farms, battery factories and transmission lines, have “announced plans for an estimated $100bn in clean technology spending overseas in the past two years”, Bloomberg reports.

Finally, Financial Times investment columnist Nathalie Thomas publishes an opinion under the title: “Like it or not, miners are still a China proxy.” And an “explainer” by the SCMP quotes Georgi Engelbrecht, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, saying that China’s actions in the South China Sea have made it “more difficult” for “new hydrocarbon exploitation”.

Data from the UK Met Office shows that 10 counties in England saw their rainiest September on record, the Press Association reports. For Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire, it was the wettest month since records began, the newswire adds, and a total seven counties recorded three times their average rainfall for September. While England faced a rainy month, Scotland and Northern Ireland faced drier conditions, resulting in the UK as a whole experiencing only 25% higher rainfall in September than the long term average, with 114.1mm of rain (4.5 inches), it adds. 

In other UK news, BBC News reports that four Just Stop Oil protesters have been convicted over a protest where they obstructed a main road in London. The Press Association reports on research finding painting London’s roofs white could save lives during extreme heat in the summer. Reuters reports that the closure of the UK’s last coal mine at Ratcliffe-on-Soar has been described as a “major milestone” towards the country’s climate goals by the CEO of Uniper, the firm that owns the plant. The head of the energy company Ovo Energy has urged the government to set up a “social tariff” to help poorer households cope with rising energy bills, the Press Association reports. The Daily Telegraph reports that “giant flywheels are to be installed around the UK to minimise the risk of blackouts as the power system goes carbon-free”. And the Daily Telegraph also has a story on an English village where a renewable energy substation is planned to be built, with the breathless headline: “The Suffolk village bearing the brunt of Starmer’s clean energy crusade.”

The Guardian reports on an analysis by several NGOs finding that “private equity firms are using US public sector workers’ retirement savings to fund fossil fuel projects pumping more than a billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere every year”. The Guardian continues: “They have ploughed more than $1tn (£750bn) into the energy sector since 2010, often buying into old and new fossil fuel projects and, thanks to exemptions from many financial disclosures, operating them outside the public eye, the researchers say. In many cases they are mortgaging workers’ futures by taking the money they have put away for old age and investing it in assets that risk serious damage to the climate, the report claims.”

Hilda Flavia Nakabuye, a climate and environmental rights activist and founder of Fridays for Future Uganda, writes that the ultra-wealthy and fossil fuel companies must pay for damages caused by climate change. She says: “I am from Uganda, a country that contributes less than 0.02% of global CO2 emissions and ranks as the 36th most vulnerable country to the impacts of climate change. I grew up on a farm, and I saw firsthand how changing weather patterns, flooded roads and mudslides, kept me from attending school.

What was once a reliable planting season turned into a guessing game of whether the rains would come at all or whether they’d wash away everything in their path. Our plantation didn’t survive. Neither did many others in my region. And in the end, it wasn’t just our farm that was lost. It was our livelihood, our food security, and for me, an entire year of education. What frustrates me most is that Africa, a continent rich in resources and biodiversity, continues to bear the brunt of a crisis we did not create. Our people are paying with their lives and futures for the emissions and actions of the world’s wealthiest.”

Elsewhere, All Africa interviews chief executive officer of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, Elnur Soltanov, about how discussions about climate finance and adaptation at the conference can ensure inclusion for African nations. In the Africa Report, Prof David Luke, strategic director at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa and extraordinary professor at North-West University in South Africa, says “carbon markets and equitable transitions must define Africa’s Green Deal at COP29”. And, in the Conversation, scientists Gracsious Maviza and Siyaxola Gadu speak about how growing climate impacts in southern Africa could “pose risks to stability and peace in the region”.

An editorial in the Daily Telegraph warns of rising gas and electricity prices in the UK, which it attempts to tie to the “rush to net-zero”. Ironically, it warns that if the UK continues prioritising policies to boost renewables over new fossil fuels, the country “risk[s] being left in the past”. The Daily Telegraph also carries a piece by climate-sceptic columnist Allison Pearson imagining how bad it would be if a solar power plant exploded and caught in fire in the UK, a column by Robert Taylor claiming “Ed Miliband’s energy madness makes blackouts a terrifying possibility” and a podcast with former Conservative minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, who says “we aren’t talking enough about net-zero”. The Daily Express has a column by contributor Tim Newark saying the UK should follow Norway in exploiting all of its oil instead of pursuing “green fantasticism”.

Elsewhere, the Nottingham Post carries a comment piece by Ed Miliband, where he pledges to ensure new jobs in clean energy follow the closure of the Nottinghamshire-based Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal power station. And the Guardian interviews Fintan Slye, head of the National Energy System Operator (Neso), a new “publicly owned company with a mandate to deliver the government’s green energy agenda”.

Compound hot-dry (CHD) and compound hot-wet (CHW) extremes have “surged” globally over recent decades, a new study says. Using observational data and climate model simulations, the researchers find a notable increase in CHD and CHW occurrences, with “CHW experiencing a higher increasing rate”. The study “further reveals that anthropogenic climate change predominantly drives the increase in both types of compound extremes, especially for CHW”. The findings “highlight that while CHD has rightfully received considerable attention due to recent destructive CHD-related disasters, it is crucial not to underestimate the looming threat of CHW”, the authors say, especially in North America, Europe and Asia.

Holding global warming below 2C would keep average Canadian wildfires at the end of the 21st century near modern levels, a new study suggests. In contrast, the average annual burned area from fires under very high warming levels would be “approaching the [record-breaking] 2023 fire season total”. The research uses a new “process-based wildfire module” that explicitly represents fire weather, fuel type and availability, ignition sources, fire suppression and vegetation’s climate response.