Many UK news outlets report on a speech by prime minister Keir Starmer in which he outlined a handful of key policies from his party’s manifesto in more detail. BusinessGreen says Starmer’s “plan for change” includes a series of new measurable “milestones” for the parliament, including the mission to “make Britain a clean energy superpower”. The prime minister said these would put the country on track to deliver “at least 95% clean power” by 2030. BusinessGreen notes that this “was characterised by some media reports as a U-turn”, after Labour’s manifesto promised “clean power by 2030”. However, Starmer rejected this notion, telling journalists in a press conference: “The clean energy pledge is exactly what it was in the election.” Among those framing Starmer’s announcement as a U-turn was the Financial Times, in a frontpage story which leads on the prime minister “water[ing] down” his clean power target. It says the government backtracked on a pre-election pledge that the UK would “run on 100% clean and cheap power”. In another frontpage story, the Daily Telegraph also says Labour’s pledge was “watered down” and cites shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho who says the government’s plans “will come with a monumental price tag”. The Daily Mail says energy secretary Ed Miliband “was humiliated yesterday as Keir Starmer watered down his pledge on clean power”.

Miliband explained the government’s position to reporters, stating that 95% clean power is consistent with the goal as the country would need a “strategic gas reserve” to keep the lights on, the Times reports. The energy secretary added that government advisors the Climate Change Committee (CCC) and the National Energy System Operator had both outlined their definitions of a “clean power system” and both included 95% low-carbon electricity, according to the newspaper. “That’s the definition we’re using,” Miliband said. LabourList includes comments from Chris Stark, head of the government’s mission for clean power and former chief executive of the CCC, who “took to social media to stress there was no watering down of Labour’s clean energy commitments”. Politico says that “for any suspecting a cabinet split” over the issue, Miliband stated that “absolutely [95% is] the right number”.

Meanwhile, in a frontpage story the Times reports that Starmer has also pledged to stop housebuilding and infrastructure projects being “held to ransom” by nimbys and environmentalists. It points to an op-ed written by the prime minister for the newspaper (see below), in which he says his government will streamline complex environmental rules and “allow developers to offset potential environmental damage of projects by paying for environmental improvements elsewhere”. According to reNEWS, Starmer mentioned an upcoming “clean power 2030 action plan”, which will set out further steps including “reforming the planning system and building the grid”. Edie also notes a pledge to “fast-tracking planning on at least 150 major infrastructure projects”.

Separately, the Times reports on comments by Miliband in a speech to the Nuclear Industry Association, in which said that new nuclear power stations will be “essential” to decarbonising Britain’s power and that investing public money could deliver “big returns”. This “come ahead of a decision by Miliband on whether to give the green light to the multibillion-pound development of Sizewell C [nuclear plant]”, the newspaper notes. Five investors are involved in the bidding for stakes in the Sizewell C plant, which is being built by the UK government and France’s EDF, according to Reuters. According to the Press Association, Miliband also praised small modular reactors (SMRs), telling the audience: “We should be open to the potential of SMRs to power the fourth industrial revolution, just as coal powered the first.”

China will “set another record” for solar capacity growth this year, with new installations expected to reach 230-260 gigawatts (GW), Bloomberg reports, an “increase from the group’s February forecast of 190-220GW”. The article quotes Wang Bohua, China Photovoltaic Industry Association chairman, attributing the rise to “rapid development” of large-scale power bases, distributed solar and accelerated grid construction. Business news outlet Jiemian says China’s newly-installed solar capacity from January to October increased 27% year-on-year to 181GW, according to Wang. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) quotes a senior executive of Aiko Solar calling for “stricter policies” in the solar industry, as seen in the steel and cement industries, to regulate overcapacity. Bloomberg says that “the embattled [solar] sector” should emulate the US shale drillers, which, after “years of bankruptcies, mergers and acquisitions…[were] winnowed to a handful of champions”.

China released its greenhouse gas bulletin 2023, which shows that, according to measurements from an atmospheric background station in western China, average CO2 concentrations last year were slightly higher than 2022, but the increase was lower than the average increase for the past 10 years, the Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily says. The China Clean Air Policy Partnership (CCAPP), an initiative run by top universities, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) and Energy Foundation China, launched a report on carbon emissions and clean air, which found that “while the civil sector has achieved significant synergistic emission reductions of carbon dioxide and air pollutants”, the power and heating sectors are seeing “dual-growth” of carbon emissions and air pollution, and the emissions reductions of industry and transport “need to be further unleashed”, according to the Economic Daily. 

China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) unveiled guiding opinions on supporting the innovative development of new entities in the power sector, which, according to an NEA official, would “facilitate” connecting new players to the grid and “better regulate” capacity, industry news outlet International Energy Net reports. Business news outlet Yicai reports China’s battery output “could reach 8.6 terawatt-hours” by 2028. An offshore wind project in eastern Shandong province has been registered as the first new China Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) project, reports energy media outlet BJX News.

Finally, Chinese automakers are “ramping up exports of hybrid vehicles to Europe” to counter battery electric vehicle tariffs, reports Reuters. And Bloomberg says the Middle East’s trade with China is likely to exceed its trade with western countries, in part due to “a push by Gulf countries to develop renewable industries”.

Shell and Equinor are to combine their UK offshore oil and gas assets in a joint venture, the Financial Times reports. It explains that this comes as oil-and-gas companies gradually wind down their business in the North Sea “as reservoirs in the once-important area have become less productive and the effort required to eke out the remaining reserves has increased”. Among the assets included is the large Rosebank field west of Shetland, and both companies are awaiting the outcome of a climate-related court case that will decide whether development should be stopped at Rosebank and Shell’s Jackdaw field, the article notes. “Analysts said the deal would help the companies to improve the tax efficiency of their operations and pool their costs,” the newspaper adds. The Times points to the “energy profits levy”, which has raised taxes on North Sea oil and gas profits and has been extended by the government to 2030. The Daily Telegraph says the move by the oil majors “comes after repeated tax raids on the sector by successive governments as well as the natural decline in oil and gas output from UK waters and pressure by climate campaigners”.

Meanwhile, oil prices have risen by 0.5% after the Opec+ group of oil-producing nations significantly scaled back plans for production in 2025, the Times reports. The Financial Times says the group, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, said it would push back a plan to start gradually reintroducing 2.2m barrels a day of oil until next April, as well as extending to 18 months the period over which the increase would take place.

Finally, Brazilian state-run oil company Petrobras, alongside Colombian company Ecopetrol, has confirmed the “largest gas discovery in Colombia’s history” with the drilling of the Sirius-2 well, reports Reuters. According to Oilprice, the discovery could help fill the expected “supply and demand disconnect” for Colombia’s natural gas needs, but adds that the nation’s energy sector “is grappling with policy changes under president Gustavo Petro, who has been supportive of the transition away from fossil fuels”. [Colombia’s left-wing government announced last year that it would not approve any new oil-and-gas drilling projects.]

In 2024, Germany imported 16.5bn kilowatt hours (kWh) of nuclear power – roughly half the nuclear power it generated domestically in 2022 before shutting down its last three nuclear power plants, according to German tabloid Bild. The story notes that Germany’s nuclear power plants produced approximately 32bn kWh in 2022. However, Germany’s electricity imports have nearly tripled this year compared to 2023, with about half coming from nuclear-powered France, Switzerland and Belgium. Jens Spahn, deputy leader of the German CDU/CSU parliamentary group, criticised this reliance on foreign nuclear energy amid an energy crisis, calling it a “policy of double standards”, the outlet reports.

Meanwhile, Süddeutsche Zeitung highlights opposition to “natural” gas extraction near the German island of Borkum. A joint statement by the German Green party and the Dutch GroenLinks-PvdA faction condemned the proposed drilling near the Wadden Islands, citing environmental risks to the UNESCO-listed Wadden Sea. They argued the project contradicts the climate goals of the European Union, Germany and the Netherlands, notes the newspaper. Stern adds that the project involves drilling at depths of 1.5 to 3.5km, extending diagonally into German territory. 

Finally, Tagesspiegel reports that Germany will need to make “massive investments” in its power grid in the coming years to meet its climate goals, according to research published on Thursday by the Hans Böckler Foundation in Düsseldorf. It estimates that total costs for the transmission and distribution networks could amount to €651bn by 2045. 

A lower number of low-altitude clouds was “behind unexplained warming that contributed to the world’s hottest year on record” in 2023, according to ABC News. Record-breaking temperatures last year “took many climate scientists by surprise”, exceeding their closest predictions by around 0.2C, the news outlet says. A new paper in the journal Science suggests that the missing warming mechanism from the prediction models was a drop in “planetary albedo”, meaning the amount of solar radiation that is reflected into space. New Scientist says the researchers attributed this to a “sharp fall” in the number of low-lying clouds in 2023, a change that was “particularly pronounced” in the Atlantic Ocean, which saw particularly high temperatures. The article says there are a handful of possible reasons for the disappearance of clouds, one of which is global warming changing how clouds behave. In its coverage, the Times notes that “if the scarcity of clouds was not a one-off, it could mean the planet is likely to heat up more than previously thought, making climate change even harder to tackle”.

UK prime minister Keir Starmer has an article in the Times about his government’s plans to boost the construction of housing and infrastructure, including energy-related projects. “Every road, pylon and mast – which connect people with opportunity – must jump through endless hoops, only to be opposed, dragged out, before eventually, if lucky, approved,” he writes. Starmer vows to take on the “blockers putting the brakes on” projects, and commits to “fast-tracking 150 planning decisions on major infrastructure by the end of parliament”. He also mentions other key priorities for the government, including the pledge to “secure home-grown energy, keeping bills down, improving energy independence and creating good jobs, with at least 95% of low-carbon generation by 2030”.

Several editorials, including one in the Times itself, focus on Starmer in light of a speech in which he outlined his government’s key priorities and how he intended to achieve them. The Times says Starmer “sought to move on from the turbulent start to his premiership”, but instead offered “more of the same”. It says the prime minister has “imbibed a welcome dose of realism” by, as the newspaper frames it, downgrading the government’s target of 100% clean power by 2030 to just 95%. [This interpretation is challenged by the government, which says its plan was always to achieve 95% clean power, with a small amount of gas power retained as backup. See the news above for more details.] “Even this reduced target will be hard to hit given the huge numbers of onshore pylons and offshore wind turbines that must be built,” the editorial adds. A Daily Telegraph editorial also reflects on the perceived change in target, stating: “While this step towards sanity should be welcomed, it also highlights the extent to which Labour’s plans seem to have been constructed without regard to practicality.” A Sun editorial tells readers to “expect that [target] to fall further as voters rebel against the hardship inherent in [energy secretary] Ed Miliband’s net-zero delusions”. The Daily Mail calls the move a “humiliating concession to reality” and says Starmer “li[ed]” when he said there had been “no change” in the government’s clean power target.

In a column for the Daily Mail, climate-sceptic columnist Andrew Neil writes: “Whether it’s 100% or 95% or even 90%, the target will be missed. It requires a massive expansion of renewable energy, for which Britain has neither the supply chains nor the skills; huge investment in carbon capture and storage, a nascent technology that remains untried at scale; and a multi-billion pound upgrade to the National Grid to cope with intermittent supplies from renewables in remote places, which simply can’t be completed by 2030.” Elsewhere, former army officer Hamish de Bretton-Gordon writes in the Daily Telegraph that “defence is more important than net-zero”. He says that the government “stubbornly refuses to spend on defence” and refers to the UK’s “ridiculous drive for net-zero by 2030”. [This is incorrect, as the government is only planning “clean power by 2030” and its economy-wide net-zero target is still set for 2050.]

A new study finds “no universal relationship” between a climate model’s effective climate sensitivity – the amount of warming projected for a given increase in atmospheric CO2 – and extreme weather events such as drought or fire weather. Researchers analyse 18 different Earth system models to assess changes in monsoon, drought and fire impacts. They find “little or no significant correlation” between the climate sensitivity of a given model and the future changes that it projects for each of the three climatic drivers. They write: “Model selection based solely on [effective climate sensitivity] appears to be unjustified and may neglect realistic impacts, leading to an underestimation of climate risks.”

A “record-low” albedo, or reflectiveness, of the Earth could explain the gap between the record global temperatures experienced in 2023 and the known drivers of temperature rise, according to new research. Using satellite and meteorological data, researchers identify the low albedo “as the primary factor” explaining the 0.2C gap between the expected temperature and the experienced one. They attribute the changes in albedo to reduced cloud cover in much of the northern hemisphere, and conclude that further exploring the cloud trends “will be crucial for assessing the current and expected future warming”.