One year on from US president Joe Biden signing the landmark climate legislation known as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law, various articles reflect on its significance and impacts. Wisconsin Public Radio reports that Biden travelled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to tour a company directly impacted by the measures – a clean energy manufacturing company that produces wind turbine generators. He told those assembled that “instead of exporting American jobs, we’re creating American jobs, and we’re exporting American products…They’re being built right here in Wisconsin and places where factories have been shut down”. Over the past year, the Financial Times has identified more than 110 large-scale manufacturing announcements – including in semiconductors, electric vehicles, batteries and solar and wind parts – which have been “spurred” by the landmark legislation, which included extensive subsidies. In total, it says “at least $224bn in clean tech and semiconductor manufacturing projects have been announced” since the act. Another Financial Times piece notes that European clean technology start-ups have attracted less than half as much investment as US counterparts since the IRA’s $390bn package of climate subsidies and tax credits was launched. Bloomberg reports the Biden administration is leading a “blitz” to celebrate the anniversary of the IRA, which will see senior politicians visit 10 states. Associated Press says Republicans are focusing on the president’s economic leadership amid high inflation, noting that despite the IRA being a major piece of economic legislation, “polls show that most people know little about it or what it does”.

Meanwhile, the Guardian reports on comments by Shawn Fain, the head of the US’s leading autoworkers union, the United Auto Workers (UAW), who says the act has been “disappointing” and failed to deliver protections to car industry workers confronted by the transition to electric vehicles. The article notes that UAW has “pointedly withheld” its endorsement of the president for next year’s election. It says the IRA is “loaded with tax breaks and loans to bolster electric vehicle manufacturing in the US”. However, the article notes the UAW is concerned that the industry will require fewer workers than traditional car manufacturers, and that public money “has been handed out without accompanying agreements over worker conditions”. Finally, a Financial Times article looks at how the shortage of electric-vehicle chargers in the US could slow down their mainstream adoption.

The expansion of the UK’s low-carbon power generating capacity is “set to fall behind all the other big global economies for the rest of the decade”, according to a new study covered by the Financial Times. The research by consultancy Oxford Economics was commissioned by trade group Energy UK to coincide with the first anniversary of US president Joe Biden signing the Inflation Reduction Act into law, which included large subsidies for low-carbon technologies, the newspaper notes. The analysis concludes that UK electricity output from renewables and nuclear power is on track to grow by an average of 2.9% per year between 2023 and 2030 – compared to 5.8% in Germany, 6.4% in the US, 7.2% in China and 10.6% in India. The UK government has signalled recently “that it was prepared to water down its green commitments” and Energy UK warns that findings “underline” why the renewables sector needs more support, the article states.

Meanwhile, BusinessGreen covers a separate report by the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), which concludes that there is a “looming private investment gap” across the nation as the US and EU push ahead with programmes that give investors greater confidence. It says UKERC warns that the UK is “not on track to deliver its energy and climate objectives at the pace required due to the lack of a consistent government strategy, which risks undermining private investor confidence in the country’s clean energy transition”. BusinessGreen also has a comment piece from trade body TechUK’s associate director for climate, environment and sustainability Craig Melson stating that the government should not slow down on net-zero. The Financial Times covers comments from Nicolai Tangen, chief executive of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund – which is based on oil wealth – who warns against the “backlash” to climate policies currently taking place in the UK. 

Amid all this, the pushback against climate policies continues among sections of the UK’s right-leaning media. The Daily Telegraph reports that Conservative backbench MPs in traditional Labour areas in the north of England – known as “the red wall” – have “urged” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to put the government’s 2050 net-zero target to a referendum. (The article cites two red wall Conservative MPs and two from “traditional heartlands” in the south, including chair of the climate-sceptic Net-Zero Scrutiny Group Craig Mackinlay.) The Sun reports on polling that finds “just a quarter of Brits say they would take the financial hit to accelerate the [net-zero target] before 2050”. (The polling concerns a hypothetical situation in which the net-zero target is brought forward to an earlier date – something no major party is planning to do.) The Daily Telegraph has an article headlined “old people could freeze if oil boiler ban starts in winter”, following on from a series of articles last week pushing back against the government’s plan to phase out oil boilers. The text of the article quotes the charity Age UK, which says it is “crucial” that any deadline is enacted in the spring or summer, to avoid initial “installation issues” arising in the colder months. It also says the ban should be “well advertised” both on and offline, with “sufficient notice” given. Finally, the Sun has published its latest article drawing links between the Labour party and what it calls “eco zealots”. It says meetings between the party and youth group Green New Deal Rising, which interrupted a recent speech by Labour leader Keir Starmer, were “laid bare”. In fact, the group’s co-founder, Fatima Ibrahim, told Times Radio about the meeting.

Finally, BBC News reports that the UK’s biggest open cast coal mine, Ffos-y-Fran in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, will close on 30 November this year, according to its operator.

One week after flames began sweeping across the Hawaiian island, the death toll of the Maui wildfires has risen to 106, according to county officials quoted by CNN. Hawaii governor Josh Green tells CNN that with the majority of the affected area still to cover, this number could still rise significantly. The Guardian says that the fire-struck region of Lahaina is “a place of incalculable importance” for native Hawaiian culture, noting that the cost of rebuilding is expected to exceed $5.5bn. It notes that “experts say [the fires] were fuelled by dry vegetation, low humidity and hot, strong winds from Hurricane Dora”. US president Joe Biden said he and first lady Jill Biden are working on travelling to Hawaii “as soon as we can” to assess the damage, according to CBS News. Yet the Washington Post reports that Biden’s perceived silence “about the devastation in Hawaii while he was on vacation at his Delaware beach home over the weekend” has attracted criticism from Republicans. The Hill reports that former president Donald Trump has taken aim at Biden and also governor Green, who he says has done “nothing but blame it on global warming, and other things that just happen to pop into his head”. It adds that “experts have said climate change has played a role in wildfires, including the latest in Maui”. Moody’s Investors’ Service has announced that the estimated insured losses from the Hawaiian wildfires will be at least $1bn, after more than 2,000 structures were damaged or destroyed, Reuters reports. MSNBC interviews a Lahaina local who reports that real estate developers have been trying to buy up land from fire victims. 

Meanwhile, Reuters covers more fires in Canada’s north-west territories, where the regional government has declared a state of emergency after the blaze “largely destroyed” one remote community and now pose a risk to Yellowknife, the territorial capital. 

Another fire, this time in the south of France, has burned through 500 hectares of land and destroyed a campsite, leading to 2,000 people being evacuated, according to the Guardian. A related story in Deutsche Welle reports on how climate change is affecting tourism in southern Europe.

A report from China Electric Power Construction Association finds that investment in solar power generation in China in 2023 reached “287bn yuan ($39bn), a year-on-year increase of 233%”, says China Energy News. Separately, the outlet also reports that China has established the world’s “largest charging infrastructure system”, which ensures the charging needs of over 16mn new energy vehicles (NEV). Reuters reports that, according to data from National Energy Administration (NEA), the country’s top energy regulator, electricity consumption in China in July increased by 12.8% compared to the previous year, bringing total power use over the first seven months up by 15.6%. The newswire adds that this growth was driven by “robust industrial activity” and strong household demand, “amid extreme hot weather”.

Meanwhile, citing a report by state broadcaster CCTV, the Communist Party-backed newspaper People’s Daily writes that China declared it has made “significant achievements” in the ecology development on the country’s first national “Ecology Day”, 15 August. It adds that the achievements include increasing forest cover from 21.6% to 24.0% and reducing the number of “heavily polluted days” by 92%. The state-run industry newspaper China Energy News reports that Chinese president Xi addressed the “Ecology Day” and said China should, guided by the “dual-carbon” targets, promote a gradual shift from “dual energy consumption control” to “dual carbon emission control”. The state news agency Xinhua, citing a report by the Economic Information Daily, writes that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) also announced on the day that it aims to build “1000 nationally recognised green factories and 50 green industrial parks” in the “next stage”. 

In other China news, the Shanghai Securities News, a Chinese securities newspaper, reports on figures from the National Bureau of Statistics showing the production of “major energy products in large-scale industries” in July “maintained a year-on-year growth”. It adds that, compared to June, the production of raw coal and crude oil “slowed down, while the production of natural gas and electricity accelerated”. The state-run newspaper China Daily carries a video of an interview with Erik Solheim, former chief of the UN Environment Programme, under the headline “Decoupling is ‘disastrous’ for global fight against climate change”.

Finally, the New York Times “This Morning” newsletter says that China’s investment on climate indicates that “it is enthusiastic about clean energy, but it needs to power homes and factories at levels that clean energy sources alone can’t handle yet”. The article adds that “as clean energy becomes cheaper and more competitive”, China could substitute fossil fuels and over time reduce its pollution. And Reuters reports that, according to a study by thinktank IW, Chinese manufacturers are “progressively posing stronger competition to their German counterparts within the European Union market, particularly in advanced industrial goods”.

US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen writes a piece in the Wall Street Journal about the success of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), one year on. She describes it as the “boldest climate action in the nation’s history”, noting that it will “drive down the cost of clean energy technologies, which will boost their adoption and reduce emissions globally”, Yellen emphasises the economic advantages of the act, which she says is spreading opportunities across the nation – for example creating a “battery belt” of electric-vehicle battery factories in the midwest and the south. “Expanding economic opportunity isn’t only morally right – it’s also good economics. Research has shown that investments in underserved communities can deliver a bigger bang for the buck. That means that taxpayer resources are spent more productively and the benefits to the overall economy are magnified,” she says. Yellen writes that the IRA is making the US more resilient to price shocks from fossil fuels and also “reducing the risks of overconcentration in our critical clean-energy supply chains, which create potential choke points and heighten the likelihood of disruption”.

Former Pakistan climate minister Sherry Rehman, who also led the G77 and China coalition of developing countries at COP27 last year, has a piece in Time in which she emphasises the high costs of adapting to climate change in a nation like hers. “For countries drowning in extreme weather, exogenous shocks, and high public debt, where will this money come from?” she asks. Rehman cites a World Bank Country Climate and Development Report that concluded the nation would need a “staggering” $348bn by 2030 to cope with climate risks. “This is just the number to stay resilient – to keep our heads above water and build sustainability into a climate-adaptive future. All this while a summer of fresh flooding and melting glaciers redefines our lives, our social and economic experiences, into a lifelong struggle to rebuild with resilience while we fight the climate devastations wreaking havoc again,” she says. Rehman points to the need for developed countries to provide more climate finance and reform the Bretton Woods system, which is the monetary management structure that governs those nations. “Critical assistance for the most climate vulnerable countries must not further burden the poor. Actions will be as important as pledges and plans at this point,” she concludes, pointing to a forthcoming Sustainable Development Goal Summit in September and COP28 in December as inflection points.

New research examines where in the world people have already lived through an emergence of human-caused warming in their local area. Younger people have “typically experienced less clear emergence of a climate change signal over their lifetimes to date”, the study finds. Over a given time period, tropical, lower-income areas have typically seen a clearer signal of climate warming over natural variability (the “signal-to-noise ratio”) than extratropical and higher-income areas. However, the researchers note, “this is counterbalanced by the younger populations of these areas such that the median experienced signal-to-noise ratio is similar between the wealthiest and poorest parts of the world”. They conclude: “Given projected ageing of low-income regions, it is imperative that substantial climate action is taken to avoid local climates becoming unrecognisable within human lifetimes.”