Daily Briefing |
TODAY'S CLIMATE AND ENERGY HEADLINES
Expert analysis direct to your inbox.
Every weekday morning, in time for your morning coffee, Carbon Brief sends out a free email known as the “Daily Briefing” to thousands of subscribers around the world. The email is a digest of the past 24 hours of media coverage related to climate change and energy, as well as our pick of the key studies published in peer-reviewed journals.
Sign up here.
Today's climate and energy headlines:
- South Africa leader urges G20 unity to tackle global challenges
- US: RFK Jr, onetime environmentalist, kills NIH climate change programmes
- Regulation risks stifling UK push for clean energy, warns infrastructure adviser
- Energy crisis: UK has spent £140bn on fossil gas since 2021
- China: The Ministry of Finance will issue green sovereign bonds overseas
- Germany: More coal power to counter dunkelflaute?
- US: Doug Burgum should stand up for wind energy
- Individual plasticity in response to rising sea temperatures contributes to an advancement in green turtle nesting phenology
- Increasing trends of land and coastal heatwaves under global warming
Climate and energy news.
South African president Cyril Ramaphosa urged the Group of 20 (G20) nations to set aside their differences and focus on tackling global challenges, including climate change and energy insecurity, Bloomberg reports. The remarks came in his opening address at a meeting of G20 foreign ministers in Johannesburg, as South Africa becomes the first African nation to take on the group’s rotating presidency, the article explains. The newswire quotes Ramaphosa saying the G20 should secure “agreement on increasing the quality and quantity of climate-finance flows to developing-economy countries”, and stressing the “catastrophic reality” of climate change. Ramaphosa also emphasised the importance of multilateralism and international law for solving global crises, according to BBC News. This comes after US secretary of state Marco Rubio “boycott[ed]” the meeting, according to the news outlet, as part of the Trump administration’s “America First” policy. According to BBC News, Rubio said South Africa was “doing very bad things”, by using the G20 “to promote ‘solidarity, equality and sustainability.’ In other words: DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] and climate change”. The New York Times says Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, told the newspaper that South Africa’s theme was agreed upon by the entire group, stating that it was “particularly important to respond to the needs of developing countries”. South Africa’s Daily Maverick says Ramaphosa told journalists he would still like to find ways to work with the Trump administration. The newspaper also lists the “four-point agenda” for two days of talks this week, which includes climate finance quantity and quality, mobilising investment for just energy transitions, debt sustainability for low-income countries and improving disaster resilience – with critical minerals mentioned as another important topic.
Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that Simon McDonald, the former lead civil servant at the UK Foreign Office, has warned chancellor Rachel Reeves “not to cut Britain’s international aid spending, amid signs the chancellor is willing to raid the development budget to help pay for higher defence spending”. The warning comes after US president Donald Trump froze his nation’s aid spending, with devastating consequences around the world, the article explains.
Bloomberg reports that Brazil, former holder of the G20 presidency and current holder of the COP30 presidency, will need to invest $6tn from now until 2050 “to speed up decarbonisation across its entire economy”. Finally, Reuters reports that an International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission will discuss around $1bn in climate financing for Pakistan next week, according to an adviser to the country’s finance minister.
Former environmental lawyer Robert F Kennedy Jr has ended funding for climate change and health programmes at the US National Institutes of Health provided by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which he now runs as part of the Trump administration, Mother Jones reports. The move “will likely terminate” these programmes, which include $40m a year for the Climate Change and Health Initiative, according to the news outlet. The programmes in question “concentrate on research and training to protect people from the health consequences of extreme weather events”, it adds. Meanwhile, USA Today reports that defence secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Pentagon to cut 8% from next year’s defense budget, amounting to around $50bn, from “low-impact and low-priority” Biden-era programmes. A statement from acting deputy secretary of defense Robert Salesses said the military will assemble a list of programmes to be cut, including “so-called ‘climate change’ and other woke programs, as well as excessive bureaucracy”, the article states. In the New York Times Climate Forward newsletter, there is an explainer about how the Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency is attempting to “claw back” $20bn in federal climate funding “that was legally committed months before the election”. In related news, E&E News has an article titled: “How Trump gutted climate policy in 30 days.”
Meanwhile, a New York Times article says US transport secretary Sean Duffy has taken aim at “mismanagement” in California’s high-speed rail project and announced an investigation into how the state was spending a $3.1bn federal grant on the project. The newspaper says that if the grant was withdrawn, this would “fundamentally threaten a project that is already struggling with inadequate funding”. President Donald Trump already cancelled nearly $1bn in federal funding for the high-speed rail project during his first term, only for this to be restored by Joe Biden during his presidency, according to the Associated Press.
The Associated Press also has a story about how critical minerals, such as lithium and rare earth elements, “could become harder to obtain if the Trump administration goes ahead with tariffs and other protectionist policies aimed at China”. It notes that these materials have various “vital” applications, including in the energy and defence sectors. In related news, White House national security adviser Mike Waltz has said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky needs to return to the negotiating table and strike a deal on US access to Ukraine’s critical minerals, according to BBC News. There is a big feature in the New York Times about Greenland and the “sudden fever for the island’s untapped mineral resources” – including from US investors and “Trump allies”. There is also an article in the New York Times about the threat posed to US manufacturing by the Trump administration as it takes aim at clean energy technologies.
Finally, the Daily Mail reports that Trump is looking at plans to reduce rising fuel prices “by working with Congress to cut taxes on domestic oil producers”.
UK government infrastructure adviser the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) has warned that “Britain’s approach to regulating its electricity networks risks holding back the shift away from fossil fuels by focusing too heavily on short-term costs”, the Financial Times reports. In a new report, the commission also said energy regulator Ofgem should account for a “broader set of long-term objectives” in order to drive the £37-50bn of investment in electricity distribution networks needed by 2050, according to the newspaper. The article explains that Ofgem “determines how much the network companies can spend and charge consumers”, and NIC says that price control must be “rebalance[d]” with long-term objectives. The commission notes that investment costs could be reduced if households became more flexible about when they used electricity, reducing peak demand, according to the newspaper. The Daily Mail says “households will have to pay more to meet the demands of charging electric vehicles and operating heat pumps”. However, it adds that NIC also points out that “bills will still be lower than they are today if ministers support low carbon energy and decarbonising heat”. Bloomberg says expanded grids are “desperately needed” to support the growth of wind and solar power, but notes that such upgrades are costly and often trigger “pushback from communities unwilling to host new infrastructure”. It says that, besides calling for investment in the grid to double, NIC is calling for the government to “relax planning rules”.
Meanwhile, Alistair Phillips-Davies, the chief executive of Scottish energy firm SSE, has written an article for the Daily Telegraph – which is also covered as a news story – in which he criticises the government’s plans for zonal energy pricing. He says this risks creating a “postcode lottery” for energy bills and making clean energy investment a riskier proposition. Reuters reports that Ofgem and its French counterpart, CRE, have agreed to explore further electricity interconnection between the two countries with capacities of around 1 gigawatt (GW). NGO the Green Alliance says the UK government is overlooking proven industrial electrification methods in favour of “risky” carbon capture and storage (CCS), BusinessGreen reports.
Elsewhere, there is continued coverage in the Sun, the Daily Express and the Daily Mail about a new report from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. The newspapers all suggest that the report undermines the claims by energy secretary Ed Miliband that net-zero policies will produce hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs. The Sun has also published an editorial with a similar message. [In fact, the report says at the very beginning that “fully capitalising on the net-zero transition could provide a major boost to UK growth”, with a “best-case scenario” that includes the “green economy” driving employment for 1.2 million people – up from 200,000. It adds that “this upside potential is why green growth must be part of the government’s economic strategy”.]
Finally, Politico has an article titled: “The Tories set the UK net-zero target. Now they are dumping it.” Interim shadow energy secretary Andrew Bowie tells the news outlet that the decision of the previous Conservative government to set the 2019 net-zero target was a “mistake”.
The UK has spent £90-100bn more on wholesale gas over the past four years than it would have prior to the global energy crisis, according to new analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), covered by BusinessGreen. The article notes that this underscores the “huge on-going costs associated with fossil fuel reliance”. Prior to the crisis, the UK spent around £10-15bn a year on gas, but – since 2021 – international gas market prices have soared as “European governments scrambled to reduce their reliance on Russian gas”.
Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph reports on comments by Chris O’Shea, the chief executive of British Gas owner Centrica, who has stated that a failure to expand the nation’s gas storage capacity added £200 to household bills during the energy crisis. O’Shea said his company’s Rough storage site, which is supposed to reduce price swings in the UK gas market by filling up in the summer when gas is cheaper, could have resulted in £5bn of savings if it had more storage capacity. The Financial Times reports that Centrica is in talks with the government to secure financial support to expand and redevelop the gas storage site, which is the country’s largest. Centrica’s profits fell by 44% last year – to more “normal” levels following the price surge during the energy crisis – according to the Times. The Independent reports that O’Shea also said Centrica hopes to invest in the new UK nuclear power plant Sizewell C if it can “give us the returns we need”.
China’s Ministry of Finance has published a document called the “green bond framework” for issuing Chinese green sovereign bonds overseas with a purpose for “achieving the environmental goals of climate mitigation and adaptation…and biodiversity protection”, according to financial newspaper Securities Daily. The newspaper adds that China “has regarded green environmental protection and ecological low-carbon as key areas of fiscal expenditure…In the past five years, the central government has invested approximately 500-650bn yuan ($68-89bn) in ecological protection and green development every year”.
Meanwhile, China’s sale of new energy vehicles (NEVs) increased by 29% year-on-year in January, accounting for 39% of total auto sales, data from the Chinese Association of Automobile Manufacturers showed, reports China City Network, a subsidiary of the Communist Party backed People’s Daily. NEV production also rose 29% in January, while its exports “performed better than conventional fuel cars”, growing by 50%, the news portal adds. Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) cites analysts from Natixis, predicting the share of foreign carmakers in China’s market to “shrink to as low 32% this year from 35% in 2024”, as they face a “brutal price war”. China City Network also notes that China has added 395,000 units of NEV “charging infrastructure” in January, a “year-on-year increase of 49%”. The state-supporting newspaper Global Times says China has delivered the “world’s first offshore production storage and offloading” vessel, equipped with a “carbon capture and storage system”. In a separate report, SCMP says that “overcapacity, a weak domestic economy, slow global demand” and “trade curbs from the US and Europe” will “eat into China’s dominance” in the global clean tech market.
In other news, South Korea will “provisionally impose tariffs of up to 38% on Chinese steel plate imports” following an anti-dumping probe, Reuters reports. In response to Trump’s signalling a “possible trade deal” with China, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said “there are no winners in trade wars and tariff wars”, says Shanghai-based the Paper. Another SCMP analysis notes that Trump’s proposed 25% tariffs on Chinese vehicles will have “minimal impact on China’s auto sector” as it exports “relatively few EVs to the US”.
Elsewhere, record coal production and imports and a “slowing economy” are “creating a glut” and pushing China’s coal prices “to a near four-year low”, reports Bloomberg. Coal traders under pressure “in the short term” from falling coal prices are “waiting on the sidelines… unwilling to stock up”, industry media outlet BJX News says. China has built an “underwater data centre” to improve efficiency in an “otherwise energy intensive sector”, according to SCMP.
In comments, state broadcaster CGTN carries an analysis by Zhao Xingshu, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, arguing that “Trump’s second withdrawal from the Paris Agreement” will have “limited impact”. A Global Times editorial posits that “China and the EU possess significant complementarities in the EV sector”. Ian Williams, a former foreign correspondent in the UK, writes in the Spectator that “there is little evidence” that China cares about the planet, and “the apparently benign face of climate diplomacy” was its “perfect cover for broader influence operations”.
A debate has emerged in Germany over whether reserve power plants, mainly old coal-fired stations, should operate during “dunkelflaute”, periods of low wind and solar power, to stabilise electricity prices, reports Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). The article explains that these plants, totalling 8.6 gigawatts (GW), can only be activated for grid stability. For instance, during the dunkelflaute last December, electricity prices on the exchange briefly exceeded €1,000 per megawatt hour (MWh), yet the reserve plants remained idle. FAZ notes that the CEO of German utility company Steag proposes allowing their use when prices exceed €150/MWh, but German energy company Uniper opposes market intervention. Tagesspiegel carries an article on how to store and balance wind and solar energy to avoid dunkelflaute, emphasising the importance of large-scale battery storage. The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) estimates that Germany will need 180 gigawatt hours (GWh) of storage by 2045, while current capacity is just 17.8GWh.
Meanwhile, Tagesschau reports that the Green party chancellor candidate in the upcoming German election, Robert Habeck, stated on a TV programme that the main cost drivers in the electricity system are fossil fuels, not climate protection. He criticised the opponent party, CDU/CSU (Union), saying that “the Union is essentially quitting all necessary measures to meet Germany’s climate targets without offering an alternative”, notes the outlet. It explains that the CDU/CSU election program indeed calls for ending the “ideology-driven policies of the traffic light coalition”, advocates for maintaining nuclear energy and scrapping the heating law. (See Carbon Brief’s “Germany election 2025: What the manifestos say on energy and climate change”.)
Finally, FAZ highlights a survey by the Allensbach Institute that shows 60% of Germans still support energy transition to renewables, but concern over climate change is declining, with those highly worried dropping from 51% in 2019 – when Fridays for Future protests peaked – to 36% today.
Climate and energy comment.
An editorial in the Washington Post notes that the “knives are out for wind energy in America”, and calls on interior secretary Doug Burgum to support the technology. “Opponents of wind power – many of them tied to the fossil fuel industry…are furiously lobbying the government to block projects already under construction,” on top of president Donald Trump’s executive order blocking any new wind projects on federal land and in US waters, the article says. Yet, it notes that Burgum, the former North Dakota governor, professed support for an “all of the above” energy policy in his confirmation hearing. “Should Trump’s moratorium remain in place, the US, blessed as it is with long coastlines ripe for wind farming, would abandon an abundant source of clean energy, just when it’s needed most,” the editorial says. It explains that Trump’s executive order instructs the interior department to carry out “a comprehensive review of the ecological, economic and environmental necessity of terminating or amending any existing wind energy leases, identifying any legal bases for such removal”. The editorial concludes that Burgum should honour the statement he made during his committee hearing that wind projects would continue if they “make sense and if they’re already in law”.
New climate research.
According to new research, individual sea turtles have been nesting, on average, nearly 6.5 days earlier for each 1C of sea surface warming over the past 31 years. Using data on more than 600 green turtles that nest on Cyprus, researchers model the first nesting date of the year for each turtle as a function of a range of factors, including sea surface temperature. They find that the nesting season has become longer over the study period, with the first nesting date coming earlier by nearly one day per year, but the last nesting date remaining unchanged. By decomposing the trend into a population- and an individual-level component, they find that the changes in sea surface temperature have a strong effect on the nesting date of individual turtles, but a smaller effect at the population level.
A new study finds that heatwaves in coastal regions will grow and intensify more than inland heatwaves under future climate change. From maximum daily temperature data, researchers detect summertime heatwaves between 1959 and 2023, distinguishing between coastal and land-based heatwaves by their evolution over time. They find that globally, summer heatwaves will increase in frequency and area, but slightly decrease in both duration and maximum intensity. However, they note that within these broader patterns are two competing trends: a decreasing maximum intensity of heatwaves with a heat stress index categorised as “safe” and an increasing maximum intensity of heatwaves with higher heat stress.
Other Stories.

