UN secretary-general António Guterres said yesterday that countries must start phasing out coal, oil and gas and called on fossil fuel firms to “cease and desist” activities that “knee-cap” climate progress, Reuters reports. It quotes him saying: “The problem is not simply fossil fuel emissions. It’s fossil fuels – period…The solution is clear: the world must phase out fossil fuels in a just and equitable way – moving to leave oil, coal and gas in the ground.” He continues: “Fossil fuel companies must also cease and desist influence peddling and legal threats designed to knee-cap progress. I am thinking particularly of recent attempts to subvert net-zero alliances, invoking anti-trust legislation.” Agence-France Presse reports under the headline: “UN chief slams ‘pitiful’ world response to climate change.” It quotes Guterres saying current policies put the world on track for 2.8C of warming: “That spells catastrophe. Yet the collective response remains pitiful.” Climate Home News reports: “The UN chief has said fossil fuels, not just their emissions, are the problem in the climate crisis, in an apparent rebuke to the United Arab Emirates COP28 presidency.” It continues: “In response to Guterres’ statement, a COP28 spokesperson told Climate Home News the presidency ‘has been explicit about the need for a rapid, well managed and just energy transition’. They added that ‘we need to find a way to hold back emissions, not progress’ and that the world cannot be unplugged from the energy system of today overnight.” Voice of America also has the story.

There was disappointment at the end of the two-week UN climate talks in Bonn, Bloomberg reports, following what it calls “inter-country bickering and what some said was a lack of ambition from the United Arab Emirates, this year’s host nation”. The outlet continues: “Negotiators from Europe and climate-vulnerable nations were looking for two things [in Bonn]: a spot on the agenda to discuss accelerating emissions cuts and a clear message from the UAE on how it would go beyond promises made at past COP gatherings. The outcome of the talks, which ended on Thursday, raised concerns that efforts to slash carbon emissions and boost financing for developing nations will fail to progress this year, according to interviews with more than a dozen delegates.” Deutsche Welle reports: “Climate negotiators have wrapped up 10 days of talks in Bonn, Germany, with finance for mitigation and adaptation efforts proving a stubborn stumbling block.” Politico reports under the headline: “Divisions deepen at Bonn climate talks amid UAE leadership vacuum.” It adds: “The 10-day Bonn talks were consumed by a power struggle over the conference agenda, which remained unadopted until Wednesday night. The EU — backed by other Western countries as well as several Latin American nations and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) — added an agenda item on the ‘mitigation work program”, aimed at scaling up emissions cuts worldwide.  That prompted the group of Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs) — dominated by emerging economy emitters like China, India and Saudi Arabia — to block the agenda unless rich countries also accepted a new agenda item about climate finance.” Climate Home News reports: “Small islands ‘disappointed’ as talking about emissions cuts proves too controversial for climate negotiators.”

Meanwhile, Politico reports: “Geopolitical tensions have cast doubt on whether Eastern Europe can host next year’s global climate conference…The EU has supported Bulgaria’s candidacy, but amid the war in Ukraine, Moscow has vowed to block any EU country from hosting. The regional group has to decide by consensus. On Wednesday night, a last round of talks to break the impasse at preparatory climate talks held in Bonn ended without agreement, according to three people close to the negotiations who were granted anonymity as they’re not cleared to discuss the negotiations publicly. That means the question of where next year’s COP takes place has to be resolved at this year’s climate summit in Dubai, giving the next host less time to prepare.” Separately, the Guardian reports: “Fossil fuel lobbyists will have to identify themselves as such in registering for the UN COP28 climate summit, making polluting and carbon-intensive industries more accountable at the annual talks.”

The Guardian reports: “Trillions of dollars of subsidies for fossil fuels, farming and fishing are causing ‘environmental havoc’, according to the World Bank, severely harming people and the planet.” It continues: “Many countries spend more on the harmful subsidies than they do on health, education or poverty reduction, the bank says, and the subsidies are entrenched and hard to reform as the greatest beneficiaries tend to be rich and powerful. Reforming subsidies would provide vital funding to fight the climate and nature crises at a time when public coffers are severely stretched, the bank says.” Citing the World Bank, the newspaper says direct government spending on subsidies amounts to $1.25tn per year – “more than $2m a minute” – with the figure rising to $7.25tn a year, including “implicit subsidies such as waived taxes and the cost of the damage caused by worsening global heating and air pollution”.

Ajay Banga, the new president of the World Bank, “wants to focus on improving the development lender so that he can earn the right to press member countries for more capital, as the new chief looks to expand its role in fighting climate change, pandemics and other crises”, Reuters reports. It says Banga told the newswire in an interview on Tuesday: “I don’t want to put the cart before the horse…I think a better bank is an important thing…And then I earn the right to come back and ask for a bigger bank.” The newswire notes: “International development experts say that annual clean energy transition financing needs in the trillions of dollars will require more capital for the World Bank and massive funding from the private sector.” It continues: “Banga said his first task in improving the 78-year-old institution is to talk to shareholders about a change to the lender’s mission statement to focus on eliminating poverty ‘on a livable planet’.” It adds Banga saying: “‘What I mean by livable is climate, but also pandemics, and also fragility and food insecurity’…Banga is seeking buy-in from shareholders on the new mission statement, but laid out his initial plans to start the bank’s transition. This includes promoting more inclusion of women and youth in the bank’s development work, with a strong emphasis on job creation. He also said he would start work soon on efforts to harness more private capital, seen as essential for financing climate-related and other projects, for developing countries.”

Average global temperatures at the start of the month were the warmest on record for the period, Agence-France Presse reports, citing the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). It adds that C3S says the record was beaten by a “substantial margin”. The newswire says temperatures were more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels during 7-11 June, according to C3S. It notes: “While it is the first time the cap has been breached in June, this limit has been exceeded several times in winter and spring in recent years.” [As Carbon Brief has explained previously, global temperature limits “should be understood as changes in long-term global averages attributed to human activity, which exclude natural variability. This means 1.5C might be breached in individual years well before the global long-term 1.5C temperature limit has definitively been crossed.”] Sky News quotes the Met Office’s Prof Albert Klein Tank saying: “It is vital to understand that a single exceedance does not imply a breach of the Paris Agreement as this will need to be a long-term average. However, the more times we temporarily exceed 1.5C the greater the chance of a permanent exceedance.” The Irish Independent says the 1.5C threshold has been temporarily breached “for the fourth time in nine years”. Bloomberg also has the story. The New York Times reports that last month was the warmest May on record for the world’s oceans, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. BBC Inside Science interviews Prof Richard Betts who explains that extreme high temperatures in the North Atlantic are due to a combination of global warming and slower winds, reducing the amount of cooling dust from the Sahara.

Separately, a HuffPost feature asks what happens if the 1.5C limit is exceeded. And CNN lists a series of extreme weather events in recent years that would have been “impossible” without climate change. Meanwhile, Reuters reports: “Mexico swelters as ‘atypical’ heat wave grips nation.” Another Reuters article reports: “The deaths of hundreds of wild birds along Mexico’s Pacific coast were likely caused by the El Niño climate phenomenon, local authorities said on Thursday, as the country and its surrounding oceans face an intense heat wave.” A third Reuters article reports: “Brutal heat wave to scorch US South through holiday weekend.” On his The Crucial Years Substack, veteran environmentalist Bill McKibben writes: “We’ve reached the scariest moment yet in the climate saga.” Elsewhere, the Guardian reports: “Exotic bee-eater returns to UK for second summer in a row.” It adds: “European birds nest in Norfolk much to the delight of twitchers – but environmentalists warn it’s a clear sign of climate change.” The Daily Telegraph reports: “African rainbow birds nest in Britain for first time during heatwave.”

Robert Habeck, Germany’s economy and climate minister, has launched a climate package intended to fill a “climate gap” in reducing greenhouse gases, reports WirtschaftsWoche. It contains an amendment to Germany’s Climate Change Act as well as a climate protection program with further measures. The outlet quotes Habeck saying that “the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 65% by 2030 is within reach for the first time”. However, Clean Energy Wire explains that “at the core of the reforms now proposed is a shift away from Germany’s current focus on annual emissions reduction targets for each economic sector, and obligatory short-term measures if the targets are missed – to a cross-sectoral view and a focus on 2030”. Deutschlandfunk quotes Greenpeace board member Martin Kaiser accusing the German ruling coalition of putting climate protection “on the back burner” with the amendments. Bloomberg says that Germany is set to weaken emissions goals for the most polluting industries in a move that has been criticised as “another blow” to the country’s climate plans. WirtschaftsWoche also reports that German activists from Fridays for Future are preparing protests against the removal of the sector targets from the Climate Change Act. 

Meanwhile, Der Spiegel reports that German climate scientists warn that droughts faced by Germany are “unlikely to resolve over the summer months”, noting that “in a strip from eastern Lower Saxony via Saxony-Anhalt to Berlin and Brandenburg, we [Germany] have a situation where it has been permanently too dry for five years”. Bloomberg also notes that “large parts of Germany will be hotter than normal through all of next week, driving up energy demand for cooling in the region’s biggest economy”. In addition, the Local carries a piece on whether Germany is prepared for “climate extremes” this summer.

The Chinese central government’s planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), held a teleconference on Wednesday to “arrange and deploy the energy work” for the summer energy surge, reports Xinhua. NDRC requires “all regions and relevant enterprises to solidly carry out various tasks” of energy supply and transition, ensuring a “stable and orderly supply of energy and electricity” during the peak, the state news agency adds. Another Xinhua article, citing a report by the Economic Information Daily, writes that electricity demand has been “continuously” rising in many regions, but power companies have “sufficient coal reserves”, reaching the “highest level in nearly four years”. According to the State Grid Corporation, the recent peak electricity demand has already reached 860 gigawatts, a year-on-year increase of nearly 8%, the article highlights.

Separately, according to the latest statistics released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), China’s “utilisation efficiency” of industrial energy resources “continues to improve”, writes a different Xinhua report, also citing the Economic Information Daily. “The green and low-carbon industries are flourishing”, the article highlights. The data released by the ministry includes: from 2012 to 2022, the energy consumption per unit of value added in large-scale industrial enterprises “decreased by over 36%”; the production and sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs; electric vehicles) have maintained its global “first position for eight consecutive years”; and the global share of major segments in the photovoltaic industry chain exceeds 70%. Additionally, the National Statistics Bureau says that, since the beginning of this year, China has witnessed significant growth in the production and export of NEVs, with a steady increase in market competitiveness, reports stcn.com. 

Meanwhile, a separate Xinhua news article writes that El Niño is “amplifying global warming” and is likely to bring about a “new peak” in temperatures. It quotes Zhou Bing, an expert at the China Meteorological Administration, saying that “all regions should be prepared and ready to respond to the development of El Niño events”. Elsewhere, the “first” overseas “super observatory” of the “belt and road” (BRI) climate and environment observation network has recently been put into operation in Tajikistan, reports China News Service. The observatory will “directly support meteorological disaster early warnings, climate change assessments, and adaptation strategies” in Central Asian’s BRI countries, the state newswire adds. Finally, Politico writes that France is calling for an EU response to what it perceives as China’s “unfair advantages” in export industries, such as electric vehicles. The bloc is cautious about the risks of “instigating an all-out trade conflict with Beijing”, the outlet adds.

The British electricity grid (which does not include Northern Ireland) will be at lower risk of blackouts next winter, the Press Association reports, citing a report from National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO). Reuters says ESO has projected a “base case” margin between supply and demand of 4.8 gigawatts, some 8%, adding that this is “slightly higher than the estimate this time last year”. The newswire notes that a separate report from Britain’s National Gas Transmission company said it expected demand for gas in homes would remain at similar levels to last winter and 8% lower than in previous years, while demand for electricity generation would also fall due to renewable expansion. BBC News reports: “Discount offers for households to use less electricity at peak times [under the ‘demand flexibility service’] will return this winter as part of plans to minimise the risk of power cuts. National Grid ESO said it expected to have sufficient capacity to meet demand, but added it would be ‘prudent’ to maintain the energy-saving scheme.” Sky News also has the story. The Times headlines its coverage of the ESO report: “Risk of blackouts this winter, National Grid warns.” The Sun headline reads: “National Grid bosses say there is no danger of winter blackouts this year.”

The Financial Times is one of several papers to report that National Grid ESO is “in talks with the owner of one of the country’s last two remaining coal-fired power plants to stay open for another winter”. The paper says ESO is “seeking to reach a deal with Drax to keep online two coal units totalling 1.3 gigawatts of capacity…despite the UK power company already having started shutting down the facility”. The Guardian also has the story. Coverage in the Daily Telegraph is titled: “Coal plant put on emergency standby to prevent winter blackouts.” However, Reuters reports: “British power generator Drax said on Thursday it is not in negotiations with the National Grid to restart its coal-fired power units to be available as back up electricity generation this winter.” It quotes a spokesperson for Drax saying: “We have closed our coal units at Drax and have started the decommissioning process. Since then, we have had various discussions with government and ESO, but we are not in negotiations to extend their availability into the coming winter.”

Writing for the Metro newspaper, former Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas criticises the opposition Labour Party for its decision to “ramp” up climate spending if it wins power at the next election, instead of spending £28bn a year straight away. Lucas writes: “Reeves’s announcement is incredibly damaging – because it risks the public becoming disillusioned with politics and because investing to tackle this emergency isn’t just important, it’s critical to our survival.” She adds: “Reeves claims this is the ‘responsible’ thing to do, because of her ‘commitment to Labour’s fiscal rules.’ But this entirely arbitrary financial straitjacket needs to be placed within a context of climate and ecological breakdown.” Lucas continues: “We’re not ashamed to say that the Green Party’s retrofitting plan, for example, would cost £25bn a year, for 10 years – because it’s a comprehensive, local authority-led mass insulation and retrofit programme that could slash people’s energy bills and carbon emissions. Case in point: David Cameron’s decision a decade ago to ‘cut the green crap’ and curtail renewable investment, which actually ended up adding an estimated £150 to every household energy bill.” (This figure comes from Carbon Brief analysis.)

In related news, the Guardian reports: “The UK is in danger of being left behind in the global race to decarbonise the economy with potentially disastrous consequences for jobs and communities, according to the TUC’s general secretary.” Politico frames its reporting under the headline: “No more climate consensus as politics of net-zero heats up in Britain.” It says: “The UK’s net-zero debate is starting to boil over. With a little more than a year to go until the likely date of a general election, the government and opposition are trading blows over energy policy.” Meanwhile, in the Daily Telegraph, columnist Matthew Lynn falsely claims that the UK had to switch on a coal unit on Monday due to a “solar panel stutter”, which he says “encapsulates the insanity of net-zero”. He also falsely claims that net-zero is an “arbitrary target”, when, in fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that the world must reach net-zero in order to stop global warming.

In the Guardian, economics editor Larry Elliot previews a summit on development finance in Paris later this month, which he says is “a much bigger deal than the average run-of-the-mill talkfest. Or it will be, if the leaders of the developed world bother to show up. Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, plans to be there. But he is the only other G7 leader on the list of attendees.” Elliot writes: “Broken promises, missed opportunities and a failure to see the bigger picture: that’s the story of the west’s approach to developing countries in recent years. Money to help with climate breakdown has been pledged but not delivered. Vaccines have been hoarded. Aid budgets have been cut. From any perspective – be it geopolitical, economic, humanitarian or ecological – the indifference to what is happening elsewhere is disastrous. If the west wants to counter Beijing’s influence in Africa, to secure the raw materials and metals it needs for its green industrial revolution, to prevent a debt crisis and to have any hope of tackling global heating, it needs to sharpen up its act fast.”

In other climate-related commentary, the Spectator gives space to author Lionel Shriver to try and argue that there was no link between recent wildfires in Canada and climate change. (See Carbon Brief’s summary of the events and the links to warming.) Similarly, Canada’s Financial Post gives a comment slot to contrarian economist Ross McKitrick to write under the headline: “The truth about forest fires goes up in climate-change smoke.” In the Financial Times, columnist Stuart Kirk, who resigned from bank HSBC last year after a controversial speech accusing central bankers of exaggerating climate risks, explains why he does not own any “green funds”.

A new study finds that using seaweed to remove 1bn tonnes of CO2 per year would require using more than 1m square kilometres of ocean in the equatorial Pacific. Researchers use a seaweed-growth model that incorporates information on nitrogen, the main limiting nutrient for seaweed growth in much of the ocean. They note that the area of the Pacific most suitable for seaweed cultivation overlaps with some of the ocean’s “most productive exclusive economic zones”. They also find that to remove a second billion tonnes of CO2 annually would require tripling the cultivation area, “indicating dramatic reductions in carbon harvest efficiency beyond the most productive waters”, they write.