Past and future COP climate summit hosts the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Azerbaijan and Brazil are together calling for a new international agreement to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, Al Jazeera reports. COP28 host UAE said on Tuesday that it will form a “troika” to ensure efforts to limit global warming to 1.5C are stepped up by COP30 in Belem, Brazil in 2025, Al Jazeera says. Azerbaijan will host COP this year. According to Al Jazeera, COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber released a statement saying: “We cannot afford to lose momentum, we must do everything we can to keep 1.5 C within reach.” Ireland’s the Journal adds that Al Jaber said that “the troika helps ensure we have the collaboration and continuity required to keep the North Star of 1.5C in sight – from Baku to Belem and beyond”. Reuters also has the story, explaining: “The main task for this year’s COP29 summit in November in Baku, Azerbaijan, is to agree a new global target for climate finance for developing countries. But some climate diplomats are already looking ahead to Brazil’s summit in 2025 as the next major milestone for global climate diplomacy. Nearly 200 countries are required to submit updated national CO2-cutting pledges in time for COP30. The next round of countries’ climate targets is seen as a crucial last chance to prevent global warming exceeding 1.5C, a target fast slipping out of reach, as global greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb.”

Many publications cover a new study finding that some polar bears are facing starvation as melting sea ice is forcing them to live on land, where they are unable to adapt their diets. BBC News explains: “The iconic Arctic species normally feed on ringed seals that they catch on ice floes offshore. But as the ice disappears in a warming world, many bears are spending greater amounts of time on shore, eating bird’s eggs, berries and grass. However the animals rapidly lose weight on land, increasing the risk of death.” BBC News adds that “the polar bear has become the poster child for the growing threat of climate change in the Arctic, but the reality of the impact on this species is complicated”. Plummeting bear numbers since the 1980s was mainly due to hunting, it says, adding: “With greater legal protection, polar bear numbers have risen. But increasing global temperatures are now seen as their biggest threat. That’s because the frozen Arctic seas are key to their survival. The animals use the sea ice as a platform to hunt ringed seals, which have high concentrations of fat, mostly in late spring and early summer. But during the warmer months many parts of the Arctic are now increasingly ice-free.” The New York Times explains that the researchers fitted 20 bears with video-camera collars in Manitoba, Canada, which is below the Arctic Circle at the southern end of the animals’ range, in order to study their hunting behaviour. It says: “Nearly all the bears followed in the new study lost weight, and two individuals were on track to starve before the sea ice returned.” Dr Anthony Pagano, a wildlife biologist and lead author of the study, which was published in Nature Communications, tells the New York Times: “Terrestrial foods are not adequate to prolong the period that polar bears can survive on land.” The Independent, Daily Mail and Guardian also cover the research.

Half a million homes in Victoria, Australia have been left without power after a storm knocked out the state’s largest coal-power plant, the Guardian reports. It says: “The storms, which brought heavy hail and strong winds to Victoria and saw the temperature plummet 15C, also wreaked havoc on the state’s public transport system, with half of the Melbourne’s 16 metropolitan train lines partly suspended as commuters began to make their way home.” The affected power station, Loy Yang A, is one of Victoria’s three remaining coal-fired plants and has a maximum capacity of 2,210 megawatts when fully operational, the Guardian adds. The Sydney Morning Herald says “there is no official timeline for how long it will take to reconnect all customers, but when similar lines went down in 2020 in western Victoria, it took two weeks to set up temporary replacements”. It adds that Loy Yang A went offline after extreme winds led to the “physical collapse” of six transmission towers. The Australian Financial Review, Bloomberg and Australia’s Renew Economy also have the story.

Elsewhere, the Guardian reports that a tax on fossil-fuel production in Australia could raise £100bn in its first year alone, according to two of the country’s leading economists.

France wants the British government to take on its “fair share” of the cost of developing new nuclear reactors in the UK, according to France’s finance minister Bruno Le Maire, the i newspaper reports. The French state energy company EDF is struggling with the costs of the much delayed Hinkley Point C nuclear power station after its Chinese partners in the project withdrew funding, the i says. It reports: “Downing Street said last month that Britain has no plans to provide loan guarantees for the Hinkley Point C nuclear plan project to ease the financing costs on EDF…The mounting UK costs are proving controversial with French taxpayers.” Speaking at an event marking the 50th anniversary of the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, Le Maire said that discussions would take place with his UK counterpart about future funding for the project, the i says. The Daily Telegraph, in a story trailed on its frontpage, and Bloomberg also have the news.

It comes as the Daily Telegraph also reports on a new government consultation to abolish a size limit on heat pumps to allow bigger units to be installed in a bid to cut down on noise pollution. It explains: “A consultation on changes to ‘permitted development’ rules launched by Michael Gove’s levelling up department said current regulations limiting the volume size of a heat pump’s outdoor compressor unit to 0.6 cubic metres were ‘preventing the development of quieter models’.” At the same time, the government is proposing to ease the rules governing where electric car chargers can be placed within the off-street parking areas of sites such as offices, supermarkets and blocks of flats, it adds. A second Daily Telegraph story says that Labour’s proposed increase in taxes on North Sea oil and gas production could encourage fossil-fuel companies to produce less between now and 2030, based on independent analysis by banks and oil and gas analysts. Elsewhere, the Times reports that farmers have blockaded a minister’s office with tractors and pick-up trucks in protest against Welsh government plans to tie its new subsidy scheme to tree-planting and habitat creation.

Ukraine has denied reports that it was considering seeking an easing of the EU’s Green Deal requirements, Reuters reports. It explains: “Terms for the integration of Ukraine’s agricultural sector into the European Union will be determined during negotiations, two ministers said on Tuesday, denying Kyiv was considering seeking an easing of the EU’s Green Deal requirements. Earlier on Tuesday, a senior official told Reuters that Ukraine could consider forgoing the EU’s agrarian subsidies in exchange for an easing of Green Deal requirements during accession talks starting next month.” It comes after Denmark’s climate minister Dan Jørgensen tells the Financial Times that he does not see Ukraine joining the EU as potential hindrance for climate action but “a chance”. “If the EU is enlarged it means that we have more countries that will stand behind the ambitious targets,” he tells the FT. He adds: “This is a country at war and maybe they don’t really need us to tell them what to do with regards to saving the climate . . . but they are very ambitious.”

The China Development Bank (CDB), one of China’s two policy banks, issued “551.8bn yuan (about $77.68bn) in loans…to support the development of the country’s advanced manufacturing and strategically important emerging industries” in 2023, reports Xinhua. These funds were mainly used for the “development of new-generation information technology, high-end equipment, new materials, new energy vehicles, energy conservation and environmental protection and bio-medicine, among other [industries]”, the state news agency added. Another Xinhua article reports that several Chinese provinces have “mapped out blueprints” to enhance support for “tech-intensive industries” and “foster new growth momentum or new productive forces that feature innovation, high-quality and advanced productivity”, with many provinces focusing on the “production of new energy vehicles” as a major industrial goal. 

Meanwhile, the power news outlet Dianlian Media publishes the new year’s address of State Grid chief executive Xin Bao’an, who says that the state-owned utility corporation has anchored its “green development” plans in the “dual carbon” targets of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, after the power company has already “achieved another record high in national installed capacity of renewable energy”. Chinese economic outlet Caixin carries the second article in a three-part series on power market reform, which assesses how more “market-based electricity transactions” could incentivise greater use of renewable energy and reduce dependence on coal. Reuters reports that “Asia’s imports of seaborne thermal coal eased from record highs in January” as leading buyers China and India “saw arrivals ease”.

The Financial Times reports on the development in Ohio of a factory owned by a joint venture between Invenergy, the largest private US renewables developer, and Longi, the world’s largest solar panel manufacturer, which is based in China, saying that the project is receiving “pushback” from some members of the local community. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post says that “Chinese electric vehicle makers face a mounting burden from disclosures relating to carbon emissions and other sustainability and compliance issues in the European Union” that could “erode some of the competitive advantage of Chinese EVs and components, given their high carbon footprint from long distance transport”. Oil Price carries a commentary arguing that “Chinese producers have been flooding the markets with [rare earth elements] and battery metals like lithium, leading to big price crashes and making it untenable for competitors to continue operations”.

A lack of rainfall in January caused “the worst drought” in Mexico in the last 12 years, Excélsior reports. It says the lack of rains impacted 76% of the country, which is undergoing moderate to exceptional drought, according to the National Meteorological Service. Colombia’s El Espectador reports that although February is “the driest month” in the Amazon, hot spots have decreased by more than 94% compared to 2023. Such an event is linked to recent atypical rainfall in the region and climate change, it says. The newspaper adds that eight countries will collaborate to address emergencies in the Amazon.

Elsewhere, Chile’s El Mercurio reports that affected neighbours and local authorities urged more speed in removing debris from the forest fires that hit Viña del Mar and communes of the Valparaiso Region. The newspaper says that there are still missing people and that the death toll (131) is out of date since last Wednesday. Meanwhile, Peru’s Ministry of Health has issued an epidemiological alert due to the risk of heat stroke caused by the high temperatures in the country, according to El Comercio. The measure urges health workers and regional governments to be alert for emergencies, the outlet says.

Meanwhile, the government of Mato Grosso, Brazil’s only state with three biomes, passed laws easing environmental protection and granted permits to industries such as mining, agriculture and energy generation, O Globo reports. NGOs and the local public ministry took legal action to stop the most controversial decisions, it adds.

In Argentina, a project carried out by two public institutes alongside the private sector obtained “for the first time in the world” a certification for the production of one kilo of “carbon-negative” beef, La Nación reports and adds that the environmental product declaration “is the most demanding certification and eco-labelling system on the planet”.

In the Financial Times, business columnist and climate journalist Pilita Clark reflects on the findings of a new study finding that 69% of the global population would be willing to give away 1% of their monthly income to fight climate change. She says: “I realise it is a lot easier to tell a researcher you care about the climate than it is to buy an electric car. But that peer-reviewed study is still a welcome example of the knowledge needed to tackle one of today’s most vexing climate policy questions: can you cut carbon emissions if rising inequality and populism are fuelling a gathering green backlash?” She concludes: “The truth is, 21st-century climate politics is hard, bitterly contested and unfamiliar. We’ve never tried to decarbonise the global economy at speed before. Politicians are learning by doing. But bit by bit, it is also becoming clearer that even when climate action looks impossibly fraught, it may not be.” Elsewhere, in the Daily Telegraph, world economy editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says that “this is the year that the world’s green juggernaut [clean energy] becomes unstoppable”.

An editorial in the leading scientific journal Nature says that the European Commission’s recently released proposals for how the bloc can cut its emissions 90% by 2040 and reach its longer-term target of net-zero by 2050 are “dangerously reliant” on the still-emergent technology carbon capture and storage. It says: “The biggest obstacle is that the technology is not ready…At present, there is not a single fully operational CCS plant in Europe, nor a system for governing and regulating the technology.” [See Carbon Brief’s breakdown of the European Commission’s proposals for a full breakdown of the projected role of CO2 removal in meeting the EU’s climate targets.] Elsewhere, a separate editorial in Nature Geoscience says “urgent efforts are needed to collect and preserve ice cores from mountain glaciers before these archives are lost”.

A new paper reviews research into the role that social media has played in the “Greta effect” – the impact that Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg has had on climate change awareness. Assessing 63 studies that “gauged social media reactions to her from different disciplinary perspectives”, the authors show how social media has “both helped Thunberg mobilise her supporters and harboured backlash from her enemies”. This twofold effect varies across different contexts, the study notes. The paper reveals “how social media have become the most important terrain for contestation around climate change”, the authors conclude.

The speed at which the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica flows towards the ocean “accelerated rapidly” in the six months after the breaking off, or “calving”, of a huge iceberg in January last year, a new “brief communication” paper says. The “immediate response” to the calving of the A-81 iceberg – described elsewhere as the size of Greater London – “was observed as a change to the rate of acceleration”, the paper says: “Acceleration increased by a factor of 10, with a second, smaller calving at the end of June 2023, leading to further tripling of acceleration.” The authors note that the acceleration was caused by the reduction of “buttressing” in an area called the McDonald Ice Rumples, which previously helped pin the ice shelf and hold back the flow of ice.