Labour leader Keir Starmer has declared a “historic” victory for his party in the UK general election, according to the Financial Times. The newspaper notes that the Conservative party, which has been in power for 14 years, achieved its “worst-ever result”, partly because its vote share was “decimated” by Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist Reform UK party. The article notes that Starmer has “promised to work with business to stimulate growth, with an agenda that includes planning reform and state investment in green technology”. BusinessGreen reports that Labour’s “sizeable majority” would provide the party with a “clear mandate for its ambitious green plans”. It lists some of these plans, including a decarbonised power system by 2030, stopping the issuance of new oil and gas drilling licences and a foreign policy “reset” based around international climate diplomacy. Former Conservative energy secretaries Grant Shapps and Jacob Rees-Mogg were among the high-profile Conservative politicians that lost their seats in last night’s election, according to BBC News. The UK’s shortest-serving prime minister, Liz Truss, also suffered a “shock upset” by losing her seat, the Independent reports. Surrey Live reports that Claire Coutinho, the most recent Conservative energy and net-zero secretary, has held onto her seat in East Surrey. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has overseen a rollback of the UK’s net-zero policies, is expected to resign as leader of the Conservative party, according to Times political commentator Tim Shipman. The Daily Mail has an article on who will be in the cabinet of the new Labour government, citing senior party figures who say so-called “mission leads” – including shadow net-zero secretary Ed Miliband – will be “safe from a reshuffle”. The article notes that Miliband will be in charge of Labour’s goal to “make Britain a clean energy superpower”.

Meanwhile, the Green party won three new seats in parliament, bringing its total number of MPs up to four, the Guardian reports. The party’s co-leader Carla Denyer unseated Labour’s Thangam Debbonaire in Bristol Central, it says. The party also won in the two largely rural Conservative constituencies of Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire, as well as holding on to Brighton Pavilion, the article adds. The new Brighton Pavilion MP Sian Berry told the Press Association that “we’ve achieved everything that we set out to do” by winning four seats.

Finally, BBC News reports on the nominations for peerages, which were announced shortly before polls closed in the general election. It says former prime minister Theresa May, who committed the UK to a target of net-zero emissions by 2050, will sit in the House of Lords, as will Alok Sharma, who was president of the COP26 UN climate summit. Conservative MP Craig Mackinley, leader of the climate-sceptic Net Zero Scrutiny Group, was also nominated for a peerage, the article says. The group’s founder, Conservative MP Steve Baker, lost his seat in the election last night, “days after hinting he may run for the Tory leadership”, according to the i newspaper.

The EU has confirmed that it will impose provisional duties on the imports of Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) that would “raise rates to as high as 48%”, Bloomberg reports. Other manufacturers that “cooperated with the investigation but haven’t been sampled will be subject to a weighted average duty of 20.8%, while firms that didn’t cooperate will face a 37.6% top-up”, the newspaper adds. State news agency Xinhua quotes Chinese commerce ministry spokesperson He Yadong urging the EU to work with China “in the same direction” and “show sincerity in advancing the consultation” concerning the anti-subsidy probe. EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis says negotiations are ongoing, adding that “should a mutually beneficial solution emerge, we can also find ways not to apply at the end of the day the tariffs…But it is very clear this solution [would] need to solve that market distortion that we are currently having,” according to Reuters. The German Association of the Automotive Industry said that the tariffs will bring “adverse impact” to consumers and enterprises and “hinder” the bloc’s EV industry development and climate goals, Xinhua reports. In related news, China’s lithium battery exports have reached $65bn in 2023, with its global market share increasing from 57% in 2016 to 74% in 2023, according to energy newspaper International Energy Net. Bloomberg columnist David Fickling writes that US tariffs may induce the Chinese government “to push…on investment as an alternative lever of growth”, supporting the growth of low carbon technology sectors.

China’s weather agency has forecasted that “extreme heat [will] persist across the country” over the summer as “climate change pushes global temperatures higher”, Agence France-Presse cites state broadcaster CCTV as saying. China Energy News also covers the news, adding that government analysis shows a “heightened” risk of natural disasters throughout the country in July. The prolonged heatwave in the eastern, central and southern regions in July is likely to hurt the production of rice and cotton, Reuters reports. It will also strain the power grid, state-run energy newspaper China Energy News says, adding that wind and solar power play an “important” role to ensure energy supply. 

Finally, China’s “rapidly expanding renewable energy production” will speed up the liberalisation of its electricity market, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) quotes a consultant with Boston Consulting Group saying. And International Energy Net cites China’s National Audit Office stating that “traditional energy management is not standardised, and new energy development and utilisation lacks coordination”.

Coverage continues of Hurricane Beryl, which has already torn through swathes of the Caribbean before heading towards the east coast of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, Reuters reports. The newswire says the “unusually fierce, early season hurricane” has put the nation’s top tourist destinations on “red alert”. It says the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an “extraordinary” storm season this year, adding that “scientists say climate change caused by humans fuels weather extremes”. According to ABC News, Beryl had weakened to a category 2 storm after hitting Jamaica late on Wednesday, but has since strengthened to a category 3 storm as it headed for Mexico. The article notes that the storm is likely to bring heavy rainfall and flooding to parts of the US, including Texas and Florida. Analysis in the Guardian notes that while the hurricane struck the Caribbean, it was the “earliest category 5 Atlantic hurricane in about 100 years of record keeping”. It notes that seven people have been killed, while some of the smaller islands in Grenada, such as Carriacou and Petite Martinique, were “more or less flattened with 98% of buildings on Carriacou damaged”. The Daily Telegraph has a piece about how the hurricane “could dramatically change holiday plans”.

Sales of new electric vehicles in the UK continued rising last month, with battery-powered cars accounting for almost a fifth of new cars sold, according to industry figures released by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) and reported by BusinessGreen. The news website says sales of new electric vehicles rose 7.4% in June (compared to the same month last year), “driven largely by demand from business fleets and corporate salary sacrifice schemes”. It notes that the increase in sales pushes manufacturers closer to meeting targets under the zero emission vehicle mandate, which require them to ensure 22% of new vehicle sales are zero-emission models this year. Despite this, the Guardian quotes SMMT chief executive, Mike Hawes, who says there has been “something of a plateau flattening out” in demand for electric cars. It notes that the overall market share of battery electric new cars “remained about the same in the first half of 2024 as last year”. The Daily Telegraph reports the same story under the headline “electric car sales sink again as industry calls for tax breaks” – due to a dip in purchases by individual households, specifically. Reuters also has the story.

In more UK news, the Times reports that Tata Steel has “snubbed unions” and closed one of two blast furnaces at its plant in Port Talbot, south Wales, “under plans to switch to a greener form of production”. Unions had opposed the plans and had wanted Tata to wait until the outcome of the general election, the newspaper continues. Separately, the Guardian reports that lobby group UK Steel has said that relatively high electricity prices in the UK “could hinder UK efforts to switch to greener technology”.

Many UK newspapers have published responses to the Labour party’s victory in the general election. An editorial in the Independent says the “sense of purpose” displayed by Labour in the run-up to the election now “needs to be applied to rebuilding the country”. It states that “Labour does have a plan, albeit with flaws of its own, and the first task must be to take the first steps that [party leader] Sir Keir [Starmer] has promised”. Among these steps, it highlights the pledge to set up Great British Energy, a new nationally owned energy company to support the development of low-carbon power. The editorial continues: “On climate change and the environment, for too long neglected by both parties, Labour will need to respond to the challenges that have been somewhat underplayed in the campaign.” 

A Daily Mail editorial is more sceptical about Labour’s energy and climate plans. It asks: “Given the need for energy security in a volatile world, will Sir Keir really ban new drilling for North Sea oil and gas? And will he stick to the dogmatic target to decarbonise electricity by 2030, which would risk the lights going out?”. Similarly, a Sun editorial says the newspaper “remain[s] worried” about some of Labour’s policies, including plans for a “ruinous dash to net-zero”. Referring to former Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson, who led his party to victory in the last election, a Daily Telegraph editorial says it “supported him and his optimistic brand of conservatism wholeheartedly”. However, it highlights that the newspaper did not support Johnson’s “belief in net-zero and a big state”. John McTernan, a political strategist commentator, writes in the Daily Telegraph that a boost in construction would help to grow the UK economy. He writes: “With this, there has to be a push on the new infrastructure from onshore wind to new electricity pylons that is needed to decarbonise the UK’s energy supply. It can no longer be held back by local nimbys when it is nationally so critical.”

Finally, analysis by Somini Sengupta in the New York Times asks if the Labour party can “bring back Britain’s green groove”. She writes: “Labour made big campaign promises on climate. How that actually plays out will be felt not only in the daily lives of people in Britain, but also on the nation’s standing in the world.”

A Guardian editorial focuses on the devastating impact that Hurricane Beryl has had on the Caribbean in recent days. It notes that Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, said he hoped the hurricane would “alert rich countries to the danger that states like his are facing”. The editorial concludes that “the moral case is unarguable”, with Gonsalves “right that the climate should have been more prominent in the UK’s election, and should feature more strongly in politics across the west”. It says the clean-up from the hurricane will likely cost tens of millions of dollars, and there will also be lots of rebuilding required. In this context, it says Beryl “strengthens the case for debts to be written off” for Caribbean nations. “The countries that bear the least responsibility for global heating must be supported to protect themselves from its worst effects,” it concludes.

There has been an increase in disinformation around Arctic issues on Twitter “since Elon Musk expressed his intention to acquire the platform”, a new study finds. The researchers gathered 1.7m tweets that addressed Arctic issues and manually coded 12,500 to detect if and how disinformation was present. They find that “Arctic disinformation is first and foremost climate disinformation” and “climate deniers or minimisers are the main drivers of disinformation” about the region. These accounts “have used common strategies including cherry-picking data, providing anecdotal evidence and attacking scientists to push their arguments forward”, the researchers add.