The US’s greenhouse gas emissions fell 1.9% in 2023, largely due to coal generation falling to its lowest level in half a century according to estimates by the Rhodium Group, reports the New York Times. The drop means that US emissions have fallen by roughly 17.2% since 2005, despite a spike in emissions following the Covid-driven drop, it continues. The decline, while “a step in the right direction’’, is still far below the rate needed to meet the president’s pledge to cut US emissions in half by 2030 compared to 2005 levels, reports the Guardian. To reach this goal, emissions would have to decline at a rate more than triple the 2023 figure and be sustained at the level every year until 2030, the article adds. 

Meanwhile, the American Petroleum Institute has warned that US oil and gas production is “booming”, but policies set to be imposed could now “jeopardise the country’s energy might”, Bloomberg reports. Speaking at the fossil fuel lobby group’s annual gathering, API president Mike Sommers told the industry and congressional staff that “Washington is on the cusp of spoiling the American energy advantage, undermining it with short-sighted policies and hostility toward US oil and natural gas,” the article notes. The API has launched an eight-figure media campaign to promote the idea that fossils are “vital” to global energy security, alarming climate experts, reports the Guardian. “The campaign comes amid record fossil fuel extraction in the US and as the industry is attempting to capitalise on the war in Gaza to escalate production even further, climate advocates say”, the article adds. The campaign comes as a top state court in Delaware has partially dismissed a lawsuit the state’s government filed against several of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies over their greenhouse gas emissions and impact on global warming, Fox News reports. The ruling significantly narrows the scope of the suit seeking to hold the industry liable for the effects of air pollution in the state, reports the Associated Press. Elsewhere, US president Joe Biden is facing “intense election-year pressure from his left to thwart a huge expansion of US liquefied natural gas exports”, reports Axios. 

The UK government has set out its ambition to build a nuclear plant capable of powering six million homes, the Times reports. It has released its Civil Nuclear Roadmap, setting out an ambition to commit to invest in new nuclear capacity of between 3GW and 7GW every five years from 2030 to 2044, the article adds. Energy secretary Claire Coutinho has called the plans “the biggest expansion in nuclear power for 70 years” as she set out a raft of other measures in the government’s delayed “nuclear roadmap”, reports the Daily Telegraph in an article featured on its frontpage. The plan for the new nuclear plant builds on the two already under development: Hinkley Point C, which is under construction in Somerset; and Sizewell C, planned for Suffolk, and will follow a similar design, the article adds. Discussions of where the third development will begin once EDF and the government reach a final investment decision on the Sizewell C station, the minister for nuclear and renewables Andrew Bowie said in an interview, reports Bloomberg. “There is no net-zero without nuclear. No one is trying to suggest that it’s not expensive to deliver, but it’s an expense we can’t afford not to spend,” Bowie said, the article notes. The final investment decision for £20bn Sizewell C should conclude before the end of 2024, with Bowie telling the Financial Times: “We are very much on track.” The roadmap echoes plans put forward by then prime minister Boris Johnoson to “build a new [reactor] every year”, reports the Guardian. Since then the cost of Hinkley Point C – the first new nuclear plant in a generation – has “spiralled” to £33bn, a 30% increase from 2021 when it was forecast to cost between £25bn to £26bn, the article notes. There are also concerns that Hinkley’s start date may be delayed from 2027 to the early 2030s, it adds. Progress in developing new nucleur in the UK has been slow, reports BBC News, with consultations for Sizewell C taking 10 years alone. As part of its new roadmap, the government is hoping to streamline the development of new power stations by introducing “smarter” regulation, allowing it to deliver new nuclear power plants faster, the article notes. Along with targeting a new power plant and streamlining the planning process, the roadmap also highlights the government’s intention to create a domestic supply of uranium fuel required for advanced nuclear reactors – known as HALEU – which is currently only commercially produced in Russia, BusinessGreen reports. This follows an announcement on Monday that the government has earmarked £200m to ramp up production of HALEU fuel in North West England, plus a further £10m for developing the sites and skills to produce other advanced nuclear fuels in the UK, the article continues. 

Separately, the installation of rooftop solar in the UK has hit a 12-year high, with almost 190,000 installations in 2023, the highest level since the government slashed its subsidy scheme in late 2011, reports the Guardian. Additionally, the number of heat pumps installed across the UK rose to a record high of almost 40,000, up 25%, bringing the total number of certified heat pumps installed across the country to more than 200,000, the article adds. 

Elsewhere, the head of the UK’s climate change body Chris Stark has announced he will be standing down from his role, “at a time when the nation’s climate leadership under the Conservatives has been questioned”, reports the FT. Stark’s departure in April after six years as chief executive of the Climate Change Committee may leave the organisation without a chief executive and permanent chair, after Lord Deben stepped down last year and still has not been replaced, the article notes. Additionally, some climate-sceptic Conservative MPs have said the net-zero push to replace London’s historic gas lamps with LED replicas would represent “cultural vandalism”, the Daily Telegraph reports.

Global renewable energy capacity grew at its fastest rate in the past 20 years in 2023, putting the world within reach of meeting a key climate target by the end of the decade, according to a new report by the International Energy Agency covered by the Guardian. Renewables grew by 50% to 510GW in 2023, the 22nd year in a row that renewable capacity additions have set a new record, it continues. This “spectacular” growth offers a “real chance” that governments could meet their pledge to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030, as agreed at COP28, the article notes. Last year’s growth takes global renewable capacity to 3,700GW, under current policies and market conditions, which is forecast to grow to a total of 7,300GW by 2023, Reuters reports. To reach the 2030 goal agreed at COP28, the world needs to hit at least 11,000GW of renewable capacity, it adds. Rapid growth of solar in China was the main driver of 2023’s record renewable additions; the nation will likely account for 60% of the new clean energy capacity that will become operational by 2028, reports the Associated Press. IEA executive director Fatih Birol tells the Financial Times that the progress is “encouraging”, “but what I would like to see is growth from emerging and developing countries, especially in Africa, but also in Latin America and other Asian countries”. Birol highlights that onshore wind and solar are now cheaper than almost all fossil fuel plants, but said there are still “hurdles” to overcome to expand renewables to meet the tripling target, including the global macroeconomic environment, and the need to rapidly scale up financing and deployment of renewables in most emerging and developing economies, the Independent reports.

Saudi Arabia’s energy minister Abdulaziz bin Salman has claimed that the headline COP28 agreement to transition away from fossil fuels is just one of several “choices” on an “a la carte menu”, reports Climate Home News. All governments agreed to “call on” each other to “contribute” to eight “global efforts”, including “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems” at the conclusion of the two-week climate conference late last year, the article notes. (Read Carbon Brief’s in-depth article detailing all of the key outcomes at COP28.) But, at a forum in Riyadh, Bin Salman claimed that “all of these eight items you have in front of you are choices – that’s why I call it a la carte”, the article continues. He pointed to phrases such as “nationally determined” and “taking into account the Paris Agreement and their different national circumstances” to justify his reading, Climate Home Notes adds. Saudi Arabia is taking climate change issues seriously and has shifted its focus to all kinds of energy, not just oil, Bin Salman added, Reuters reports. “People are still interested in continuing to produce fossil fuels. However, like us, and we should be calling on everybody to do this, we have to work on mitigating these fossil fuels,” he told the mining conference in Riyadh, arguing Saudi Arabia believes fossil fuel use can continue in tandem with measures to capture its emissions.

China’s largest state-owned enterprises have invested “hundreds of billions of yuan into wind and solar power projects”, setting the country up for a six-year head start towards its clean-energy target, says the Chinese outlet Caixin. It adds that the “investment frenzy has also raised concerns over profitability and waste”, because, “out of 98 industrial enterprises under the central government’s supervision, nearly 50 have entered the new energy business”, according to the outlet’s calculations. Bloomberg says that a rooftop solar boom which has driven China’s “world-leading pace of renewable energy installations” is “hitting new challenges as multiple regions run out of grid capacity for additional projects”. China Energy Net reports that China’s “first high-altitude wind power generation demonstration project” has successfully generated electricity, with a total installed capacity of “2×2.4 megawatts, able to use 500- to 3,000-metre high-altitude winds to generate energy”. The state-run industry newspaper China Energy News reports that, according to the state-run electric utility company State Grid, Tibet produced nearly 2.6 terawatts-hours of outgoing power, with the province’s overall proportion of clean energy standing at “more than 90%…[meaning Tibet has] basically achieved a clean energy power supply”. Meanwhile, the state-run newspaper China Daily reports that “an inter-island power transmission network in…[eastern China’s] Zhejiang province” recently began operations, which is the “first case in China to use land cables running beneath the ocean floor instead of traditional submarine cables to transmit electricity between islands”. 

Separately, the Financial Times’ Chinese website has published a commentary by Miao Zhongquan, senior researcher at the State Grid Energy Research Institute, and Wang Zongyi, director of the Greenpeace climate and energy program. They write that, following COP28, the “vigorous expansion” of Chinese companies’ overseas renewable energy business not only  “supports the country’s…climate goals, but also…boost[s]…the global realisation of the clean energy transition”. CAJ News Africa reports that “a multibillion rand investment [in] wind energy by a Chinese firm” will “avert power outages faced by companies in the Northern Cape and eventually, South Africa [as a whole]”. China Dialogue says that while “health became a focus” at COP28, “among Chinese attendees, the topic rarely came up in private conversation…[and] received little coverage in COP-related reporting.

Elsewhere, the Financial Times has published a commentary by Yuhan Zhang, a political economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who writes that “transformative shifts” in China’s economic strategy away from investing heavily in high-tech projects just as “low-carbon energies” – which have “longer cycles, lower input-output ratios and non-guaranteed returns” – do “not look imminent” for China this year. Finally, the Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily carries a commentary by Yin Yanling, deputy director of the economic committee of the national committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), who writes that, following China’s national economic work conference held in December 2023, the government is determined it should improve the “formation of a mechanism for feed-in tariffs for new energy”, enhance the “absorption and utilisation of renewable energy”, improve the “government’s green procurement system”, and promote “the gradual shift of dual controls from energy consumption to carbon emissions”.

There is no other option but to “put the decarbonisation of the economy at the heart of a new industrial strategy” in the hope it will drive faster growth and revitalise communities that have been left behind, writes Guardian economics editor Larry Elliott. With the UK election looming this year, the green transition cannot be seen as “too difficult” and delayed, he continues. The opposition Labour party committed to a £28bn green prosperity plan in 2021 and, while the commitment timeline has been weakened, party leader Keir Starmer has denied any intention to scrap it, despite wider economic challenges, Elliott notes. There are compelling arguments for holding onto the plan, allowing Labour to fight the next election on its own terms, sending a signal that the party is serious about the green transition and showing that it is focused on the big picture. “Paring back Labour’s green spending now would be the most egregious example of short-termism: bad economics, bad politics and – it should go without saying – bad for the planet”, concludes Elliott. 

New research sheds light on the impact of human activity on snow loss in the northern hemisphere, detection of which through observations alone has so far proved “elusive”. Using an ensemble of snowpack reconstructions and climate models, the authors find a decline in snow in 82 out of 169 major northern-hemisphere river basins, 31 of which they say can confidently be attributed to human influence. Importantly, the relationship is nonlinear with snow becoming increasingly sensitive as winter temperature exceeds -8C. The paper concludes that further snow loss will “pos[e] risks to water resources in the absence of substantial climate mitigation”.