Reuters reports that the US has “withdrawn from the board of the UN’s hard-negotiated climate damage fund, dedicated to helping poor and vulnerable nations cope with climate change-fuelled disasters”. The newswire adds: “Nearly 200 countries had agreed to launch the ‘loss and damage’ fund at the COP28 UN climate summit in 2023, in a victory for developing nations that had demanded help for years over increased extreme weather events…The climate damage fund is hosted by the World Bank, whose president is appointed by the US. The US letter [confirming the move] did not mention any changes to the hosting arrangement, or make clear if quitting the board entailed a full pull-out from the fund. As of 23 January, wealthy countries had pledged $741m to the fund, according to UN data, with the US putting up $17.5m. It is unclear if it will now honour that pledge.” The Guardian says the decision to abandon the loss and damage fund has been “condemned by climate advocates from the global north and south”. It quotes Mohamed Adow, a climate policy analyst and director of the thinktank Power Shift Africa, saying: “We urge the US to reconsider its position in the interest of the planet and future generations…This regrettable decision risks undermining collective progress and erodes the trust necessary for effective international cooperation.” The Washington Post notes that the US has actually withdrawn “from a pair of global programs it had once deemed crucial for curtailing fossil fuels and dealing with the consequences of climate change”. In addition to the loss and damage fund, the newspaper notes that a Treasury spokesperson says the US is “pulling out of a global climate finance program – known as the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) – that seeks to help several large developing countries move away from fossil fuels, particularly coal”. The newspaper quotes Richard Sherman, a South African who co-chairs the loss and damage board: “The impacts on developing countries are huge.” Deutsche Welle and Politico are among the other outlets covering the news.

Meanwhile, in other US news, the Financial Times says the “World Bank is facing renewed calls from its biggest shareholder to drop a decades-old ban on funding nuclear power to help the west compete with China and Russia in atomic diplomacy”. It adds: “French Hill, chair of the US House financial services committee, has signalled that the new US administration will continue to support the push to fund nuclear projects just months ahead of a crucial decision on the contentious ban. Hill told the Financial Times last month that World Bank chief Ajay Banga had US backing to end the taboo, as the world’s biggest development fund moves closer to embracing nuclear energy in lending to emerging markets.”

Separately, the latest remarks made by Chris Wright, the new US energy secretary, have attracted media coverage. The New York Times says that he told a gathering in Washington DC last week of “energy ministers and tech founders from across Africa…discuss[ing] how best to bring electricity to more than 600 million people on the continent who have none”, that “fossil fuels are the future” for the continent. He is quoted as saying: “We’ve had years of Western countries shamelessly saying don’t develop coal, coal is bad…That’s just nonsense, 100% nonsense. Coal transformed our world and made it better.” E&E News also covers his comments. The Financial Times notes that he has also said that the “US shale sector can deliver President Donald Trump’s pledge to ‘drill, baby, drill’ and boost oil production even if prices hit $50 a barrel, a level most analysts say would curtail drilling activity”.

Finally, the New York Times says that “thousands of protesters gathered in Washington for Stand Up for Science, a rally in response to Trump’s federal-funding and job cuts”.

A frontpage story in the Times says that, “under plans to be set out this week, households living within a half a kilometre of new or upgraded power infrastructure could see their average electricity bill fall by almost 40% a year”. The article adds: “The move is intended to reduce opposition to renewable energy infrastructure as Keir Starmer makes a building boom the cornerstone of his push for growth. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill to be set out on Tuesday would also strip quangos of the power to block developments and require environmental regulators to speed up decisions. However, ministers are facing pressure from Labour MPs to go further and scrap environmental rules that ‘simply do not work’. The bill discount scheme – which is the equivalent to an annual payment of £250 over 10 years – would apply to new above-ground transmission cables as well as structures such as substations and some significant upgrades of existing pylons. The legislation would also allow the scheme to be extended to other projects, such as new onshore windfarms.” Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph continues to cover the different views within the power sector on zonal pricing. It says: “Billions of pounds of investment in British windfarms are at risk from plans to introduce regional power prices, the owner of Scottish Power has warned. In a letter to the chancellor, Ignacio Galan, chairman of Spanish energy giant Iberdrola, said so-called zonal pricing risked creating uncertainty and pushing up development costs.”

In other UK news, the Times reports that the “government is discussing relaxing mandatory quotas for electric cars after Nissan warned that excessively high targets and punitive fines were a risk to the Japanese company’s manufacturing in Sunderland, Britain’s biggest automotive plant”. The newspaper continues: “Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, told the Times after a meeting with Nissan that a ‘substantial change of policy’ had been agreed and added: ‘We will do everything we can to make sure Nissan has that secure long-term future in the UK, making sure the business and regulatory environment reflects that.’ Reynolds said that the policy change had the support of Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, who has pushed for ambitious regulation to reduce carbon emissions. It will be seen as another defeat for Miliband, however, after indications that the government could support a third runway at Heathrow.” The Daily Telegraph also covers the news.

Separately, the Times reports that the Treasury says it is “fully committed” to the £8.3bn budget for one of “Ed Miliband’s flagship green energy initiatives, GB Energy, after reports the firm was facing cuts”. And the Sun misleadingly runs an article under the headline: “Starmer should scrap net-zero plans and spend money on defence, demand MPs.” Inspection of the article reveals that just one MP – a known climate sceptic – has made this claim. (See Comment below.)

The New York Times covers news analysis showing that a “blistering February heatwave in South Sudan’s capital [that] caused dozens of students to collapse from heat stroke” was made “10 times as likely and 2C hotter” by human-caused climate change. The new study by World Weather Attribution, it adds, “used weather data, observations and climate models to get the results, which have not been peer reviewed, but are based on standardised methods”. Climate Home News also covers the study, adding: “Researchers have found that women and girls in the conflict-torn nation of South Sudan are facing greater health risks and worsened inequality due to the negative impacts of climate change as the country battles record-breaking heat.” (For more on this type of analysis, see Carbon Brief’s “Mapped: How climate change affects extreme weather around the world”.)

Mark Carney has been elected leader of the Liberal party in Canada and, as a result, will replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister, reports the Globe and Mail. The former governor of the banks of England and Canada wins with a “dual mandate”, adds the newspaper: “take on Trump and defeat Pierre Poilievre in the coming general election”. CNN has an article headlined: “Who is Mark Carney, the crisis-handling former central bank governor turned Canada’s next leader?” It says: “After becoming the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance in 2019, he advocated for the financial sector to invest in net-zero emissions. Since then, he has made clean energy, climate policies and economic prosperity for Canada some of the central facets of his campaign, stressing that being low-carbon will help Canada be more competitive. He has proposed shifting the financial burden of the carbon tax from consumers to big corporations and has said that under his leadership, the tax Canadian consumers and small businesses pay on fuel would be replaced with incentives to reduce carbon emissions.” The Financial Times says: “Carney recently resigned as chair of Brookfield Asset Management, which has close to $1tn in assets under management. He has also been chair of the board of Bloomberg and UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance and spent over a decade at Goldman Sachs. He vowed to cut all his corporate ties and put his asset portfolios in a trust if he became prime minister.”

Huang Runqiu, a minister in China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), has said at the annual “two-sessions” political meeting that the MEE has “enhanced efforts to cultivate and develop new quality productive forces, launching a package of policy measures last year to support the development of these forces in the ecological environment”, reports state-run broadcaster CGTN, adding: “The ministry has promoted the development of the carbon market, resulting in a cumulative decrease of 8.78 percentage points in the country’s carbon emission intensity in the coal-fired power generation sector.” China News says that Huang also spoke about progress in tackling air pollution.

Separately, industry news outlet BJX News says the reason why solar, onshore wind power and hydrogen are not specifically mentioned in the “report on the work of the government” at this year’s “two sessions” is that they already “remain as the backbone” of the initiatives outlined in the report. An article by the state-run newspaper China Daily says that “green development and ecological conservation” are the “focus of lawmakers and advisers” at the “two sessions”. (The newspaper also cites Carbon Brief analysis on the contribution to growth from clean energy.)

Meanwhile, China’s imports of coal have increased 2.1% year-on-year, reaching a record high of 76m tons for the January-February period, Reuters reports. Bloomberg says that China’s energy imports “broadly fell” at the beginning of 2025, after a glut created by the “record shipments” of coal and gas last year, as well as the slow demand for oil. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports that China has “diversified” its imports of gas in 2024 to “reduce its risk exposure to any individual market”, which has reduced the “short-term likelihood of launching the controversial Power of Siberia 2 pipeline” to Russia. China’s rare-earth exports dropped 3% year-on-year in the first two months of this year, according to a separate Reuters report

Elsewhere, the Financial Times reports that Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, has criticised Donald Trump as “two-faced” over rising trade tensions between China and the US at a “two-sessions” press conference. Wang also pledged to help Africa make progress in the continent’s “green sectors”, SCMP reports. The New York Times also covers Wang’s speech.

Finally, Reuters publishes a comment article by Gavin Maguire, the newswire’s global energy transition columnist, under the headline: “China’s power grid clean-up puts several US systems to shame.” An editorial in the state-supporting Global Times explains the “new terms and buzzwords” from China’s “two sessions”, adding that the “proposal to establish a ‘group of zero-carbon industrial parks and factories’ signifies China’s commitment to pursuing a comprehensive green transformation”. 

Friedrich Merz’s conservative CDU, its Bavarian sister party CSU and the Social Democrats (SPD) have taken a “major” step toward forming a “black-red” coalition government in Germany, the heads of the parties announced on Saturday, reports Deutsche Welle (DW). In another article, DW says that formal coalition negotiations will begin next week. It also notes that both sides agreed to reduce electricity prices for industry by at least five cents per kilowatt-hour. The outlet adds that the parties say: “The electricity tax for all should be lowered to the European minimum level and transmission network charges should be halved.” Reuters reports that climate activists “fear the worst” with Germany’s conservatives and Social Democrats beginning “to thrash out” a joint climate policy for their future coalition government. The CDU wants to abolish a future ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, reverse a law phasing out fossil-fuel heating, plus reintroduce diesel subsidies in agriculture, notes the outlet. However, it says the CDU remains committed to the overarching 2045 target of climate neutrality. Separately, Der Spiegel reports that an activist from the climate group Last Generation has been convicted for participating in a paint attack on the Brandenburg Gate.

Meanwhile, according to the German weather service (DWD), “the persistent dryness, combined with abundant sunshine, is increasing the risk of wildfires in Germany”, reports Der Spiegel. The article says that February in Germany was “extremely dry”, with precipitation being 45% lower than the average during 1991-2020. In addition, Germany is experiencing a wave of dust coming from the Sahara, ZDF reports. 

Finally, Handelsblatt reports that the “heavily indebted” operating company of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, Russian energy giant Gazprom’s subsidiary, has been granted additional time to repay its debts to “prevent insolvency”. 

Nils Pratley, the Guardian’s financial editor, focuses his latest analysis on the UK’s “bitter lobbying battle over zonal pricing”. He begins: “How would you prefer your electricity prices to be set – nationally or locally? There is little middle ground in the bitter lobbying battle over zonal pricing, the proposal that Great Britain’s electricity market should be split into regions with prices set by local supply and demand. The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, must decide in the next few months, in time for this summer’s auction for new wind and solar projects.” Pratley’s article lays out the arguments for and against zonal pricing – which is seeing rival energy companies Octopus and Scottish Power taking opposing views: “Who will win this scrap? At the moment, the outcome looks to be genuinely up in the air. There is ‘civil war’ among officials at the Department for Energy Security and Net-Zero on the issue, says one insider.” Pratley chooses not to take a view on the best route, but concludes: “If he backs zonal pricing, Miliband should worry about the backlash. The companies may not be bluffing about higher financing costs and reduced risk appetites.”

Elsewhere, the Sunday Times has a news feature headlined: “Scunthorpe is England’s last steel town. Can it survive net-zero? As other countries build blast furnaces, Britain is shutting them to save the planet. The people who depend on them fear the green transition will come too late.” The Times gives space to BP’s chief executive Murray Auchincloss to justify his recent decision to end the oil company’s commitment to reduce its emissions this decade: “Our optimism in 2020 for a fast energy transition was misplaced and we went too far, too fast in our plans. We have now fundamentally reset our strategy. We are reducing and reallocating spending to our highest-returning businesses to drive growth and we are relentlessly pursuing performance improvements and cost efficiency. All in the service of growing long-term value for shareholders.”

Finally, the UK right-leaning newspapers continue to platform climate sceptics. The Sunday Telegraph invites Bjorn Lomborg to write: “Ditch net-zero to fund Europe’s long-term safety.” The Sun columnist Tony Parsons argues: “[Kier Starmer] is playing blinder on the world stage – now he must sack Ed [Miliband] and fix the UK’s problems.” And an editorial in the Sun is headlined: “What better way to fund a massive ramping up of Britain’s defences than to axe vastly expensive net-zero spending?”

Rooftop photovoltaics could reduce global warming by 0.05-0.13C before 2050, according to a new study. The authors use “geospatial data mining and artificial intelligence techniques” to map more than 280,000 square kilometres of rooftops worldwide. They use nine Earth system models from the sixth coupled model intercomparison project to assess the global potential of rooftop photovoltaics to limit warming. “Region-specific analysis” highlights the need to consider “local solar resources, existing infrastructure and grid carbon intensity”, the paper says.

A survey of smallholder farmers in Madagascar finds that nearly all participants reported perceiving increases in temperature and decreases in rainfall over the previous five years. The study authors surveyed 479 smallholder farmers from two villages in rural northeast Madagascar. They find that most farmers reported that they expect to have less food to feed their families in the future due to changes in rainfall and temperature. However, only 21% of participants reported changing their farming practices to adapt to climate change. According to the paper, “farmers who had greater market-based wealth had higher odds of adopting new farming methods”.