The US could face one of its worst hurricane seasons in two decades, according to widely reported remarks by government scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), quoted in the Washington Post. The agency has issued its “most aggressive outlook ever”, predicting 17-25 tropical storms, of which eight to 13 are likely to become hurricanes, including between four and seven “major” hurricanes, the newspaper explains. Storm activity could “outpace” even the record storm season of 2005, which saw, among others, Hurricane Katrina strike the US, the article adds. With tropical Atlantic waters now “dramatically” hotter than they were 19 years ago, this year’s storm season may start earlier and persist even longer, it explains. According to NBC News, this marks the most severe hurricane season forecast NOAA has ever released in May. The New York Times explains that forecasters see “combined circumstances that have never occurred in records dating to the mid-1800s”, which could make the storms worse. Specifically, it points to record warm water temperatures in the Atlantic and the potential formation of the La Niña weather pattern. The newspaper adds that the forecasts from NOAA are the latest in a series of projections from universities, private companies and other government agencies, which foresee high numbers of large storms this year. According to BBC News, while “there’s no evidence climate change is producing more hurricanes, it is making the most powerful ones more likely,and bringing heavier rainfall”. The Guardian predicts a “summer of natural disasters” in the US. It notes that “increasingly higher sea levels and severe hurricane seasons have battered coastal communities, leading to great loss of life and property”.

Elsewhere, Associated Press reports on the latest analysis by the World Weather Attribution research group, which concludes that the impact of rains that struck east Africa from March to May this year was “intensified by a mix of climate change and rapid growth of urban areas”. The rains, which in turn caused floods that killed hundreds and displaced thousands, were made twice as likely and 5% more intense by climate change, according to the article.

As the UK gears up for a July general election, news outlets are covering the back and forth between the two major parties over energy and climate issues. The Conservatives and Labour have “clashed on energy policy” and particularly on the “prospect of cheaper household bills”, according to the Press Association. Labour leader Keir Starmer has used a trip to Scotland to highlight his plan for Great British Energy, a new publicly-owned energy company, that he says will help to increase energy security and cut people’s bills, it explains. Meanwhile, Conservative energy security and net-zero secretary Claire Coutinho said Labour’s plans for a net-zero electricity supply by 2030 would increase costs for people in the UK. The article explains that all of this comes as the energy regulator, Ofgem, is set to establish the latest level for the “energy price cap” on average bills, which determines how much people have to pay for their gas and electricity bills. The expected drop will reduce the typical household’s energy bill from the current £1,690 a year to £1,574, according to energy consultants Cornwall Insight, cited in the article. However, it adds that Labour pointed out this would still be £400 more than in 2021, when the war in Ukraine sent costs spiralling. Nevertheless, the drop in bills was characterised as a “boost” for Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak in the Daily Mail. It says Coutinho is unveiling a “string of initiatives to keep bills down”, including a “promise to retain the energy price cap for at least the lifetime of the next parliament”. However, the commitment from Coutinho that the newspaper emphasises the most, including in its frontpage headline, is a pledge that “controversial green levies on energy will be kept below their current level for the next five years”. [As Carbon Brief analysis from 2022 demonstrated, green levies – which subsidise older renewable projects – are a relatively small proportion of people’s bills and were not responsible for the increase in bills in recent years.] 

In a set of energy-related plans released by the Conservatives, they also said they would make it easier for energy customers to switch to cheaper services, and work with Ofgem to produce “a league table on suppliers’ customer complaints, wait times and responses”, according to the Daily Express. The newspaper quotes a Labour source who says: “This is not a plan – this is a call for evidence, a set of options, two consultations, a copy and paste job from an old letter, and lots of wishful thinking. The Tories grand idea after 14 years in power is to ask the public if their energy bills are too high.” The Daily Telegraph says Coutinho will push the government’s plans – which also include considering a new “code of practice” for smart meters and pushing Ofgem to keep standing charges on bills low – in a round of broadcast interviews on Friday morning. Amid all of this, the Press Association reports that Jonathan Brearley, Ofgem’s chief executive, has told MPs on the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee that energy prices “are still significantly higher than they were before” and will remain “high and volatile” for the foreseeable future.

The Times also features these issues on its frontpage, noting that Starmer and Sunak are trying to make energy costs and net-zero policies an “electoral dividing line”. It explains that Sunak is accusing Labour of “failing to be honest about the ‘significant costs’ that its environmental pledges will impose on households”.[See below for comment pieces by both Sunak and Coutinho making these arguments explicitly in national newspapers.] The Daily Record in Scotland has positive coverage of Starmer’s proposals, with a frontpage story under the headline “I’ll cut Scots’ bills”, alongside a picture of the Labour leader. It explains that Labour says Great British Energy will invest in wind and solar projects around the UK and “make Britain a world-leader in cutting edge technologies such as floating offshore wind”.

In the UK, the National Grid – which oversees the nation’s power grid – plans to raise £7bn in order to double spending on the electricity network over the next five years, according to the i newspaper. It says the money will go towards building new pylons and other transmission systems as part of its plan to “rewire the nation” and accelerate the process of decarbonisation, by ensuring that low-carbon energy sources such as offshore wind can be built. According to the Daily Mail, the company will spend more than £30bn on this “overhaul” of the network in the UK. The newspaper explains that National Grid will raise £7bn from shareholders to help fund the plan and the public will also contribute because a portion of household energy bills goes to the company. It adds that an extra £30bn will be “pumped into the US”, where the National Grid also owns infrastructure. According to the Guardian, this spending “will draw fresh focus on Labour and the Conservatives’ energy transition plans”. Labour is aiming for a net-zero electricity system by 2030, while the Conservatives are aiming for the same by 2035, and the newspaper quotes John Pettigrew, National Grid’s chief executive, saying that both plans were “ambitious” – but adding that the company was in dialogue with both parties. The Daily Telegraph focuses its coverage on plans to install “thousands of high-voltage electricity pylons” across the country. The story is also covered by the Financial Times, City AM and the Times.

There is some commentary in the UK press on National Grid’s plans, with the Guardian’s economics editor Nils Pratley stating how easy it is for the company to raise money “because it has its balance sheet in order and plans to invest”. However, the Lex column in the Financial Times examines the National Grid’s plans from an investors’ perspective, noting that “funding the green transition is a laudable ambition but it will not light up returns”.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that the developer of the UK’s Sizewell C nuclear power plant is “pushing ahead to complete financing for the project this year even as a looming election risks complicating the timeline”.

State news agency Xinhua reports that, according to the latest data from China’s National Energy Administration (NEA), China’s total installed power generation capacity reached more than 3000 gigawatts at the end of April, showing a 14.1% increase from a year earlier. 

Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) is asking the country’s top automakers to source 20-25% of their chips made in China by 2025 as the country aims to “build a semiconductor supply chain amid escalating tensions with the US”. Reuters says the European automakers “won’t have much time to restructure their operations and product lines” to compete with Chinese automakers. Japanese economic news outlet Nikkei Asia says that “Tesla has asked suppliers to start making components and parts outside of both China and Taiwan by next year at the earliest to mitigate rising geopolitical risks”. 

Elsewhere, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports that the China Photovoltaic Industry Association has “called for more mergers, acquisitions and curbs on domestic competition to control capacity, as western countries resist Chinese exports in the name of industrial overcapacity”. State-run newspaper China Daily reports that solar products made by Chinese companies’ “overseas units or joint ventures” in south-east Asia have become the new “target” of US investigation. The SCMP quotes Samaila Zubairu, head of the Africa Finance Corporation, saying that China should “look at Africa as a way of diversifying the supply chain because Africa has minerals and metals to support this”.

In other news, Reuters reports that US treasury secretary Janet Yellen said yesterday that “market-driven countries” need to “stand together” to let China understand that they “face a wall of opposition” over its “state-driven” industrial policies. Bloomberg also covers Yellen’s remarks ahead of a G7 finance meeting, saying that China’s overcapacity is not just “a bilateral issue between the US and China”, but a threat to the “viability of firms around the world, including in emerging markets”. Reuters reports that “solar will dominate US power installations in the next few years and the exemption on import tariffs for bifacial panels aimed to encourage solar deployment while domestic manufacturing catches up”. China Daily quotes Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, saying that “China’s capacity in the new energy industry is an advanced capacity urgently needed by the green transition of the world economy”.

Mexico could see “unprecedented” temperatures over the next two weeks, according to researchers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), quoted in Reuters. The warning comes during a period of extreme heat, partly driven by the El Niño weather phenomenon, with 70% of the country already experiencing drought and one-third facing severe drought, the article adds. It notes that heat records have already been broken across the country, but in the next fortnight the capital Mexico City – where most people do not have air conditioning due to a relatively temperate climate – is expected to reach 35C. The Associated Press says extreme heat across Mexico, Central America and parts of the southern US “has left millions of people in sweltering temperatures” due to an area of strong high pressure – a “heat dome” – over the southern Gulf of Mexico. “This extreme heat is occurring in a world that is quickly warming due to greenhouse gases, which come from the burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal,” it says.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, Associated Press reports that temperatures have reached as high as 49C in Mohenjo Daro, in southern Sindh province. The article says doctors across the country have treated hundreds of victims of heatstroke amid the “intense heatwave”, which sent temperatures “above normal levels due to climate change”. In Thailand, corals along the country’s east coast have been bleaching as sea surface temperatures reach record highs of 32.7C, according to the Independent.

Democrats in the US Senate have launched a probe into claims that former US president Donald Trump proposed a deal with oil companies in which he would cut environmental policies in exchange for $1bn to fund his election campaign, the Financial Times reports. It says: “In letters sent to the heads of companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum on Thursday, senators called on executives to hand over materials from an April meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort detailing any promises he made to them and contributions made by them to his campaign.” According to Politico, Democrats have “upped the political ante” against the fossil-fuel sector, “just as oil company executives have started opening their wallets to back Trump’s campaign against president Joe Biden”. This appears to reference a trip by the Republican presidential candidate to Texas this week, which saw him raise tens of millions of dollars as he promised to support new oil-and-gas pipelines as well as fracking in the state, Reuters reports.

Separately, the Financial Times has a data-driven piece titled, “How red Texas became a model for green energy” – demonstrating how, despite its politics, renewable energy has seen enormous success across the state.

Five climate activists – who are members of Letzte Generation, “Germany’s equivalent to Just Stop Oil”, a radical anti-fossil fuel organisation – have been charged with “forming a criminal organisation” under section 129 of the German criminal code, reports the Guardian. Prosecutors in Brandenburg have filed charges related to more than a dozen incidents occurring between April 2022 and May 2023, including “attacks” on oil refineries, the blockade of the airport’s runway and throwing mashed potatoes at an oil painting by Monet, says the newspaper. However, the activists say all their protests were “open, accountable and non-violent” and contested the use of such “a draconian law” against them, notes the article.

Meanwhile, the construction of the “first-ever” 700km power cable linking the electricity networks of Germany and the UK has commenced in the German city of Wilhelmshaven, reports Die Zeit. The cable, which runs through the North Sea, is expected to be operational by 2028, details the outlet. It quotes German vice chancellor Rober Habeck, who participated in the inaugural ceremony, as saying: “The more interconnected Europe is, the larger the network, the more efficiently the system can be operated and controlled, and the great goal of decarbonisation, a carbon-neutral power supply, can be achieved.” 

Finally, T-Online reports that Habeck, also the economy and climate minister, wants to decarbonise German steel and cement industries. Habeck’s ministry has laid out in a concept paper how policy can promote the adoption of climate-neutral products despite higher costs, emphasising the need for rapid demand growth for these products, notes the outlet. In addition, Bloomberg reports that “Germany will lobby for tougher climate regulations in the European Union to quickly cut emissions in fossil-fuel heavy industries”. 

UK newspapers are full of commentary from senior politicians as the nation enters a period of campaigning ahead of the general election. Energy security and net-zero secretary Claire Coutinho has an article in the Daily Mail trumpeting the fact that the UK’s energy price cap is set to fall “60% since its peak”. She says that this means “the average family’s energy bill will be £500 less this year than last”. [Speaking on Sky News this morning, the broadcaster’s political correspondent Rob Powell said: “It might be a bit funny for the Tories to claim the energy price cap coming down is due to their plan, in reality it is down to dropping wholesale energy and gas prices.”] Coutinho says her party will “always” prioritise people’s bills when making decisions about energy, and suggests that the opposition Labour party’s plans to tackle climate change go against this. She writes that her government has “giv[en] people extra time to make changes to their cars or boilers”. [This is seemingly a reference to the decision to delay key targets from the net-zero strategy last year, including a phaseout of fossil fuel cars and gas boilers.] Coutinho, who is the most senior climate politician in the country, writes that the alternative to voting for the Conservatives is “handing Labour and [shadow net-zero secretary] Ed Miliband control of your energy bill – along with his plans to pursue dangerous and expensive eco-targets that no other country is aiming for”. Responding to Coutinho’s claims on Twitter, shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband writes: “Only Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives could look at energy bills still being hundreds of pounds a year higher than before the crisis and call it good news. Only Labour has a plan to bring down energy bills for good and boost energy security by setting up Great British Energy.”

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak pens a piece for the Daily Telegraph titled, “Labour would make Britain less secure in every way”. He highlights the energy security threat to the UK that was brought to the fore by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and repeats many of the same talking points as Coutinho. “There are big issues at stake in this election…Do we prioritise energy security and your family’s finances in our approach to net-zero or put environmental dogma first as Sir Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband would,” he asks. In the Daily Express, Richard Tice – the climate-sceptic leader of the right-wing populist party Reform UK – has a piece in which he takes aim at both of the major parties. He says: “Where the Tories and Labour will squeeze you until the pips squeak with green energy levies and tax hikes, Reform will scrap these punitive measures and increase UK energy production to cut your bills.” [Levies only make up around a 10th of household energy bills.]

Meanwhile, Andrew Marr – veteran political broadcaster and political editor of the New Statesman has an article on the “vision” Labour leader Keir Starmer should offer the UK – highlighting climate change as a key part of this narrative. “Somehow, between the oppositionist antics of Just Stop Oil and the big-oil-funded naysaying of much of the mainstream media, the case for action on global warming is trickling away,” he writes, suggesting that a major summer heatwave might “make the case for a big Starmer intervention on the subject before long”. He adds that “Labour should make a more vociferous case for its own plans” for addressing climate change. Separately, a blog post by Shaun Spiers, executive director of the thinktank Green Alliance, declares “we should not be shy about making the environmental case” at this election.

Climate-sceptic journalist Ross Clark writes in the Daily Express that while he voted twice for former Labour prime minister Tony Blair, he does not plan to vote for Starmer. He repeats Conservative lines about how Starmer’s plans would be too expensive. “Labour seems to think we can get by mainly on intermittent wind and solar energy – and without the gas power stations currently keeping the lights on,” he writes. [Clark also has another one of his regular articles attacking electric cars in the Spectator.] The Wall Street Journal has an editorial on the approaching UK election, in which it says the Conservatives have “pandered to the green left on climate policy in a way that punished Britons with higher energy costs”. [High energy costs in the UK were driven by high gas prices.]

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal attacks the “environmental justice” grants that are being distributed by the US Environmental Protection Agency, as part of the government’s flagship Inflation Reduction Act. It notes that this funding includes $600m for a “national grantmaker” programme and places particular emphasis on $50m that has gone to the Climate Justice Alliance, a network that plans to use the money to fund community-based organisations and help them “to address past, current, and future environmental health and justice challenges”. The newspaper, which generally expresses climate-sceptic viewpoints, characterises the group as “radicals”, reserving particular criticism for its stance on Palestine. It says: “In other words, banishing fossil fuels won’t be enough to arrest rising temperatures and sea levels. Israel, the military, the police, immigration enforcement, prisons, and capitalism all will have to go, too. The EPA is funding radicals whose aim is to sow division and dismantle US institutions.”

New research shows that changes to international shipping could reduce the sector’s emissions by up to 86% by mid-century. Researchers use integrated assessment models to determine the emissions-reduction potential of several different interventions and fuel substitutions. They find that switching to a range of low-carbon fuels – such as “green” ammonia, biofuels and renewable alcohols – has the highest reduction potential, with the ability to align the shipping industry with the 2018 emissions-reduction goal set by the International Maritime Organization. They add that it is “essential to start investing in low-carbon fuels, new motorisations and infrastructure (storage and bunkering) as soon as possible”.

Groundwater depletion will “substantially” decrease streamflow in parts of the Colorado River under future climate change, according to a new study. Using historical streamflow data and subsurface hydrological modelling, researchers determine that groundwater is historically an “important and stable source” of water to the river. However, increased water usage in forests in a warmer climate will reduce the amount of groundwater “recharge” that makes it into the subsurface aquifers, especially during dry years. The researchers conclude: “Our research highlights the tight coupling of vegetation and groundwater dynamics and that excluding explicit groundwater response to warming may underestimate future reductions in mountain streamflow.”