Volvo has “abandoned” its target to sell only electric cars by 2030, amid a “downturn in demand” for battery-powered vehicles, reports the Financial Times in a story featured on its frontpage. The Geely-owned Swedish group was one of the first traditional carmakers to pledge to switch to electric, the article notes, and remains one of the “most bullish about the transition, even as rivals including Ford and General Motors have also walked back on their EV targets”. Volvo now expects at least 90% of its output to be made up of electric and plug-in hybrids by the end of the decade, reports BBC News. It may also sell a small number of “mild” hybrids, which are more conventional vehicles with limited electrical assistance, the article explains. Growing demand for hybrid cars is part of the reason for the strategic shift at Volvo and across the sector, reports Reuters. It quotes Volvo CEO Jim Rowan, who says:  “We are resolute in our belief that our future is electric. However, it is clear that the transition to electrification will not be linear, and customers and markets are moving at different speeds.” European carmakers are under pressure as they switch away from petrol and diesel cars due to inconsistent demand and increasing competition from China, reports the Guardian. It adds that, along with Volvo’s change to targets, Volkswagen has announced plans to shut two factories in Germany.

New renewable energy projects contracted at the UK government’s latest auction, the results of which were announced on Tuesday, “are cheaper than gas power stations and will protect consumers from volatile gas prices”, the Times reports, citing a number of energy analysts and industry groups. It says the auction will result in “nine large new offshore windfarms being built between 2027 and 2029”. [Carbon Brief’s analysis of the auction results also quotes an analyst saying “deploying this capacity ultimately lowers costs to consumers by increasing the availability of cheap, low-carbon power”.] Meanwhile, a Financial Times feature covers the end of coal-fired power in the UK, with the last site set to close by the end of September. The closure of the Ratcliffe-on-Soar plant will mark the end of 140 years of coal-fired power in the country, it notes.

Separately, in an article which extensively quotes John Constable, the “energy editor” of a climate-sceptic lobby group known as the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the Daily Telegraph says prime minister Keir Starmer has “vowed to crack down on profiteering windfarms”. The newspaper says: “The prime minister said it was ‘not acceptable’ that Scotland-based SSE had received over £2m in compensation for being forced to switch off its Viking windfarm and promised to address the practice. Speaking to MPs at prime minister’s questions, Starmer said: ‘It is a problem that was not fixed over the past 14 years, but a problem we are determined to fix.’” A separate story in the Daily Telegraph covers energy secretary Ed Miliband being urged to cut household energy bills by £200 by capping “pylon levy” charges. It says the founder of Ecotricity, Dale Vince, has called for a review of the profits made by power distribution networks, which, in contrast to the heavily regulated supplier market, have profit margins that can be as high as 42%. Vince argues that “trimming” these profits could cut £6bn from standing charges, the article adds. 

Elsewhere, this year’s Labour Party conference will include events sponsored by fossil-fuel lobbyists and major polluters, an article in DeSmog says. While the full agenda for the event in September is not yet available, the New Statesman magazine has published a list of firms sponsoring panel events, which includes “controversial energy company Drax, the fossil-fuel lobby group Offshore Energies UK, and the gas company Cadent”, the article states. 

“Searing temperatures are roasting the US west” again, as a “brutal heatwave” could bring some of the hottest weather this year, reports the Guardian. Excessive heat warnings are in effect in parts of southern California, Arizona and Nevada, with weather predicted to peak on Wednesday, but lasting into the weekend, the newspaper continues. According to a forecast from the US National Weather Service (NWS), temperatures in Los Angeles could approach 100F (37.7C), while locations further inland could hit 110F (43.3C) or higher, the article notes. The NWS has warned that “dangerously hot conditions with peak temperatures of 95F to 110F possible, hottest Thursday and Friday. Warm overnight low temperatures will bring little relief from the heat,” the Guardian adds. Phoenix, Arizona, hit its 100th straight day of 100F temperature on Tuesday, reports the Associated Press. Temperatures are now predicted to reach the 110Fs from Wednesday through to Friday, as the city’s hottest year on record continues, it adds. This streak breaks that set in 1993, when there were 76 consecutive 100F days, reports the Guardian. It quotes Shel Winkley, a meteorologist at the non-profit Climate Central, who says: “Summers in Phoenix are becoming increasingly hotter, with more intense and prolonged heat. On average, Phoenix now experiences about 60 days [or] 65% of the summer with extreme heat.” In Ohio, the US Department of Agriculture has designated 22 counties as “natural disaster areas” due to the prolonged drought in the state, reports the Associated Press. This will allow farmers in the 22 counties and 18 neighbouring counties to apply for emergency loans from the federal government, it adds. 

Pope Francis and Nasaruddin Umarhave, the grand imam of Southeast Asia’s largest mosque, have vowed to protect the environment and issued a call for “interfaith friendship and common cause”, reports the Associated Press. The pontiff travelled to Jakarta’s Istiqlal Mosque for an interreligious gathering where he launched the Istiqlal Declaration, a “pillar of his interfaith push”, it adds. The document calls for “decisive action” to protect the environment and its resources, and “blames human-made actions for the climate crisis”, the article adds. The document reads: “The human exploitation of creation, our common home, has contributed to climate change, leading to various destructive consequences such as natural disasters, global warming and unpredictable weather patterns. This ongoing environmental crisis has become an obstacle to the harmonious coexistence of peoples.” Pope Francis, who pushed for the 2015 Paris climate pact via an encyclical (see Carbon Brief’s explainer), has made tackling climate change a key focus of his pontificate, reports Reuters. Jakarta is vulnerable to climate change due to chronic flooding and sinking land, the newswire adds, with the Indonesian government currently building a new capital, Nusantara, on the island of Borneo.

Chinese president Xi Jinping has “stressed the necessity to promote integrated development between infrastructure, energy, mining and industries” in talks with Nigeria, the state-run newspaper China Daily reports. It adds that Xi also pledged to “expand mutually beneficial cooperation in areas such…energy and minerals [and] clean energy” with Zimbabwe. An editorial in the Global Times, a state-supporting newspaper, says that China-Africa green cooperation is “thriving” because “China and Africa have…have the inherent momentum to expand new productive forces in key areas such as new energy”. A China Daily editorial says that, “for most African countries, China is a valued partner providing trade opportunities, investments…[and] support for their development efforts beyond the traditional ex-colonial powers, whose assistance is often conditional and exploitative”. South Africa’s  Mail & Guardian carries an article by Lauren Johnston, associate professor at the University of Sydney, who says “China is expected to advance its Africa Solar Belt programme” at the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which is taking place in Beijing this week. Meanwhile, China’s investment in Brazil grew by 33% in 2023, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports, adding that “most of the financing went to the electricity sector…such as wind, solar and hydropower”. Reuters reports that Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD has refuted reports that it had “postponed” plans to build a factory in Mexico.

Elsewhere, a commentary by Hudson Lockett in Reuters’ BreakingViews says that, although “consolidation in China’s badly oversupplied solar sector” is urgently needed, it is not a given that “China’s biggest solar groups are keen to snap up the sector’s struggling small fry”. An comment piece by Kamala Thiagarajan in SCMP says the “US and China might not see eye to eye on much these days, but extracting shale gas and oil is something they have both agreed on”. Business news outlet Yicai says the mass production of solid-state batteries still has a long way to go, despite “major progress”.

Finally, Bloomberg reports that “the risks [to China] from the extreme heat aren’t over yet”. State news agency Xinhua reports that China has “raised its emergency response for flood and typhoon prevention” in Hainan province ahead of Typhoon Yagi making landfall, which the Independent describes as the region’s “strongest storm in nearly a decade”. China “has activated a total of 21 disaster-relief responses” this year, according to the Ministry of Emergency Management (MEM), another Xinhua report says, also quoting the ministry saying China has “earmarked about 3.13bn yuan ($440m) of central disaster-relief funds”. Science news outlet Live Science reports that a group of Chinese scientists have found that climate change “is burying huge amounts of silver beneath the South China Sea”.

Brazil’s Folha de São Paulo reports that the government has reduced the number of civil-society credentials within its official delegation being sent to COP29 in Azerbaijan later this year. The UN requested the reduction after Brazil sent “the largest” delegation to COP28 in Dubai with 2,400 participants, which was made up of 1,800 from civil society organisations. Brazil will now give accreditation to 1,000 civil society organisations for COP29, the outlet notes. (See Carbon Brief’s “Analysis: Which countries have sent the most delegates to COP28?”)

Meanwhile, delegates from 26 Latin American and Caribbean countries have gathered in Bogotá to discuss “challenges and opportunities” for addressing their climate targets by 2030, Colombia’s El Espectador reports, adding that the forum seeks “to strengthen” such targets with “more diverse, integral and equal approaches” ahead of the UN’s deadline for new climate commitments in February 2025. 

In other news from Latin America, an El Espectador post written by representatives of the Nature Conservancy and WWF Colombia says that Indigenous leaders, researchers, campaigners and government representatives in the nation have concluded that drought and water scarcity are “some of the climate impacts” affecting the Amazon. Journalist Mônica Bergamo writes in a column for Folha de São Paulo that a movement of more than 20,000 campaigners is planning to hand in a letter to Brazil’s government to urge it to increase climate ambition, highlighting forest protection. At a conference in Chile, more than 1,500 scientists have warned of a “potential tipping point in the Antarctic due to climate change”, adding that “intense rainfall, heatwaves and strong dry winds” are being experienced at research stations, BioBioChile reports. Finally, a UN report covered by Argentina’s La Nación says that sea-level rise – it cites 20cm between 1901 and 2018 – is threatening vulnerable regions such as the Buenos Aires Atlantic coast and the Paraná delta.

Despite calls to tackle the “twin challenges” of climate change and “Chinese geopolitical influence” with a “green Marshall Plan”, the US’s “lagging technology and protectionist trade policy” means the nation lacks some of the key capabilities to reach this ambition, argues senior trade writer Alan Beattie in the Financial Times. The US is a “late starter” in developing “green” technologies, he writes, with its technology “more expensive and often inferior to China’s”. The lack of political consensus in the US is also a challenge, and any benefits from a “green Marshall plan” could be “snatched away if Donald Trump is elected president”, he says. “The struggle for influence against Beijing now will be more complicated than it was against Moscow back then,” concludes Beattie. 

Meanwhile, a comment piece on the Spectator’s frontpage by the climate-sceptic commentator Ross Clark looks at the UK Labour party’s plans for decarbonising the electricity grid by 2030, following energy secretary Ed Miliband writing to the head of the electricity system operator for “practical advice”. Clark claims that, instead of an “honest conversation” about the price of wind (one of the cheapest sources of electricity in the UK), Miliband is instead doing his “best to cover up his lack of a realistic agenda”. Elsewhere, an editorial in the Daily Telegraph about the inquiry into the fire at Grenfell Tower that killed 72 people argues that the cladding refurbishment of the building was due to “new eco-friendly insulation regulations”. It claims that “safety cannot take second place to the pursuit of green emissions targets”. (A factcheck published by Carbon Brief at the time of the fire in 2017 found that “green targets” were not the primary driver of the refurbishment.) Also in the Daily Telegraph, Allister Heath, the climate-sceptic editor of its Sunday sister edition, rages once more at how, in his words, “Ed Miliband is driving up energy prices, rushing through decarbonisation before technologies are ready, hurting the poor and middle classes for the sake of reductions in emissions that will barely make a dent to the global picture”.

A collapse of Atlantic ocean currents could impact rainfall in tropical monsoon systems in various parts of the world, according to new research. To assess the possible impact that a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) – a system of ocean currents in the Atlantic – would have on monsoon rainfall, the researchers applied “hosing scenarios” to four climate models. (In these scenarios, freshwater is added to part of the north Atlantic for a long time period, “forcing the AMOC to weaken and potentially collapse”, the study says.) The models show “substantial disruptions” to monsoons in the event of an AMOC collapse, with annual rainfall dropping by up to 30% in the West African monsoon, according to the study. In the southern Amazon, on the other hand, rainfall could increase by more than 40%, the researchers find. The likelihood of an AMOC collapse is uncertain, but it  “would have catastrophic ecological and societal consequences”, the study adds.