Exceptionally warm waters could cause Hurricane Idalia to intensify rapidly before it makes landfall in Florida, NBC News reports. Models of the hurricane’s track show it moving over the eastern Gulf of Mexico before becoming a major Category 3 storm and making landfall on the west coast of Florida, the article states. “Warmer-than-usual water is a key ingredient in the formation and development of storms. In recent weeks, sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico have climbed to record levels,” it continues. Dr Brian Dzwonkowski, a marine scientist at the University of South Alabama, tells the New York Times: “Holy cow has it been hot down here…What does that translate to? Really hot water. And that’s not a good combination for hurricane season.” The article notes that, in July, a buoy off the Florida coast reported a “hot-tub-like reading” of more than 38C (101.1F), “a possible world record for sea surface temperatures”. The Washington Post says the “dreaded rapid intensification” of Idalia is “becoming the norm for Gulf storms”, emphasising the role that climate change is playing. It notes that in the Atlantic basin, which includes the Gulf of Mexico, “16 of the 20 hurricanes that formed during 2021 and 2022 rapidly intensified”. CNN says if the storm does rapidly intensify, it would join a “growing list” of such storms, such as last year’s Hurricane Ian, which “levelled coastal Florida and left more than 100 dead”. According to Politico, Idalia is set to pass parts of Florida that still bear the damage from Ian, “bringing a potential new influx of coastal flooding and tropical storm-force winds to hundreds of thousands of people living in unrepaired homes”. Greenpeace USA oceans director John Hocevar has a piece in Newsweek titled: “Storms like Hurricane Idalia thrive on global warming.”

Inside Climate News says officials have issued evacuation orders in at least 10 Florida counties, with 46 counties now under an emergency declaration. It notes that amid the “dizzying pace of major extreme weather events” this summer, the US federal disaster relief fund will soon run out of money unless Congress agrees on how to replenish it. The Miami Herald has an article warning about the threat of flooding from “king tides” as the storm passes. The Hill reports that US president Joe Biden has stated his administration has been in “constant contact” with Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis as the state braces for Idalia to make landfall.

China is “approving new coal power projects at the equivalent of two plants per week”, a pace that is deemed “unsustainable if the country aims to meet its energy targets”, reports the Guardian, citing a report by Global Energy Monitor (GEM) and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. It says that from January to June 2023, the Chinese government “approved 52 gigawatts (GW) [of new coal power], starting construction on 37GW”. The report highlights that the provinces adding a “large amount” of new coal-fired power are primarily deriving the “majority” of their increased power generation from coal, which “contradicts the framing of coal power as a supporting source for clean energy”. Reuters columnist Clyde Russell writes that China’s thermal coal imports are “expected to have ticked higher in August”, as seaborne prices for thermal coal remain “competitive” in the face of constrained domestic supplies.

Meanwhile, data from the Global Wind Energy Council suggests that Europe – which accounts for about 47% of total global offshore wind capacity in 2022 – has “lost its top position” in the global offshore wind market to the Asia-Pacific region (53%) led by China (31%), reports the Financial Times. The Chinese energy website Bjx.com reports that China has released its “China new energy generation analysis 2023”, which says that the cumulative installed capacity of new energy nationwide has exceeded 700GW. It adds that the utilisation rate of new energy has “consistently exceeded 95% for five consecutive years since 2018, comparable to that of developed countries like Germany”.

Separately, the South China Morning Post reports that the US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo has met with Chinese premier Li Qiang, “calling for collaboration with China on AI, climate change and the fentanyl crisis”. Reuters writes that Raimondo said that the US companies have “complained” that China has become “uninvestable”. Barron’s, a US weekly magazine by Dow Jones & Company, writes that the US’s move to restrict tech investments in China, could potentially hinder climate mitigation. Canada’s minister of environment and climate change Steven Guilbeault is also visiting Beijing. A comment by Chinese state broadcaster CGTN says “Ottawa should take a more objective and long-term approach in dealing with its relations with China”.

In other news, the Chinese ministry of ecology and environment announced the emission quota at the national carbon market for 2021 and 2022 has been “largely completed” [been sold], reports the Chinese outlet Jiemian. The Communist party-backed newspaper People’s Daily reports that the 2023 China-ASEAN Environmental Cooperation Forum will be held in southern China’s Nanning, Guangxi, on 15-16 September. The National, a private English-language daily newspaper published in UAE, writes that oil prices remained stable on Tuesday “amid fuel demand concerns in China and easing supply”.

Finally, the South China Morning Post has published a comment piece by Edwin Lau, founder and executive director of The Green Earth, calling on Hong Kong’s chief executive to “set decarbonisation targets for carbon-intensive businesses by applying technology- and nature-based solutions”. He highlights that as China prioritises economic growth, it continues building coal-fired plants to bolster growth and provide “backup” for its renewables.

New analysis by the thinktank Ember suggests that fossil fuels produced just 33% of the EU’s power in the first half of the year, Reuters reports. It adds that the “main reason” was falling electricity demand, which meant rising renewables could meet a larger proportion of demand. Emergency policy measures designed to bring an end to Russian energy exports and the continued roll out of renewables projects also contributed to pushing out coal and gas power, BusinessGreen notes. Fossil-fuel generation in the first half of 2023 fell more than 20% in 11 EU countries and more than 30% in five of them, according to the Guardian. Greece and Romania got more than 50% of their power from renewables for the first time and Denmark and Portugal broke 75%, it adds.

At the same time, the Financial Times reports that the EU is “set to import record volumes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia this year, despite aiming for the bloc to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels by 2027”. It notes that, for the first seven months of the year, data analysed by NGO Global Witness shows that Belgium and Spain were the second and third-biggest buyers of Russian LNG after China. It adds that the “jump comes from a low base as the EU did not import significant amounts of LNG before the war in Ukraine due to its reliance on piped gas from Russia”.

Meanwhile, Politico has a piece about the EU’s new interim Green Deal chief, Slovakian commissioner Maroš Šefčovič, who has told the outlet he has no plans to “dilute our ambition” on climate change, but also suggested he does not intend to push for more stringent targets. It notes that this comes amid “growing political backlash” over climate policies from conservative lawmakers within the EU. EurActiv says the European Commission has officially put forward deputy Dutch prime minister Wopke Hoekstra to head the EU’s climate action. It notes that, if approved by the European Parliament, Hoekstra will work under the guidance of Šefčovič. The Financial Times says parliament’s socialists “are angry they lost the climate portfolio to the centre-right”, referencing the left-wing Frans Timmermans, who Hoekstra could replace. Edie notes that Hoekstra has been “slammed” for being a former employee of oil giant Shell.

A wildfire in Greece is the largest ever recorded in the EU and the bloc is mobilising nearly half its firefighting air wing to tackle it, according to a European Commission spokesman quoted by Agence France-Presse. Since it began on 19 August, the fire in the Alexandroupolis and Evros regions has killed 20 people, 18 of them migrants whose bodies were found in an area that is often used as an entry point from neighbouring Turkey, the article notes. Euronews says the fire has scorched more than 81,000 hectares of land, according to the EUs Copernicus Emergency Management Service. The New York Times reports that hundreds of firefighters and dozens of aircraft have been deployed to stop the blaze, with one-fifth coming from an emergency EU force. “It was a preview of Europe’s future, where, increasingly, major natural disasters linked to the climate crisis, like Greece’s wildfires, will be handled with the help of standing forces funded by the EU, ready to deploy where needed,” the article states. The Times says “environmentalists have long accused Greece of spending more funds on extinguishing fires than on prevention”.

A Politico article reflects on what it describes as a “summer of civil war” in the UK’s main political parties “over all things green”. With the parliamentary summer recess drawing to a close, both the Conservatives and Labour “now face internal pressure to scale back environmental commitments which could hit household budgets during an ongoing cost-of-living squeeze, as they enter what will effectively be an extended general election campaign”, the article says. It includes a “guide to some of the key players and flashpoints that will be causing a headache for the prime minister and his team” as a major energy bill enters its final stages of debate in the House of Commons. The article points to the recent backlash against the expansion of London’s ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) as a catalyst for these discussions. Meanwhile, a frontpage in the Daily Telegraph focuses on transport secretary Mark Harper’s call for London mayor Sadiq Khan to “give drivers a grace period before issuing Ulez fines”. This Ulez expansion is facing what the Times describes as a “turbulent start” to the scheme, with protests and, according to the Daily Telegraph, 14 Ulez-enforcement cameras in south-east London smashed by protesters.

A group of leading asset managers and banks has written to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak “urging him not to U-turn on the government’s commitments” to net-zero, according to the i newspaper. They warn that the nation could miss out on billions of pounds of investment and 1.7m environmental jobs. The Times reports that the UK government is scrapping a proposed £120 annual levy on household energy bills to cover the cost of producing hydrogen. The tax would have taken effect in 2025 as part of plans to replace fossil fuels, but instead energy and net-zero secretary Grant Shapps wants to see companies that buy and transport gas “shoulder the burden of hydrogen’s extra cost”, the newspaper says. Separately, the Daily Express has an article about villagers in Essex uniting to oppose a 112-mile stretch of pylons.

Ahead of his visit to Beijing, the Financial Times interview’s James Cleverly about the UK’s relationship with China, which says the foreign secretary “wants to reset the relationship with Beijing, working with China on issues such as climate change and habitat protection, while bolstering economic ties within the constraints of national security”. Elsewhere, City AM reports that Conservative MPs have criticised the role of a Chinese private investment group in the Moray West offshore windfarm project off the coast of Scotland. 

Another City AM story reports that government spending on the proposed nuclear power plant Sizewell C has “crossed the billion-pound threshold” after the government committed more funds to the project. It says ministers have allocated an additional £341m towards the project on top of the government’s £870m stake. BusinessGreen notes that the new announcement “provided no further update on the effort to line up private investors behind the project”, which the government has pledged to obtain a final investment decision for by the end of this parliament next year.

The first US auction of leases for windfarms in the Gulf of Mexico ended yesterday with just one of three available tracts sold, the New York Times reports. The newspaper notes that the Biden administration had heralded the auction as a key part of its effort to expand clean energy. It adds that energy experts say the “lacklustre bidding underscored a number of problems facing the offshore wind industry as companies struggle with soaring costs spurred by inflation, rising interest rates and permitting delays”. Reuters says the bidding “ended with a single $5.6m winning bid” from Germany’s RWE – “the lowest winning bid for a federal offshore wind lease at auction since the Obama administration​​” – and notes that this reflects “meagre demand for the clean energy source in a region known for oil-and-gas production”. The Guardian notes that building offshore wind in the Gulf will be more expensive than in the north-east, “making it harder for wind projects to compete in local energy markets, where existing energy prices are lower”.

The Financial Times has a piece about the rapidly expanding size of wind turbines, noting that the “race for bigger turbines has experts calling for slowdown in growth and greater standardisation”.

Developed countries have been urged to contribute their share to a new nature fund “after it was left undercapitalised by $40m (£32m), receiving money from just two donors”, according to the Guardian. The COP15 biodiversity summit saw the creation of a new fund to help developing countries meet their nature targets, with a goal of reaching $200bn a year in contributions by 2030, it continues. However, so far only Canada and the UK have contributed anything to the fund, it adds.

Meanwhile, an article in the South China Morning Post asks if the expansion of the BRICS grouping of large developing nations to include Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates could pile pressure on developed countries to meet their “broken” pledge of $100bn a year in climate finance. In other news, Reuters reports that Denmark plans to donate $21.9m to Brazil’s Amazon Fund to fight deforestation in the region. France 24 has an interview with Joseph Ng’Ang’a, chief executive of the upcoming Africa climate summit in Nairobi, in which he discusses “a new global financial architecture to help green growth”. India’s NDTV reports on comments by Indian external affairs minister S Jaishankar that developed countries “preach [but] don’t practise” on climate change, adding that India had to show global leadership, ahead of the G20 summit in New Delhi next weekend.

Another South China Morning Post article reports that Malaysian prime minister Anwar Ibrahim has announced that his oil-rich nation “will establish a $430m seed fund for its ambitious plan to turn energy transition into the country’s next growth generator”. Separately, Reuters reports that India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp plans to invest $24.2bn on clean-energy projects in order to meet its 2038 net-zero carbon emissions goal.

Commentary from the UK press on the expansion of London’s ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez), a measure introduced primarily to curb air pollution, rumbles on. London’s Evening Standard has an editorial from Tuesday calling it “a proud day for our city”, coinciding with the day the expansion came into force. “The project has not been without its detractors, particularly in government. It is a pity that the cross-party consensus on air quality and wider climate policies has started to fray,” it says. The editorial reminds its readers that it was the Conservatives who first announced the Ulez, when former prime minister Boris Johnson was mayor of London. “We believe in giving credit where credit is due,” it adds. An editorial in the Independent also laments the decline of the cross-party consensus on the Ulez and other environmental issues. It calls the Ulez an example of a “good policy badly implemented”. Citing recent “symbolic downgrading of the green agenda by ministers”, it says the pushback to the Ulez “does not bode well for the cleanliness of our home environment – or for the future of the planet”.

The Ulez commentary in the nation’s right-leaning newspapers is even less positive. A Daily Mail editorial says the Ulez got off to a chaotic start, with vigilantes spraying the scheme’s lenses with paint, cutting the wires or even demolishing them entirely. The newspaper says “such anger is understandable” given the charges being placed on “long-suffering motorists”. [By contrast, the newspaper has referred to climate-change activists in recent months as “zealots”, “eco-mob” and “eco-anarchists”, stating: “It’s really quite simple, if a green zealot commits a crime, the law should come down on them like a ton of bricks.”] A Sun editorial also empathises with the destruction of the cameras, noting that while it does not condone the vandalism “most people will sympathise with the motivation”. [The Sun has also spent months calling for harsher penalties for climate protesters including “meaningful jail terms to crackdown on eco-yobs’ attention-seeking stunts”.] A Daily Telegraph editorial describes the backlash to the Ulez as “arguably the first organised popular revolt against a green policy pushed through by Britain’s political establishment, and it will not have been lost on voters that no mainstream political leader at Westminster was brave enough to properly take their side against the eco-zealots”. The newspaper says Ulez supporters maintain that large numbers of people back the change, adding: “That may be so, but the strength of feeling is clearly on the side of the opponents.” [Similarly, the Daily Telegraph has not appreciated the “strength of feeling” shown by climate protesters, whom it has described as “militant” and called for new laws to target.] Former Labour MP Tom Harris writes in the Daily Telegraph that the Ulez is a good argument against devolution, which has granted more power to the mayor of London.

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial titled “a net-zero car crash in London”, which frames London mayor Sadiq Khan’s decision to scale back plans for a new road-charging system by 2025 as a defeat for the UK’s net-zero agenda. [Again, it is worth noting that Ulez has always been framed predominantly as a public health measure to curb air pollution.]

New research explores the impact of Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) oscillations – rapid northern-hemisphere temperature jumps of up to 15C in Greenland – during the last ice age on global atmospheric circulation patterns. Using proxy data drawn from speleothems (stalagmites and stalactites) along with high-resolution climate models, the researchers show that atmospheric circulation and associated rainfall patterns worldwide changed abruptly as a consequence of the DO events. The findings provide “quantitative observational evidence for previous suggestions of the North Atlantic region being the focal point for these archetypes of past abrupt climate changes”, the study says. In a press release, one of the authors said the study said “further increasing our understanding of [these events] is crucial for more reliable assessments of the risk and possible impacts of future large-scale climate tipping events”.