Climate Home News reports that countries have failed to make progress on a post-2025 climate finance goal in Bonn, “with negotiators from developing and developed countries blaming each other in fiery exchanges” at the mid-year UN climate talks. It continues: “As discussions wrapped up on Tuesday, representatives of countries on both sides expressed disappointment with the process that is intended to result in an agreement on a new collective quantified goal (NCQG) at COP29 in Baku in November. They will leave the German city with a 35-page informal ‘input paper’ stuffed with wildly divergent views and repeatedly described as ‘unbalanced’ by negotiators during the final session of the talks.” [The conference as a whole will conclude tomorrow.] Climate Home News says that, for most developing countries, “the sticking point is the lack of negotiations on the size of the new goal – known as the ‘quantum’ in technical language”. It adds: “The Arab and the African groups landed their proposals for a new dollar amount on the table in Bonn – between $1.1tn and $1.3tn a year for the five years from 2025. Meanwhile, they accused rich states of failing to do the same and refusing to talk about numbers.” The Hindustan Times reports that the US, meanwhile, “has repeated its stance on how contributing to the new fund, meant to replace the existing goal of $100bn per year, should be voluntary”. It continues: “According to Loss and Damage Collaboration, a climate policy group that is tracking the negotiations, the US has argued that NCQG is separate from the provisions under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. This weakens the provision in the convention and the Paris Agreement that developed nations ought to deliver climate finance to developing countries, experts said. They also said developed countries are urging [the expansion of] the number of donors by including emerging economies and limiting beneficiaries to least developed countries.” Elsewhere, Reuters reports that the World Bank’s board approved a plan on Tuesday for the bank to act as interim host of the loss and damage fund.

The Press Association reports that the UK’s Conservative party has been accused of failing to seize the “economic opportunity of the century” with a manifesto that pledges a “pragmatic” approach to net-zero. It continues: “The party’s manifesto recommits to legislation for annual licensing rounds of oil and gas production in the North Sea – which failed to get through the last parliament before it was dissolved – and new gas power plants, prompting an angry response from environmental campaigners. There are also promises to treble offshore wind capacity, build the first two carbon capture and storage clusters for technology that catches and permanently stores carbon emissions and invest £1.1bn in helping green industries grow.” According to PA, the Conservative manifesto also pledges a “pragmatic and proportionate approach” to net-zero and promises never to “force people to rip out their existing boiler and replace it with a heat pump”. The document also says the Conservatives will ensure green levies on household bills – which fund renewables – are reduced, and rules out future green taxes, such as a frequent flyer levy, PA adds. It continues: “It also says it will reform the Climate Change Committee, giving it an explicit mandate to consider costs to households and UK energy security in its future advice to parliament – although the committee’s remit already requires it to consider energy supplies, the economy and social issues such as fuel poverty.” Ed Matthew, from the climate thinktank E3G, tells PA the manifesto is “utterly devoid of new pledges to supercharge the net-zero economy and is the most unambitious on climate action yet”. Greenpeace tells BusinessGreen the manifesto “reads like a car crash for the planet”. Separately, the Press Association reports that the Green party has launched its manifesto, pledging for a tax on millionaires and billionaires to fund issues such as the green economy, as well as health, housing and transport. The Financial Times reports that Greenpeace is knocking on doors in an attempt to make climate a key electoral issue. [See Carbon Brief’s UK election manifesto tracker for where parties stand on climate and energy issues.]

In other UK news, the Times reports that an energy company run by a Labour campaign organiser has blamed fiscal uncertainty and negative political rhetoric ahead of the election for its decision to abandon an oil and gas project in the North Sea. It says: “Deltic Energy, whose chairman is Mark Lappin, 63, Labour’s election agent for West Aberdeenshire & Kincardine, said that ‘deteriorating sentiment’ towards the oil and gas industry meant that the company had failed to find an an investor willing to take on its share of the Pensacola project, or to secure any alternative financing.” The Daily Telegraph also has the story. The Daily Telegraph also reports that the National Grid is considering expanding its “demand flexibility service” to pay customers to use more power when wind and solar are abundant.

India’s prime minister Modi, “in his third term with a weakened mandate”, will be “under pressure to make faster progress toward existing green targets, including pledges to hit net-zero by 2070, install a mammoth 500 gigawatts of non-fossil energy by the end of the decade and corral a global alliance on solar power”, writes Bloomberg. However, “expand[ing] fossil fuel output…is unlikely to ease under a new government”, it adds. Ashwini Swain from the Sustainable Futures Collaborative tells the newswire that “a more fragile and fractious coalition could be prompted to push for projects that spread largesse[,] earn political support” and protect the fossil ecosystem. At the same time, a coalition government with more regional parties in power “should allow more states to make claims on the growing green economy in India”, said Prof Rohit Chandra of the IIT Delhi School of Public Policy, who is quoted in the story, with most of this activity in the past decade concentrated in states that are “bastions of support for Modi’s party”. 

The new government “must work to bridge the gap between states that are swiftly adopting renewables and those trailing behind”, says Down to Earth in a climate agenda-setting piece. It adds that “necessary investments in grid flexibility, transmission and distribution infrastructure and energy storage technologies like pumped hydro and batteries will be crucial” to integrating more renewables into India’s grid. While the country submitted a long-term decarbonisation strategy to UN Climate Change in 2022, India still needs “detailed sectoral emissions reduction plans with short, medium, and long-term targets”, it says, adding that India’s “foreign policy should prioritise resource security” in its domestic green transition. Elsewhere, the Hindustan Times reports the comments of Bhupender Yadav, who will take charge of India’s union ministry for environment, forests and climate change for the second time. He said: “We believe development and environmental conservation can go hand in hand.”

In a week where the new government assumed power, extreme heat continues to claim lives. The eastern state of Odisha “reported eight deaths within a 72-hour period”, according to BBC News. All schools in Jharkhand will remain closed until 15 June “in view of severe heatwave conditions, per the Economic Times, while northern India has seen “a surge in temperatures that surpassed 45C”, Times of India writes. Bloomberg carries a story on how “46,000 women across 22 districts were paid $340,000 in total over last month’s heatwaves” through an “innovative” insurance programme. Meanwhile Business Standard examines the “record spike in sales of air conditioners and refrigerators” even in smaller towns and rural India and its “inevitable” impact on warming.

Temperatures in northern China are expected to surpass 40C in the next 10 days, with a surge in electricity usage in the region, local newspaper Beijing Youth reports. Zheng Zhihai, chief forecaster at China’s National Climate Center, explained that “direct influencing factor” for the high-temperature is “the broader context of global warming and the anomalies in atmospheric circulation”, local media Beijing Daily reports. In the meantime, heavy rainfall is expected in southern China, state news agency Xinhua reports. Bloomberg reports that “deadly rains in China that have damaged farming and infrastructure are feeding a recovery in the world’s most powerful dams, boosting clean energy generation and sending hydroelectric stocks to record highs”.

Elsewhere, Heymi Bahar, a senior analyst at the International Energy Agency (IEA), has said at a conference in Shanghai that “without China, there is no market for solar, wind power or hydropower”, state-run newspaper China News reports. He predicts that China’s renewable energy capacity will increase by more than 2,000 gigawatts from 2023 to 2028, the outlet adds. Bloomberg reports that China’s top solar manufacturers are urging the government to guide the solar prices, “as excess production capacity slashed prices and profits”. 

Finally, Reuters reports that the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) has said that “Chinese automakers’ plans to invest in Europe won’t be deflected by the EU’s anti-subsidy probe into Chinese-made electric vehicles”. Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, urges the EU to “terminate the investigation as soon as possible to avoid damaging China-EU economic and trade cooperation”, state-supporting newspaper Global Times reports. Reuters reports that amid trade restrictions, such as NEV tariffs, and other sanctions from the west, China is now urging “the BRICS bloc of nations to take on greater responsibilities and establish itself as being inclusive to the world”. The Financial Times reports that “Brussels is pushing ahead with Chinese electric vehicle tariffs that are set to bring in more than €2bn a year, brushing aside German government warnings that the move risks starting a costly trade war with Beijing”.

The Associated Press reports that “violent riots erupted in a drought-stricken Algerian desert city last weekend after months of water shortages left taps running dry and forced residents to queue to access water for their households”. In the central Algerian city of Tiaret, “protestors wearing balaclavas set tires aflame and set up make-shift barricades blocking roads to protest their water being rationed, according to pictures and videos circulating on social media”, AP says. It continues: “The unrest followed demands from President Abdelmajid Tebboune to rectify the suffering. At a council of ministers meeting last week, he implored his cabinet to implement ‘emergency measures’ in Tiaret. Several government ministers were later sent to ‘ask for an apology from the population’ and to promise that access to drinking water would be restored.”

Commenting on the Conservative party’s manifesto, published yesterday, a Guardian editorial says: “Much of Sunak’s rhetoric at the manifesto launch was not even aimed at the general public, but tailored to niche rightwing Conservative fixations – readiness to reject European court of human rights jurisdiction; dismissal of measures to avert climate catastrophe as ‘eco-zealotry’. This is not the agenda of a man who expects to be in office after polling day.” A Daily Telegraph editorial says: “It succeeded in illustrating some of the practical and ideological differences between Labour and the Conservatives. Sunak’s commitment not to introduce new green levies stands in stark contrast with a Labour Party riven with net-zero extremists.” The Guardian also looks back at what the Conservatives have pledged on environmental issues in its last 14 manifestos. The Times has an editorial on the benefits of seaweed.

In Australia, there are escalating political tensions over the nation’s 2030 climate target. Australian Financial Review columnist Jennifer Hewett explains: “[Opposition leader] Peter Dutton wants the community’s focus to be on the government’s failure to meet its 2030 carbon emissions reduction targets. [Australian prime minister and Labor leader] Anthony Albanese wants the focus on the Coalition’s failure to commit to those same targets – accusing them of effectively withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on climate change.” In the Conversation, journalist and scholar Michelle Grattan says that “Dutton has taken a controversial step in his climate change policy, indicating a Coalition government would only announce its medium-term emission reduction targets after the election”, which is currently tabled for 2025. In the Guardian, Ian Lowe, an emeritus professor in environmental science, describes Dutton’s move as a “death wish and utterly irresponsible in the face of the climate emergency”. Separately in the Conversation, Matt McDonald, professor of international relations at the University of Queensland, says the latest political spat shows Australia’s “climate wars are far from over”.

An editorial in the Financial Times examines what losses for green politicians in some parts of Europe could mean for the EU’s climate policies. It says: “Policymakers committed to the green transition need to learn lessons. They must be finely attuned to the impact on consumers, and ensure policies are well designed and communicated, with help for those most heavily affected. More targeted tax incentives to reduce the upfront costs of, say, installing solar panels or switching to electric vehicles could accelerate adoption by businesses and households alike. A more compelling narrative is needed, too, on the jobs, businesses and technologies the green transition will create. The European election of 2024 might yet prove to be the peak of the far right. But amid efforts to neutralise rightwing extremism, the focus on combating the epochal threat of climate change must not be lost.” [Carbon Brief spoke to a range of experts on what green losses could mean for EU climate policy.]

The levels of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and their influence on the climate have decreased since 2021 – five years “sooner than anticipated”, a new “brief communication” paper says. The phase out of HCFCs, which initially replaced chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), was mandated by amendments to the Montreal Protocol, the paper explains: “While HCFCs have much lower ozone depletion potentials than the CFCs they replaced, they are still [ozone-depleting substances] and potent greenhouse gases.” The findings mark an “important milestone” that “demonstrates the benefits of the protocol for mitigating climate change and stratospheric ozone layer loss”, the authors conclude.