The UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has issued a “red alert” on climate change, “citing record-smashing increases last year in greenhouse gases, land and water temperatures and melting of glaciers and sea ice”, the Associated Press reports. In its latest state of the climate report, the WMO confirms that 2023 was the hottest year on record and says that there is a “high probability” that 2024 will be another record-hot year, AP says. It quotes WMO secretary-general Celeste Saulo saying: “Never have we been so close – albeit on a temporary basis at the moment – to the 1.5C lower limit of the Paris agreement on climate change. The WMO community is sounding the red alert to the world.” The agency says that extreme weather made worse by climate change is having an “alarming” impact on food insecurity, the Financial Times reports. The number of people it says are “acutely food insecure” worldwide has more than doubled from 149 million people before the Covid-19 pandemic to 333 million people in 2023, the FT says. Leading glaciologist Prof Jonathan Bamber, from the University of Bristol, tells the i newspaper that the new report provides further evidence that climate change was having an even greater impact than scientists had expected just a few years ago. He tells the outlet: “The pace of climate breakdown that we’re witnessing is faster than I think the vast majority of climate scientists were anticipating five or 10 years ago. Things are changing so rapidly that myself and quite a few of my colleagues do have concerns that some of our estimates could be on the conservative side.” The Guardian, Reuters and the Independent are among others covering the report. Metro reports that Rio de Janeiro in Brazil is currently facing a scorching heatwave, with temperatures of up to 42C.

A Labour government would, if elected, make tackling climate change a priority for the Bank of England, according to shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, the Guardian reports. In a speech widely attended by the press on Thursday evening, she said: “Monetary policy and financial regulation cannot stand still, in the face of new risks, not least those posed by climate change. The European Central Bank’s Isabel Schnabel has set out the implications for monetary policy of climate change: in losses that could translate onto the balance sheets of financial institutions and reduce the flow of credit; in impacts on labour productivity and health-related inactivity, which could lower the equilibrium real rate of interest and constrain the space for conventional monetary policy; and through the impact of supply-side shocks on prices. Given the onus to mobilise investment to achieve our energy transition, these challenges are especially acute.” She also announced that she would reverse chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s decision to downgrade climate change in Threadneedle Street’s main objectives, saying: “I disagree with the current chancellor’s decision to downgrade the emphasis put on climate change in the remits for both Bank committees. So the next Labour government will reverse these changes, at the first opportunity. Because there can be no durable plan for economic stability and no sustainable plan for economic growth, that is not also a serious plan for net-zero.” Elsewhere, the Times says that one of six questions Reeve must answer on Labour’s economic plan is how it will “meet its target to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030 without spending the £28bn originally proposed”? 

Shadow energy and net-zero secretary Ed Miliband also gave a speech yesterday. Speaking at an event held by the Green Alliance thinktank, Miliband accused the Conservatives under Rishi Sunak of slipping from “climate delay to denial”, the Press Association reports. According to PA, Miliband warned the forthcoming general election was the most important on climate and energy the UK has ever had, saying: “There is a stark election choice: Labour’s case for climate action as the route to lower energy bills, energy security, good jobs and doing our duties by future generations against a Conservative party slipping from climate delay into denial which will mean higher bills, energy insecurity, fewer jobs and betrayal of future generations.” The Daily Telegraph reports that Miliband pledged to bring back a fine on boiler makers if they do not meet binding targets for heat pump installations.

Elsewhere, Reuters reports that a science fund said on Wednesday it had received backing from the UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB) for the first fund looking to commercialise nature and climate research at UK bioscience and environmental science institutes. Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph publishes an editorial titled: “The untenable costs of net-zero.”

In India’s southern tech capital of Bengaluru, “[g]roundwater, relied on by over a third of the city’s 13m residents, is fast running out“, the Associated Press reports, with poorer areas being the worst hit. The city “is witnessing an unusually hot February and March, and, in the last few years, it has received little rainfall in part due to human-caused climate change”, the article adds, with experts comparing the city’s water woes to Cape Town’s “day zero” and pointing to factors from El Niño and poor rainfall to that fact that “the city lost nearly 70% of its green cover in the last 50 years”. The News Minute reports that the “crippling water shortage” has now hit hospitals in the city, where they have been “forced to buy water from tankers” whose prices have “soared” over the last six months. “We need to start planning for extreme weather now, not just temporary fixes,” says Azim Premji University’s Harini Nagendra, speaking to Mongabay: “While we are still receiving Kaveri water, what is the plan to continue recharging that river? The more trees we cut down, the more our watersheds are destroyed.”

In national news, Bloomberg columnist Andy Mukherjee writes that India has been rocked by revelations following the supreme court “lifting a veil of secrecy from a now-banned election funding mechanism” to expose a “rot in the country’s opaque political donations…just before nearly one billion voters in the world’s biggest democracy start choosing their next government”. According to the Reporters’ Collective, “[c]ompanies involved in the energy business in India donated…nearly 30% of the total donations through electoral bonds”, observing that “[w]hether it is the sunrise sector or the sunset sector…everyone has to pay a price”. The list of firms, the article says, “includes major players in India’s energy sector”, as well as “many companies involved in green energy business including solar power, wind power and electric buses”. Cement, mining and infrastructure companies “have emerged as big political donors”, reports Business Standard, Indian Express points out that many of the mining and steel majors were “awaiting [a] green nod” in the form of deforestation and environmental permits, while Scroll.in identifies steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal as one of the biggest individual donors through the bonds. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that India’s Adani Group has said that it was “aware” of a US investigation into violations of anti-corruption laws by an unrelated “third party”, days after Bloomberg reported that US investigators were “probing whether an Adani entity or individuals linked to the company…were involved in paying officials in India for favourable treatment on an energy project”. 

Meanwhile, News18 reports that India’s upcoming “marathon poll run this summer will be more than double the duration in 2004, when the election got transferred to the summer months rather than the cooler autumn-winter season”. Poll dates announced by election authorities stretch over “44 days in peak summer”, with met authorities “predicting severe heatwaves in April and May.” Climate activist Sonam Wangchuk continues his “fast-unto-death” protest, reports the Indian Express, calling for “constitutional safeguards” and statehood for the Himalayan region of Ladakh, plus the “protection of ecologically fragile Ladakh’s ecosystem from industrial and mining lobbies”.

In other energy and infrastructure news, a new report estimates that emissions from India’s building sector between 2020 and 20270 could “exceed the carbon budget allocated for the entire country”, the Economic Times reports. Bloomberg notes that India is looking to start shipments to a new LNG terminal, as it “aims to rapidly increase gas consumption by 2030.” India’s union coal secretary quoted in the Hindu BusinessLine expects that another 16 coal mines “will go”, on top of the 91 mines already auctioned. India Development Review carries a feature on why “the global language for just transitions falters” in the country’s coal-dependent districts, where community “needs are rooted in land”, not just jobs.

US-China cooperation on tackling methane emissions is advancing, US deputy climate envoy Rick Duke tells Reuters. At the sidelines of a methane summit in Geneva, Duke tells the newswire that the biggest greenhouse gas emitters were focusing on methane as part of a climate change “working group” established last year. He adds: “We are, indeed, in the process of propelling that work together. That is a tremendous opportunity, given the magnitude of the mitigation potential in both countries, but above all in China.”

Elsewhere in the US, Bloomberg reports that the Biden administration is setting a new estimate of the fuel efficiency of electric vehicles that aims to “better reflect the real world and is likely to further drive sales of emission-free cars”. The New York Times reports on new Treasury data showing Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act has “created a large and growing market for companies to buy and sell clean-energy tax credits”.

A new report finds that China is “falling short” in decarbonising its steel sector, due to “slowing demand, low recycling rates and lingering overcapacity concerns” impeding the transition to lower-emission production, says Reuters. It adds that while China has “promised to take action” to reduce emissions from the steel sector, it is “lagging on targets to replace coal-fired blast furnaces with cleaner electric arc furnace (EAF) technology, which uses recycled scrap rather than iron ore as a raw material”. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post also covers the study by Global Energy Monitor (GEM), saying that China’s steel sector could reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by more than 10% “from current levels by next year” if the country accelerating the adoption of “cleaner production technology”. 

Meanwhile, Australian electric vehicle (EV) website the Driven quotes Wang Chuanfu, the CEO of BYD, saying that sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs), including battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), will account for “more than half of all new cars sold in China within the next three months”. Tokyo-based Nikkei Asia reports that Beijing will likely direct three state-owned automakers to increase investment in research and development, even if it affects their profits. It also covers comments by BYD’s Wang that “companies need to create economies of scale as quickly as possible”. Economic outlet Jiemian reports that Chinese solar company Longi says that its planned layoffs will total 5%, not the 30% reported by the media.

Separately, the state-run industry newspaper China Electric Power News reports that the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the National Energy Administration (NEA) released regulations on information reporting for power companies, which “urges all types of information reporting entities to conduct information reporting work in a standardised manner”. China Energy News says that the State Council has issued an action plan to attract foreign investment which calls for regulators to “exempt raw material energy use and non-fossil energy consumption from the total energy consumption and intensity control” and to meet the “reasonable energy consumption needs” of projects run by foreign-invested enterprises. Another article by China Electric Power News reports that China has released the list of the “first batch of green low-carbon advanced technology demonstration projects” for public comment. BJX News notes that the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) has released a number of draft national ecological and environmental standards for public comment, including for pollution discharge permits for thermal power plants. Finally, BJX News reports that the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) has pledged that state-owned companies “will make greater contributions to building a firm barrier for national energy security” in recent meetings.

Writing in Nature, NASA climate scientist Dr Gavin Schmidt says that 2023’s record heat spike has left researchers stunned. He says: “I’ve made climate predictions at the start of every year since 2016. It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate scientists’ predictive capabilities more than 2023 has. For the past nine months, mean land and sea surface temperatures have overshot previous records each month by up to 0.2C – a huge margin at the planetary scale. A general warming trend is expected because of rising greenhouse-gas emissions, but this sudden heat spike greatly exceeds predictions made by statistical climate models that rely on past observations. Many reasons for this discrepancy have been proposed but, as yet, no combination of them has been able to reconcile our theories with what has happened.” Nature also publishes an essay by atmospheric scientist Prof Adam Sobel about how to overcome feelings of being overwhelmed by climate change. In the Guardian, climate scientist Prof Bill McGuire says the UK is facing its “last chance” to prepare for “46C summer days and ‘supercell’ storms”. On his Substack, the Climate Brink, climate scientist and Carbon Brief contributor Dr Zeke Hausfather examines why forest carbon offsets have a “back-end durability problem”.

For the New Statesman, Costa Rican diplomat and former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres writes that the next UN climate summit COP29 must keep the Paris Agreement’s ambition of keeping temperatures at 1.5C in sight. She writes: “As Azerbaijan takes the helm for delivering climate action this year, its president, Ilham Aliyev, must know the main driver of this temperature increase is the historical and continued burning of fossil fuels. Emissions reached a record high in 2023; this year the world cannot afford yet another peak. Baku has a lot to grasp. Within the next seven months it must face some challenging issues. How will it rally countries to accelerate the global energy transition to renewables? What will it do to help unlock the flow of public and private finance that’s urgently required by vulnerable countries? Where does it stand on adaptation measures that need to be put in place to buffer the worst impacts? Hosting a COP is a huge opportunity. The world will be watching Baku make its every move.”

Having wind turbines in close proximity has a “small” negative impact on property values in the US, but this “diminishes over time and in distance and is indistinguishable from zero for larger distances”, a new study says. Using data from more than 300m home sales and 60,000 wind turbines in the US from 1997 to 2020, the researchers assess the “externality costs” of wind power generation through the visibility impact on property values. The study finds evidence of a 1% drop of home values within 10km of visible wind turbines, adding: “The effect is larger for homes closer to more wind turbines, but is no longer detectable by the end of the 20-year period covered by our data.”

A new study explores how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the reported climate commitments and actions of cities around the world. Using global data on 793 cities from the Carbon Disclosure Project, the researchers find that “actions persist despite funding shortfalls”, yet “only 43% of cities have implemented green recovery interventions”. The authors note that “co-benefits of climate action (for example, health outcomes) and early engagement on sustainability issues (for example, via climate networks) are associated with sustained climate action and finance during Covid-19 and green recovery interventions”.