New data suggests that global warming has exceeded 1.5C across an entire 12-month period “for the first time”, reports BBC News. The article notes that this year-long breach of 1.5C, as recorded by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), does not break the Paris Agreement 1.5C limit – as that refers to long-term warming – but it “does bring the world closer to doing so”. [See Carbon Brief’s recent interactive about the 1.5C limit for more details.] Scientists said it was a “significant milestone” that highlighted the challenge of keeping the 1.5C long-term limit in reach, reports the Daily Telegraph. The temperature rise in the past year has been influenced by El Niño, the article notes, a regularly occurring global climate phenomenon that triggers warmer ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific. According to C3S, the global average temperature for the specific period between February last year and last month was 1.52C above the 1850-1900 baseline, reports the Times. Currently, the long-term average is 1.25C above pre-industrial times, but with carbon emissions rising “it seems certain that, on this measure, the 1.5C limit will soon be breached, probably around 2030”, reports New Scientist. According to C3S, January was the eighth consecutive month with record-high monthly temperatures, reports Bloomberg. In January, global temperatures hit 1.66C above the average during pre-industrial times, it notes. January 2024 broke the previous record for the warmest first month of the year set in 2020 by 0.12C, adds the Associated Press. The records are based on computer-generated analyses and according to the ERA5 reanalysis dataset, “using billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world”, C3S notes in its press release. [It is worth noting that the observed global temperature record produced by Berkeley Earth estimated that the average global temperature for 2023 had already hit 1.5C, as reported by Carbon Brief last month.] The new World Meteorological Organisation chief has said that the rate of climate change is accelerating, reports a separate Associated Press piece. Warming has triggered more Arctic cold outbreaks in North America and Europe, secretary general Celeste Saulo told the outlet, it notes. The record temperatures in January and over the last year were also covered by France24, Reuters, the New York Times, the Financial Times and others. 

UK Labour leader Keir Starmer is set to announce that he is scaling back the party’s proposed £28bn green investment programme today, in his “biggest policy U-turn since becoming party leader”, reports the Guardian in a story trailed on its frontpage. Senior Labour party source told the Guardian that Starmer will finally confirm that the party is no longer planning to spend £28bn on environmental schemes annually, due to the economic uncertainty caused by the Conservative government, the article continues. This follows weeks of uncertainty about the policy, as competing factions within Starmer’s senior team “pushed him to keep the pledge or ditch it”, it notes. The move was driven by “economic woes” and the Conservatives “scorched earth” approach to finances, which will leave the Labour party with limited manoeuvrability after the election, reports the Daily Telegraph in a frontpage story. The plan to invest £28bn a year on green energy projects – should Labour win the next election – was first announced by shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves in September 2021, reports BBC News. It was “watered down” last year, with the £28bn adjusted so that a Labour government would meet this target about halfway through its first term rather than in its first year, the article adds. At the time, Reeves said the party needed to be “responsible” with the public finances, given the poor economic backdrop and rising cost of borrowing, it notes. The Labour party will now focus on previously-announced plans to “get Britain off fossil fuels”, reports the Independent. But Starmer has faced “immediate backlash” over the U-turn, with former shadow minister Barry Gardiner calling it “economically illiterate, environmentally irresponsible and politically jejune”, the article adds. Former adviser to Tony Blair John McTernan said it is “probably the most stupid decision the Labour Party’s made”, the Independent adds. On the eve of the decision, UK mayors Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram had urged Starmer not to abandon key climate and constitutional policies, reports the New Statesman. The Times also covers the U-turn, while an analysis piece by BBC News political editor Chris Mason says that “it had got to the point where the only thing that was clear about the idea of spending £28bn a year on green investment was it wasn’t remotely clear if [Labour] were still committed to it”. 

In other UK news, the Labour party has rejected “bogus” analysis by government officials that suggests its plan to improve home energy efficiency would cost £12-15bn a year, reports BBC News.The party said the measures, which would have formed part of its wider £28bn green investment plan, would be capped at £6bn a year, it adds. The Labour party called into doubt the analysis, saying private sector levies and incentives would help to fund the scheme to insulate 19m homes in a decade, the Guardian reports. However, the lack of detail in Labour’s proposal is “another example of how uncertainty around its overall £28bn-a-year green plan continues to plague the opposition party”, the article notes. The Conservatives have said that the policy “blows another hole” in Labour’s flagship green energy jobs plan, reports the Sun, saying the “black hole is the equivalent to a 2p rise in income tax for workers”. The calculations have “sparked a major row” over the neutrality of the civil service who worked on the dossier however, the article notes. The Conservatives have been accused of ordering civil servants to draw up the dossier, which is being used as a “political tool”, reports the Daily Mirror. It quotes Jess Ralston, energy analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) thinktank, who said: “These appear to be politically-motivated figures, rather than a proper assessment. They deflect from the failure of the government to get homes insulated which has left the most vulnerable choosing between eating and heating during the gas price crisis.” Elsewhere, prime minister Rishi Sunak is facing internal revolt over plans to scrap the so-called “boiler tax”, reports the Times. Graham Stuart, the minister of state for climate, is considering resigning in protest after energy secretary Claire Coutinhon backed down in the face of industry concerns over the clean heat market mechanism, a scheme designed to incentivise the uptake of heat pumps, the article adds [Carbon Brief’s Simon Evans has broken down the debate around the incentive on Twitter.]

Danish energy group Orsted has “scrapped” its shareholder dividend and unveiled plans to cut jobs and scale back its development plan, reports the Times. The group, the world’s biggest offshore wind developer, is attempting to strengthen its balance sheet after “battling rising costs and project delays”, it adds. The company plans to axe up to 800 jobs, pull back from markets in Spain, Portugal and Norway, and suspend payments to shareholders from 2023-25, reports the Guardian. It will also cut its target for developing renewable energy capacity by 2030 from 50GW to 35-38GW following a “chaotic 12 months”, the article adds. Orsted has already abandoned several uncompleted projects in the US over the last year after incurring billions of pounds in losses, reports the Daily Telegraph. In common with the industry generally, Orsted has been hit by high inflation, raised interest rates, project delays and supply chain difficulties, reports Sky News. Orsted chief executive Mads Nipper said the moves are necessary to turn the company into a “leaner and more efficient company”, reports the Financial Times. The world’s three biggest wind power groups – Orsted, Siemens Energy and Vestas – all gave “a sober view of the year ahead for an industry buffeted by project delays, equipment problems and inflation” on Wednesday, reports Reuters. Siemens is expecting a 2024 loss of around €2bn, while Vestas will not pay a dividend for 2023, the article notes. 

Meanwhile, Norwegian oil and gas group Equinor remains committed to offshore wind and other renewables, despite the lower returns, its CEO announced on Wednesday, Reuters reports. “We see a challenging time at the moment, but this is a long-term game we are in and that is why we are investing (in renewables),” Anders Opedal told reporters, the article adds.

China recently issued a document encouraging new energy vehicle companies to “establish research and development centres overseas”, develop “strategic cooperation relationships with foreign research institutions” and “regulate exports of new energy vehicles”, reports the IN-EN.com in an article titled: “nine Chinese government departments have issued a document encouraging new energy vehicle companies to establish research and development centres overseas”. Bloomberg also covers the news, adding that China will “strengthen support” for its electrified vehicle (EV) industry as it “increasingly faces trade restrictions from the EU and the US”. The government guidelines include “steps such as better using international trade rules and engaging foreign governments to create an open and transparent environment for the EV”. Reuters covers the same story, adding that “Chinese banks would be encouraged to expand domestic and overseas services for automakers and their supply chains”. 

Another Reuters article reports that, in a meeting with their US counterparts, China’s financial officials expressed concerns about “restrictions” on Chinese solar components. The state-run newspaper China Daily quotes Jack Perry, chairman of the 48 Group Club, a London-based non-profit organisation, saying that the UK and China can cooperate on “decarbonisation, renewable energy and biotechnology”. Chinese energy outlet China Energy Net covers a report released by the EU delegation to China, which shows that “green cooperation has become a focal point of Sino-European collaboration”. It adds that “enhanced policy coordination and dialogue between the two sides…cooperation, are conducive to jointly addressing global climate, energy, and environmental challenges”. 

China Daily quotes Luo Zhongwei, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of Industrial Economics, who says that “more emphasis should be placed on nurturing emerging industries with strategic importance”, such as new energy. The Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily says that due to “continuous research and development”, solar products “are transitioning from a ‘made in China, sold globally’ model to a ‘made globally, sold globally’ one”. Another article by People’s Daily says that “because of China’s vigorous development of renewable energy…the cost of solar power generation has decreased by nearly 90% globally in recent years, and wind power cost by 80%”.

The state-run industry newspaper China Electric Power News reports that the national energy administration (NEA) said that, in 2024, China should “ensure the construction of large-scale wind and solar power generation bases”. China Energy News reports that the NEA has issued the key tasks for power safety supervision in 2023, emphasising the need to “strengthen the safety management of coal-fired power units during peak load regulation”. It guides electricity enterprises to have a profound understanding of “the changes in the positioning of coal-fired power units in the construction of new-type power systems”. Finally, China Daily says that, according to the China meteorological administration (CMA), “the average absolute national temperature last year was 10.71C, which was 0.82C higher than the long-term average, marking the highest since 1951”. The average number of hot days nationwide “exceeded the long-term average by 4.4 days, the second-highest since 1961”, and the number of extreme high-temperature events ranked “fourth-highest in history”, it adds.

Forest fires in Valparaiso, started on February 2, left 131 dead and more than 6,000 homes affected, but have now been contained and their “total control is expected in the coming days”, Chile’s La Tercera reports. The newspaper reports that president Gabriel Boric described the fires as “the biggest tragedy we have experienced as a country since the earthquake of 27 February 2010”. In a third article, the outlet points out that a historical review by a climatologist suggests that climate change and El Niño make the country more prone to mega-fires. 

Fires have also hit Serra do Amolar, in Mato Grosso do Sul, central Brazil, considered a “strategic region for biodiversity”, O Globo reports, adding that the region – which lies in the “Pantanal”, the world’s largest tropical wetland – has recorded 115 fires over the last month, despite being the rainy season. Colombia will invest 1.5bn Colombian pesos ($379m) to respond to emergencies caused by El Niño since fires consumed more than 35,000 hectares of forests this year, according to El Espectador. 

Meanwhile, in a column published in Mexico’s Excélsior, economist Lorena Rivera writes that Mexico City is in a “water scarcity crisis”. Rivera suggested the city’s government and municipalities “can demand a declaration of emergency” to receive assistance from the federal government. In Lima, amid a heatwave, 600,000 people do not have access to water and are looking for ways to supply the resource by themselves, Peru’s El Comercio reports. Finally, La Nación reports that after several days of high temperatures in central and northern Argentina, the National Meteorological Service projects the possible arrival of storms in several provinces, including Buenos Aires, starting today.

India is expected to narrowly outstrip China and become the world’s largest driver of global oil demand growth between 2023 and 2030, according to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), released at India Energy Week and covered by Reuters. Currently the world’s third-largest oil importer and consumer, India “is on track to post an oil demand increase of almost 1.2m barrels per day (bpd)” within this time period, accounting for over a third of global increases, the newswire says, largely driven by the growth in transportation fuels. For instance, the IEA says diesel fuel forms the “single largest basis of India’s oil consumption”, accounting for nearly half the rise in national demand and over a sixth of global oil demand growth through to 2030, the article explains. In contrast, the IEA says the electrification of India’s vehicle fleet “will lead to a more muted 0.7% annual growth average through 2030 for gasoline”, with new EVs and energy efficiency improvements helping “avoid 480,000 bpd of extra oil demand from now to 2030”, the article adds. 

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that “a mix of policy decisions, politics and supply chain issues meant [India’s] solar projects in 2023 have been marred in delays and uncertainty, making the country fall short of its annual clean energy installation target in a year that saw heat records topple and devastating floods batter the country”. According to analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), India “only installed 13.7 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy [last year]….compared to 16.3GW in 2022”, the outlet reports, while it “needs to install 40GW a year to meet its goal of installing 500GW of clean energy – enough to power 51m homes – by the end of the decade”. While solar module prices have dropped globally, in India they “have been subject to conflicting import tax policies, with the government first ordering high import taxes and then backtracking within the space of a year”, creating a “wait and watch” attitude among solar project developers and leading to “months-long delays” in projects across states, the article says Analysts warned that government incentives to spur domestic module manufacturing and curb imports “conflicted with the country’s goal of installing renewable energy at speed”, the outlet says, and “a huge increase” in exports of Indian-made solar parts to the US meant less supply for local solar projects. Separately, IndiaSpend examined a government policy revised in December that “allows for old turbines that had less capacity and height to be repowered, refurbished or their life extended, which in turn will allow additional wind power to be generated.” Experts who spoke to the outlet warn that repowering “is a costly affair, might require more land, wider access roads, consent of all turbine owners in joint projects and indigenous manufacturing capabilities”.

In other news, India’s forest authorities has granted approvals for three major coal mine expansions in the eastern state of Chhattisgarh, as well as a nod for exploratory oil drilling in Assam in an area “rich [in] wildlife, including elephants and one-horned rhinoceros”, Hindustan Times reports. In addition, Article 14 reports that environment ministry officials have “selectively interpreted the law to give preliminary approvals to three big hydropower projects planned by an Adani group company in [the] ecologically sensitive forests of the Western Ghats where such large-scale projects are prohibited.” Finally, the newswire Press Trust of India reports that a parliamentary committee has expressed its displeasure with the environment and climate ministry over the “unprecedented delay” in submitting information on actions taken based on the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) in 2018, reports. And Scroll.in has published a long-read on how “climate change is making salt harder to produce”.

The UK Labour Party does not need detailed pledges because, if the party is voted in, it will then have the scope for change, writes Financial Times UK chief political commentator and executive editor Robert Shrimsley. “Expensive pledges are being scaled back, delayed or reduced to aspirations,” he says, pointing to the £28bn green investment plan which has suffered “death by a thousand briefings”. But while some are calling for a detailed mandate, this sort of caution is necessary, as “a winning Labour party taking office will have a mandate to govern differently,” Shrimsley states.

In other UK comment, a Daily Mail editorial hits out at Just Stop Oil protests, and Sunday Telegraph editor Allister Heath argues that the “great electric car lie is a monstrous deception against the British public” in an article for the Daily Telegraph.

US president Joe Biden has done something “remarkable and almost without precedent – he actually said no to big oil”, writes author and veteran climate campaigner Bill McKibben in the Guardian. Biden has halted the granting of new permits for building liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals, showing how “threadbare” the petroleum industry and “its gaggle of politicians” argument have become, he explains. “Biden has called their bluff, and it’s beautiful to watch”, writes McKibben. A Lex opinion piece in the Financial Times explores who the unintended winners of Biden’s pause on licences are, arguing that “companies that have secured US regulatory approval might be pleased to see the door slam behind them”. [For more on Biden’s LNG “pause”, see Carbon Brief’s explainer.]

A new “global megastudy” of more than 59,000 participants in 63 countries investigates whether different types of “intervention” have an impact on peoples’ beliefs and behaviour with respect to climate change. The authors found that making climate change feel more geographically, socially and temporally close – reducing an effect known as “psychological distancing” – increases belief in the threat of climate change by 2.3%. Support for climate change policies increased most (by 2.6%) when participants were asked to write a letter to someone from a future generation. Using a “doom and gloom messaging style” increased willingness to share climate mitigation information on social media by 12.1%, although it did not necessarily have a positive impact on other outcomes. The researchers found that no intervention increased the more “effortful” behaviour of tree-planting, however. The results highlight the need for tailoring interventions to target outcomes, the paper concludes.