The EU must cut emissions almost three times faster than it has over the past decade to meet its climate goals, according to the latest State of the Energy Union report released by the European Commission and covered by the Guardian. The article notes that new estimates from the European Environment Agency suggest current policies in EU member states will cut emissions in 2030 by just 43%. While this rises to 47% if including planned policies that are not yet in place, it is still short of the EU-wide target of a 55% reduction the bloc has set itself. Wopke Hoekstra, the EU’s new climate commissioner, pointed to the building, transport and agriculture sectors as needing to see significant emissions cuts, as well as the need for larger natural carbon sinks, the article continues. Politico notes that cutting agricultural emissions “has long been a hot-button issue in the EU, with many countries reluctant to impose new rules on farmers” – something acknowledged by Hoekstra when talking to journalists about the new report. It adds that Hoekstra also said member states should phase out fossil fuel subsidies, emphasising that “most…are anachronistic and unhelpful to our clean energy transition”. In more positive news, the report does say the EU is on track for its goal of ending the region’s reliance on Russian fossil fuels within this decade, notes Reuters. According to the commission, Russian gas imports are expected to drop to 40-45bn cubic metres (bcm) this year, compared with 155bcm in 2021, the year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Renewables have also been “soaring” in the EU, Euronews reports. It says the bloc saw a record year for solar in 2022, with 60% more new capacity, and new onshore and offshore wind capacity was also 45% higher than in 2021. Despite this, it adds that member states “aren’t expanding renewable energy fast enough to reach the legally binding target of 42.5% by 2030”.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that the commission has announced an action plan to keep Europe’s wind industry in a “global leadership position”, including boosting financial support through export credit agencies and the European Investment Bank. According to the Financial Times, campaigners have described an EU register of 149 “green” projects earmarked for better access to funding and prioritisation by policymakers as a “wishlist” for oil-and-gas majors. The reason cited in the piece is that half involve low-emissions hydrogen, and the campaigners say the plans risk keeping existing fossil-fuel pipelines in place. In Poland, the Guardian says the “probable” new government – a “climate-friendly” coalition between the centrist Civic Coalition, the centre-right Third Way and the left-wing Lewica parties – may struggle to implement emissions cuts fast, according to civil society groups. Experts say the parties may not agree on policies outside of renewable energy and will face pushback from coal mining unions in the nation that remains Europe’s largest burner of coal, it adds.

Elsewhere, in an interview with Bloomberg, Spanish environment minister Teresa Ribera says the EU will push for countries to do more to cut emissions and phase out all fossil fuels at this year’s UN climate summit in COP28. She explains that “last year was a year of paralysis in terms of emissions commitments”, with much of the focus on establishing a new fund for loss and damage resulting from climate change. Ribera also says that for COP28 to succeed, nations must accept that their current targets are not on track to limit warming to the 1.5C goal of the Paris Agreement. The article notes that while the EU is in a stronger bargaining position than it was last year, there are “weak spots”, with European companies signing multi-decade contracts for liquified natural gas and EU leaders failing to agree on a date for ending fossil-fuel subsidies.

Finally, the Guardian has commissioned YouGov polling of Europeans across seven countries, which shows that many 18-24-year-olds are “willing to have smaller families, stop using cars and – albeit in smaller numbers – go vegan for the planet”.

The planet’s “vital signs” have been pushed to the limit and life on Earth is “under siege”, according to a new study covered by the Independent. An international team of scientists, which previously declared a “climate emergency” in 2019, have identified 35 planetary vital signs, 20 of which they said are being pushed to record extremes, the article continues. Among  the records broken by “enormous margins” in 2023 were global air temperature, ocean temperature and Antarctic sea ice extent, the Guardian reports. The newspaper notes that as well as greenhouse gas emissions, global temperature and sea level rise, the researchers had also noted human and livestock population numbers as one of their key indicators. In response, they “urged a transition to a global economy that prioritised human wellbeing and cut the overconsumption and excessive emissions of the rich”. Scientific American notes that the researchers pointed to a “steep increase” in global disasters linked to climate change, adding that “many of these disasters are hitting communities that have historically produced very little carbon pollution”.

Separately, the Financial Times reports on comments by Jim Skea, recently appointed chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who says the chances of the world limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C are now “less than the one-third to one-half predicted in the last landmark report by UN’s climate science body”.

An EU official says that the bloc still lacks “very clear evidence” of unfair practices to launch a formal probe into China’s wind power industry, reports Reuters. “You need to have very clear evidence that there is an unfair practice…[the Commission] have received reports and indications that leave you with some doubts, particularly about the financial conditions” the outlet quotes the official as saying. Bloomberg says that the EU launched a wind power package to “counter the growing influence of China and spur its own industry”. The package includes changes to improve access to financing, speed up permitting and add nuance to the auction process. The state-run China Daily reports that European businesses and media outlets have expressed concerns about the EU’s anti-subsidy probe into Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), with BMW saying that further punitive tariffs could result in a “boomerang effect”. The finance newspaper Securities Times carries a commentary by Zhang Rui, a member of the Chinese Association of Market Development, who writes that the EU’s investigation will find it “difficult” to suppress the success of Chinese EVs in overseas markets. 

Meanwhile, energy industry news outlet BJX News reports that the national energy administration has announced that decentralised wind power projects will not need to obtain an electricity business licence. Another BJX News article publishes comments from a national development and reform commission (NDRC) official that provinces should “promote the construction of new power systems” and plan a green power system. China Electric Power News reports that from January to September 2023, total installed electricity generation capacity grew 12.3% year-on-year to 2.79 terawatts. Of this, the installed capacity for solar power totalled 520 gigawatts (GW), increasing 45.3%, and wind power reached 400 GW, up 15%. A separate report in the state-run outlet says that the NDRC has released draft legislation related to “energy conservation, carbon reduction and recycling”. 

Beijing News quotes Zhang Juntao, deputy secretary-general of China Energy Conservation Association, who says that “minimising waste…[and] resource consumption” and improving energy efficiency and carbon emissions reductions are key to developing a low-carbon manufacturing sector. Finally, the state-run Economic Daily quotes Chen Shixin, vice president of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), who says that climate financing by the ADB has “doubled” to around $900m.

DeSmog reports on a “lobbying blitz by fossil fuel firms against the windfall tax” in the UK by trade body Offshore Energies UK and various oil-and-gas companies. It says these entities met with ministers at least 210 times in the 12 months following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a period which saw the government introduce a windfall tax on excess profits from the industry. However, when the levy was passed it included a “a loophole where companies received 91p tax relief for every pound they invest in UK extraction” – something that DeSmog reports “came about following a surge in meetings and lobbying”. Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that amid continued high gas prices due to the war in Ukraine and, now, war in the Middle East, analysts at Cornwall Insight have warned that UK households could face higher energy bills next year.

Separately, the Independent reports that in a meeting of the climate change all-party parliamentary group of UK MPs ahead of COP28, Danish climate minister Dan Jorgensen called on the UK to renounce fossil-fuel exploration and join the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance that his country co-chairs. And the Daily Telegraph reports that British Gas owner Centrica has warned that a long queue of renewable projects waiting for grid connections is holding up the UK’s progress to net-zero. A report commissioned by the company finds that “projects struggling to join up to the grid mean investors could abandon opportunities in the UK and instead look abroad”, the newspaper says.

Scottish justice secretary Angela Constance has stated that Storm Babet, which has claimed at least seven lives across the UK, shows climate change is a crisis taking place “here and now”, according to the Press Association. The minister, whose brief includes Scotland’s resilience, said councils are still assessing the full extent of damage and worst-hit areas would face a “long road to recovery”, the article continues. Former deputy first minister John Swinney described the storm as a wake-up call to climate sceptics, according to the Scotsman. 

Speaking to MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, environment secretary Therese Coffey said the country had been less prepared for the scale of flooding because Storm Babet’s rain came from the east, not the west, reports the Daily Telegraph on its frontpage. The newspaper quotes her saying: “This was rain coming from the other way. And we don’t have quite as much experience on that and therefore our accuracy of predicting where such heavy rain would fall was not to the same degree as if it had been otherwise.” As a result, Coffey said, “the Environment Agency had moved assets from parts of the country more towards Yorkshire and the north-east and that way. But I’m conscious that there were still some places that felt they could have done with some more pumps”, reports the Guardian. The Daily Mail also has the story.

A Financial Times editorial about the state of the oil industry reflects on the recent moves by US supermajors ExxonMobil and Chevron to purchase other major producers even as the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that global demand for oil and gas will peak this decade. It asks “who is right about the future of oil?”, adding: “The tie-ups are a bet that the IEA’s vision of shrinking demand is wrong, or at least a bid to position these enlarged US giants among the last producers standing to meet the demand they believe will still exist by mid-century.” It also notes that the US companies are “widening the gap” with their European peers that have “begun, tentatively, to embrace clean energy”. The article states that “there is certainly a case for highly cash-generative oil and gas giants, with all their engineering knowhow, to play a role in the energy transition”. The outlet adds that the US consolidation will apply pressure onto European companies to “demonstrate that their more hybrid strategies are sound” – adding that Shell has already been “backtracking somewhat”. 

Separately, Financial Times energy editor David Sheppard writes that “the IEA – once viewed as the gold standard in oil forecasting – has been turned on by many devout believers in the sector”. Members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) have accused the IEA of becoming politicised and stoking up volatility in oil markets, he writes, concluding: “You can of course believe that the IEA have [sic] got this wildly wrong…But within the wide ranges and uncertainty of the IEA scenarios is a glimpse into what the likely path is for the oil sector. Investors should be careful about swaggering blindly towards it.”

Columnist David Wallace-Wells has a lengthy piece in the New York Times magazine about the spate of devastating fires that have afflicted Canada over the past year. He reels off a list of regions and towns across the nation that have seen terrible events unfold in recent months. “It was, all told, an ecologically unprecedented event. By the end of September, more than half of the world’s countries could fit inside the land burned this year in the Canadian wilderness. Since the 1970s, the average area burned in the country had already doubled; this year, wildfires consumed that average six times over,” Wallace-Wells writes. He notes: “Up north, it was hard to find anyone who wasn’t speaking the language of climate alarm, or who had passed through the crucible of the fire season without seeming hardened or darkened by it.”

In the Washington Post, Fatima Bhutto, a Pakistani writer and novelist, takes a broader look with a piece titled, “Climate change is the catastrophe to end all other catastrophes”. She recalls recent events such as fires in Greece, floods in Libya and also in her home country of Pakistan. “We live in an era of dreadful superlatives. July was the planet’s hottest month ever recorded…The same pound of flesh will be extracted from every nation, rich or poor, whether their leaders believe that things aren’t really so bad,” she concludes.

Financial Times business columnist Pilita Clark explains that “when it comes to switching to heat pumps, few countries offer a bleaker case study in what not to do than Britain”. She says the government has taken a “muddled, contradictory approach” to this technology, announcing grants to help with installation, while also rolling back targets to phase out gas boilers. She says the country has a long history of similar behaviour – for example, failing to encourage the installation of low-carbon heating in new-build homes. A key issue is that electricity in the UK is so expensive, partly due to policies that actively increase the price of electricity relative to gas, Clark continues. “None of these problems are insurmountable. The solutions are known and tested. A G7 country like the UK has the resources to implement them. One day, it might finally get a government with the will and acuity to put them in place,” she concludes. On the same topic, climate-sceptic columnist Ross Clark has an article in the Daily Telegraph titled, “Nobody wants a heat pump, no matter how large the bribes”.

Meanwhile, a Daily Telegraph editorial considers the “stubbornly bad” polling for the UK’s government and suggests the ruling Conservatives “must be clear what they believe in”. It concludes by stating that prime minister Rishi Sunak “has taken some courageous decisions, including scrapping the northern leg of HS2 and slowing down the madcap dash to ‘net-zero’. More along these lines is needed in his second year”. [Since Sunak announced his rollback of net-zero pledges, the Conservatives’ performance in the polls has remained low and the party has lost two by-elections to Labour in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire, despite previously holding large majorities in those areas.]

Meanwhile, a Guardian editorial looks at how the opposition Labour party should approach the country’s faltering steel industry. It says: “Britain is set to require more, not less, steel as it builds net-zero machinery and infrastructure at pace. That can be a catalyst for industry renewal, if a committed government shows the drive and imagination to make it so.”

Nobel laureate in economics and former chief economist of the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz writes for Project Syndicate about how “international trade and financial arrangements are overwhelmingly arrayed against” the goal of enhancing developing countries’ revenues so that they can tackle climate change. He criticises the focus on “de-risking” to encourage the private sector to invest in the necessary climate solutions in developing countries. “Why should we expect the private sector to solve a long-run public-goods problem like climate change? The private sector is well known to be short-sighted, focusing wholly on proprietary gains, not social benefits,” he writes. Stiglitz says a better option would be to “use liquidity to strengthen multilateral development banks (MDBs), which have developed special competencies in the relevant areas”. He also points to other flaws in the current global system, such as the need for changes at the World Trade Organization to avoid “neocolonial trade patterns”. He concludes: “The best – and perhaps the only – strategy, then, to ensure that developing countries and emerging markets do what they must if we are to avert a climate catastrophe is to start rectifying some of the global injustices of the past, and to generate more income and affordable financing for developing countries.”

The temperatures of surface waters in lakes across the world are generally increasing more slowly than global air temperatures, a new study says. Using satellite data and numerical modelling, the researchers produce high-resolution lake surface water temperatures for 92,245 lakes. The global lake surface water temperature data indicate an average increase of 0.24 C per decade over 1981-2020, which is “significantly slower than the change in surface air temperature [0.29C per decade] during the same period”. An acceleration in evaporation rate “is mainly responsible for the slower warming rate”, the authors note.

New research presents an assessment of leaf-type variation in forests around the world. The authors estimate that 38% of global trees are needle-leaved evergreen, 29% are broadleaved evergreen, 27% are broadleaved deciduous and 5% are needle-leaved deciduous. The “aboveground biomass distribution among these tree types is approximately 21% (126.4 Gt), 54% (335.7 Gt), 22% (136.2 Gt) and 3% (18.7 Gt), respectively”, the study finds. Depending on future warming levels, 17-34% of forested areas will “experience climate conditions by the end of the century that currently support a different forest type”, the authors say, which highlights the “intensification of climatic stress on existing forests”.