Global leaders must avoid “empty slogans” and adopt a pragmatic attitude to climate change that incorporates worries about energy security, employment and growth, a Chinese climate official has said ahead of the COP28 climate talks next month, Reuters reports. Xia Yingxian, head of the climate office at China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, said at a briefing in Beijing that “developed countries have an unshirkable responsibility for global climate change and at the same time have the actual ability to deal with climate change”, according to Reuters. The newswire adds that Yingxian called for rich nations to fulfil promises to provide $100bn in annual climate finance for poorer countries, complete setting up a financial mechanism for “loss and damage” and double adaptation funds.

In other China news, a spokesperson from the Chinese ministry of commerce said that the government has implemented graphite expert control in accordance with the law and “without targeting any specific country, region or industry”, reports the financial news outlet Yicai. The spokesperson added that graphite exports that comply with relevant regulations will be granted licence approvals. Euronews reports that the EU announced new bilateral investment agreements on Wednesday, including “on critical raw materials with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia and on green hydrogen with Namibia, as well as cooperation on clean energy with Bangladesh and Vietnam”, in a move seen widely as in competition with China’s belt and road initiative (BRI). 

Meanwhile, the state-run China Daily reports that the Chinese ambassador to the US Xie Feng recently remarked that China’s demand for agricultural products is expected to increase further, creating “new opportunities for the China-US cooperation in agricultural technology cooperation and green development”. Politico carries a commentary by Francis Rooney, a retired Republican politician, in which he argues the US should develop a carbon pricing mechanism to both address climate change and counter “China’s expanding economic and military influence”. Another Yicai article writes that the India government is “investigating 40 Chinese solar companies” for potential tax evasion, although no business being affected yet. The outlet notes that India has enacted several protectionist measures on behalf of their own solar industry. 

Nikkei Asia writes that CNOOC, one of China’s “largest” national oil companies, plans to make “record capital expenditure” this year. The Tokyo-based newspaper recalls that Xi reiterated the need “to enhance the construction of energy production, supply, storage and sales network and to ensure energy security” last October. Politico reports that China will assist Finland in its investigation into a destroyed gas pipeline, after a Chinese ship was spotted in the area at the time of the damage. Finally, Bloomberg reports that Sinopec, the country’s “biggest” refiner, experienced a significant increase in profits during the third quarter of 2023, despite China’s slow economic recovery.

The Times reports that at least 27 people have been killed by Hurricane Otis after it tore through the Mexican resort city of Acapulco. It says: “The category 5 Pacific storm caught authorities off-guard after dramatically strengthening before slamming into the coast on Wednesday with 165mph winds. Otis flooded streets, ripped the roofs of buildings and cut communications, leaving confusion and devastation in its wake. Mexican authorities said four people are still missing while the government has deployed around 10,000 troops to deal with the aftermath. Many of Acapulco’s roughly 900,000 residents were without electricity due to Otis.” The New York Times reports on how the storm “is an extreme example of what hurricane experts call ‘rapid intensification’”. It adds: “[This is] defined as a minimum increase of 35 miles per hour in wind speed over 24 hours. Otis’s wind speeds increased by a staggering 115 miles per hour in less than a day, growing from a tropical storm to a category 5 hurricane.” Eric Blake, a forecaster with the National Hurricane Center, tells the New York Times that rapid intensification is a “nightmare scenario,” giving the authorities almost no time to warn residents or prepare for the onslaught. The newspaper adds: “It’s too early to say whether Hurricane Otis became more powerful so quickly because of man-made climate change. (It often takes months to produce such attribution studies.) But a hotter planet is likely to produce stronger storms, because warmer water holds more energy, and warmer air holds more moisture.”

Elsewhere, ABC News reports that Severe Tropical Cyclone Lola, which ripped across Vanuatu this week leaving significant damage in its wake, has “become the earliest category 5 system on record for the southern hemisphere”.

Bloomberg reports that the first major legislation House Republicans passed under newly installed Republican speaker Mike Johnson “would cut billions of dollars in consumer rebates for energy efficiency upgrades included in president Joe Biden’s signature climate law”. Bloomberg says: “The $58bn measure, which funds the energy department and other agencies, rescinds more than $5.5bn from the Inflation Reduction Act, including a $4.5bn programme for homeowners to switch to more energy efficient appliances and a $1bn grant programme to help states craft more stringent building energy codes.The bill, approved Thursday on a 210-199 vote, also slashes the energy department’s energy efficiency and renewable energy office funding by 42% below last year’s levels and revokes $15bn in loan authority from the department’s loan guarantee programme.” The New York Times reports that Johnson “has questioned climate science, opposed clean energy and received more campaign contributions from oil and gas companies than from any other industry last year”. It says: “Even as other Republican lawmakers increasingly accept the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is dangerously heating the planet, the unanimous election of Johnson on Wednesday suggests that his views may not be out of step with the rest of his party.” It comes as new research from the Pew Research Center highlights the extent to which climate change is a politicised issue in the US, the New York Times says. It “found that a vast majority of Democrats polled – 85% – said that climate change is an extremely or very serious problem, while 47% of Republicans viewed climate change as not too serious or not a problem at all”, according to the New York Times. Bloomberg also reports on the survey, Some 80% of the survey respondents said that the level of political disagreement over climate change bothers them, Bloomberg reports.

Elsewhere, Reuters reports that the US appeals court on Thursday temporarily paused a federal judge’s order last month that had required the Biden administration to expand a planned offshore oil and gas auction in the Gulf of Mexico by 2.4m hectares. Reuters also reports that a group of Republican-led states on Thursday said they would “appeal a Texas-based federal judge’s decision rejecting their challenge to a rule from Biden’s administration allowing employee retirement plans to consider environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues in investment decisions”. The Hill reports that Senate Democrats are calling on Biden to do more to bolster the electrification of trucks.

The UK government has denied a request from a group of MPs to explain how it will still meet its legally-binding emissions targets after rolling back key climate policies, Edie reports. In September, prime minister Rishi Sunak weakened key measures for banning the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, phasing out the sale of new fossil-fuel boilers and improving home energy efficiency. This prompted the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC), led by Conservative MP Philip Dunne, to write to Sunak to ask for “clarity” on how the government will meet its targets in light of the rollbacks, Edie reports. It adds: “Energy and net-zero secretary Claire Coutinho has today (26 October) responded to the EAC’s letter, stating that ‘it is not appropriate, nor is it a requirement, to update and publish a revised version of the Carbon Budget Delivery Plan every time there is a change in economic data, policy or a wider factor’.” She insisted that the government is still on track to meet net-zero by 2050, the Press Association reports. 

Elsewhere, the Daily Telegraph reports that “new homeowners who improve the energy efficiency of their properties in the first two years of their ownership could receive a stamp duty rebate under plans being considered by the Treasury”. The Daily Telegraph says: “One government figure familiar with the policy discussions said the idea was ‘in the running’ to be announced in next month’s autumn statement.” This was one of the leading recommendations of the energy efficiency taskforce, which was created by Jeremy Hunt in last year’s autumn statement, it adds. [The taskforce was scrapped in September following Sunak’s U-turn on core elements of the UK’s climate policy.] The Daily Mail reports that several Conservative green groups are urging Hunt to adopt the policy, including Onward and Bright Blue.

The Daily Telegraph reports that the UK “risks becoming dependent on oil and gas imports as North Sea production dries up”, according to figures from the state-run North Sea Transition Authority. The article claims there will be a “gap” between supply and demand in “two to three decades” as the North Sea produces less oil and gas. [However, as the article notes, demand for oil and gas is projected to fall dramatically as the UK switches to greener forms of energy. It is likely that the UK will remain a net importer of oil and gas near net-zero, but it will still use far fewer imports than at present.]

In addition, Forbes reports that the high court will allow a challenge to the government’s decision to slash funding for walking and cycling.

A Munich-based company and the major European manufacturer of wind farms, Siemens Energy, is asking the German government for several billion euros in guarantees “to continue financing new projects, despite significant losses in the wind turbine sector”, according to Der Spiegel’s information. The outlet explains that Siemens Energy’s stock price dropped by around 30% to under €7 on Thursday due to growing demand and high losses in the wind turbine business. Furthermore, the article notes that Siemens Energy and competitors such as Vestas, General Electric and Nordex have engaged in “cutthroat competition”, rapidly introducing larger wind turbines into the market. The European Commission would need to approve any state aid package, which is “highly likely” will happen, especially as Brussels has recently agreed on a package of measures to support “the struggling European wind industry”, notes the newspaper. The New York Times quotes the company’s statement: “The enormous speed of the energy transition is creating high demand for our technologies…This positive development also means we have to issue guarantees to our customers to a greater extent.” The Guardian also reports on the story, adding that the cost of correcting technical faults, which have affected the company’s newest onshore wind turbine models, is expected to drive Siemens Energy to a €4.5bn loss this year. The crisis is the subject of the Lex column from the Financial Times.

Meanwhile, Handelsblatt reports that for the first time in 20 years, Germany is becoming a net electricity importing country this year, importing 12.8 terawatt hours (TWh) more electricity than it exported due to lower prices on European electricity markets. An analysis of hourly electricity generation and German import data from Agora Energiewende reveals that the most imported energy source was nuclear power, at 12.6TWh, followed by hydroelectric power at 11.2TWh and onshore wind energy at 6.9TWh, creating “an advantageous situation for Germany’s energy transition”. However, Berliner Zeitung reports that Germany’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by two-thirds by 2030 compared to 1990 levels “will most likely be missed”.

Many parts of Ghana have been plunged into a major power crisis due to a shortage of gas needed for generating electricity, BBC News reports. The major outage began on Thursday evening, BBC News reports, adding: “Power distribution firm Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) says the situation has caused ‘a supply gap of 550MW at peak time’ at Tema power plant, near the capital, Accra.”

In the Daily Telegraph, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organization (WHO) director-general; Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, president-designate of COP28 and Dr Vanessa Kerry, WHO special envoy for climate change and health, write on the “connection” between tackling climate change and improving human health. They say: “If we don’t act, climate change will soon overwhelm the world’s health systems. Extreme weather events – like droughts, floods and heatwaves – will increase in frequency and severity as the planet warms. Last year’s floods in Pakistan, for example, displaced eight million people and affected 33 million overall.”

Writing on Substack, Steve Akehurst, who works on climate and political issues for the Global Strategic Communications Council (GSCC), explains why his research shows Sunak’s decision to rollback climate measures will lose him votes. He says: “I set up a small RCT (Randomised Control Trial) experiment with FocalData on the day of Sunak’s speech. A treatment group of voters saw a shortened version of this neutral BBC article regarding Sunak’s announcement, while a control group saw nothing. Both groups took the same survey at the end. Any statistically significant difference (minimum 6% +/-) can be attributed to reading the article. So what happened for the Conservatives in the treatment group compared to control? In short, not much good.”

Elsewhere, a column in the Daily Telegraph by Spectator journalist Kate Andrews claims the “public still isn’t being told the full truth about the net-zero transition”.

A new study finds that simple dietary substitutions, such as changing out beef for chicken in a burrito, could reduce the US’s total dietary carbon footprint by more than one-third. Researchers use dietary intake data from a survey of more than 7,750 US residents, then link those with information on the emissions associated with different foods. They find that “if all consumers who ate the high-carbon foods instead consumed a lower-carbon substitute”, it would cut 35% of the US dietary carbon footprint. In addition, they write, “these substitutions would improve consumers’ overall dietary quality by 4–10%, with benefits projected for all age, gender, and racial and ethnic groups”.

Changes in atmospheric circulation in western Europe have caused a “substantial fraction” of the extreme temperatures felt in that region over the past 70 years, a new study finds. Using 170 simulations from 32 climate models, researchers examine changes in extreme heat in an attempt to understand why it has been “increasing at a disproportionate rate”. They find that “none [of the models] have a circulation-induced heat trend as large as observed”, attributing the difference “to underestimated circulation response to external forcing, or to a systematic underestimation of low-frequency variability, or both”. They call for “caution when interpreting climate projections of heat extremes over western Europe” as a result.