More than $14bn in low-carbon US energy investments have either been cancelled or delayed this year according to analysis by clean-energy business group E2, reports the Associated Press. It says the group also estimates that losses since January have cost 10,000 new clean-energy jobs. The article continues that companies are “concerned that investments will be in jeopardy amid House Republicans’ passage of a tax bill that would gut clean energy credits”. These tax credits were boosted by former president Joe Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), but many of its incentives would be “render[ed] moot” by the new bill if it passes in its current form, the outlet explains. E2 estimates that – excluding the cancellations – there have been $132bn in clean-energy plans announced since the IRA passed, the article adds. Nevertheless, Inside Climate News says the scale of cancellations since Donald Trump took office reflects businesses’ “uncertainty and pessimism over federal support amid president Donald Trump’s climate policy retreat”. It says this trend marks an “ominous sign” as the Senate prepares to take up Trump’s bill. Among the cancelled projects are a $3.3bn Stellantis battery plant in Illinois and RWE’s halting of offshore wind development in the US, according to E&E News. It says that, of the $14bn in halted projects, $4.5bn took place in April alone.

In related news, Ford executive chair Bill Ford has warned that the disappearance of tax credits for electric-car manufacturing would threaten the company’s projected $3bn investment in a Michigan plant that is already 60% complete and expected to employ 1,700 people, Reuters reports. Another Reuters story reports that solar panel maker Meyer Burger has closed a US factory in Arizona “due to financial troubles”. This article, too, mentions the wider context of the US government threatening incentives for clean-energy industries. Semafor says that as negotiations continue around the bill that could bring in tax credit cuts, the process could threaten “an even more important clean energy goal” – namely, permitting reform. Elon Musk’s company Tesla has issued a statement criticising the “Republican megabill” for cutting clean-energy tax credits, Politico says. It adds that this message was later “amplified” by Musk on his personal X account.

A group of 22 young people in the US have sued the Trump administration over executive orders that they say are “unconstitutional and would cripple the clean energy industry, suppress climate science and worsen global warming”, the New York Times reports. The plaintiffs are from Montana, Hawaii, Oregon and other states – and are represented by the NGO Our Children’s Trust, the article says. It explains: “The plaintiffs argue that they are already experiencing harms from a warming planet in the form of wildfires, drought and hurricanes, and that Trump’s executive orders will make conditions even worse.” The Guardian says the case is based on the idea that Trump’s executive orders “are violating [the plaintiffs’] constitutional rights to life and liberty”. The case also argues that the “federal government is engaging in unlawful executive overreach by breaching congressional mandates to protect ecosystems and public health”, the article adds.

Meanwhile, Politico reports that the Supreme Court has ruled that federal agencies carrying out environmental reviews can take a more limited view of the impacts of transport and energy infrastructure projects, which does not take into account all “the climate effects of fossil fuels that move through them and will later be burned”. The article says: “The ruling follows years of complaints from industry and Republicans – and some Democrats – that National Environmental Policy Act reviews had ballooned in scope and become a legal hurdle in some cases.”

Finally, E&E News says the oil-and-gas industry is “pushing the Trump administration to kill a proposed rule that would protect workers from extreme heat”. The rule – proposed by the Biden administration last July – would require companies to offer outdoor workers paid water and rest breaks above certain temperatures, the article explains. Scientific American notes that the oil industry is “among the nation’s leading workplaces for heat-related deaths and injuries”.

A drought has been declared in north-west England, following the driest period on record across the country between February and April, the Guardian reports. Despite recent rain, the newspaper explains that the nation’s rivers are at “exceptionally low flows” and reservoir levels are declining. It notes: “Climate breakdown will make droughts more likely, scientists have said, as rainfall becomes less predictable.” The Independent reports that the UK has experienced its sunniest spring since records began. It adds that the current dry spell follows a period of extreme wet weather, with England experiencing its wettest 12 months on record up to September 2024. The Environment Agency has warned that there is a “medium” risk of drought across the whole of England this summer if there is not sustained rainfall, Sky News says.

This follows news that the government is “fast-tracking” plans for the first new UK reservoirs in three decades in Lincolnshire and East Anglia, BusinessGreen reports. By awarding both projects the status of “nationally significant infrastructure projects”, the planning process is elevated from a local level to a decision by the secretary of state, the article explains. It notes that without new reservoirs, the government says national water supplies would “remain under threat” from population increases and the impacts of climate change. Water minister Emma Hardy tells BBC News: “This is really important because if we don’t build the reservoirs, we’re going to be running out of the drinking water that we need by the mid-2030s.” The new projects are scheduled for completion in 2036 and 2040, the article says. The Times quotes an interview Hardy gave to Times Radio, in which she said that without new reservoirs people in the UK could face water restrictions similar to those seen in the Mediterranean. The article says that government plans for new homes and data centres place additional strain on water supplies. An opinion piece by Daily Telegraph columnist Henry Hill lambasts successive UK governments for not doing more to tackle drought. He does not mention climate change.

In more UK news, the Guardian reports that government advisors the Climate Change Committee (CCC) have stated that flexibilities announced by the government for the zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate could lead to higher emissions. The changes could lead to more plug-in hybrids being sold at the expense of electric vehicles, which would limit emissions savings, the newspaper explains. In a story trailed on its frontpage, the i newspaper reports that Tesla has been pushing the UK government to “overhaul” a £2bn scheme that supports biofuels used in vehicles – the renewable transport fuel obligation – to “allow the electric car company access to the lucrative carbon credit market”.

Finally, the Times reports, in a frontpage story, that UK chancellor Rachel Reeves is preparing to announce a multibillion-pound investment package in the north and Midlands “to combat the threat of Reform” in the upcoming 11 June spending review. The newspaper says this “could mean the announcement of tens of billions of pounds of investment in road, rail and green energy projects”.

Wildfires in western Canada have now been declared emergencies in two provinces where thousands of people have fled their homes, BBC News reports. Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe has announced a state of emergency as 14 wildfires “rage uncontrollably” in the province, it explains. A state of emergency has also been declared in the province of Manitoba as multiple wildfires spread across nearly 200,000 hectares, the Globe and Mail reports. The area burned across the province this year is already triple the five-year annual average for Manitoba, the article adds. CBC News reports that thousands of First Nations people in northern Manitoba are among those that have been forced to evacuate. There are currently 134 active fires across Canada, half of which are “considered out of control”, including the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, according to Le Monde. The article quotes Manitoba premier Wab Kinew saying: “For the first time, it’s not a fire in one region, we have fires in every region. That is a sign of a changing climate that we are going to have to adapt to.” In its coverage of the Canadian fires, CNN explains that “climate change is leading to an increase in wildfire risk days, as well as more frequent and larger fires that exhibit more extreme wildfire behaviour”.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that a “short-lived but punishing blast of intense heat” will hit the western US out to Saturday, with “temperatures rising to near-record values”. It adds: “The unusual intensity of high pressure is a marker of human-caused climate change.”

Finally, new analysis by scientists at World Weather Attribution, Climate Central and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre finds that half of the world’s population “endured an additional month of extreme heat over the past year because of man-made climate change”, according to Agence France-Presse.

France will push for China and the EU to take on “global climate leadership” during meetings of ecological transition minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher with Chinese officials and former climate envoy Xie Zhenhua in Beijing, Agence France-Presse reports. The newswire quotes an anonymous source saying the meetings aim to “see how, given the US withdrawal [from climate leadership], we can try to build a new convergence between the EU and China on climate”. Euractiv cites a member of Pannier-Runacher’s team saying it is “extremely important” for China and the EU to “send out a very strong message”, given “doubts” around “climate multilateralism and the COP system”. An article under the byline GT Voice in the state-supporting newspaper Global Times says “China-EU cooperation” in the electric vehicle supply chain will “bring greater certainty to the achievement of global carbon neutrality goals”.

Foreign minister Wang Yi pledged “increased support” to Pacific Island countries “in addressing climate change” at a recent summit, according to Reuters, including “100 ‘small but beautiful’ projects” and a $2m investment in “clean energy…[and] low-carbon infrastructure”. Wang said “China’s commitment” to global climate governance will “not waver” despite the “withdrawal of certain major countries from the Paris agreement”, Xinhua reports. The Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily publishes an article under the byline Zhong Sheng, a pen name indicating the article expresses party leadership’s views on global affairs, urging US-China science and technology cooperation to tackle “pressing” challenges such as climate change. China and African countries have built solar power stations with an installed capacity exceeding 1.5 gigawatts that could “power millions of African households”, another People’s Daily article says. A Global Times editorial notes that a summit held by China, ASEAN and the Gulf states, in which they agreed to “deepen cooperation…in energy security”, is an “event of major significance”.

Former finance vice-minister of finance Zhu Guangyao said that China’s emissions will likely “peak a few years ahead” of 2030, citing analysis in Carbon Brief, Bloomberg reports. Chinese vice-premier He Lifeng “called for greater efforts” to combat desertification, says state news agency Xinhua. Opinions issued by the State Council and Central Committee urged China to establish “sound trading systems for carbon emission rights” by 2027, stating China will shift from controlling carbon intensity to controlling total carbon emissions and increase allocation-based trading, BJX News says. China “ranked first in the world for nine years” in pumped-storage hydropower capacity, China Economic Daily reports. A major “clean-energy transmission line” in Inner Mongolia has been completed, state-run newspaper China Daily reports. Despite “relatively high production costs” and other challenges, hydrogen energy has “huge potential”, Ma Ding and Gao Zirui, professor postdoctoral fellow respectively at Peking University, write in the People’s Daily.

More than three-quarters of the world’s glaciers are on track to vanish “if climate change continues unchecked”, according to a new study covered by Agence France-Presse. Under existing climate policies, which would see temperatures rise 2.7C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, 76% of glacier mass would be gone, an outcome that would fuel sea-level rise and threaten water supplies for billions of people, the article says. However, it adds that if the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C target were reached, the study concludes that 54% of glacial mass could be preserved. Harry Zekollari, a glaciologist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and ETH Zurich who led the study, tells AFP that, given this potential to save glaciers, the findings should be seen as a “message of hope”. Other outlets take a different tack, with the New York Times headline reading: “Some glaciers will vanish no matter what, study finds.” The newspaper explains that “even if global temperatures stayed where they are today for the next thousand years, essentially an impossibility, glaciers outside of ice sheets would lose roughly one-third of their mass”. It explains that glaciers are melting much faster than polar ice sheets in response to climate change, partly because they are smaller. The Guardian says that “almost 40% of glaciers in existence today are already doomed to melt due to climate-heating emissions from fossil fuels”. It says 75% of glaciers in the western US and Canada are “already doomed” to melt, while those in the higher, colder ranges of the Hindu Kush and Karakoram ranges would be more resilient.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that “the landslide that buried most of a Swiss village this week is focusing renewed attention on the role of global warming in glacier collapses around the world and the increasing dangers”. Finally, Atmos reports on “the mountain deity being lost to climate change”. It says tropical glaciers high in Uganda’s Rwenzori Mountains are rapidly melting, adding that for the Bakonzo people, “the loss is not only environmental – it’s displacing the mountain god who lives inside the ice”.

Elinor Bale from the Conservative Environment Network has an article in BusinessGreen arguing that the UK needs to focus more on developing nuclear power. She points to the government’s target of achieving clean electricity by 2030 and says “their ambition in tackling climate change so quickly is admirable, but the government’s approach risks setting itself up for failure”. Bale argues that, due to the focus on 2030, longer term planning has been deprioritised, writing: “Decisions on new energy projects that might not be ready until the next decade, such as nuclear, are being sent to the back of the queue despite their importance to decarbonising without increasing energy bills.” Bale points to the small modular nuclear reactor competition that is currently underway, but which she says has been “significantly delayed”. She acknowledges that the fault does not lie entirely with the relatively new Labour government, noting that there have been “endless delays on crucial nuclear decisions”. The article suggests measures to “streamline red tape” and boost nuclear power, including accepting reactor designs from “other trusted regulators” outside the UK, such as South Korea and France. Bale concludes: “Britain has a proud history when it comes to nuclear. We are in desperate need of consistent, green energy that provides our nation with security and economic growth. Nuclear ticks all these boxes.”

A Times editorial includes a swipe at the hard-right Reform UK party and its leader, Nigel Farage, specifically referencing the “fantasy economics” he has proposed in recent days. The newspaper says: “It must be great fun in Rothmans-puffing, covert-coated ­circles to josh about scrapping quangos, sacking diversity officers and junking everything to do with net-zero, whatever that means in practice…But it won’t pay the bill (we are talking more than the entire ­defence budget here) for raising the income tax threshold by £7,430 to £20,000.”

A new study finds that “climate change deniers” make up a growing proportion of the German population. Based on surveys carried out during UN climate negotiations five times since 2015, researchers analyse shifts in attitudes towards climate change and climate action over the past decade. They find a “strong peak” in positive attitudes and engagement in 2019, followed by “significant backlash” against climate action in the most recent survey. They write that this “potentially indicate[s] an impending climate change fatigue or frustration with climate policy…highlighting the importance of analysing the connection between attitudes, behavior and different communication practices”.