The amount of sea ice in Antarctica has “plummeted to unprecedented lows…due to a series of interconnected climate change-driven phenomena”, says the Press Association, citing new research published in the journal Science Advances. It notes that, until 2015, sea-ice levels in the continent were increasing, but this trend then “abruptly shifted”. It continues: “[H]uman-induced climate change intensified winds, which, from around 2013, began drawing warm, saline water from the deep ocean closer to the surface. Then, in 2015, intense wind mixed the deeper heat directly into the surface layer, rapidly melting sea ice…Since 2018, the ice-ocean system has been trapped in a cycle where – with less ice to melt – the surface remains salty and warm so that ice cannot recover.” CNN also has the story.

MORE ON CLIMATE RESEARCH

• The Guardian: “Inequality causing 100,000 extra deaths a year from heat and cold in Europe.”
• The Times of India: “Combined impact of climate change and rapid development triggers landslides: study.”
• The Press Association: “Warning climate change could threaten Britain’s beloved cup of tea.”
• The Associated Press says seasonal models are “predicting an El Niño climate pattern that could be the strongest on record, bringing with it more extreme weather”.

Nature, in an effort to prevent the centre from being “dismantled”. It says NCAR is a “crucial global resource whose models underpin much of modern atmospheric science”. The outlet explains: “At the heart of the legal fight is whether the US National Science Foundation (NSF), which provides the bulk of NCAR’s funding through a contract with UCAR, is moving too quickly and without authority to hand off pieces of NCAR – including a supercomputing centre in Cheyenne, Wyoming – to public and private institutions.” Meanwhile, the Guardian reports on how a “Trump panel seeks to weaken disaster response amid climate crisis”. It says: “Sweeping changes may be in store at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), the nation’s frontline emergency response coordinator, that experts warned could further erode US capacity to handle disasters.”

MORE ON US

• Financial Times: “US wildfires surge to decade high as drought fuels fears of brutal summer.” Time: “The worst spring drought on record is putting US crops at risk.”
• A comment for the Financial Times by global business columnist Rana Foroohar says that US farmers have been “hurt by trade wars, climate disasters and, most recently, rising fertiliser and other input prices”.
• Vox: “Levees can no longer save New Orleans.”
• Politico: “The East Coast’s signature climate policy [the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative] is poised to spike electricity prices just as governors are desperate to lower them.”
• The Wall Street Journal: “New York is working on a blueprint for greener buildings.”
• Agence France-Presse: “Climate risks fuel insurance costs, squeezing US households even inland.”

China’s oil imports fell 20% year-on-year in April to the lowest level in almost four years amid the closure of the Strait of Hormuz that disrupted supplies, reports Reuters, citing customs data released on Saturday. The newswire adds that China’s crude inventories rose by 17m barrels in April despite the decline in imports, according to ship tracker Vortexa. The Chinese government’s export restrictions also drove refined oil products down to their lowest level in roughly a decade, down by around a third since March, according to the newswire. Bloomberg also covers the story, saying that imports of gas also fell by 13% last month. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that a Trump administration “crackdown” has seen installers, banks and insurers stop doing business with “at least a half dozen recently built US panel factories because of uncertainty over whether their ties to China could disqualify them from clean-energy subsidies”.

MORE ON CHINA

• The South China Morning Post: “China vows action after EU cuts funding for green projects using Chinese inverters.”
• China’s NDRC has raised domestic petrol prices by 320 yuan ($47) per tonne while calling state oil companies to ensure stable market supply, reports Xinhua.
• CWEA’s Qin Haiyan has said “green methanol and ammonia” are two core “hydrogen-based energy carriers” for safeguarding China’s energy security and building a new power system, reports Xinhua.
• China needs to “embrace green energy” by focusing on three areas, including technological innovation, energy systems and international cooperation, reports Economic Daily.
• He Weiwen, with the Centre for China and Globalisation, has said China and the US share enormous opportunities in areas including “green transformation”, reports China Daily.
• The state-supporting Global Times says China can provide “technology, capital and a stable market” to help Brazil build domestic rare-earth processing capacity.

A number of UK outlets preview the upcoming King’s speech, which will outline the new legislation set to be introduced by the government over the year ahead. The Sunday Times says the speech will announce the “full nationalisation of British Steel”. It adds: “The situation also means that British Steel is unable to press ahead with plans to switch to newer steelmaking methods. Ministers still hope to swap the blast furnaces for an electric arc furnace that has a far lower carbon footprint.” The Guardian says: “Officials reportedly drafting legislation likely to safeguard Britain’s last blast furnaces and save thousands of jobs.” BBC News lists legislation expected in the speech including an Energy Independence Bill that had been promised in Labour’s 2024 manifesto. Meanwhile, the opposition Conservatives have pledged to “restart drilling in the North Sea” if elected in 2029, reports the Daily Mail.

MORE ON UK

• The Financial Times reports on last week’s local elections: “Greens score some urban goals, but undershoot the wider target.”
• The Times reports warnings from trade body British Glass that a recycling tax, which the newspaper describes as a “green levy”, is “put[ting] UK glass industry’s future at risk”.
• The Daily Express reports “fury” at a proposal from a thinktank for a temporary reduction in speed limits to reduce fuel demand during the Iran crisis. [The International Energy Agency has previously called for such a measure.]
• The Guardian carries a feature on a 2022 wildfire in east London that “showed [the] scale of UK wildfire threat”.
• The Guardian: “Google developers significantly misstate carbon emissions of proposed UK datacentres.” The Sunday Times asks: “How much energy and water do our AI tools really use?”
• The Guardian examines whether home batteries are a “gamechanger” for cutting energy bills.

“Soaring prices and fuel shortages” are “compel[ling]” countries in Africa to look towards electric vehicles (EVs), reports the Associated Press. It cites customs data showing the number of EVs imported to the continent from China more than doubled in 2025. The newswire continues: “As the Iran war drags on, Ethiopia’s fuel shortages are rippling through transport systems and daily life, reinforcing its effort to cut costly imports of oil and gas and strengthen its energy security. However, that trend is raising questions about charging infrastructure and affordability.” It adds: “Egypt, South Africa and Morocco also are pursuing a transition to EV use, adopting a mix of policy incentives, investing in manufacturing capacity and in clean energy.” Another Associated Press article says: “Bolivia’s fuel shortages and ‘junk gasoline’ drive a surge in electric cars.” Bloomberg reports that a solar firm is planning a $750m expansion in four African countries.

There has been a rise in the global capacity for coal-based steelmaking driven by a “major expansion of steel production in India”, reports the Financial Times. It says: “More than 300mn tonnes a year of new coal-based blast furnace production has been announced or is under construction to date, a 5% increase in the past year, according to a new report by Global Energy Monitor, a non-governmental organisation that tracks fossil-fuel and renewable-energy projects.” The newspaper adds: “Electric-arc furnace capacity increased 1% in the past year to 34% of total global production, up from 31% in 2022, according to the GEM report.” Bloomberg says: “The global steel industry’s green transition is threatened by continued spending on coal-based production and underinvestment in cleaner methods, according to a clean energy research group.”

Saudi Arabian state oil firm Aramco has reported a 26% jump in profit in the first quarter of the year, says the Guardian, adding that “its east-west pipeline allowed it to ship millions of barrels of oil out of the Gulf despite conflict in the Middle East”. Reuters reports that the head of Saudi Aramco, Amin Nasser, has warned that the “world has lost about 1bn barrels of oil over the past two ​months and energy markets will take time to ​stabilise even if flows resume”. The Times reports that Nasser “says the Iran war could disrupt oil until next year”. Agence France-Presse says “soaring energy profits” have “reignite[d] calls for windfall tax”. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports: “A tanker carrying liquefied natural gas from Qatar appears to have transited the strait of Hormuz, marking the country’s first export out of the region since the Iran war began.”

A Financial Times editorial says that, at the start of the Iran war, “some of president Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters sought, tenuously, to cast the move as part of a grand strategy to squeeze China”. It continues: “In fact, the conflict has opened ways for China to increase its global economic influence.” The editorial adds: “First, high fossil fuel prices and volatile supplies have underscored the need for nations to hasten their shift to renewable power sources. This is a boon for Beijing.” However, it adds: “Concerns around national security, particularly in Europe, are also likely to limit the boom in green exports.”

In the Guardian, Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, says Europe should learn lessons from China in the wake of the Iran crisis. He says: “Take the industries of the future. The fossil-fuel shortfalls caused by the war in Iran are prompting many Europeans to look with renewed interest at their clean-energy transition. Yet all the key elements of that transition, from batteries, electric vehicles, solar panels and – if action isn’t taken soon – wind energy supply chains, are dominated by Chinese firms.”

MORE COMMENT

• In his new Bright Spots Substack, the University of Oxford’s Prof Jan Rosenow looks at how wind and solar have made Spain “one of Europe’s cheapest power markets”.
• An editorial in the climate-sceptic comment pages of the Washington Post claims: “Climate mandates have helped doom the EU to sluggish growth and high electricity prices.”
• An editorial in the climate-sceptic comment pages of the Wall Street Journal by the American Enterprise Institute’s Matthew Continetti claims Democrats are to blame for high energy prices.
• A comment for the New York Times by Matthew Huber, author of “Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet” is titled: “Democrats don’t have to campaign on climate change anymore.” (An earlier headline, which attracted a lot of criticism on social media, ran: “Forget climate change. Democrats need to talk about other issues.”)
• An editorial in the Times says UK prime minister Keir Starmer should “accept that energy costs [are] too high and move more quickly to build new nuclear power stations”. A Financial Times feature, on what a Reform government would do, looks at how the party has contradicted itself on renewable energy.
• The climate-sceptic comment pages of the Daily Telegraph includes pieces on “celebrat[ing]” profits at BP and how Trump “will be unable to resist” using European LNG imports from the US as a “coercive weapon”.

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Simon Evans, with contributions from Henry Zhang. It was edited by Leo Hickman.

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