Climate Home News reports that Australia will “continue to argue” for a transition away from fossil fuel use in energy at COP31, according to the incoming co-president of next year’s UN climate summit. The outlet says that Australian climate minister Chris Bowen, who will be COP31’s “president of negotiations”, told reporters that Australia and the Pacific helped to create the fossil-fuel transition goal agreed at COP28 and will “continue to argue for things that are in the best interest of Australia and the Pacific together”.  

Meanwhile, media outlets continue to cover the aftermath of COP30. The Guardian looks at how a last-minute wording negotiation between the EU and Saudi Arabia saved the talks from collapse. The Associated Press speaks to 17 experts about what comes next following the Belém talks. UN climate chief Simon Stiell tells the newswire: “We leave here with a clear signal…that we have entered the era of implementation.” Axios also looks at what comes next and Mongabay explores the key outcomes, saying the summit “ended with disappointment”. Bloomberg shares the “starkest COP memories” from climate diplomats, researchers, analysts and activists. 

MORE ON COP30

• UN rights chief Volker Turk says the “meagre results” from COP30 show how “corporate power imbalances…play out in the climate emergency”, Agence France-Presse reports. 
• The Financial Times says Argentina is “dabbling with spoiler status” at global negotiations – including at COP30 when it “repeatedly voiced dissent”. 
• The Times of India asks: “How will climate action history remember COP30?” 
• Bloomberg reports that “Indigenous peoples’ demands got more than lip service at COP30”, with “concrete progress” such as newly designated territories and a $1.8bn land rights pledge. 
• The Wall Street Journal reports how the COP30 organisers “hope that leveraged finance can send billions of dollars to developing countries while also generating a return for investors”. 

At least 19 people have died in southern Thailand after a major storm, CNN reports. Hat Yai city experienced the “heaviest rain in 300 years” and floodwaters surged more than eight feet high, the outlet says. Around 1.9m people have been affected by the floods, Reuters reports. Bloomberg says: “Heavy rainfall is typical for this time of year due to the northeast monsoon, but the recent downpours have been notable for their intensity and impact.” Al Jazeera reports that floods in Vietnam have killed 91 people over the course of just over a week. Sky News publishes photos showing the impacts of the floods in Thailand and Vietnam. The South China Morning Post says Malaysia is now “bracing itself for its turn as the severe weather moves south”.

The Daily Express reports in its print edition and online that fewer than 100,000 heat pumps were installed in the UK last year, meaning the country is “now operating at one sixth of the required pace” to meet key targets. The newspaper adds that experts say the UK will fall “dramatically short of its target to install 600,000 a year by 2028”. [This target was set by the previous government and has not been maintained under Labour.]  It also says – without explanation – that the figures are a “blow to energy secretary Ed Miliband’s dream of decarbonising the electricity system by 2030”. The i newspaper reports: “Plan to install heat pumps in most homes in jeopardy over cuts to £7,500 grants.”

MORE ON UK 

• Ahead of tomorrow’s budget, the Daily Telegraph looks at “every tax [chancellor Rachel] Reeves could raise”, including on electric vehicles. BusinessGreen says conservation groups are calling for an “urgent rethink on how the government can protect nature” ahead of the budget. 
• Politico says that a “drawn-out fight” over the future of oil and gas drilling in the North Sea is “finally reaching its conclusion” ahead of the budget. The Scotsman reports on “warn[ings]” from the North Sea oil and gas sector that it could see “decommissioning costs outstrip fossil-fuel investment for the first time”. 
• More than £700m is being spent at the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station on a fish protection measure, nicknamed a “fish disco”, that is expected to save less than one salmon each year, according to the Times.
• Wildfires burned more land in the UK this year than “any time since records began”, the Guardian reports. [Also reported by Carbon Brief in August.]
• More than 1,400 UK scientists have written to MPs urging them to attend a “first-of-its-kind” climate and nature briefing in Westminster this week, BusinessGreen says. 
• The Guardian factchecks Reform UK claims about saving millions at English councils, including two claims – that it debunks – about councils saving money related to electric vehicles. 

Chinese premier Li Qiang told fellow leaders that the world needs “unity and cooperation” to tackle challenges such as climate change and energy and food security, state news agency Xinhua reports, in ongoing coverage of the G20 summit. Li urged the G20 to “strengthen ecological and environmental cooperation”, “take urgent action” on climate issues and accelerate the implementation of outcomes from COP30, it adds. Li defended China’s need to “cautiously manage” critical-minerals exports and unveiled a global mining initiative with countries that are “friendly” to China at the summit, Bloomberg reports. Reuters says Li “pitched stronger ties” with Germany on “new energy” and hydrogen, as tensions over rare earths stymie cooperation. Xinhua covers a joint initiative by China and South Africa that includes calls to “strengthen international cooperation on green infrastructure and green minerals”. A Global Times commentary under the byline “Global Times” says the G20 declaration underscores the “necessity of multilateralism” on climate and other “core areas”.

Meanwhile, business outlet Jiemian says “regrettably, [COP30] failed to achieve breakthrough progress on the most contentious issue – fossil fuels”, citing analysis by Carbon Brief. The Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily says China has become a “trusted leader in global climate governance”. State-run newspaper China Daily publishes an opinion article by Ikenna Emewu, editor-in-chief of Africa China Economy Magazine, saying global-south countries need China to “guard them from bullying on green energy transition” at global climate talks. China Daily also says COP30 sends a “strong political signal that ‘multilateralism is alive’”.

MORE ON CHINA

• China Electric Power News reports that between January and October 2025, China’s total installed power capacity rose to 3,750 gigawatts (GW), with solar capacity growing to 1,140GW and wind to 590GW.
• The EU plans to push China to “transfer technological knowhow” when investing in certain sectors in Europe, such as batteries, the Financial Times reports.
• The Global Times reports that China’s first project achieving “100% conversion of coke oven gas to clean energy” has come online.
• The number of operational nuclear power units in China is about to reach 60, Jiemian reports.
• China has released three more methodologies for “voluntary greenhouse gas emission reduction projects” for the oil and gas sector under its voluntary carbon market, Science and Technology Daily reports.
• Xinhua: “How will China peak coal, oil use in its climate push.”

An editorial in the Guardian says that although COP30 “ended without a major breakthrough”, the negotiations “held together at a point when its collapse felt close”. The newspaper adds: “This ought to be a warning: next year’s conference of the parties must strike a better bargain between the rich and poor world.” It adds that while developing countries disagree on a number of issues – such as rare-earth minerals and a fossil-fuel phaseout – the global south broadly agrees on a “simple principle: its nations must be equipped to survive a climate emergency they did not create”. Climate finance, however, is a “hard sell in the global north”, it notes. The editorial concludes: “COP30 underscored a simple reality: only by moving beyond symbolism and self-interest can the world secure its future.” 

Several other outlets publish COP30 comment articles. Opinion columnist Lara Williams writes at Bloomberg that COP30 fossil-fuel frustration “strengthens calls to worry less about negotiation and more about delivering what’s already agreed”. For Climate Home News, researcher Yamina Saheb and PhD candidate Ana Díaz-Vidal say the “COP30 mutirão agreement was just talk without truth”. Climate-diplomacy strategist Alex Scott writes for Backchannel about what the Belém outcomes show about the role of COP presidency leadership. In the climate-sceptic Daily Telegraph, associate editor Ben Marlow writes that it is “surely time to end” the “pointless virtue-signalling talking shop” of UN climate summits. 

MORE COMMENT

• “Climate policy can help solve the cost of living crisis”, Duncan Brack and David Vigar from the UK Liberal Democrat climate policy working group write for BusinessGreen, ahead of the budget. 
• Implementing recommendations on nuclear power in the UK would be a “step in the right direction”, writes Jonathon Kitson from the thinktank Centre for a Better Britain in the Daily Telegraph.
• Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice writes in the Daily Mail that the party proposes stopping wood-burning at the Drax power station. His comments are also covered in a Daily Mail news article. 
• Business columnist Elizabeth Knight writes about the opposing climate “agendas” of two Australian billionaires in the Sydney Morning Herald. 

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Orla Dwyer, with contributions from Henry Zhang and Anika Patel. It was edited by Simon Evans.

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