There is continued coverage of the wildfires in North America. Reuters reports that the Canadian province of Ontario is seeking federal support to evacuate people from remote northern Canadian communities “ravaged by wildfires”. It notes that Canada has “more active wildfires than it had as of mid-July for the past two years and a larger area has burned compared to 2025”. Most of the fires, it continues, are in “remote areas” of the central provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario. Wildfires in recent years have “overwhelmingly impacted remote indigenous ​communities”, it notes. BBC News says there are currently 858 fires actively burning in Canada, including 30 new fires from yesterday. The Boston Globe says climate change is fuelling the wildfires. 

Smoke from Canada’s fires “enveloped a swath ​of the US from the midwest to the north-east on Thursday”, reports Reuters, prompting warnings from officials that residents stay indoors. The newswire says that Detroit registered the “worst air quality of any city in the world”, with a pollutant index of 600 – twice the level considered “hazardous” by the US Environmental Protection Agency. “Dangerous” levels of smoke were also recorded in Minnesota, Michigan, northern Illinois, northern Ohio and into Ontario, it continues. The outlet quotes atmospheric chemist Emily Fischer saying: “this is a direct connection to climate change. This is climate change that people breathe.” In a piece entitled “heat and wildfire smoke become a dangerous new climate reality”, Bloomberg says an “estimated 64 million Americans” are affected by high temperatures and wildfire smoke. 

MORE ON WILDFIRES

• USA Today says its analysis of decades of wildfire data in the US shows a “drastic increase”.
• Financial Times: “Wildfires burn record area in France as Europe’s risk intensifies.”
• Reuters: “France’s Macron pledges to replant Fontainebleau forest after devastating fire.”
• Axios, Reuters, Time and USA Today have explainers on the health risks of wildfire smoke.
• Reuters says the wildfire smoke that has “blanketed” the north-eastern US is expected to dissipate before Sunday’s football world cup final in New York.
• BBC News reports that firefighters in Scotland are spending a third day tackling a major wildfire which has led to evacuations in the Cairngorms.

The European Commission will today propose an “overhaul” of the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) that will “allow industries to emit ​CO2 longer while offering more financial support to invest in clean technologies in Europe”, reports Reuters. EU officials reportedly told Reuters yesterday that it plans to cut the annual rate at which the ETS emissions cap falls to around ​3.7% from 2031, down from 4.3% currently and reduce it further from 2036. The article says that Brussels is attempting to balance “pressure from industries and countries, including Italy and Poland”, who say the ETS “undermines ​competitiveness” with “warnings, including from Spain, that weakening the ETS would punish ⁠industries that spent early on cutting emissions”. The Financial Times reports that EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said more revenue from the ETS would be “steered towards businesses in return for their commitment to invest in cleaning up their operations”. It continues that Hoekstra “insisted the revision would help deliver the EU’s ambitions of net-zero emissions by 2050 and not weaken the system”. He told the newspaper: “What we will be doing – both in terms of industry and in terms of climate – the next decade will be better and more ambitious than the current one.”

MORE ON EUROPE

• Reuters reports on a draft proposal from the European Commission which shows that the EU is “eyeing” a target for electricity to account for 46% of energy consumption across the bloc by 2040, doubling the rate today.
• Reuters: “Europe EV sales top 1m in first half as demand accelerates.” 
• Continuing drought and heat have caused a water shortage in the Netherlands, ​the Dutch government said yesterday, according to Reuters.
• Euronews: “How solar has saved Europe €20bn since the war on Iran began.”
• Reuters: “Sweden approves two offshore windfarms, rejects 11 others.”
• France and Morocco are planning a direct electricity link, says Reuters. 

Incoming UK prime minister Andy Burnham – who will succeed Keir Starmer on Monday – is preparing to “announce new drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea as well as taking public control of Thames Water”, reports Bloomberg. According to “people familiar with the matter”, Burnham’s team has asked the civil service to “draw up plans for new energy and water policies that can be revealed as soon as next week”, the article says. Bloomberg continues that sources say “officials are working on a range of options”, which “include signalling a willingness to approve new drilling at the Jackdaw gas and Rosebank oil fields off the coast of Scotland and an expansion of so-called tie-backs which allow further drilling on or near existing ones”. In a piece looking at Burnham’s record on “green” issues, the Guardian notes that Burnham’s climate policies remain “shrouded”.

There is ongoing coverage of Burnham’s pick for chancellor. Amid reports that home secretary Shabana Mahmood is now the favourite, Sky News reports that Burnham has been “urged” by Labour peer Harriet Harman to pick Ed Miliband. A Times frontpage story says the incoming PM is facing a “revolt from his core support on the Labour left” over plans to pick Mahmood over Miliband. One Labour MP tells the newspaper: “Ed has Treasury experience and he’s been able to bring our party together around some very difficult issues, really advancing the whole climate agenda and winning the argument.” The Guardian reports that “the emergence of Mahmood has reassured some bosses, several of whom privately said they were concerned about Miliband’s reputation as being more left-leaning, as well as his strong backing for Britain’s net-zero ambitions”. However, it notes that figures close to Miliband warned Mahmood would be a “disaster” because she lacked a serious background in economic policy and did not share his political vision.

MORE ON UK

• There is widespread coverage of the UK government’s nationalisation of British Steel, including in BBC News, BusinessGreen, the Guardian, Times and Daily Telegraph.
• Quoting “whistleblowers”, shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho has alleged that the UK’s National Energy Sys­tems Oper­ator – a government body – tried to “cover up” that the UK “came close to blackouts” during last month’s heatwave, reports the Daily Mail.
• Daily Telegraph: “North Sea gas to power offshore AI datacentre.”
• Politico’s E&E News says the”heatwaves are Andy Burnham’s problem now”.
• The Daily Telegraph reports that electric vehicle owners will be rewarded with lower annual tax rises than petrol and diesel drivers under a “two-tier” road tax system.

Nine African countries are set to see their UK bilateral aid cut by more than 80%, after the UK government laid out the full breakdown of its plan to reduce the aid budget from 0.5% to 0.3% of gross national income through to 2029, reports the Independent. Bilateral UK aid to African countries is set to fall from £1.6bn to under £700m, and the countries impacted includes numerous long-standing UK partners – including Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, and Mozambique – whose aid relationship is set to be virtually eliminated or reduced to £5m or less, it says. The newspaper notes the new figures “confirm previously-announced cuts to UK climate aid”, from £11.6bn across the five years to 2026 to £6bn over the next three years. Tim Ingram, head of advocacy at WaterAid UK, said that cutting funding to climate-vulnerable countries like Malawi, Zambia and Ghana will have “deadly consequences, particularly for women and girls”. The Guardian also covers the cuts, which were set out in the Foreign Office’s annual report, published yesterday.

The “top scientific advisory body” in the US has issued a report “backing” extreme event attribution science, a research field that “could help governments hold oil, gas and coal companies responsible for the damage caused by extreme weather”, says the New York Times. The new National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report “doesn’t make recommendations on how attribution science should be used in policy and the law”, the newspaper says, but notes that “attribution findings could be relevant in several types of legal cases”. The article notes that Energy in Depth, a “project” of the the Independent Petroleum Association of America lobby group, described the report as “the latest deliverable in a well-funded litigation campaign”. Agence France-Presse says the report authors called for a “common framework” for attribution studies, noting “confusion…when studies of the same event produce different results”. It says the report is “likely to boost the multitude of lawsuits working their way through courts across the country”. Inside Climate News also covers the story.

MORE ON US

• There is widespread coverage of widespread flooding in central Texas, including in BBC News, Reuters, New York Times and Bloomberg.
• Connecticut has joined a lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of blocking windfarms, reports the Connecticut Post.
• The Associated Press looks into the “national security” arguments cited by Trump for blocking windfarms.
• Politico says Los Angeles leaders are “spending billions to make the 2028 Olympics a story of climate and environment policy progress”.
• Bloomberg looks at the US’ “failing EV sector”.
• Honda is ending sales of electric vehicles in the US, reports Bloomberg, marking the “latest pullback by a major automaker in response to tepid demand in the market”.

Northern China is entering its “most critical flood-control period”, reports state-run newspaper China Daily, adding that this year’s rainy season is eight days earlier than the long-term average. The newspaper quotes Chen Tao, chief forecaster at the China Meteorological Administration, saying that global warming is making weather “more extreme and more complex”. Chen also said that “interaction between global warming and large-scale climate patterns” means climate disasters are “increasingly occurring simultaneously across multiple regions rather than as isolated events”. State news agency Xinhua says over the next three days, rainfalls are expected to be both “widespread and intense” across many regions. The Communist Party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily says while coal continues to serve as the “ballast stone” of China’s energy security, renewable energy is also operating at “full strength” amid peak summer power demand. Bloomberg reports that China’s “residential power consumption” fell 3.1% in June, a “rare drop due to a milder start to summer and as air conditioner sales appear to slow”.

MORE ON CHINA

• The MEE’s Lu Shize said the thermal power sector alone achieved 530m tonnes of carbon reductions through the carbon market during the “14th five-year plan” period, reports CCTV.
• China’s National Bureau of Statistics estimates the country’s energy intensity fell 1.9% year on year in the first six months, reports International Energy Net.
• A Global Times editorial says China’s oil procurement has served as a “predictable and stable constant” in the global market, rather than a “risk factor” triggering fluctuations. Beijing Normal University’s Wan Zhe writes in People’s Daily that China injected stability into a “fragile global economy” through its “early positioning” in energy transition.
• China News Service reports China’s first “full-chain green and low-carbon ethylene project” has started operations in Xinjiang, which is expected to consume 1,000GWh of clean electricity annually. 
• Financial Times: “EU readies crisis team for China rare earths stand-off.”
• Bloomberg reports China’s “standalone” and “co-located” battery storage systems both doubled their utilisation since 2022, as “policy changes made the industry more market-driven”, according to thinktank Ember.

In the Washington Post, Matthew Lynn – financial columnist for the Daily Telegraph and Spectator – says that US president Trump is “presiding over an accelerating transition to net-zero carbon emissions in the US”. Lynn continues: “Trump inherited a machine he either can’t or won’t switch off. Although he scrapped many of the Biden administration’s green subsidies, he can’t claw back money companies have already spent on clean energy. Meanwhile, his tariffs on Chinese solar panels…have turbocharged a domestic industry now churning out cheap panels faster than anyone predicted.” The rest of the world should take note of two things, Lynn says: first, that the US has “continued producing” fossil fuels to “keep the economy expanding during the transition to cleaner energy”; and second, that “it isn’t reducing emissions by decree”. He concludes: “Trump may become the president who leads the world on fighting climate change…if the world can take a deep breath and look past the windmill jokes, it can follow the template Trump has set for renewable energy success.” 

Elsewhere, in the Daily Telegraph, assistant editor Jeremy Warner argues the ongoing blockage of the strait of Hormuz means that “Trump can console himself with the thought that he’s done more for climate change mitigation over the last few months than his predecessor, Joe Biden, managed in his entire four-year term”.

MORE COMMENT

• For Climate Home News, Mohamed Adow, founder and director of Power Shift Africa, says “Africa can lead the age of electrification”.
• In an editorial on Keir Starmer’s legacy, a Daily Telegraph editorial describes the Climate Change Act as a “law rushed through without proper scrutiny at the end of a premiership to varnish [the] legacy” of then prime minister Gordon Brown.
• An editorial in the Scottish Daily Mail says the “rush away from fossil fuel extraction has been a disastrous cosmetic exercise, with increasing amounts of oil and gas being imported from overseas”.
• An editorial in the Times says whistleblowers’ claims that the National Energy System Operator covered up problems during the June heatwave (see news above) raises “a wider question” about whether the UK’s energy policies “need rethinking”. 
• In DeSmog, senior policy counsel in Public Citizen’s Climate Program Clara Vondrich says the “companies that pioneered the first sustainable energy commitments in the 2000s are now driving the biggest climate bomb since the advent of fracking”. 
• The Economist has an editorial entitled: “It’s too darn hot. Blame global dimming.”

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Cecilia Keating, with contributions from Henry Zhang and Anika Patel. It was edited by Robert McSweeney.

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