Daily Briefing

Only around 80 countries are expected to submit revised climate plans this year, reports a Climate Home News interview with UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa. The article says she “declined to list the 80”, but did say that China was not among those set to submit new pledges in 2020. It also reports that the UK government, which is hosting the COP26 summit next year, “declined to say if it would submit an NDC this year”.

Final figures are expected to show that fires in the Brazilian Amazon during August will have been the worst in a decade, Reuters reports, citing a “scientist responsible for the figures”. The newswire says uncorrected data that has yet to be finalised, and which shows a decline in monthly fire activity since last year, has been reported by Brazilian media. Reuters adds: “A surge in fires in August 2019 to a nine-year high provoked outcry from global leaders and the public that Brazil was not doing enough to protect the world’s largest rainforest, with [President] Bolsonaro trading barbs with French president Emmanuel Macron.” A feature in the Guardian says that the Amazon rainforest “is experiencing a repeat of last year’s devastating fires and critics say Bolsonaro bears ultimate responsibility”. Meanwhile, Reuters also reports that wetlands in Argentina are “under assault by [the] worst fires in more than a decade”.

In other fire-related developments, the Sydney Morning Herald reports on new research finding that Australia faces “more extreme droughts, fire seasons and floods” as a result of swings in the “El Niño-Southern Oscillation”. The Guardian reports that Australian politicians and industry used an error in research “to falsely claim logging doesn’t raise bushfire risk”. And Bloomberg notes that “the Arctic has experienced the worst fire season on record for the second year in a row, with giant wildfires sending over one third more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than last year”. Separately, the New York Times reports on “another climate crisis” with homeowners unable to get insurance in fire-prone areas. Insurance firms have suffered “huge losses” due to “years of megafires”, it reports, and as a result have been pulling back from offering cover. Carbon Brief recently published an explainer on links between climate change and wildfires.

The French government has released details of a two-year €100bn stimulus package, Reuters reports, including “€30bn for more environmentally friendly energies”. The plan includes €4bn for energy-efficient building renovations in the public sector and another €2bn for homes, the newswire reports, as well as €2bn for the hydrogen industry, which is “increasingly seen as a key building block in the transition away from fossil fuels”.

In the US, meanwhile, Reuters reports that the Interior Department is seeking to expedite 50 major infrastructure projects, including 21 that involve oil and gas drilling and mining, as part of efforts to stimulate economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. According to the Hill, “controversial oil drilling projects in Alaska’s pristine reserves are among those that benefited from a June order from President Trump waiving environmental reviews to speed construction”.

Separately, Reuters reports that Mexico’s environment minister has resigned over the government’s green record. It says that president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador “has been criticised for policies seen as favouring fossil fuels over renewable energy”. Another Reuters piece reports that a Mexican court will hear a legal case brought by 15 youth activists seeking stronger climate action.

Carbon Brief is currently tracking “green recovery” plans around the world.

There have been further arrests in London on a second day of protests by Extinction Rebellion activists, the i newspaper reports. At least 160 people have now been arrested, it says. Reuters also has the story. The Guardian reports that artists and actors including Mark Rylance have joined protests outside a group of thinktanks based in Tufton Street in central London, accusing them of a “culture of misinformation”. The paper notes: “Offices on the street include that of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.” DeSmog UK also reports on the Tufton Street protests. A piece in the Conversation reports that there is “no evidence” that celebrity endorsements help environmental campaigns. A letter in the Guardian from a group of MPs offers support for a “climate and ecological emergency” bill introduced in parliament yesterday. The Times reports lawyers’ challenging their professional standards watchdogs over “whether lawyers who engage in peaceful climates protests risk losing their right to practise if they are arrested”. A comment in the Evening Standard says Extinction Rebellion’s “messages matter – their silly stunts don’t”.

Consumer goods firm Unilever has pledged to replace petrochemicals in its products with ingredients made from plants and marine sources, such as algae, BBC News reports. The firm will invest €1bn to eliminate fossil fuels from its cleaning products by 2030, Reuters reports. BusinessGreen also has the story. Separately, a comment in the Daily Telegraph argues that corporate boardrooms “must take up the challenge that Covid has brought to end the primacy of shareholders”, with a shift towards “stakeholder capitalism” that can speed up action on climate change.

Industries regulated by the EU Emissions Trading System (EUETS) would receive fewer free allowances over the next five years, according to an “exclusive” report from Reuters. It says “most industries” covered by the scheme – some 43 of 52 sectors eligible for free allowances – would see their allocations “cut by the highest possible rate”, a move that the newswire says could cost some firms “millions of euros”. Affected sectors would receive 24% fewer free allowances on average during 2021-2025, “per tonne of product produced, compared with the amount they would currently get”, Reuters reports, adding that the draft numbers are subject to change until they are finalised later this year.

Meanwhile, a second Reuters article reports that Mark Carney, UN special envoy for climate action and former governor of the Bank of England, has launched a private sector taskforce on scaling up voluntary carbon markets. Separately, Bloomberg reports that the growing voluntary market for carbon offests “could be open to interest rate-style manipulation without greater transparency and standards”, according to the chief executive of Standard Chartered.

Major banks continue to lend and underwrite to coal companies, the Financial Times reports, in a feature that sets out the positions of firms including Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Barclays. It explains: “Under mounting pressure from customers and shareholders for action on climate change, a string of banks have announced they will withdraw credit to the most carbon-intensive natural resources projects. But critics say the sector has been too slow to act, has barely scratched the surface and continues to exploit loopholes to finance the biggest corporate polluters.”

A second Financial Times article runs under the headline: “Poland needs a clear plan for kicking a dirty habit.” It says economic costs and EU climate policy are moving “inexorably” against coal, with mining and energy firms in the country “struggling”. The piece says “despite the backlash from the unions, the time has come for Poland to set out a schedule for exiting coal” and argues for a “realistic plan” on how to replace the fuel. It says government plans to use nuclear energy for this are “something many analysts consider at best optimistic” given “huge” costs, arguing instead that Poland “needs to do more to encourage renewables generation”.

Separately, an editorial in the journal Climate Policy makes the case for limits on fossil fuel supply in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. It says current plans focus on fossil fuel demand, whereas governments “continue to plan on, and invest heavily in, the expansion of fossil fuel production for the purposes of economic development and revenue generation, and also as a geopolitical strategy”.

A feature by Daily Telegraph business journalist Ed Clowes looks at the prospects for new nuclear power in the UK. It starts by looking back to 2013, when then-chancellor George Osborne travelled to China to announce the opening of UK doors to Chinese investment in new nuclear energy, a vision that it says “now lies in tatters”. The piece says that “despite an insistence that countries and companies are queuing up to build new nuclear plants in Britain, the list of those who can actually afford to do so is limited to just China”. It goes on to say that there is “mounting opposition” to government proposals for an alternative new nuclear funding model, known as “Regulated Asset Base”, and that: “If ties between Westminster and Beijing continue to deteriorate, Chinese funding may no longer be an option.” The piece concludes by quoting a recent National Infrastructure Commission report saying: “Given the balance of cost and risk, a renewables-based system looks a safer bet at present than constructing multiple new nuclear power plants.” In the Financial Times, meanwhile, “active private investor” David Stevenson talks up investments in uranium miners, arguing: “It’s worth taking a look at these and other options if you share my suspicions about the necessity of nuclear.” In other nuclear news, Reuters reports that “some US cities” have “turn[ed] against” plans for the country’s first small-scale nuclear plant.

Sea ice extent in the Bering Sea in the winter of 2018 was “the lowest of the last 5,500 years”, a new study says. Using “a record of peat cellulose oxygen isotopes from St Matthew Island” along with climate model simulations, the researchers generated a 5,500-year record of Bering Sea winter sea ice extent. The results show that “sea ice in the Bering Sea decreased in response to increasing winter insolation and atmospheric CO2”. In turn, this suggests that “the North Pacific is highly sensitive to small changes in radiative forcing”, the authors say, and that “sea ice loss may lag changes in CO2 concentrations by several decades”.

Annual flood losses in China are “projected to soar in the future”, a new study suggests, “particularly in lowland regions subject to rapid economic growth”. Using river runoff simulations in a hydrological model, multiple climate model simulations and projections of GDP under the shared socioeconomic pathways, the researchers projected flood losses between 1.5C and 4C of global warming at 0.5C intervals. Under warming of 1.5C and 4C, in an average year, “flood losses are projected to be, respectively, four and 17 times that at present”, the study finds. For each 0.5C of warming that is curbed, flood losses in China can be reduced by an average of $67bn, or 0.04% of GDP, the researchers say.

A new paper describes a joint project to develop operational capacity for monitoring human-caused CO2 emissions as a new service under the European Commission’s (EC) Copernicus programme. The project “includes components such as atmospheric space-borne and in situ measurements, bottom-up CO2 emission maps, improved modelling of the carbon cycle, an operational data-assimilation system integrating top-down and bottom-up information, and a policy-relevant decision support tool”, the authors explain. The EC has given the green light for the project to move “from exploratory to implementing phase”, the paper says, with the aim of becoming operational by 2026.