There is widespread coverage in the UK media of the latest annual “progress report” published by the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the UK government’s official climate advisory body. BBC News says the CCC has warned that “government backing for new oil and coal, airport expansion plans and slow progress on heat pumps show that the UK has lost its leadership on climate issues”. The outlet adds: “The CCC described government efforts to scale up climate action as ‘worryingly slow’. It was ‘markedly’ less confident than a year ago that the UK would reach its targets for cutting carbon emissions. The government said it was committed to its climate targets.” The Guardian says “the government’s plans to hit net-zero have been comprehensively criticised in a withering report by its own advisers that warns targets are being missed on nearly every front”. It continues: “Fewer homes were insulated last year under the government-backed scheme than the year before, despite soaring energy bills and a cost of living crisis. There is little progress on transport emissions, no coherent programme for behaviour change, and still no decision on hydrogen for home heating. Meanwhile, the installation of new wind and solar farms and the upgrading of the electricity grid are still too slow to meet net-zero.” Reuters says the CCC’s reports shows that the UK has “lost its position as a global leader on climate action and is not doing enough to meet its mid-century net-zero target”. Bloomberg notes that the report indicates that the policymakers in the UK are  “moving too slowly to cut greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the decade, making it increasingly unlikely those aims will be achieved”. BusinessGreen spots that the report does point to some “glimmers of hope” within the UK’s net-zero transition, such as fast-growing electric car sales and the continued deployment of renewable electricity capacity. Politico says the CCC criticises ministers for being “slow” to react to major new climate policies from the US and the EU, “adding that the government failed to respond to the spike in gas prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with effective policies to cut energy demand and emissions”. The Press Association quotes Philip Dunne, the Conservative MP who chairs the Environmental Audit Committee: “Unless ambitious policy direction is given now, the government risks the unravelling of the last few years of climate leadership, which was spurred on by the UK’s hosting of COP26 in Glasgow and its landmark agreements.”

Both the Times and the Daily Mail pick up on the CCC’s warning about hybrid cars. “Hybrid cars produce much more greenhouse gases than claimed by manufacturers, a report reveals today. The CCC says plug-in hybrids – which can run either on electric or on petrol/diesel – have performed up to five times worse than expected, says the Daily Mail. The Times also quotes Ed Miliband, the shadow net-zero and climate secretary: “This is by some distance the most damning indictment of a government since the climate change committee was established in 2008. Government ministers should hang their heads in shame.” The Daily Telegraph notes that the CCC says the government “should consider halting road-building schemes to cut pollution”. The Financial Times notes that the CCC says the “delivery risks” on the emissions targets were increased because of the government’s “overreliance on some technologies, such as carbon capture, which have yet to be scaled up”. The government should “therefore be looking at other ways to reduce the UK’s carbon footprint, such as encouraging behavioural changes, including cutting air and car travel and eating less meat”.

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail chooses to focus more prominently on comments made by the CCC’s outgoing chair, Lord Deben: “Anger erupted last night after the chairman of a key climate watchdog said the Government ‘should learn’ from Just Stop Oil extremists. At the launch of the CCC annual report, Lord Deben said young people are drawn to the group as they think older generations are ‘not facing up to the realities’. It came after the Tory peer appeared in a video at Glastonbury festival saying protesters ‘ought to make themselves a nuisance in every circumstance they can’. This sparked a backlash, with [climate-sceptic] Tory MP Philip Davies accusing him of ‘spouting tripe’.” The Daily Mail has also published an angry editorial about Deben’s comments: “Just when we hoped the end could be near for the eco-zealots of Just Stop Oil, CCC chairman Lord Deben puts wind in their flagging sails…If this is the best advice he and the CCC can offer, is there any point listening to anything they say?” In contrast, an editorial in the Daily Express, reacting to the same comments by Deben, says: “Our irritation at zealots should not blind us to the urgency of saving our planet.” In an analysis piece for the Guardian, environment editor Fiona Harvey writes: “The Conservatives are lagging far behind on the climate crisis, that much we know. But the Labour party is not showing the leadership that the country needs on reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, the chairman of the CCC has warned…Rishi Sunak and Grant Shapps, who both proclaim their green credentials, could heed the CCC’s advice and start upping their net-zero policies. To do so, they would need to resist strong pressure from the right of their party, not only to stoke a culture war over net zero, but to keep the brakes on, making it harder for any future Labour government to act. If the next 18 months are as bad as the last in terms of policy and implementation, any programme of climate action from 2025 will need to be more radical and almost certainly much more expensive than if the work started today.” Carbon Brief has published an in-depth summary of the CCC’s findings and the article will continue to be updated with more detail later today.

Separately, the Daily Telegraph highlights on its frontpage a letter sent to the paper [and clearly timed to distract attention from the CCC report] by a small grouping of climate-sceptic parliamentarians who describe themselves as the “net-zero scrutiny group”. The article starts: “A ‘hidden tax’ adding up to £84 on energy bills must be slashed to help struggling households, Tory MPs have said. Companies which produce energy by burning gas to create electricity are charged for every tonne of carbon they produce, under a government decarbonisation policy aimed at helping the country reach its ‘net-zero’ goal. The cost is passed down to households through their energy provider, potentially imposing up to £84 a year at current rates, according to analysis in a letter signed by 33 Tory MPs and peers calling for carbon costs to be reformed.” The article later says: “Simon Cran-McGreehin, head of analysis at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said the exact impact on energy bills ‘can’t be estimated easily’. But he said it was small compared to the overwhelming cost of wholesale gas, which has spiked since the invasion of Ukraine.”

Finally, in other UK news, the Times reports that “the North Sea windfall tax is likely to bring in £16bn for the Treasury, about 60% less than original government projections, after a drop in energy prices, according to analysts”. It adds: “The energy profits levy was introduced last year and was increased at the start of this year to give an effective tax rate of 75% on oil and gas production. When the rise was announced in November, the Treasury forecast it would bring in £41.6bn up until 2028, when it is due to end. However, oil and gas prices have receded after sanctions on Russian oil failed to make much of a dent in its exports and after mild weather helped Europe to avoid gas shortages last winter. Wood Mackenzie, the consultancy, said that the energy profits levy ‘will transfer £16bn from companies to [the] government between 2022 and 2028’. It said the forecast was unaffected by the introduction of a price floor for the levy.” The Financial Times also covers the story. The Daily Telegraph says “Britain risks missing out on more than £100bn worth of electric car production, unless ministers use ‘every policy, every fiscal and regulatory lever’ to compete with the EU, automotive chiefs have said”. (The Daily Telegraph also publishes a comment piece by a climate-sceptic commentator under the headline: “Time to slam the brakes on the electric vehicle calamity: our economically ruinous approach to net-zero, combined with the failure to fix our decrepit road network, is a national embarrassment.”) And, lastly, the Press Association reports: “Budget cuts have undermined the UK’s international influence on agriculture and the government must focus more on climate change in its support for the sector, a review by the foreign aid watchdog has found. There is a ‘significant risk’ that Britain’s reputation as a development ally in areas including food security will ‘degrade rapidly’ in the near future unless changes are made, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) suggested.”

Germany’s three ruling parties have agreed on the final details for a green energy law to phase out gas and oil heating, reports Politico, “paving the way for the bill to be adopted next week ahead of the German Bundestag’s summer recess”. The outlet adds: “Senior lawmakers from chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) agreed on the fine print of the heating law, a cornerstone of Germany’s efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions, a spokesperson for the SPD confirmed to Politico. The spokesperson could not immediately provide details of the agreement, but said it is based on broader guidelines agreed by the parties earlier this month and that link key deadlines to municipal heating planning. Disputes over the law almost caused a government crisis last month. The Greens and their vice chancellor Robert Habeck had pushed for an ambitious rollout, but faced fierce criticism not only from the opposition but also the liberal FDP.”

Relatedly, the Financial Times reports under the headline: “‘A danger for democracy’: Germany’s far right scores first local victory.” The news feature says that the success of the far-right AfD party in Sonneberg “highlights the party’s ability to feed on economic insecurity and immigration fears”. It continues: “Discontent reached a new peak in Sonneberg – and in many other towns and cities in Germany – earlier this year when the government unveiled its plans to phase out gas- and oil-fired boilers and move instead to heat pumps powered by renewable energy. The initiative triggered a dispute between Scholz’s coalition partners, the Greens and liberals, enhancing the perception that the government was hopelessly divided over everything from next year’s budget to how to tackle the climate crisis.” Alice Weidel, the AfD’s national leader, tells the FT “acknowledges the boiler ban was one of the key factors in the AfD’s sudden change of fortune”. She says: “People call it the heating massacre. The government is intervening directly in people’s ownership rights, it’s de facto expropriation, and people just won’t stand for it.”

The Daily Telegraph carries two comment pieces on the topic. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the newspaper’s world economy editor, warns about the “perils of net-zero coercion” and says that “sweeping bans to cut greenhouse emissions in Europe are leading to widespread public backlash”. He continues: “Germany’s failed attempt to impose a de facto ban on the sale of home gas boilers from the end of this year is a lesson in how to destroy national consent; doubly so given that the Green Party behind this extreme measure is also responsible for the lunacy of shutting down three young, safe, and productive nuclear plants in the middle of an energy crisis. The political storm has revived the ailing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), propelling it past the Greens and the ruling Social Democrats to 20% in the polls. AfD is now the leading party across most of old East Germany and won 53% of the vote over the weekend in a district election in Thuringia. Germany’s heat pump industry is not physically capable of covering such a sudden switch from gas boilers. Heat pumps will become cheaper over the course of the 2020s, and new technologies are arriving that could let you keep old radiators without having to rip up the house. We are not there yet. I am all in favour of kick-start subsidies to drive down the costs through critical scale, but you have to go with the grain of public acceptance.” And, in the same newspaper, Daniel Johnson says that “Olaf Scholz faces a reckoning as Germans resist his ‘Green dictatorship’ of mandatory heat pumps and unaffordable technologies”.

The Canadian government has unveiled its new “national adaptation strategy”, reports the Toronto Star, which includes targets such as “eliminating all deaths from extreme heatwaves by 2040, and halting and reversing the destruction of Canadian nature within the next seven years”. The newspaper continues: “[The strategy] also says the federal government will craft new rules to insert climate considerations in codes for buildings and highways by 2026, include climate resilience factors in all new federal infrastructure programs by next year, draft hundreds of new high-risk flood maps by 2028, and aim to create 15 new urban national parks by 2030. Speaking in a province that has been hammered by atmospheric rivers that have washed out highways, a deadly heat dome that killed more than 600 people and a wildfire that torched the Interior-British Columbia town of Lytton two years ago, environment minister Steven Guilbeault said there is no doubt the impacts of climate change will continue for decades to come.”

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that Canadian wildfire emissions have hit a record high “as smoke reaches Europe”. The newswire adds: “Wildfires burning through large swathes of eastern and western Canada have released a record 160m tonnes of carbon, the EU’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service said on Tuesday. This year’s wildfire season is the worst on record in Canada, with some 76,000 square kilometres (29,000 square miles) burning across eastern and western Canada. That’s greater than the combined area burned in 2016, 2019, 2020 and 2022, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.” 

Separately, the Guardian reports that , further south, “the record heatwave roiling parts of Texas, Louisiana and Mexico was made at least five times more likely due to human-caused climate change, scientists [at Climate Central] have found, marking the latest in a series of recent extreme ‘heat dome’ events that have scorched various parts of the world”.

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post says that, according to consultancy firm Deloitte, “countries in the Asia-Pacific region could add US$47 trillion to the global economy by 2070 and create 180 million jobs by 2050 if they seize opportunities from decarbonisation, with China and India set to benefit the most”. It adds that 48% of China’s total workforce – the highest proportion in Asia-Pacific – are employed in industries “that are most vulnerable to the physical impact of climate damage and the economic transition to net-zero, such as agriculture, conventional energy, manufacturing, transport and construction”. Quoting Pradeep Philip, head of Deloitte Access Economics, the newspaper adds: “But with education reforms and talent development plans already starting to take shape, the opportunity to shift to green skills is significant.”

Meanwhile, the Financial Times carries an article saying that nearly 109,000 Chinese enterprises – doubling the number registered in the past three years – are rushing into the energy storage sector “spurred by massive state spending on President Xi Jinping’s plan to achieve energy independence”. Xi’s determination to achieve carbon neutrality and energy independence has brought “a more than $7tn infrastructure investment opportunity through to 2040”, the outlet says, citing forecasts from Goldman Sachs. It has, however, prompted “concerns over a healthy and sustainable growth”.  

In other China news, the Global Times, a state-supporting newspaper, writes that, “as the surface temperatures in some areas exceeded 70C recently, cooling demands drove up power consumption in China”. But, it adds, “industry practitioners said that, at present, power supply in the heat-struck regions is generally smooth and stable” and that the country is “well prepared”  to meet the high demand. Separately, Bloomberg writes that China’s State Grid will “prioritise preventing power outages over its long-term goal of decarbonising the country’s power mix”. Climate Home News carries an article focusing on issues in China’s power market, including its inability to transfer power between regions, inadequate price mechanism for renewable energy, and limited support for energy storage.

Elsewhere, Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Mao Ning says that China “hopes developed countries will shoulder their historical responsibilities, deliver on their commitments at an early date…and work for substantive progress in global climate governance”, reports Xinhua. She stresses that China will support “fellow” developing countries for climate response “under the frameworks of green Belt and Road and South-South cooperation”. The state-run newspaper China Daily quotes He Siyao, a climate research analyst at consultancy firm MSCI, saying immediate actions are necessary to address global warming “as any extreme warming scenario could lead to significant costs for listed companies and investors”, especially for the “utilities and energy sectors”. 

Finally, the state-run newspaper People’s Daily quotes Chen Liming, the “greater China chairman” of the World Economic Forum, saying that the “vigorous” development of clean energy in China holds “significant” importance for the world to address climate change and achieve sustainable development. China Daily has published a comment by Tang Xinhua, associate researcher at Tsinghua University, who writes that the US has continuously “eroded the cornerstone of climate governance”. He adds that the US will take advantage of COP28 to “force developing countries and developed countries to submit new ‘nationally determined contributions’ and bear the scale of losses and damages under the same standards, to achieve its goals of setting new rules on climate governance…Therefore, in the current US government’s climate foreign policy toward China, competition is far greater than cooperation.”

Writing in London’s Evening Standard, Nimco Ali begins: “At a drinks event before President Macron’s recent climate summit in Paris, the new Barbadian High Commissioner to London told me a startling fact: his country’s entire GDP could be wiped out by a single hurricane in just four hours…Such destructive hurricanes are now coming to the Caribbean more and more frequently. So fair play at least to Macron for taking the lead and convening an impressive line-up of people to talk about it in Paris. The summit, though, was a failure. And it’s one that should shame the West. Yes, there were successes on positive reforms, progress on debt and Prime Minister Mottley’s natural disaster ‘pause’ clauses (whereby loan repayments can be temporarily halted following natural disasters). But people in the global south – and our planet – need much more than that.” She concludes: “The next moment for real change will be the G20 in September where the UK and US, who were missing in action at this critical summit, can redeem themselves. It will take a lot of effort – and serious diplomatic work behind the scenes – but the consequences of failure are not worth thinking about. Hurricanes that wipe out an entire nation’s GDP would be just the start.”

A new study looking at whether populations of marine species can be sustained with the projected warming and loss of oxygen in the world’s oceans in the 21st century finds that habitat viability decreases nearly everywhere. The researchers use environmental data from six comprehensive Earth system models to calculate an extended version of the ‘Aerobic Growth Index’ for 47 representative marine species. The findings suggest that while most species lose less than 5% of their contemporary habitat at 2C of warming, some species suffer 2-3 times greater losses. For most epipelagic species – those living in the sunlight-rich surface – habitat loss is driven by ocean warming. In the mesopelagic – or twilight – and demersal zones, decrease in dissolved oxygen is an additional factor, the paper explains.