COP30 negotiations were disrupted yesterday after a fire broke out at a pavilion inside the conference venue in Belém, the New York Times reports. The newspaper says the fire began at around 2pm local time, “sending panicked delegates racing to evacuate”. BBC News reports that 13 people were treated for smoke inhalation. The article quotes climate editor Justin Rowlatt, who says: “You can see huge columns of smoke rising up into the air through the hole that’s been burnt in the top of the conference centre.” The Associated Press notes that the fire was under control after six minutes and the conference venue remained closed for around seven hours afterwards. The Times says the cause of the fire is unknown. Reuters adds that the summit was “initially scheduled to wrap up on Friday, but it missed a self-imposed Wednesday deadline to secure agreement…on issues including how to increase climate finance and shift away from fossil fuels.” Bloomberg, the Independent, the Times of India and the Daily Mail also cover the story.

A new draft COP30 text published this morning does not include mention of plans to secure an “agreement on how to move away from fossil fuels”, Reuters reports. This text will be discussed in negotiations later today. The Guardian reports that countries in favour of agreeing a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels have “threatened to block any agreement that does not include such a commitment”. The newspaper says: “The simmering row over a potential roadmap for the ‘transition away from fossil fuels’ boiled over on Thursday night when a group of at least 29 countries signed a strongly worded letter to Brazil, the COP presidency.” The Guardian reported earlier yesterday that Brazil’s president said he will take the fossil fuel roadmap to a G20 meeting in South Africa this week “to campaign for it”. 

Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that UN chief António Guterres “identified Saudi Arabia as leading moves to obstruct key outcomes” at COP30. Earlier on Thursday – before the fire broke out – Guterres urged countries to compromise and “show willingness and flexibility to deliver results”, the Associated Press reports. BusinessGreen quotes Guterres as saying: “A fair outcome [needs to be] concrete on funding adaptation, credible on emission cuts, bankable on finance…No delegation will leave with everything it wants, but every delegation has a duty to reach a balanced deal.”

At the same time, the negotiations remain stuck on a number of key issues. Climate Home News reports that developed nations, including the UK, are “pushing back” on the Belém Action Mechanism (BAM) – a proposal to create a “just transition mechanism to bolster and unify efforts to help workers and communities adversely affected by the shift away from fossil fuels”. Down to Earth looks at the “red lines” for developing countries in just transition discussions. Discussions on the global goal on adaptation (GGA) are “stuck on various issues and no one knows what progress is happening behind closed doors”, according to Down to Earth. Gender action plan negotiations remain in a “tense phase…after disputes broke out on how to define gender”, the News Minute says. The Hindustan Times notes that while many issues remain ongoing, “some observers said texts on which there is complete agreement would at least symbolise progress from Belém”. 

MORE ON COP30 

• The Australian government “blamed” the UN process over its failed bid to host COP31, according to the Australian Financial Review, but “privately express[ed] relief that it dodged a bullet on the domestic political front”. 
• Brazil is “working hand-in-hand with industry groups to secure backing for biofuels in the final text” at COP30, according to DeSmog. 
• Le Monde says the talks are being “overshadowed by trade tensions”. 
• BBC News says “all eyes are on India” at COP30 as it has not yet submitted its updated national climate pledge. 
• Context explores divides on “how to split the bill for vital adaptations to a fast-changing climate”. 
• Delegates from small island states have “decried” a recent memo from Bill Gates which criticised the “doomsday view of climate change”, Bloomberg reports.

The US has announced plans to allow new oil and gas drilling in almost 1.3bn acres of coastal waters, the New York Times reports, including a “remote region off Alaska in the northern Arctic where drilling has never before taken place”. The newspaper says the plan is one of US president Trump’s “most significant steps yet to increase the production of fossil fuels, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet”. The plans outline that the US interior department would hold “as many as 34 sales of leases in federal water”, the article notes. It includes new oil drilling plans off the coasts of California and Florida “for the first time in decades”, the Associated Press says, “advancing a project that critics say could harm coastal communities and ecosystems”. The newswire says California governor Gavin Newsom called the plans “idiotic” and the proposal “drew bipartisan pushback in Florida”. The Washington Post, Reuters, the Guardian and Mint also cover the news. 

MORE ON US 

• The Trump administration presented plans to “roll back regulations” on the Endangered Species Act, which the Guardian says experts fear may “accelerate” species extinctions. 
• The US energy department is “breaking up or rebranding” in areas previously central to clean energy technology development, according to the New York Times. 
• Politico reports that at least three Republican politicians “took advantage of a decades-old rooftop solar credit that will end in January” due to Trump’s “megalaw”.

Chinese premier Li Qiang has said in Moscow that member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) should work together to advance “green and low-carbon” transition, International Energy Net reports. Li added that countries should also continue cooperation on the “clean and efficient use of traditional energy” and expand installed renewable energy capacity, contributing to the “global response to climate change”, the outlet reports. Li also said that China is ready to work with all SCO parties to build “10GW of wind and 10GW of solar projects” over the next five years, as proposed by China at the SCO summit in Tianjin earlier this year.

MORE ON CHINA

• China’s carbon prices have surged more than 8%, following the government’s decision to expand ETS “via a test system before the end of the year, according to documents released Wednesday”, Bloomberg reports.
• China Daily: “Nation sees rise in scale of concentrated solar power.”
• China Daily publishes a comment by Maria Luiza Falcão Silva, a retired professor from the University of Brasília, saying that China’s “emergence as a green creditor” in Latin America is an opportunity for the region to “channel external resources into energy transition, biodiversity protection and climate resilience”.
• Bloomberg: “China’s coal miners hope spot price rally lifts annual contracts.”
• China Electric Power News publishes a series of “expert interpretations” of the NEA’s notice on promoting the “integrated and coordinated development” of China’s “new energy” sector.
• Financial Times: “Europe’s carmakers risk losing plug-in hybrid war to China on their own turf.”

Reuters reports that the EU is setting up a service to assess the role of climate change in extreme weather events. Experts say this “could help governments set climate policy, improve financial risk assessments and provide evidence for use in lawsuits”, the newswire says. The attribution science service will be allocated around €2.5m (£2.2m) in funding over three years, Reuters says, adding: “Copernicus will publish results by the end of next year and offer two assessments a month – each within a week of an extreme weather event.” 

MORE ON EXTREME WEATHER 

At least 41 people have been killed in “relentless rains and floods” in central Vietnam since last weekend, BBC News says. Bloomberg reports that the downpours have also “drenche[d] coffee-producing regions in the central highlands.

Writing in the Financial Times, the presidents of Brazil and South Africa and the prime minister of Spain say they want to place inequality “at the centre of the world’s agenda, beginning with the creation of an International Panel on Inequality”. They compare this concept to the UN science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a way to assess evidence to support action on tackling inequality. They write: “It should alarm us all that we will see our first trillionaires within years, while close to half of humanity still lives in poverty. At the same time, it is clearer than ever that the climate emergency is a crisis of inequality.” The three leaders say they will “foster a coalition of governments to champion and deliver” a new inequality panel. Meanwhile, an editorial in Nature says that South Africa is “right” to focus on debt, climate and inequality in plans for a meeting of G20 leaders in Johannesburg next week.  

MORE COMMENT 

• Guardian columnist George Monbiot says “there’s a catastrophic black hole in our climate data” over deaths from extreme heat – and “it’s a gift to deniers”.
• In Context, Philippines politician Javi Benitez writes about legislative proposals around climate accountability that would establish a “reparations fund financed by penalties on oil and gas corporations that exceed acceptable emissions thresholds”. 
• A global citizens’ assembly, endorsed by Brazil, could be the “boldest legacy” from COP30, writes Mercele Oliveira, a COP30 presidency youth champion, in Backchannel. 
• Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, world economy editor at the Daily Telegraph, writes: “The west can still win the electric car war with China.” 
• Paul Brown, a former environment correspondent at the Guardian, writes in his last column that the facts on climate change “speak for themselves”. 
• Simon Case, former cabinet secretary and author of a new thinktank report on nuclear energy, writes in the Times that the “UK must get reacquainted with its nuclear power”.