A court in the Hague has ruled that the Dutch government “discriminated against people in one of its most vulnerable territories” by not helping them to adapt to climate change, reports the Guardian. The ruling, announced yesterday, orders the Netherlands to “develop a proper adaptation plan for Bonaire and put in place tougher greenhouse gas targets”, according to the newspaper. It adds: “The court ruled that the government was breaching articles eight and 14 of the European convention on human rights, which protect the right to respect for private and family life and prohibit discrimination.” The Associated Press says the court “ruled that the government discriminated against the island’s 20,000 inhabitants by not taking ‘timely and appropriate measures’ to protect them from climate change before it’s too late”. The newswire adds: “The court also ordered the Dutch government to set binding targets within 18 months, laid down in law, to cut greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.” The Financial Times says: “The case, brought by Greenpeace, is one of the first to test climate obligations on a national level set in a landmark 2024 ruling and last year’s world court advisory opinion.” The New York Times says: “Legal experts said the ruling added to a growing body of law about the obligations of countries to citizens in the era of climate change and could prompt new lines of argument in courts around the world.” Climate Home News also covers the ruling.

China added 543 gigawatts (GW) of new power capacity in 2025, 12% more than “all the power plants combined in India”, reports Bloomberg. It also says that the amount of new power capacity added by China since the end of 2021 eclipses the total capacity of the “entire US system”. China’s wind and solar power capacity reached 1,840GW in 2025, surpassing thermal power for the first time in history, says state-run newspaper China Daily. It adds that wind and solar energy now account for 47% of the country’s total power mix, exceeding thermal power by 300GW. Energy news outlet International Energy Net reports that solar capacity reached 1,200GW and wind capacity increased to 640GW, while thermal capacity reached 1,500GW. Energy news outlet Energy New Media says that, as installed capacity sharply increased, average utilisation of power generation sources in 2025 dropped compared with four years earlier, indicating that “systemic curtailment and absorption pressure” is accelerating. Industry news outlet BJX News and state news agency Xinhua also cover the data release.

Meanwhile, the head of the Chinese Wind Energy Association (CWEA) says annual installed wind power installations will “stabilise” at around 120GW from 2026 to 2028, with up to 980GW in new wind capacity added between 2025 and 2030, according to energy news outlet China Industry News. The Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily cites CWEA data noting that more than 90% of wind turbines produced in China are deployed domestically and that around half of the world’s installed wind power capacity is located in China.

MORE ON CHINA

• China’s balance of green loans rose 20% in 2025, reaching 45tn yuan ($7tn), reports People’s Daily.
• People’s Daily says that the electric vehicle boom in China does not guarantee the “exit of oil”, which will play an “important role” in sectors such as chemicals. China’s electric trucks sales “overtook gas-powered vehicle sales for the first time last year”, says Bloomberg.
• Nigel Topping, chair of the UK’s Climate Change Committee, and Wang Yi , China’s national expert committee on climate change vice-chair, write in China Daily that the UK and China “should emphasise dedication to continued cooperation” on climate change.
• South Africa could impose tariffs of 50% on vehicles from China, reports Bloomberg, adding that Chinese vehicle exports to the country surged 368% in four years.
• China and Denmark have renewed an agreement on a “long-term partnership” in the “green maritime technology and shipbuilding” sector, says Reuters.
• Shi Xunpeng, a professor at the University of Technology Sydney, writes in China Daily that “ensuring access to knowledge – and the capacity to use it – must be part of climate action”.
• Reuters reports that China’s national average temperature hit a record high for the second year in a row in 2025.

The EV company Tesla saw its annual revenue fall “for the first time in the company’s history” last year, reports the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. It adds: “The firm’s automotive production declined 7% and total deliveries fell 9% in 2025 from a year earlier, according to the company’s financial statement, as Tesla struggles to fend off fierce competition from Chinese electric vehicle makers such as BYD in the global market.” The Financial Times says the company “will scrap its Model S and X vehicles and invest $2bn into Elon Musk’s xAI as the company shifts focus from cars to AI”. Reuters, the Associated Press, Axios, New York Times and Daily Telegraph also cover the news. 

MORE ON EVS

• A survey of UK drivers finds that the EV transition “is being undermined by a lack of consumer confidence in the long-term reliability of batteries and an absence of low-cost car loans that are hampering the expansion of the second hand EV market”, according to BusinessGreen.
• The Los Angeles Times outlines “why faster charging could finally win over America’s EV sceptics”. 
• Reuters covers research which finds that “the more electric cars in a neighborhood, the lower the air pollution from burning fossil fuels”. 

A judge in the US has ruled that “ConocoPhillips Alaska can proceed with an oil and gas exploration programme in a portion of a vast petroleum reserve in the state”, according to the Associated Press. The newswire adds that the US district court judge “rejected a request from conservation groups and an Iñupiat-aligned group that sought to halt ConocoPhillips Alaska’s planned exploration program in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska until the groups’ legal challenge to the program’s authorisation by the US Bureau of Land Management was resolved”.

MORE ON US

• Reuters says: “A dozen House Democrats on Wednesday sent a letter to 21 companies who attended a 9 January White House meeting about developing Venezuelan oil resources, warning them that any transaction or investment they make there faces legal and financial risks.” Separately, Reuters reports that Chevron will “boost exports of Venezuelan oil” to the US in March and that BP and Shell are seeking US licences for gas fields shared with Venezuela.
• Scientific American explains “why the weekend’s winter storm was supercharged by climate change”.
• The Associated Press says: “The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would have enough money to respond to the massive winter storm still impacting large swaths of the US even if a partial government shutdown begins at midnight Friday, experts and former FEMA officials said, despite Trump administration warnings to the contrary.”
• DeSmog reports that the American Petroleum Institute has published its policy agenda, which shows that “the US oil lobby aims to bulldoze European climate regulations as a top policy goal in 2026”. 
• Climate Home News has an explainer, with the headline: “Out of Paris, but will the US formally quit the UN climate regime?”

The UK government has announced a decision to “cut subsidies for renewable power generators by linking them to a lower inflation measure”, reports the Financial Times. The outlet says that, according to officials, “the move would save £270m a year by 2030 and was a ‘necessary and proportionate change’ given the subsidy scheme’s costs, which are expected to climb above £8bn this year”. BusinessGreen says the proposal “mean payments to renewables generators will be indexed to the consumer price index rate of inflation, rather than the higher retail price index”. The Daily Telegraph reports that “the change has frustrated some of the green investors working to help the UK achieve its target of generating almost entirely clean power by 2030”. 

MORE ON UK

• BusinessGreen says: “The government’s new North Sea Future Board will today hold its inaugural meeting, as it seeks to accelerate efforts to develop a ‘clean energy powerhouse’ in what has historically been the heart of the UK’s oil and gas industry.”
• The Times reports that the UK government “stumped up £20m to rescue a factory making wind turbine blades on the Isle of Wight, saving the jobs of half of its 600 employees”. The Daily Express and BusinessGreen also cover the story. 
• There is widespread media coverage of the premiere of King Charles’ documentary, “Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision”. The Associated Press reports that in the film, Charles “delivers a simple message – that humanity needs to restore the balance between man and nature if it hopes to solve global warming and many of the other problems facing the world today”. 
• DeSmog reports that three policy papers endorsed by Conservative energy lead Claire Coutinho drove “sensational claims about climate policy” at the start of 2026. Analysis by the outlet finds that the reports were “all authored by individuals or organisations with ties to the fossil-fuel industry”.
• The Guardian reports on flooding in Somerset. The article says that “extreme rainfall is becoming more common and more intense in many parts of the world because of human-caused climate breakdown”.

The wildfires that ravaged Chile earlier this month have “reignited discussions over a wildfires law”, which was approved this week by the country’s upper chamber, reports La Tercera. The law strengthens the control and mitigation of forest fires across the country, but “experts warn it lacks effective measures to prevent [them]”, adds the outlet. The law had been proposed by Chile’s president Gabriel Boric in 2023 and aims to create a “regulatory framework to foresee events and reduce their impacts”. BioBioChile also covers the news, adding that the law will give further power to Chile’s national forest service to impose financial penalties and monitor compliance with preventive plans. Other measures include requiring landowners to build firebreaks and manage vegetation.

MORE ON LATIN AMERICA

• Chilean researchers are developing native trees resistant to degraded soils in order to reforest areas burned by wildfires, reports BioBioChile.

• Brazil’s 2026 budget for preventing forest fires and monitoring the environment will drop by 17%, meaning a reduction of $19m compared to 2025, reports Folha de São Paulo.
• ((o))eco reports that last year Amazon conservation units registered their lowest deforestation rates since 2014.
• El Espectador covers Colombia’s government initiative to replace fossil-fueled freight transport with low-emission hydrogen vehicles.

In his Moral Money newsletter for the Financial Times, Simon Mundy begins: “For much of the past decade, the prevailing narrative around green investment has had China going gangbusters while the rest of the world flails in its wake. Last year, the story got a bit more complicated.” He continues: “Chinese investment in the energy transition fell by 4% last year, the first decline since 2013, according to a report this week by research group BloombergNEF. But the rest of the world – especially Europe – more than picked up the slack, driving the overall global investment number up 8% to a new record of $2.3tn. This hardly signals a threat to China’s status as the biggest beast in the green energy jungle. Its investment numbers last year accounted for a third of the global total, more than the next six countries combined. It does, however, suggest that the world’s low-carbon investment may be moving towards broader-based growth, less reliant on a single market to keep driving expansion.”

Separately, Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the UK opposition Conservative party, writes in the climate-sceptic Daily Telegraph that Keir Starmer “gave away his leverage in talks with Beijing before even boarding the plane”. She says: “Instead of drilling in the North Sea and exploiting Britain’s natural resources, Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, has made a clear ideological choice to leave Britain entirely reliant on China for our future energy supply. The reality of Miliband’s ‘green future’ is Chinese-made solar panels, Chinese-made wind turbines and Chinese-made lithium batteries.” [Badenoch, since becoming leader of her party, has abruptly reversed her position on net-zero and made a series of misleading claims.] Meanwhile, the Guardian has an editorial under the headline: “The Guardian view on Keir Starmer in China: engagement is necessary, caution is vital.” It says: “[China] leads the world in green energy technology – a field the current climate-sceptic White House administration is happy to neglect. It would be irrational to refuse to have a functional dialogue with such a country.”

MORE COMMENT

• The Washington Post has an editorial which says that, “in chilly New England, blue states can thank oil for keeping the heat on at home during this week’s cold snap”. 
• New York Times opinion writer Robinson Meyer writes: “The US needs more energy to get through the cold snaps of the future. The question is where it will come from – and whether it will raise or lower climate-heating emissions.”
• Climate-sceptic writer Ross Clark claims in the Sun that “Ed Miliband is an economic vandal intent on killing off North Sea gas”.
• Veteran climate scientist Ben Santer reflects on “30 years fighting the ‘forces of unreason’” in Climate Cafe. (See Carbon Brief’s interview with Santer, published earlier this month.)
• Joss Garman, executive director at Loom, explains on his substack why he set up the organisation. He explains that Loom is based on the premise that “climate decisions have significant implications for people’s other big priorities like economic security, affordability and sovereignty”. 

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Ayesha Tandon, with contributions from Yanine Quiroz, Anika Patel and Henry Zhang. It was edited by Leo Hickman.

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