The Financial Times reports that the EU has “failed to agree” on a legally binding plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade in time for the UN general assembly, which takes place next week. EU environment ministers said they would “try to reduce emissions by between 66.3% and 72.5% by 2035”, the newspaper says, in a “blow to hopes of EU leadership” at the COP30 climate summit in November. Politico says countries drafted a “statement of intent” when they could not agree on binding targets. This formed a “two-page missive to the UN promising to deliver” an updated climate plan before COP30, according to the outlet. Reuters reports that “major emitters, including China, are expected to meet the deadline”. Another Politico article says that the EU has been “left off a provisional line-up for world leaders to tout their new climate targets” at a summit on 24 September. 

MORE ON EU

• Bloomberg reports that the EU has pledged €1.3bn (£1.1bn) towards supporting “clean energy plans and the local processing of critical minerals” in Namibia.

US president Donald Trump has “urged” UK prime minister Keir Starmer to “exploit the ‘great asset’ of North Sea oil and gas” and labelled wind power an “expensive joke”, the Press Association reports. Speaking at a joint press conference during Trump’s second state visit to the UK, the news agency reports that he claimed “his “drill, baby, drill” policy had helped bring down American prices”. Press Association adds that Starmer noted he was “absolutely determined to ensure that the price and cost of energy comes down” in the UK. The Daily Mail reports that Starmer said this will be achieved through a “mix” of renewable energy and fossil fuels. Another Daily Mail article notes that the two leaders’ “differences” on certain key issues, including renewable energy, “did not come to the fore” much during the press conference. The Daily Telegraph characterises Trump’s comments as an “attack” on the UK’s “net-zero drive”. The Times and CityAM also have the story, while Trump’s views make the frontpages of the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. 

MORE ON UK 

• Britain’s rollout of “household clean tech” has recorded its “best ever August” this year, according to BusinessGreen. 
• Kent County Council has rescinded its 2019 “declaration of a climate emergency” after a motion put forward by Reform UK, which controls the council, BBC News reports. 
• The climate-sceptic Daily Telegraph claims that the “shutdown” of North Sea oil and gas production will cost the UK government “£10bn in lost taxes” by 2030. 
• The Daily Mail says that unsuccessful legal challenges “have added almost five years of delays to the construction of Britain’s new nuclear power stations”.  

Oil and gas major Exxon Mobil is “stepping up attacks” against an EU corporate sustainability law and has taken its concerns “directly” to Trump, Reuters reports. The European Commission proposed changes to the law earlier this year “in response to criticism” about possible harms to the bloc’s competitiveness, the article says. Speaking to the newswire, chief executive Darren Woods called for the law to be revoked entirely. Woods also spoke to a number of other news outlets, including Axios, which reports that the sustainability law will “challenge” the US-EU energy deal. Woods tells Semafor: “[The EU is] trying to build a so-called green economy, that’s not working. And
instead of trying to fix that, they’re now trying to drag every American company down.” The Financial Times reports that the company does not have “any plans” to begin working again in Russia. The chief executive’s comments are also covered by the New York Times, Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal. 

MORE ON ENERGY 

• The global banking sector made no progress in financing the energy transition in 2024, Bloomberg reports. 
• “Insiders, experts and officials” in the California wind industry tell the Los Angeles Times that they are continuing with offshore wind plans despite cancelled funding from the Trump administration. 
• According to Bloomberg, the Trump administration intends to “speed the development of power plants, power lines and other energy projects that can help meet the mounting electricity demand from AI and manufacturing”.
• The Wall Street Journal reports that many US policymakers are still “bullish on clean energy” in spite of the Trump administration’s “clampdown on solar and wind energy” 
• The developers of a halted offshore wind project off Rhode Island say the reasons for stopping work were “factually incorrect”, Reuters says. 
• The Trump administration has asked a federal court to send an offshore wind project near Massachusetts “back to the interior department for further review”, Bloomberg reports. 

The Financial Times reports that an asset manager run by US Democrats Tom Steyer and John Kerry, the former climate envoy, “has doubled down on a climate investment strategy with a new $1.3bn credit offering”. The newspaper notes that the investment group is looking to “capitalise” on Trump’s “sweeping green cuts”. The strategy “will provide loans and bespoke financing for businesses and projects”, the Financial Times reports. Axios says that the announcement is “focused on the ‘full energy transition value chain’ – renewables, storage, fleet electrification, efficiency, advanced materials manufacturing and more”. 

MORE ON US 

• A new study finds that exposure to wildfire smoke will “kill an estimated 70,000 Americans each year by 2050”, the New York Times says. 
• The New York Times reports on the possible “far-reaching” consequences of the Trump administration’s recent moves to stop tracking key data on emissions and expensive extreme weather events. 

China’s cumulative sales of “new-energy vehicles (NEVs)” have now surpassed 40m units, with production and sales ranking first in the world for 10 consecutive years, Chinese news outlet Economic Observer reports. The newspaper adds that the country’s NEV production and sales in the first eight months have both increased by more than 36% year-on-year, while domestic new sales of NEVs in China for the whole of 2025 is expected to reach 50%. State news agency Xinhua reports that China’s total electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure has increased by 54% year-on-year, reaching more than 17m units by the end of August 2025. Chinese automakers are able to account for more than half of the EVs sold in the world, even “in the age of tariffs”, the Wall Street Journal says.

MORE ON CHINA

• China has begun building the world’s “largest clean electricity direct current [power] line”, stretching from north-western Tibet to China’s south-eastern coast, Yicai reports.
• Zhang Renhe, dean of the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences at Fudan University, tells 21st Century Business Herald that improved monitoring and forecasting technologies are vital to “empower efforts to address climate change”
• In a long read for New York Times Magazine, contributing writer Brook Larmer says that Chinese companies are more interested in “offloading products and cornering markets than in helping countries build their own clean-tech economies”.
• China Daily: “China, Ghana deepen ties to fulfill FOCAC 2024 climate commitments.”
• Africa should “accelerate south-south cooperation in fighting climate change”, including through collaboration with China, according to China Daily.

More than 450 demonstrations across the US this Sunday will celebrate renewable energy, amid Trump’s attacks on wind and solar power, the Guardian reports. It says: “The national ‘day of action’, called Sun Day, will be spearheaded by the veteran climate activist Bill McKibben…The event organisers say it could be one of the largest environmental mobilisations of the decade.” The newspaper adds that, among the demonstrations, “Oregon will host its largest ever clean energy celebration featuring Indigenous dancers, while Minnesota will see theatrical performances and Washington DC advocates will host tours of solar-powered homes”.

MORE ON CLIMATE ACTIVISM

• The New York Times reports on a legal effort from young activists in Montana accusing that Trump’s executive orders are causing them harm by limiting efforts to tackle climate change.
• Two Just Stop Oil activists who planned to spray-paint Taylor Swift’s private jet orange have been found guilty of criminal damage, the Daily Telegraph reports.

Canada “made no progress reducing total greenhouse-gas emissions last year” and is set to “fall far short of its 2030 target” to cut CO2, according to a thinktank estimate covered by the nation’s Globe and Mail. The newspaper continues: “In an early estimate, the Canadian Climate Institute said emission-reduction momentum has stalled nationally, remaining at 8.5% below 2005 levels, about the same as in 2023, with oil and gas accounting for a large and growing share. On the current trajectory, emissions are on track to be 20% to 25% under 2005 levels by 2030, well under the legislated target of 40% to 45% below.” CBC News adds that it is the first time that the Canadian Climate Institute has said that the nation will not meet its 2030 target.

Guardian Australia’s climate and environment editor Adam Morton writes: “The Australian government has announced an Oprah Winfrey-style emissions target for 2035. It has tried to promise (nearly) everyone a prize.” He discusses the government’s new targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 62-70% by 2035. He says this target range is “extraordinarily wide”, adding: “At the bottom end, it is likely to dampen criticism from business organisations that have argued for less action. At the top end, it nods to a campaign that has argued that the target must include a number that starts with a “7” – that is, in the 70s – if it is to have any claim at being serious about the scale of the problem.” Six experts responded to the new target in another Guardian article, with one expert calling it a “slap in the face to the people growing Australia’s food”. Also writing in the Guardian, the newspaper’s Australian political editor Tom McIlroy writes that the target range is “designed to offend as few people as possible”. 

MORE POLITICAL COMMENT 

• One of Carbon Brief’s contributing editors Frank Jotzo writes in the Australian Financial Review that “an emissions reduction in the mid-60s will put Australia on track to net-zero and help position the economy for long-term international competitiveness”. 
• A number of UK newspaper editorials discuss Trump’s comments on renewable energy. The Sun says that Trump “rightly described wind farms as an ‘expensive joke’”. The Daily Telegraph writes that “clarity” was put forward on net-zero when Trump “urged” Starmer to “drill, baby, drill” in the North Sea. The Times editorial says that Trump “sucked the wind out of Sir Keir’s sails when he laid into renewables”. 
• Tom Harris writes in the Daily Telegraph that the “biggest potential winner” of the UK Labour party’s deputy leadership race is energy secretary Ed Miliband. 
• The US-UK tech alliance is a “vindication of Britain’s clean energy strategy”, writes Daily Telegraph’s world economy editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.
• A Lex opinion piece in the Financial Times writes that there are “better places” to build data centres for artificial intelligence than the UK. 

Former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and Lord Adair Turner, the first chair of the UK’s Climate Change Committee, write in Reuters that a “new era of growth and opportunity is rising, propelled by the convergence of clean electricity, digital innovation and manufactured technologies revolutionising how economies generate, store, transport and use electricity”. They write that this move is “happening now” and being “driven not just by advanced economies, but increasingly by developing ones”. They note: “Today, more than 60% of emerging and developing economies are leapfrogging the US and Europe in clean electrification, according to analysis by Ember. From Kenya to Vietnam; Morocco to Brazil, the adoption of solar, wind and battery storage is outpacing not only fossil fuels, but also the business-as-usual strategies of many rich economies.” 

MORE COMMENT 

• In the Hill, climate activist Saad Amer writes about his experience testifying against “one of the most dangerous proposals I’ve seen in my decades of climate work: the repeal of the endangerment finding”.
• Bloomberg opinion columnist Liam Denning writes that “billions in cleantech investments are going up in smoke” in the US. 
• In Bloomberg, the outlet’s opinion editor and columnist Mark Gongloff writes about the future of home insurance in a “world of proliferating climate disasters”. 
• In Reuters, the CEO of the We Mean Business Coalition, Maria Mendiluce, writes about “why business wants Europe to hold its nerve on its 2040 climate target”.
• Emily Atkin writes in Heated that “big oil’s money” gave US right-wing activist Charlie Kirk a “larger platform to spread baseless climate conspiracy theories”.

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Orla Dwyer, with contributions from Daisy Dunne, Anika Patel and Henry Zhang. It was edited by Robert McSweeney.

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