The EU is experiencing its worst wildfire season on record, exceeding 1m hectares of land burned for the first time on record, according to analysis by Politico. Data from the European Forest Fire Information System reveals that an area larger than Cyprus, or one-third the size of Belgium, has been affected by fires since January, the news outlet says. The article notes that “climate change is exacerbating wildfire risk, bringing more frequent and intense heat waves and droughts”. Agence France-Presse has conducted the same analysis, noting that four EU countries – Spain, Cyprus, Germany and Slovakia – have already experienced their worst fire year in two decades of existing data. It notes that “Spain and Portugal are still battling wildfires”, adding that Spain alone accounts for 40% of the burned total so far. With a “burned area twice the size of London” in Spain, disaster declarations will be triggered for the worst affected regions, “clearing the way for funding for aid and reconstruction”, according to the Financial Times. In an article titled “Europe is ablaze”, the Economist notes that “global warming turns large parts of Europe’s countryside into kindling”, although it highlights a need for “stiffer penalties” aimed at those responsible for starting fires.

MORE ON EXTREME WEATHER

• The Economist has an article – and an accompanying editorial – about the threat that heatwaves and rising temperatures pose to pregnant women.
• Italy’s Certified Tour Guide Association has called for a rethink of the summer opening hours at major attractions in Rome – citing climate change – after a tour guide “died of a suspected heart attack while showing a group around the Colosseum in baking heat”, the Guardian reports.
• Schools in Puerto Rico are “neither designed nor prepared to face hotter and more frequent heatwaves”, according to an investigation by the Associated Press.
• Rising temperatures in the Middle East may be “intensifying rainfall over north-west India”, according to research laid out in a Times of India article.
• The French meteorological organisation says the recent spell of intense heat in France – described as “unprecedented” – was one of the most severe to hit the southern part of the nation, according to Le Monde.
• The New York Times has a feature on the deadly impact of climate change-amplified monsoon rains across Pakistan and the “catastrophic new normal” they have brought to the country.

The Trump administration in the US has launched an investigation into imported wind turbines and parts, a move that could potentially add more tariffs onto the clean-energy components, the Hill reports. The administration asked for information from the public on various topics, including foreign supply chains, foreign government subsidies and “predatory trade practices” and whether it is possible to weaponise foreign-built wind turbines and their parts, the article explains. Bloomberg notes that the US wind industry depends heavily on imports for parts, with 41% coming from Mexico, Canada and China, according to Wood Mackenzie figures from 2023. The newswire notes that this is the latest attack from Trump and his administration on wind energy, following the inclusion earlier this week of wind turbines among products facing 50% steel and aluminum tariffs. Reuters charts the projected changes to US electricity generation laid out in new US Energy Information Administration (EIA) figures, noting that they are “likely to alter course” due to Trump’s attacks on renewable energy policy. Nevertheless, it says both solar and wind are expected to increase their share of US electricity generation out to 2035. The EIA figures show that solar power is expected to make up more than half of the 64GW of capacity that developers aim to introduce to the US grid this year, according to Energy Monitor. Amid this surge, Politico says Trump has “renewed his verbal attacks on renewables”, calling them “the scam of the century” on his Truth Social platform.

MORE ON US

• The Financial Times reports that Trump’s attacks on renewable energy have “thrown the sector into chaos, prompting industry concerns that the US will struggle to meet surging demand to power the artificial intelligence revolution”.
• The Guardian reports on how the Trump administration is “forcing” a Michigan coal power plant to remain open “even against the wishes of its operator”, racking up $1m a day in operating costs.
• The League of Conservation Voters is launching a $4m campaign across US swing states and districts to “sour voters” on Trump’s budget law – which includes rollbacks on renewable support – in an attempt to “politically tether rising power prices to the law”, according to Axios.

China will “increasingly look” at its west and north regions of Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet – rich in renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and hydropower – to meet its “surging energy demand over the next 10 years”, according to Ouyang Changyu, deputy chief engineer of State Grid Corporation of China, the country’s major grid operator, Yicai reports. Ouyang adds that China’s electricity consumption will “maintain medium-speed growth over the next decade”, with growth rates of 5.6% and 4.3% during the 15th and 16th five-year plan, respectively, the outlet adds. 

MORE ON CHINA

• Reuters cites experts saying climate change has pushed the expansion of “China’s rain belt”, and its capital Beijing remains “insufficiently prepared” for a “wet future”.
• SCMP publishes a comment by its senior reporter Phoebe Zhang under the headline: “Beijing floods a deadly reminder to prepare for climate change’s worst.”
• Factories in China are trading “smokestacks and chemical fumes” for a “sweeping green” industrial transition, says Xinhua. 
• China’s major oil company Sinopec reports a net income fall of 36% in the first half of 2025 due to “rapid spread” of electric vehicles (EVs), reports Bloomberg.
• China is encouraging its new “green electricity industrial parks” to “achieve 100% green electricity consumption”, says Economic Daily.
• Various outlets, including Reuters and Climate Home News, cover recent Carbon Brief analysis showing that China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions dropped 1% in the first half of 2025, compared to last year, driven by renewables expansion.

A “conflict” is emerging within the German federal government, as economy minister Katherina Reiche pushes to allow carbon dioxide capture from gas-fired power plants, while environment and climate minister Carsten Schneider opposes it, reports the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “The discussion about carbon capture and storage (CCS) must not raise false hopes and lead to longer use of fossil fuels,” FAZ quotes Schneider’s state secretary for climate. Nevertheless, Reiche’s draft bill, recently adopted by the federal cabinet, allows the use of CCS for gas-fired power generation as well as for the production of “blue” hydrogen from “natural gas”, while only ruling out CO2 capture from coal-fired power plants. Westdeutscher Rundfunk reports that, according to a new study, the German government’s plans to build 30 to 40 new gas-fired power plants in the coming years “appear to be significantly oversized”.

MORE ON GERMANY

• Handelsblatt reports that starting next year, electricity customers in Germany will be relieved through a €6.5bn federal subsidy for transmission grid costs, financed by the Climate and Transformation Fund (KTF).
• “Germany is falling behind in the expansion of solar energy”, highlights Handelsblatt.

Four of India’s more “carbon-intensive” sectors – power, steel, cement and transport – will require a combined $467bn in climate finance by 2030 to put them on a low-carbon pathway, according to the Economist Times. This is based on a working paper produced by Indian economists and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the article notes. The roughly $54bn per year required to decarbonise these sectors amounts to 1.3% of India’s GDP, with around 80% of the finance needed for the steel and cement sectors, it notes. The study says the financing gap will need to be “bridged through both domestic and external sources”. The Times of India also reports on the new paper, noting that it  is intended to inform domestic policy as well as the international conversation ahead of the COP30 climate talks in Brazil, later this year.

Polish president Karol Nawrocki has vetoed a bill that was intended to ease the rules for constructing onshore wind farms, stating that a government decision to combine it with a freeze on energy prices amounted to “blackmail”, Reuters reports. The newswire describes the move as “the latest salvo in a battle with the centrist government of prime minister Donald Tusk”, who is an “arch rival” of the president’s allies in the right-wing, nationalist Law and Justice party. Polskie Radio reports that Nawrocki plans to submit a separate proposal to prolong the freeze on electricity prices into the last quarter of this year. He stated that lowering energy costs would require “moving away from the EU’s green deal” and emissions trading system (ETS), rather than building more wind farms, the article adds.

MORE ON RENEWABLES

• Construction work has begun on a “community” wind farm in the south of Scotland that will generate enough electricity to power about 335,000 homes, the Scotsman reports.
• A new study has found that solar panels in space could cut Europe’s renewable energy needs by 80% by 2050, the Guardian reports.

Los Angeles Times climate columnist Sammy Roth lays out some of California governor Gavin Newsom’s recent shortcomings regarding renewable energy in the state. In particular, he notes that the governor has had opportunities to boost the state’s rooftop solar potential, which he has not taken. At the same time, Newsom is “pushing lawmakers to streamline oil drilling in Kern County and elsewhere” with less focus on environmental reviews, the article explains. “Critics feel he is increasingly shying away from the climate ambitions that have long defined California. As a result, they fear, the state is starting to backslide as a global leader – at the worst possible time,” Roth writes. He notes that Newsom could take the chance to act as the Trump administration rolls back climate action, but “as environmentalists have grown more critical, the governor has refused to admit fault”. Roth concludes: “The path forward won’t always be smooth. But in a state suffering ever-more-powerful heat waves, wildfires and floods, that’s no excuse for backsliding.”

MORE US COMMENT

• Jason Isaac, chief executive of the American Energy Institute – which lobbies for fossil fuels in the US – has a comment article in the Hill criticising “California’s climate alarmism” and taking aim at Newsom’s “extreme energy agenda”.

Daily Telegraph world economy editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has an article describing UK energy secretary Ed Miliband’s strategy for achieving net-zero as “misconceived”. He writes that Miliband is “captured by vested interests”, adding: “He is wasting billions by the fistful on the wrong technologies, much of it subsidising oil and gas companies. He is bending every sinew to meet his clean power target of 2030, allowing this absolutist goal to distort all else.” Instead, Evans-Pritchard says that “as a green conservative… I am supremely relaxed about relying on unabated gas plants for a long time yet to buttress renewables and keep the lights”. 

MORE UK COMMENT

• A Times editorial – based on coverage in the same newspaper – highlights a solar farm “dazzling” pilots at Schiphol airport in the Netherlands. The newspaper uses the editorial to take a broader swipe at renewable construction “trump[ing] all other considerations” and replacing fossil fuels.
• Julia Pyke, joint managing director at Sizewell C nuclear power plant, has a comment article in the Daily Telegraph in which she describes the project as “a great engineering achievement and as proof that Britain can deliver major infrastructure projects efficiently and affordably”.
• A book review of “Goliath’s curse: The history and future of societal collapse” is given a double-page spread in the Daily Mail. It points to climate change happening “at an unprecedented rate – 10 times faster than the global warming that triggered the greatest mass extinction in the planet’s history”.

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Josh Gabbatiss, with contributions from Henry Zhang and Wanyuan Song. It was edited by Robert McSweeney.

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