An increase in clean-energy spending is expected to drive a record $3.3tn in global energy investment in 2025, reports Reuters. According to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), clean-energy technologies are set to attract $2.2bn in investment, “despite economic uncertainty and geopolitical tensions”, it adds. This is twice the amount of investment expected for fossil fuels, the article notes. A “contraction in the oil sector where a sharp drop in prices is forcing companies to reassess their plans” has led to this drop in investment for fossil fuels, reports the Financial Times. The IEA predicts a 6% drop in oil production spending, which – excluding the Covid-19 pandemic years – marks the largest drop since 2016 when oil prices “crashed” below $30 a barrel, it adds. The FT quotes Fatih Birol, the head of the Paris-based intergovernmental energy advisory body, who says: “This is the first time we have seen such a decline, except for Covid, because of lower prices and lower oil demand.” The IEA’s overall upstream oil and gas investment for 2025 has fallen by 4% to just under $570bn, while global refinery investment is set to fall to its lowest level in a decade at around $30bn, reports Bloomberg. Conversely, investment in solar power is expected to reach $450bn in 2025, reports the Wall Street Journal. 

An area five times the size of Australia was hit by a marine heatwave in 2024, reports the Guardian. A new paper from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) found the heatwave impacted almost 40m sq kilometres of ocean around south-east Asia and the Pacific, it adds. “WMO scientists said the record heat – on land and in the ocean – was mostly driven by the climate crisis and coincided with a string of extreme weather events, from deadly landslides in the Philippines to floods in Australia and rapid glacier loss in Indonesia,” the article continues. The region was 0.48C hotter in 2024, than the average recorded between 1991 and 2020, it adds. The “unprecedented” heatwave in the Southwest Pacific affected more than 10% of the global ocean surface, damaged coral reefs and puts the region’s last remaining tropical glacial at risk of extinction, reports Reuters. The WMO report also found that “an unprecedented number of cyclones, which experts have attributed to climate change, also caused havoc in the Philippines in October and November”, the article notes.

Smoke from Canadian wildfires has continued to hamper air quality in the US Midwest, as well as causing “huge plumes of smoke” to reach Europe, reports Le Monde. The wildfires have forced the evacuation of more than 26,000 people, and continued their “stubborn spread”, “with heavy smoke choking millions of Canadians and Americans and reaching as far away as Europe”, it adds. Smoke from the wildfires across three Canadian provinces now covers about a third of the US, reports Al Jazeera. The first high-altitude plume of wildfire smoke reached Greece and the eastern Mediterranean over two weeks ago, with a much larger plume crossing the Atlantic within the past week and more expected, reports the Associated Press. Copernicus senior scientist Mark Parrington said it is “really an indicator of how intense these fires are, that they can deliver smoke,” high enough that they can be carried so far on jet streams.

In other North American news, a proposal by the US Senate environment committee has suggested that all unspent funds that were designed for climate and clean energy programs under former president Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) could be cut, reports Reuters. The committee “released a budget reconciliation draft that would rescind all the unspent funds and create a fee that developers of energy projects like oil wells or pipelines can pay to speed through environmental reviews”, it adds. Amid already high energy bills, president Donald Trump’s broad domestic policy bill, which is up for debate in the Senate, could raise prices further, reports the Independent. Studies have found that the energy bill of an average family could increase by as much as $400 annually if it passes, it adds. A new report from Atlas Public Policy has found that factories in Republican states are the most at risk from the fight over the IRA, reports Axios. 

The UK’s sunniest spring has generated a record amount of solar power, delivering a “windfall for the million-plus households with solar panels”, reports the Times. The Met Office found that the country had 43% more sunshine than average for the season, the most since records began 115 years ago, it adds. The newspaper explains that new analysis by Carbon Brief reveals that 7.6 terawatt hours of electricity was generated by solar in the first five months of 2025, up 42% on 2024, the Times article continues. The average output peaked at nearly 3,400 megawatts in May, it adds. 

In other UK news, the climate-sceptic Daily Telegraph leads its frontpage with reports that chancellor Rachel Reeves has been “forced” to “back down” from a “net-zero row” with energy secretary Ed Miliband. The Treasury has been considering cuts to the £13.2bn warm homes plan, designed to insulate properties and make them more energy efficient, it continues. However, Miliband and Reeves “are understood to have reached an agreement in the past few days after fraught negotiations and the scheme will remain largely unaffected”, it adds.

Elsewhere, ministers are considering funding energy-bill discounts for homeowners in the UK, reports the Financial Times. “Plans are being debated for a scheme under which households with heat pumps would not have to pay ‘green levies’ on the electricity they use to run them, according to government and industry sources,” the article continues. Replacing gas-fired boilers with heat pumps is considered a key climate goal, but, in 2024, “only” 60,000 heat pumps were installed, well below the 600,000 target set by the former Conservative government for 2028, it adds. More than £500m has been spent this year on switching off wind farms to “avoid overloading the creaking power grid” in the UK, reports the Daily Telegraph. 

China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) has issued a notice about the first batch of pilot projects tasked with constructing a “new power system”, reports industry news outlet BJX News. The projects will be carried out with a “focus on seven areas, including smart microgrids, virtual power plants, large-scale and high-ratio transmission of new energy, as well as next-generation coal power”, the outlet adds. A new report by State Grid, the operator of the country’s largest grid, says the company will be focusing on tasks including installing “as much [new-energy capacity] as possible”, another BJX News article reports. BJX News also says that, in order to adapt to the market-oriented price reform in China’s renewable energy sector, the country’s offshore wind power industry needs more “local government support policies”, better technological innovation and a more resilient supply chain. Power industry outlet Dianlian Xinmei publishes an article discussing how the “new generation of coal power” should adapt to China’s development of a “new power system”. Industry news outlet PV Magazine reports that China has developed the world’s first “large-scale hybrid lithium-sodium battery energy storage facility” for the power grid. State-supporting newspaper Global Times covers a recent BBC article saying that the growth of China’s sodium-ion battery capabilities is a result of “active international collaboration”, as opposed to “trade protection”.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that some European automotive parts plants have “suspended output” amid deepening concerns about China’s restrictions on critical mineral exports. There is widespread coverage of fears that Chinese export controls on critical minerals could lead to production bottlenecks at carmakers, including electric vehicle manufacturers, it adds. Other outlets including the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP), Bloomberg and the New York Times also publish similar coverage.

The Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily publishes an article under the headline: “A resolute actor and key contributor to global green development.” It argues that China’s pledges to achieve its “dual-carbon goals” sets a “strong example” for the world. It adds that China has also partnered with more than 100 countries on “green energy projects”, turning low-carbon energy from a “luxury” into a “daily necessity”. State news agency Xinhua reports that “many zero or near-zero carbon villages” are emerging across China as the energy transition accelerates across the country’s “vast rural regions”.

Tesla sales were once again down in the UK, falling 45% in May, reports the Times. The company’s sales declined for the fifth consecutive month in the UK, Germany and Italy, “underscoring the challenges facing Elon Musk as he renews his focus on the electric vehicle maker”, it adds. The drop in sales in the UK came as industry-wide electric car sales increased by 28% last month, the article notes. According to New Automotive, 31,519 new electric cars were registered in May, making up 21.9% of the total new car market, reports BusinessGreen. This follows a “fast start to the year for the EV market”, with 175,165 battery EVs registered in the first five months, overtaking the same period last year by 29%, it adds. EV sales were up in Germany by 45% year-on-year in May and in Spain by 72%, reports the New York Times. But sales of Teslas fell by a third in Germany, 67% in France and 29% in Spain in May, it adds. Norway stood out as a European exception, with the country selling 2,600 cars in May, more than triple the numbers of the previous year, the article notes. Elsewhere, Tesla sales jumped in Australia, soaring 675% from April to May, reports CNBC. Tesla sales are covered in multiple Reuters articles.  

Dialogue Earth reports that Brazil’s civil society participation at COP30 is “being undermined by costs, bureaucracy and mixed messaging”. According to the outlet, the creation by Brazil’s government and the COP30 presidency of a dedicated technical working group for scaling up social participation could be overshadowed by “the exorbitant price of accommodation in Belém” and the “high cost of flights” that have hindered even the participation of local organisations. Meanwhile, journalist Igor Patrick writes in his column for Folha de São Paulo that BRICS – an intergovernmental group of 10 countries including Brazil, India and China – could “make COP30, in Belém, more than a symbolic stage” since the group set its priorities for reforming multilateral banks and the search for private climate finance. He dubs their proposals as the “bloc’s largest coordinated move on this agenda to date”.

Elsewhere, O Globo covers the announcement of an initiative named “Landscape Accelerator – Brazil” to be launched at COP30 to boost regenerative agriculture and “reverse soil degradation” in the Cerrado biome. A study cited by the outlet found that if 32,3m hectares of the biome adopted regenerative agriculture practices they “could yield $100bn”.

In other Latin American news, climate change is “affecting the mental health” of Colombian farmers, according to a study covered by Colombia’s El Cronista. As climate change “wreaks havoc on crops”, says the study, Colombian farmers are increasingly suffering from “ecoanxiety”, posttraumatic stress and depression.

With two-thirds of the Earth covered by water, the fight against climate change “is a lost cause if we ignore the oceans”, argues Ian Urbina, executive director of the Outlaw Ocean Project in the Observer. People have viewed the ocean as “a metaphor for infinity”, assuming that the “enormity of the sea comes with a limitless ability to absorb and metabolise all”, he writes. Urbina lists some of the damages done to the ocean, including ships releasing oil and engine sludge, commercial fishing “plundering” marine stocks and companies dumping carbon into the atmosphere, roughly a quarter of which is absorbed by the oceans. He argues that the ocean has acted as the lungs of the planet, but “our “smoking habit” has caught up with us and those lungs are failing”. Urbina argues for a change of approach to oceans, giving them more focus within the climate conversation and exploring new technologies and methods to protect them. “Perhaps in helping them to flourish, we will see that the oceans are not just a victim of the climate crisis but a big part of its solution”, he concludes. 

In other comment, Bloomberg columnist Liam Denning argues that “Trump is cementing the green energy transition he loathes”, by driving countries around the world to invest in renewable energy. An editorial in the climate-sceptic Daily Telegraph wonders whether “Miliband will deliver higher energy prices, but still not hit net-zero”. Also in the Daily Telegraph, former Labour MP Tom Harris argues that James Cleverly should be allowed to speak about net-zero, after the former foreign secretary made the case for the Conservative party continuing to support net-zero. In the Daily Express, Lois Perry, Europe director of a notorious US climate-sceptic thinktank called the Heartland Institute, argues that “Miliband’s agenda is falling apart piece by piece in net-zero humiliation”.

Atmospheric evaporative demand – sometimes known as “atmospheric thirst” – caused around 40% of increased drought severity globally from 1981-2022, according to new research. Using global drought datasets, the study authors find that areas hit by drought grew by almost 75% on average from 2018-22, compared to 1981-2017. Atmospheric evaporative demand contributed to almost 60% of this increase, the researchers write. This demand plays an “increasingly important role in driving severe droughts”, they note, which will likely continue with future warming. The New York Times and Conversation cover the study.