India has hit a target for 50% of its installed electricity generating capacity to come from non-fossil fuel sources five years early, reports Reuters. It says the announcement follows the country’s renewable power output rising at its fastest pace since 2022 in the first half of 2025, while coal generation declined by nearly 3%. However, it notes that fossil fuels still accounted for over two-thirds of the increase in generation last year and that the country is planning to expand its coal-fired capacity by 80 gigawatts (GW) by 2032 to meet rising electricity demand. The newswire notes that India missed its 2022 renewable target of 175GW but has since “ramped up solar and wind additions” towards a goal of 500GW of non-fossil capacity by 2032. The Times of India quotes renewable energy minister Pralhad Joshi saying in a social media post: “In a world seeking climate solutions, India is showing the way.” Citing Joshi, the Press Trust of India says the country’s non-fossil capacity has reached 242.8GW, out of a total of 484.8GW.

The EU does not want to enter a “race” with China to develop new clean-energy technologies that leads towards “low incomes” or “lower environmental standards”, according to Teresa Ribera, the bloc’s vice-president for the clean transition, speaking during a visit to Beijing ahead of a major EU-China summit, Agence France-Presse reports. Ribera said that if the EU does not act “against Chinese green energy firms”, it could “kill the possibility” of long-term renewable energy investment in the bloc’s future, the newswire adds. Ribera also said the EU will “pursue more subsidy investigations against foreign companies investing” in the bloc, adding that sectors including the automotive and battery industries will come under scrutiny, the Financial Times reports. 

More on China:

• Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese says Australia and China “should cooperate more closely over green steel”, Reuters reports.
• Xinhua reports that the UAE’s climate change and environment minister visited China to “strengthen cooperation on climate action”.
• Jiemian reports that China’s export volume of energy-storage batteries grew 175% year-on-year in the first half of 2025.
• The number of new-energy vehicles (NEVs) registered in China in the first half of the year, some 5.6m, was the “highest…in the country’s history”, according to Xinhua. 
• China has built a 4,000km power transmission project in the Taklaman desert that will “create a torrent of green power”, Xinhua says. The South China Morning Post, International Energy Net and Guangming Daily also cover the story.
• China pledged to strengthen quantitative measures for developing “new quality productive forces” across several industries, including “new energy”, Xinhua says.

Sales of “catastrophe bonds” by insurance firms hit a record $18.1bn in the year to date, up from $17.7bn in the whole of 2024, reports the Financial Times, which says the companies are seeking to “offload the growing risk from climate change on to investors eager for high returns”. The bonds transfer part of the risk from events such as wildfires, hurricanes and earthquakes to bondholders, it explains. The article adds: “The sales come as much of the world grapples with extreme weather, which scientists say is becoming more frequent and intense because of climate change. Devastating floods have hit Texas and China in the past week, even as Europe suffers back-to-back heatwaves that have sparked wildfires and shuttered businesses…The steadily increasing cost of traditional reinsurance – partly due to extreme weather losses and rising asset prices – has also pushed insurers towards catastrophe bonds.”

UK net-zero secretary Ed Miliband has accused the opposition Conservative party of being “anti-science” for abandoning the political consensus on net-zero as he “gave MPs a stark outline of how the climate crisis and nature depletion are already affecting the UK”, reports the Guardian. It continues: “In the first of what is promised to be an annual ‘state of the climate’ report, the energy and net-zero secretary set out the findings of a Met Office-led study that detailed how the UK was already hotter and wetter, and faced a greater number of extreme weather events.” According to a separate analysis of Miliband’s speech in the Guardian, he laid out the “uncomfortable, sobering facts”, as well as highlighting how the UK has “led global efforts to bring emissions down”. It quotes Miliband saying: “To those who say Britain cannot make a difference, I say you are wrong, stop talking our country down, British leadership matters.” Miliand also said during the debate that Great British Energy could fund solar panels on religious buildings, reports the Press Association.

MORE ON UK

• The National Energy System Operator (NESO) has called for “further and faster” progress on clean power, according to BusinessGreen, with the Guardian noting climate goals will otherwise be missed. NESO says electricity demand could rise by more than 30% by 2035, 8% higher than thought last year, reports Bloomberg.
• Climate-sceptic Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has called for councils to ditch  “virtue-signalling” net-zero targets, reports the Daily Telegraph. The Daily Express and others also have the story, while the Guardian covers plans by Reform-run councils to scrap net-zero policies. 
• The UK and Czech Republic governments have agreed to work together on developing small modular reactors, reports Reuters.
• More of England is expected to reach “drought status” following the hottest June on record, reports the Guardian.

The Trump administration has taken “another step to make it harder to find major, legally mandated scientific assessments of how climate change is endangering the nation and its people”, reports the Associated Press. It says this follows the official US government websites that hosted the “authoritative, peer-reviewed national climate assessments” going “dark” earlier this month. The newswire adds: “At the time, the White House said NASA would house the reports to comply with a 1990 law that requires the reports, which the space agency said it planned to do. But on Monday, NASA announced that it aborted those plans.” The New York Times quotes government spokesperson Bethany Stevens saying the government “met its statutory requirements by presenting its reports to Congress. NASA has no legal obligations to host globalchange.gov’s data…To clarify, globalchange.gov is not a NASA domain. We never did and will not host the data.”

MORE ON US

• Bloomberg reports that Trump’s $3.4tn fiscal package is “[throwing] a lifeline to unloved energy and climate sectors” such as coal, nuclear and geothermal. 
• The Guardian looks at how Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” could raise household energy bills in some Republican-leaning states by more than $600 every year.
• Trump is set to announce $70bn in funding for AI and energy investments in Pennsylvania, reports Bloomberg.
• A wildfire “that tore through a historic Grand Canyon lodge and raged out of control [on] Monday had been allowed to burn for days before erupting over the weekend”, reports the Associated Press.
• The storm-related death toll in Texas rose to 131 as authorities warn of yet another day of heavy rains, reports Reuters.

There was widespread coverage of the UK government officially announcing the reintroduction of grants for new electric vehicles (EVs), as signalled in coverage earlier this week. The government is introducing grants to cover £3,750 of the cost of a new electric car to encourage drivers to move away from petrol and diesel, reports BBC News. Cars that cost up to £37,000 will be eligible for the grant, with “the most environmentally friendly vehicles seeing the biggest reductions”, it adds. The government has allocated £650m for the grants, which will not be means tested, reports the Times in an article featured on its frontpage. The Department for Transport noted that there are 23 new electric vehicle (EV) models available for less than £30,000 currently, reports the Daily Telegraph. It quotes Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, who said: “This EV grant will not only allow people to keep more of their hard-earned money, it’ll help our automotive sector seize one of the biggest opportunities of the 21st century.” In addition to providing funds for the vehicles themselves, there will be £63m of funding available for charger installations, notes the Financial Times. Reuters, BusinessGreen, the i newspaper, Bloomberg, Sky News and others all have the story.

MORE ON EVS

• Global EV sales jumped 24% in June year-on-year, although sales in the US were down 1%, reports Reuters.
• The Financial Times carries a “big read” on “how BYD caught up with Tesla in the global EV race”, which is trailed on its frontpage. 
• Reuters carries a comment piece from Lucy Yu,  CEO and founder of the Centre for Net Zero (part of the Octopus Energy Group), arguing: “Everyone needs to be able to plug into the electric vehicle revolution.”
• Euractiv reports: “Berlin says EU must stick to 2035 diesel, petrol car ban.”

For the Financial Times, associate editor and columnist Stephen Bush explores what he calls the “curious idea doing the rounds on the right: that climate change is real, that it is caused by human activity, but that European countries cannot meaningfully shape whether the world reaches net-zero”. He writes: “It may well be that despite major advances in solar and renewable energy, the world is not going to reach net-zero by the 21st century’s halfway mark. It may well be that smaller countries need to accept that the battle against climate change is being lost at the moment.” He notes a recent report from the Office for Budget Responsibility – covered by Carbon Brief – which found that the “costs of not reaching net-zero are considerably higher than the costs of reaching it”. Despite all this, says Bush: “What these critics of net-zero actually seem to envisage is not a world in which states switch from spending money on the climate transition to spending larger sums on adaptation and resilience, but one in which we and the planet agree to put all of this unpleasantness behind us and spend money on neither.”

MORE COMMENT

• In the Economist, US secretary of energy and former CEO of onshore oil services company Liberty Energy Chris Wright argues that “climate change is a by-product of progress, not an existential crisis”.
• In Sustainability by Numbers, Hannah Richie says population growth will have little impact on climate change.
• Dr Niall McLoughlin, co-director at Climate Barometer, writes in Climate Home News that “to help people prepare for extreme heat, we must communicate better”.
• For Crikey, writer and consultant Ketan Joshi writes under the headline: “Climate fatalism is just as wrong as climate denial – it’s never ‘too late’ for change.”

An editorial in the Guardian reflects on Ed Miliband’s state of the UK climate speech, arguing that he framed “environmental action as practical and patriotic, not in terms of wordy ideological pieties. But holding the line won’t be easy.” The piece argues that Miliband is a target for the right “not because he is irrelevant, but because he is effective”. [Carbon Brief analysis found that UK newspapers launched more editorials attacking Miliband in the first four months of 2025 than they did during the whole of 2024.] The editorial continues by saying that Miliband “let the data speak and created a tone of national reckoning rather than moral crusade”. It adds that Miliband is aware that the public’s attention is “fickle” and that net-zero has “slipped down the list of voter priorities, but says this is part of what makes his intervention “essential”. The newspaper concludes: “The energy secretary’s authority rests on whether he can resist pressure from business interests and the Treasury without blinking on net-zero.” It adds that by creating the annual climate speech he “has hopefully established a new norm that can deliver political accountability to the generations to come.”

MORE UK COMMENT

• The net-zero-sceptic Daily Telegraph carries comments by columnist Matthew Lynn on “Labour’s “net-zero blackmail” and “Europe’s energy rationing”, as well as a parliamentary sketch by Tim Stanley calling Miliband’s speech “histrionic”.
• Columnist Jawad Iqbal argues that an EV grant scheme would be “politically misguided folly” in the Times.

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Molly Lempriere and edited by Simon Evans.

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