There is widespread coverage of the UK’s autumn budget, set to be delivered by chancellor Rachel Reeves later today. BBC News reports that it understands the government intends to “relax” the UK’s current moratorium on new drilling for oil and gas. This would be done in a way that would open the door for schemes that can be argued to be “extensions of existing infrastructure”, it says. It adds that the relaxation in rules is “widely thought” to increase the chances that the “controversial Rosebank field” will “ultimately be approved”. The Guardian reports that ministers are planning “incentives” for fossil-fuel companies to “drill parts of the seabed which others have previously abandoned”. It notes that the plans are likely to be “controversial” with campaigners and Labour MPs, given the party’s election promise not to grant new licenses for North Sea oil and gas.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that the government has decided against cutting VAT on energy bills, after the Bank of England’s chief economist said such a move would have only a “one-off” effect on headline inflation. The budget will, however, see the government press ahead with a “package of support for household energy costs”, the newspaper reports, including changes to so-called “green levies” for electricity. These levies – which fund a “range of schemes” that improve energy efficiency in homes and support lower-income households in winter – will instead be funded through general taxation, it says. The Times says the plan to cut energy bills by removing green levies is likely to be the “centrepiece” of measures announced to help people with cost of living. Sky News says the removal of green levies from energy bills could see “funding for some energy efficiency measures reduced”. A Times editorial notes the chancellor’s decision to abandon plans to cut VAT on energy bills is the “latest twist of this budget soap opera”. 

MORE ON UK

• In a frontpage story, the Sun celebrates the government’s reported plans to extend a fuel duty freeze – the 15th consecutive year a UK government has done so. (The Times notes in its coverage this move will “cost £3bn”).
• The Daily Telegraph reports that the UK Department of Energy Security and Net Zero has removed a pledge to cut household bills by £300 by the end of this decade from its website and replaced it with a promise to “protect billpayers”.
• The Daily Express covers calls from Centrica CEO Chris O’Shea to fund “net-zero policy costs” through general taxation.

A government spokesperson has confirmed that 33 people have died across several provinces amid widespread flooding in southern Thailand, Agence France-Presse reports. The newswire notes that the “severe flooding” has spread to seven provinces that are home to several million people, with more than 10,000 evacuated in Songkhla province alone. It also covers the situation in neighbouring Malaysia, where more than 27,000 people are estimated to have been evacuated amid heavy rain in eight states. The newswire notes that experts say “human-induced climate change” has intensified the extreme weather and made conditions “increasingly unpredictable”. Reuters also has the story, noting that 45,000 people have been evacuated across both countries. 

There is also coverage of torrential rains and flash floods in Indonesia’s Sumatra island, which have killed 10 people and left six others missing, according to ABC News. The outlet notes that the disaster struck yesterday – the same day that Indonesia’s national disaster agency declared the official end of a 10-day relief operation in Central Java following previous torrential rains that killed 38 people. Al-Jazeera and the Straits Times also cover the Sumatra landslides. Channel News Agency speaks to climate experts about the causes of recent record-breaking rain and floods in south-east Asia, who tell the outlet it is the “outcome of a convergence of weather systems and the amplifying effect of climate change”. The outlet says: “Two major climate systems – La Niña and a negative Indian Ocean Dipole characterised by warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures – have aligned unusually this season, supercharging rainfall across the region.”

The amount of new coal-fired power capacity permitted by China in 2025 is set to fall to a “four-year low”, according to new analysis by Greenpeace covered by Reuters. During the first three quarters of the year, China permitted almost 42 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired capacity, potentially the “lowest level since 2021” if the trend continues, the newswire adds. Chen Zongfa, chief expert at the China Electricity Council (CEC), told conference attendees that China’s coal-fired power generation ”decreased by 199 hours year-on-year…revealing a trend of expanding capacity while reducing output and declining revenue”, energy news outlet Dianlian Xinmei reports. 

Meanwhile, China Daily publishes an opinion article by reporter Hou Liqiang about COP30 negotiations on a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, in which Hou states “some international media outlets wrongly painted [China] as an opponent to the roadmap”. Deputy head of the Chinese delegation Xia Yingxian said the narrative on transitioning away from fossil fuels would find greater acceptance if it were framed differently, focusing more on the adoption of renewable energy sources, according to the state-run newspaper. 

MORE ON CHINA

• Foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning says China will work with other parties to “fully implement the outcomes” of COP30, Xinhua reports. A China Daily editorial says it is “high time countries embraced solidarity” on addressing challenges such as climate change.
• China’s “green electricity trading” reached 28,300 gigawatt-hours (GWh) last month, up 28% year-on-year, China Electric Power News reports. Reuters says that China’s solar installations were up 30% month-on-month in October.
• China Electric Power News republishes an article by NEA head Wang Hongzhi in the Party-Building Research Journal saying China will “further deepen energy reform” and firmly advance the achievement of China’s “dual-carbon” goals.
• The CEC has launched an initiative to combat cut-throat competition and “involution” in the energy storage sector, BJX News reports. Chinese solar manufacturers are urging “patience” in resolving involution in the solar sector, Bloomberg reports.
• Chinese executive vice-premier Ding Xuexiang told the China-Russia energy business forum in Beijing that the two countries should “keep energy trade running smoothly” and “deepen cooperation on energy transition”, People’s Daily reports.
• China will develop a “20GWh sodium-ion battery manufacturing plant”, indicating “rebounding” investment in the sector, PV Magazine reports. SCMP says China is developing the “world’s first commercial supercritical carbon dioxide power generator”, which produces electricity from waste “heat”.

UK ministers have backed a plan for a third runway at Heathrow Airport to be in operation by 2035, the Guardian reports. The £33bn scheme – which involves the construction of a 2.2-mile runway that crosses the M25 motorway – was the “longer, costlier” option on the table for Heathrow’s expansion, according to the newspaper. The Guardian says the government said “it was clear” the scheme “should meet” the UK’s legally-binding climate obligations, with the Climate Change Committee set to be consulted. However, it quotes Friends of the Earth campaigner Tony Bosworth as saying the airway expansion plan “isn’t compatible with our legally binding climate targets – even if the government meets its hugely optimistic assumptions for emerging technologies”. The Metro newspaper also covers opposition to the plan from environmental groups, noting that Greenpeace said the expansion will support a “small number of flyers” while “the rest of us have to live with the consequences of their disproportionate polluting”. BBC News, Sky News and the Sun also have the story.

US president Donald Trump’s administration has asked a federal court to “strike down” 2024 soot limits for power plants and factories, reports Reuters, and has, separately, “delayed by three years a deadline for coal plants to clean up coal waste”. The country’s “dirtiest coal plants would be among the biggest beneficiaries from a rollback of soot limits”, the newswire says: “They include the Colstrip power plant in Montana, which the EPA says is the country’s only coal plant without modern pollution controls for particulate matter.” In its second announcement, the EPA proposes to extend by three years the deadline for a small number of large coal plants to cease operation of coal-fired boilers and close unlined coal ash impoundments, the article reports, adding that The EPA says the new deadline would be October 2031 “to promote electric grid reliability”. The Associated Press reports that environmental groups say the EPA’s soot proposal “threatens public health” and “undermines” the Clean Air Act. It quotes Patrice Simms from not-for-profit law firm Earth justice as saying: “Walking away from these clean-air standards doesn’t power anything but disease”. The Hill also has the story. 

MORE ON US

• Climate Home News reports on an address made by John Kerry at Chatham House in London, where the former US climate envoy and secretary of state “lamented the lack of progress in global climate negotiations on transitioning away from fossil fuels over the last two years”. 
• Speaking to the Financial Times at the same event, Kerry told the newspaper he was “shocked” at how many US chief executives were “frightened” of Trump and had retreated from green energy investments despite the returns to be made.

In an editorial, the Financial Times argues that “efforts to address the climate crisis met almost comic levels of resistance” at the recently-ended COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil. A “series of efforts” to acknowledge how quickly temperatures are rising and “beef up” countries’ climate plans were “scotched”, it says. This is not surprising, the newspaper argues, noting that the COP faced “multiple obstacles”, including “sweeping [trade] tariffs” imposed by the US and the reality that the EU – the “world’s top climate finance provider” – is grappling with war in Ukraine and “far-right resistance to climate action”. One of the “few positives” from the conference, the newspaper notes, was the launch of various “coalitions of the ‘climate willing’”. This includes a new “trade and climate body” to deal with carbon border tax-related tensions and plans to hold international meetings on a fossil fuel roadmap – even if the plan “never made it into the final COP agreement”. It adds: “It is hard to know how much any of these coalitions can achieve, but a lot now rides on their success.” [For all the details on the COP30 outcomes, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth summary.]

MORE CLIMATE COMMENT

• For Backchannel, Dr Ümit Şahin, head of the climate change programme at the Istanbul policy center, Sabancı University, Turkey, looks at how the “unprecedented” plan for Turkey and Australia to host COP31 could work in practice. He asks: “Who’s really in charge?”
• Semafor’s climate and energy editor Tim McDonnell counts the more “encouraging” takeaways from COP30, including a new UN “implementation accelerator” and a transition “roadmap”.
• In an analysis of COP30’s outcomes, Guardian US environment reporter Oliver Milman argues the country now forms part of a group that formed an “axis of obstruction that has stymied progress on the climate crisis”.
• In the Daily Telegraph, markets editor Chris Price argues that oil demand has been “hit” as Chinese consumers ditch petrol cars for electric vehicles, leading to a surplus in production that is driving prices down.
• Peter Lewis, executive director of Australian communications and research company Essential, argues in the Guardian that there is “waning appetite for greater ambition” on climate in Australia, with “many seeing Australia’s domestic emissions as marginal compared with the impact of big polluters”.

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Cecilia Keating, with contributions from Henry Zhang and Anika Patel. It was edited by Robert McSweeney.

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