There is widespread coverage of a new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) with each outlet focusing on a different angle. Renew Economy in Australia leads with the claim that the IEA has “indicated that the world has already passed ‘peak coal’ [in the electricity sector], even with an expected huge boost in global power demand caused by the ‘age of electricity’”. The outlet adds: “[The IEA report] ‘Electricity 2026’ says electricity demand will increase by an average of 3.6% each year over the remainder of the decade, driven by rising consumption from industry, electric vehicles, air conditioning and data centres. This continues the recent trend that saw electricity demand grow 3% year-on-year in 2025 and 4.4% in 2024, which the IEA blamed on ‘intense heatwaves and strong industrial activity’.”

BusinessGreen says the report says that “global electricity use is expected to rise rapidly through to 2030, but new clean-power projects mean emissions should remain flat”. Axios reports that “data centres are slated to account for a whopping 50%-ish of US power demand growth the remainder of this decade” [but less than 10% globally], according to the report, while India’s Down to Earth notes that rising power demand will be “driven by accelerating electrification of industry and transport, rapid expansion of data centres, and rising demand for cooling”.

Politico interviews IEA chief Fatih Birol and reports: “Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s admission that Germany’s nuclear phase-out was a ‘serious strategic mistake’ has won an emphatic endorsement from Fatih Birol.” Turkey’s Hürriyet notes that Birol met with the nation’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last week, adding: “Birol has described Turkey’s hosting of [COP31] this year as a major opportunity both for the country and for the global climate agenda.” The Daily Telegraph leads its coverage with the opening sentence: “British households are paying more for power than almost any other European country, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned.” [The report also shows that 1.5% of UK household spending is on electricity, lower than in Germany at 2.4% or France at 2.8%] 

In an interview with the Guardian, UN secretary general António Guterres has warned that the “global economy must be radically transformed to stop it rewarding pollution and waste”. Speaking after the UN hosted a meeting of leading global economists, Guterres tells the newspaper that humanity’s future requires an urgent overhaul of the world’s “existing accounting systems” which, he says, are “driving the planet to the brink of disaster”. He adds: “We must place true value on the environment and go beyond gross domestic product as a measure of human progress and wellbeing. Let us not forget that when we destroy a forest, we are creating GDP. When we overfish, we are creating GDP.” The Guardian has also published an accompanying interactive feature headlined: “Economic growth is still heating the planet. Is there any way out?” It begins: “Rising GDP continues to mean more carbon emissions and wider damage to the planet. Can the two be decoupled?”

Reuters reports that farmers in Spain have warned that “torrential rains and high winds had left fields submerged and caused millions of euros worth of damage to crops, as Spain and Portugal braced for more extreme weather”. The newswire adds: “The Iberian peninsula has already experienced a succession of storms in recent weeks, bringing heavy rain, thunder, snow and strong gales before the arrival of Storm Marta on Saturday…More than 11,000 people have been forced to leave their homes in Spain’s southern Andalusia region, while nearly 170 roads have been closed across Spain and rail services have been disrupted in Portugal. Portugal’s agriculture ministry said on Friday that preliminary estimates put losses in the agricultural and forestry sectors at around €750m ($890m) because of the storms, which are expected to intensify in the coming days.”

Agence France-Presse covers how the same extreme weather system has been affecting north-west Africa where “more than 150,000 people have been evacuated over the past week as heavy rainfall battered provinces in Morocco’s north”. The newswire adds: “In recent weeks, severe weather and flooding in neighbouring Algeria killed two people, including a child. In Tunisia, at least five people died, while others were still missing after the country experienced its heaviest rainfall in over 70 years last month.”

MORE ON EXTREME WEATHER

• The Associated Press: “EU official announces 300-strong firefighting force to battle wildfires across Europe.”
• The Guardian reports that “weather agencies and climate scientists have pointed to the possibility of an El Niño forming in the Pacific Ocean later this year – a phenomenon that could push global temperatures to all-time record highs in 2027”.
• The New York Times: “What’s up with this big freeze? Some scientists see climate change link.”
• BBC News reports that “University of Reading meteorologists said they have recorded the longest unbroken spell of rainy days in the [English] town since they started measuring them in 1908”.

Experts have warned that “cutting climate finance for poorer countries would amount to an act of ‘self-harm’ for the UK”, says the Independent, after reports in the Guardian last week claimed that the government plans to scale back its international climate finance. The Independent quotes Gareth Redmond-King, head of the international programme at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit: “If true, the government’s own recent national security assessment would suggest such a move risks being an act of self-harm for the UK. We import two fifths of our food from overseas, much grown in countries being hit hardest by extremes of heat and flood. The UK’s climate finance helps farmers in these countries to adapt their farming to maintain both their livelihoods and our food security.” Jennifer Larbie, head of UK advocacy and campaigns at Christian Aid, tells the online newspaper that slashing climate finance would be “another betrayal of the world’s most vulnerable”.

MORE ON UK

• Reform UK’s flagship council has been accused of telling a “blatant lie” after its claim of nearly £40m in savings on net-zero was found to be based on hypothetical projects for which there was no documentation, reports the Guardian.
• The Daily Telegraph claims that Ørsted, the world’s largest windfarm operator, has “revived plans for a massive North Sea windfarm after [UK energy secretary] Ed Miliband promised billions more in subsidies”. [For background, see Carbon Brief’s recent Q&A: “What UK’s record auction for offshore wind means for bills and clean power by 2030.”]
• The UK’s right-leaning newspapers continue their obsession with Miliband, with the Sun claiming he is “plotting” to return as Labour leader, the Daily Telegraph claims his “net-zero revolution is a hacker’s dream” and the Sunday Times running a feature under the headline: “Will Ed Miliband approve oilfields he once called ‘vandalism’?”
• BBC News and ITV News both report that the government in Northern Ireland has “taken a step closer to establishing a “just transition commission” to “help steer climate-change policy”.
• Grist: “The UK quit coal. But is burning Louisiana’s trees any better?”

Global carmakers have “booked some $55bn in writedowns in the past year as they scale back electric vehicle ambitions on a tough US market under president Donald Trump, price wars in China and a more complex mix of vehicle types in Europe” explains Reuters, adding: “The latest to join the growing pile is Jeep-to-Fiat owner Stellantis, which revealed charges of around €22.2bn ($26.5bn) in the second half of 2025, dragging its shares down over 20% to six year lows.”

The Financial Times also covers the story: “In a dismantling of one of the industry’s most gung-ho EV strategies, the owner of the Peugeot, Fiat and Jeep brands said on Friday that €15bn of the charge related to the cost of scrapping models and revamping the platforms used to make vehicles.” The newspaper adds: “New chief executive Antonio Filosa’s decision to scale back the group’s electric ambitions is a reversal of the strategy pursued by his predecessor Carlos Tavares, who had set a goal that EVs would account for all of its European passenger vehicle sales and 50% of its US ones by 2030. Filosa said the charges ‘largely reflect the cost of overestimating the pace of the energy transition that distanced us from many car buyers’ real-world needs, means and desires’.” The climate-sceptic Sunday Telegraph jumps on the story running a comment piece under the headline: “The auto industry’s gamble on electric cars has turned into a catastrophe.”

The Guardian says that, “as climate disasters drive up the price of home insurance, three US states are considering empowering their state prosecutors to sue major polluters for their role in those rising costs”. It continues: “Lawmakers in California, Hawaii and New York have introduced measures which would authorise their attorneys general to sue fossil-fuel companies on behalf of residents whose insurance premiums have soared amid climate disasters…The proposals aim to hold the fossil-fuel industry, the top contributor to global warming, accountable for soaring insurance rates driven by climate-fueled extreme weather.”

MORE ON US

• Reuters: “Tesla is hiring to support founder Elon Musk’s recently announced plan to become the biggest US manufacturer of solar energy components, according to online posts by senior executives at the company.”
• Financial Times: “Ørsted’s two major US offshore wind projects are back on track to complete as scheduled, its chief executive said, after a court lifted a suspension imposed by the Trump administration on national security grounds.”

The world’s first 20-megawatt (MW) offshore wind turbine has begun generating electricity for the grid, reports state news agency Xinhua. It says that the turbine is located more than 30km off the coast of southern Fujian in southwest China, representing the first “successful installation” of an “ultra-large-capacity” turbine. Meanwhile, Shanghai Securities Journal reports that China has also developed the first “long-distance pipeline for the transportation of carbon dioxide (CO2)”, repurposed from a former oil pipeline, which the outlet says marks a “major advance” for the carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) industry. It adds that the distribution of CCUS sites is “uneven” in China, making “economical, safe and efficient” long-distance CO2 transportation system “key” for wider CCUS application.

MORE ON CHINA

• China Daily says that “average wind power utilisation” in China is expected to dip slightly in 2026, according to new research.
• Financial Times: “China’s aluminium smelters embark on green long march.”
• Executives from Nigeria’s national oil company are in “talks with a Chinese firm to potentially run its refineries”, reports Bloomberg.
• A China Daily comment article by reporter Hou Liqiang says that the west’s “persistent criticism” of China’s coal-power buildout is “shallow” and “profoundly hypocritical”.
• Xinhua reports on the importance of “ecological zoning”.

A Bloomberg editorial begins: “On a sunny afternoon, solar farms in Spain can generate far more electricity than local consumers need. But only some of that surplus can flow north to other parts of Europe because transmission links, known as interconnectors, are limited. The rest goes unused. This is part of Europe’s energy paradox, and it’s undermining the continent’s competitiveness and energy security. Members of the European Union have built renewable electricity capacity at impressive speed: low-carbon sources – renewables, hydro and nuclear – now provide the bulk of Europe’s electricity. Yet bottlenecks within and between national grids too often prevent that clean power from being used efficiently.” The editorial concludes: “Leaders should start thinking of grid infrastructure as shared strategic capital. Europe built the single market by aligning rules and removing barriers to cross-border trade. Its electricity systems urgently need the same treatment.”

MORE COMMENT

• An editorial in the Guardian focuses on the global “scramble for critical minerals”: “Meeting climate goals will require many times the current production of materials such as lithium and cobalt. But environmental despoliation, the eviction of communities and the exploitation of labourers including children are not the inevitable results of the necessary shift away from fossil fuels.”
• Writing in the Times, Joanna Donnelly, an Irish meteorologist, argues that, “after the wettest three months on record in Ireland, we must take lessons from the Dutch to safeguard against future weather events”.
• In the US, the climate-sceptic comment pages of the Wall Street Journal carry an editorial that celebrates a “failed climate coup in the courts”, while the Los Angeles Times platforms the climate-sceptic commentator Bjorn Lomborg (to the anger of many of its readers).

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Leo Hickman, with contributions from Henry Zhang and Anika Patel. It was edited by Simon Evans.

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