Richard Tice, the deputy leader of the hard-right populist Reform UK party, has sent a letter to “leading renewable energy developers” warning that the “party will ‘strike down’ industry subsidies if it wins power in the next general election”, the Financial Times reports. The outlet says that Tice, who is a climate sceptic, “warned companies planning to bid in the UK government’s upcoming auction round for wind and solar subsidy contracts that they risked financial losses because the net-zero agenda ‘no longer enjoys cross-party support’”. The Daily Telegraph calls the move “an attempt to sabotage Ed Miliband’s renewables expansion” in a frontpage story. Bloomberg also covers the story. (Carbon Brief’s Simon Evans has more details on the rule changes for the upcoming auction.) Separately, the Guardian reports that Durham county council, which has “an overwhelming Reform majority”, has become the first council in the UK to “rescind its climate emergency declaration”. The Daily Express also covers the story. 

MORE ON UK

• According to government emails seen by Politico, the UK government is “considering a string of reforms to energy policy, in a bid both to bring down bills and hit flagship green targets”. This includes plans, covered in the Times, to give houses with heat pumps “£200 off” their energy bills every year.
• BusinessGreen reports that “UK water companies have been urged to immediately implement their drought plans, after more areas of England were officially declared to be in drought following the driest start to a year since 1976”. The outlet, along with many others, warns of further hosepipe bans.
• BBC News reports that Kew Gardens’ Palm House, built in 1848, is set to close for up to five years as part of a £50m refurbishment that, in part, will “reduce emissions…to net-zero”. The Guardian, MailOnline, New York Times and BusinessGreen also cover the news.
• The Press Association reports that Nigel Topping – the government’s preferred candidate to chair the Climate Change Committee – “has defended his record of flying around the world as part of his climate diplomacy work”.
• The Press Association reports that the London Fire Brigade has tackled more wildfires this summer than in the whole of 2024. Meanwhile, the i newspaper reports that “successive heatwaves are causing Britain’s rivers to run worryingly low”.

A group of 20 US states are suing the Trump administration “over its decision to shut down a multibillion-dollar grant program aimed at protecting communities from floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters”, reports the New York Times. The outlet continues: “The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Boston, accuses the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of unlawfully terminating the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, or BRIC, without approval from Congress. The filing came two days after heavy rains inundated parts of New York and New Jersey and nearly two weeks after catastrophic floods hit Central Texas.” The Hill and the Associated Press also cover the story.

MORE ON US

• The Associated Press reports that the Trump administration has paused work on a new database that would “take the influence of climate change into account when making precipitation frequency estimates”. The Washington Post says the tool is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Atlas 15 project.
• Florida’s attorney general has sent a letter to all public airports in the state, warning them about a new law “banning any injection of chemicals to change the climate or weather”, the Washington Post reports. It adds that “the letter seemed to endorse a persistent conspiracy theory: that cloud seeding ‘could have played a role’ in causing the floods in Texas that have killed at least 132 people”. 
• Outlets including the Guardian, New York Times and Axios have published pieces linking the flooding in New York to climate change. 
• The Press Association reports that environmental groups have filed a lawsuit accusing a US development bank of providing an “unlawful near-$5bn loan to a fossil-fuel project in southern Africa”. 
• Reuters reports that “clean-energy companies are asking California leaders for help getting their projects going before changes to federal subsidies in President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tax and spending law make them more expensive and difficult to build”.
• Solar and wind energy projects must now be signed off by the interior secretary to receive permits across the “hundreds of millions of federal acres under his department’s control”, according to an internal memo seen by Politico.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, has “called for new EU taxes on large companies, tobacco and electronic waste” as part of the £1.7tn EU budget for 2028-34, reports the Guardian. According to the newspaper, the proposal will “double the research budget with 35% ringfenced for climate and biodiversity”. Euractiv reports that the European Commission has proposed “axing the LIFE Programme, the EU’s only stand-alone mechanism for environmental action”. France24 says: “While Germany says the budget is too large, many EU lawmakers accuse it of not leaving sufficient funds for priorities such as climate adaptation and the agriculture subsidies that make up the biggest share of the budget.” Reuters reports that the budget “requires backing from all 27 member countries and sign-off from the European Parliament”. 

MORE ON EUROPE

• Bloomberg reports that the Netherlands will cut its 2040 offshore wind target by 40%.
• Reuters notes that “the soil surface temperature in areas around Greek capital Athens rose in some places by as much as 10C since July 2024 after big fires destroyed vegetation”. 
• Bloomberg reports that “preliminary findings of an investigation into a wide-ranging blackout in Spain earlier this year show that European power grids need to improve resilience”.
• Reuters says electric car sales in Germany “reached a record high in the first half of the year”. 
• Al Jazeera reports on “record-breaking heatwaves” across the EU, which it links to climate change.
• Euronews says that reservoirs in Athens’ are “very close to historic lows” due to the ongoing drought.

The Chinese government has introduced export restrictions on “core technologies used in lithium battery production”, business news outlet Caixin reports, in a “strategic move to safeguard its dominance in the global electric vehicle (EV) supply chain”. The move “stop[s] short of an outright ban”, with “Chinese companies seeking to export these technologies [now required to] apply for licenses”, it says. In addition, batteries and manufacturing equipment made in China “can still be exported freely”. The New York Times also covers the story, saying the decision could make it harder for Chinese EV companies to build factories overseas. The new restrictions would “consolidate” China’s “lead” in the sector, according to the Wall Street Journal. China’s commerce ministry says battery-related technologies are “increasingly applied in sensitive areas”, and that the restrictions will help balance China’s “development and security” and “promote safe and sustainable application” of the technologies, reports the Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily. The Financial Times reports that the US has launched probes on “predatory trade practices” that could lead to “tariffs” on polysilicon. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post says rare-earth exports from China “surged in June to their highest level” since 2009.

MORE ON CHINA

• Qiushi publishes an article penned by the NDRC party leadership group pledging to ensure “energy and resource security” and accelerate the construction of a “new energy system”.
• China’s “new three” industries “maintain a high growth rate”, with the lithium-ion battery sector growing 53% in the first half of 2025, China Environment News reports.
• International Energy Net publishes a Q&A with an NDRC official providing more details on the recently approved “cross-grid trading mechanism”.
• China and Australia’s leaders have identified decarbonisation as an area with “potential for new engagement”, Nikkei Asia reports.
• Reuters: “China cuts electricity emissions to record lows in 2025.”

Mexico’s “heat season” has so far claimed 39 lives since March, with 13 states reporting fatalities, Excélsior reports. The northern state of Sonora has been the most affected, with nine deaths due to dehydration and heatstroke. El Imparcial reports a further 1,042 cases of heatstroke, dehydration and burns across 28 Mexican states, with Sonora and Tabasco accounting for 22.4% of all cases. Meanwhile, the country’s national weather service has this week forecast intense rainfall and extreme heat nationwide, Infobae reports. Temperatures in northwestern states such as Baja California and Sonora are expected to exceed 40C, while central Mexico is set to experience heavy rainfall. These weather conditions are attributed to meteorological phenomena such as the “Mexican monsoon and cyclonic circulations”, the outlet adds.

MORE ON LATIN AMERICA

• A comment piece by a Colombian academic in El País explores how Trump’s “big beautiful bill” is cutting key incentives for renewable energy and could lead to “profound and confusing implications for Latin America”.
• El Comercio quotes a representative of Peru’s energy ministry, who says renewable energy projects in Peru, including 59 solar farms and 46 wind projects, will total $30bn in investments. Renewable energy share is expected to rise from 9.5% to 43.3% by 2050, the outlet adds.
• Venezuela is “lagging behind” on its transition to renewable energy as the government “has not figured out the renewable business…[and] domestic legislation is outdated”, according to the coordinator of the country’s international center of energy and environment, quoted by Correo del Caroní.
• Argentina’s province of Córdoba is to implement a “climate financing tool” for companies, becoming “the first province in Argentina” to do so, according to InfoNegocios.

Bloomberg opinion editor Mark Gongloff writes about the floods that have hit multiple cities across the US this month. He says: “Floods aren’t new, according to the climate-change deniers in my inbox, but their frequency and severity have worsened as the planet has become hotter…In fact, this sort of flash flooding might just be the new normal.”  Gongloff warns that “despite the obvious frequency of such events, most of this country is still not ready for it”. He notes that Trump has implemented budget cuts and lay offs across the Federal Emergency Management Agency, warning that “this is the opposite of how we should be moving in an era of supercharged rainstorms”. He concludes: “First, we need to stop burning fossil fuels as quickly as we can…Meanwhile, houses and offices need to be waterproofed along with our infrastructure.”

MORE US COMMENT

• Peter Hill, the CEO of COP26 in Glasgow, writes for the Backchannel substack under the headline: “Decision-makers must face climate facts, not fantasies.”
• An editorial in the Washington Post argues that “Congress should reevaluate which environmental impacts society must tolerate and which it must avoid at all costs”, adding that “maybe the idea of protecting every ecosystem at any cost should be reconsidered”.
• In the Daily Telegraph, the net-zero-sceptic Conservative shadow minister Andrew Bowie writes: “We need the government to have a radical rethink of net-zero. Hopefully, Trump [on his visit to Aberdeen] will get our embattled prime minister to change his tune once again.”
• Gary Yohe, a professor of economics and environmental studies at Wesleyan University, writes an “introduction to a three-part presentation of pertinent climate change data” in the Climate Cafe substack.
• Yossi Mekelberg, a professor of international relations and an associate fellow at Chatham House, writes in Arab News that “Europe must learn to adapt to extreme heat”.
• Dominique Browning, co-founder of Moms Clean Air Force, argues in the Houston Chronicle that the “Hill Country floods show it’s time for Texas to get serious about climate change”.

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Ayesha Tandon, with contributions by Yanine Quiroz, Henry Zhang and Anika Patel, and edited by Leo Hickman.

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