US president Donald Trump has told BBC News that he will meet UK prime minister Keir Starmer in Aberdeen later this month. According to the broadcaster, he described the Scottish city as the “oil capital of Europe”, but said it should “get rid of windmills”. Reporting on the interview, the Times quotes Trump as saying: “They have so much oil there. They should get rid of the windmills and bring back the oil.” [Production from the North Sea is expected to drop significantly, even if new fields are licensed.] The newspaper adds that Trump has a “long-held disdain for windfarms and previously complained about a development offshore spoiling the views from his golf course in Aberdeenshire”. It quotes a spokesperson for the Aberdeen and Grampian chamber of commerce saying “oil and gas would be required as part of the UK’s energy mix for decades to come” and adding: “The biggest barrier to investment in the North Sea is a 78% tax rate on profits and perhaps the US president can persuade the prime minister to lift that punitive tax when they meet in Aberdeen.”

MORE ON US

• The Washington Post reports that Trump “travelled to Pennsylvania on Tuesday to claim credit for billions of dollars in investments that companies have planned, which he said would make the key swing state ‘a leading hub’ for energy and artificial intelligence”.
• Bloomberg reports that Trump’s energy chief has said the US could walk away from the International Energy Agency unless the body makes “changes to forecasting that Republicans have criticised as unrealistically green”.
• The Daily Telegraph says that Trump has handed the UK a “surprise boost in [its] net-zero quest” with his plan for a 50% tariff on copper, which might lead to UK producers exporting less of the material often used in clean-energy projects.
• Axios says Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency has “waded into” weather modification debates following the Texas floods, “working carefully to stamp out conspiracy theories”.
• Two people have been killed in flash floods in New Jersey, CBC News says. The Guardian adds that the rains also flooded the New York subway.

UK wind and solar developers will be offered longer subsidy contracts “as ministers try to boost investment into renewable projects in a bid to meet the country’s clean-power targets”, the FT reports. The newspaper says that the government is to amend the “contracts for difference scheme” (CfD), raising contract duration from 15 to 20 years. The FT continues: “[The government] argued the move would spread the costs of building the infrastructure over a longer period of time and would lower financing costs for developers by reducing project risks. The decision could raise concerns over renewable energy projects receiving state support over a longer period of time than previously envisaged, which could add to bills after 2045.” The Press Association reports that the new government plans will also mean “offshore windfarms will be able to apply for energy contracts while they are still waiting for full planning consent”. Carbon Brief’s Simon Evans has more details on the news. Separately, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey is set to call for older renewable schemes to be shifted on to CfDs so as to “slash bills”, the Press Association reports.

MORE ON UK

• HSBC has become the first major UK bank to quit the UN net-zero banking alliance, BusinessGreen says.
• Bloomberg reports that the government is to scrap its “green taxonomy” plan, “abandoning years of work” on a framework for sustainable investments.
• A “growing number” of climate groups are calling for a UK wealth tax to “make [the] super-rich fund [a] sustainable economy”, the Guardian says.
• The government confirmed it is “looking” at a way to make heat pumps that can also cool the air eligible for public grants, according to BusinessGreen.
• The climate-sceptic Daily Telegraph carries a misleading headline falsely claiming that a routine letter sent from energy secretary Ed Miliband to the UK grid operator suggests that he plans to “unleash new gas plants”.
• England’s Midlands has joined other parts of the country in declaring drought, BBC News says. More hosepipe bans could be announced elsewhere, a second BBC News story says.

There is continued coverage of the news that India has reached its Paris Agreement target for 50% of its installed electricity generating capacity to be from non-fossil source “five years ahead of its 2030 pledge”, reports the Financial Times. It says experts “welcomed” the milestone and notes “how far the developing country had to go to meet its voracious energy needs”. According to the article, officials acknowledge that the country “has much work ahead in integrating installed capacity into the country’s existing grid”, with many state utilities “under financial duress” and “continu[ing] to opt for coal” over renewables.

MORE ON INDIA

• After threatening new sanctions on those buying Russian exports, Trump has “turned attention” to India, which sources a third of its oil imports from the country, reports the Economic Times. A Down to Earth comment by author and analyst Amal Chandra says India “must see this…as a strategic nudge toward [energy] sovereignty”.
• India’s environment ministry has exempted most coal power plants from “installing key anti-polluting systems”, the Hindu reports. Experts say the studies “cited to justify” this are “riddled with contradictions”, according to the Press Trust of India.
• Citing scientists and experts the Associated Press says that climate change is making South Asia’s monsoon “more dangerous”, “more erratic and intense”.
• Mongabay India reports on how solar irrigation is helping Indian farmers “overcome high diesel costs” but could “worsen” groundwater depletion in arid regions.
• The Hindu carries a feature on climate migration and how drought, rising temperatures and floods are already changing “where and how Indians” live.

China pledged to “build liveable, sustainable and resilient cities” in the country’s “first high-level urban planning meeting in a decade”, Reuters reports. It notes that the meeting, headed by President Xi Jinping, marked the “shifting [away] from a stage of large-scale expansion”. Policymakers resolved that “development will focus on building green and low-carbon cities, with…urban flood control systems strengthened”, it adds. State news agency Xinhua also covers the meeting, noting that “promoting green, low-carbon and beautiful urban spaces” was a “key” priority. Another Reuters report says state-owned oil refiners in China are “ramping up output” to meet expected higher demand for “jet fuel and petrochemical feedstocks”, adding that demand nevertheless “will be restrained by the country’s prolonged property sector downturn”. Bloomberg reports that China’s output in the heavily-polluting steel, glass and cement industries have all fallen in recent months due to attempts to tackle “overcapacity” and the impact on “downstream sectors such as construction…[of] the hot weather this year in China”, according to analysts. 

Meanwhile, the Chinese economy grew 5.3% in the first half of 2025, the Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily reports. An editorial in Caixin says that efforts to tackle “involutionary competition”, which has caused a “steep decline in profitability” in China’s electric-vehicle sector, shows how China has stopped pursuing “growth at all costs”. Top ideological journal Qiushi collates a series of Xi’s statements on “high-level” openness to foreign investment – re-published by major state-run outlets – in which Xi argues that China’s commitment to a “green transformation” means the country has “huge potential regarding investment and consumption”.

MORE ON CHINA

• Reuters: “China suffers $7.6bn in losses from natural disasters in H1 2025.”
• Energy companies expect “surging electricity demand” as extreme heatwaves hit across the country, Yicai reports. 
• Bloomberg covers the Chinese government’s support for “weather derivatives” to “cushion the blow of an erratic climate”.
• China issued a catalogue clarifying which projects can be covered by “green finance”, such as “energy-efficiency” retrofits and lithium batteries, BJX News reports.
• BJX News says that power generation in June rose 1.7% year-on-year, with hydropower falling 4% and thermal power [mostly coal] rising 1%.
• Lin Boqiang, director of the China Institute for Studies in Energy Policy, writes for the Global Times under the title: “Does the EU really understand China’s energy transition?” The outlet’s English-language site carries a similar piece without a byline. 

The Australian government has won a landmark case against residents of the Torres Strait Islands, an archipelago of small islands that already face steep impacts from climate change, BBC News reports. The broadcaster continues: “In 2021, community elders Pabai Pabai and Paul Kabai launched legal action against the then-Liberal government for breaching its duty of care to protect the Torres Strait Islands from the impacts of climate change. But a Federal Court judge dismissed the case and said climate policy was a matter for parliament, not the courts. The ruling also found that the government did not owe a duty of care to protect the islands from the impacts of climate change.” The Guardian says that the ruling has left community leaders “shocked and devastated”.

In the leading medical journal the Lancet, a group of scientists propose “greater integration” between the “planetary boundaries” and “planetary health” frameworks, with the former focused on humanity’s impact on Earth and the latter on how this affects human health. The authors say: “Destabilising the Earth system is fundamentally threatening human health. There is ample evidence that each change in the Earth system as tracked by the planetary boundaries framework affects human health in a variety of ways…These health impacts can occur well before planetary boundaries are transgressed. But crossing these safe boundaries, which might include crossing irreversible tipping points and subsequent loss of the Earth’s resilience, will further accelerate environmental changes and amplify their health risks.”

MORE RESEARCH COMMENT

• Climate scientist and Carbon Brief contributor Dr Zeke Hausfather examines whether renewables have cut electricity prices in the US on the Climate Brink.

For the Times, diplomatic editor Roger Boyes writes on how escalating climate impacts in the Arctic have “changed calculations” about global geopolitical threats. He continues: “An ice-free passage from Asia to Europe is a sure way to lasting prosperity for a big exporter like China, a pathway to overtaking the US economy. And for Russia, which holds the longest chunk of the increasingly navigable northern sea route, it provides a key to the modernisation of its most remote territories. It will be a new and profitable strategic choke point for the Kremlin and a sign that the relationship between Moscow and Beijing is more than just a wartime axis.” Focusing on Earth’s other pole, executive director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean coalition, Claire Christian, writes in Reuters that Earth “can’t afford to ignore the ecological crises unfolding in Antarctica”.

MORE UK COMMENT

• An editorial in the Times celebrates news that air pollution levels have dropped in the UK, but notes that “soaring temperatures are killing our wildlife”. It also calls for a “sustained switch to electric vehicles”.
• TV naturalist Chris Packham writes in the Guardian that “sheep are destroying precious British habitats”.
• Times columnist Alice Thomson writes on the need to protect UK woodlands as two men were sentenced over the felling of an iconic tree at the Sycamore Gap.
• The climate-sceptic Daily Telegraph has a column criticising e-bikes.
• The Daily Express carries a column by Lois Perry, UK director of the climate-sceptic Heartland Institute, calling HSBC’s departure from the net-zero banking alliance a “killer blow” to the government.

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Daisy Dunne, with contributions from Aruna Chandrasekhar, Henry Zhang and Anika Patel, and edited by Simon Evans.

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