The US Department of the Interior has announced additional layers of review for wind and solar power projects, following an executive order by president Donald Trump aimed at ending any “preferential treatment” for renewables, the Washington Post reports. The newspaper explains that the move “threatens to trip up the approval process as wind and solar projects race to begin construction by a deadline next July to qualify for tax credits, which have been gutted by Trump’s signature ‘one big beautiful bill’”. Under the new process, any wind and solar projects being built on federal lands and waters must be personally approved by interior secretary Doug Burgum, according to the Associated Press. Renewable-energy companies pointed out that the move was at odds with Trump’s goal to slash excessive regulations and boost domestic energy, Reuters notes. The newswire says that “most US solar and wind facilities are built on private land because, historically, it has been costlier and more time-consuming to permit projects on federal lands”, although it adds that the previous Biden administration had sought to make it easier. Bloomberg says the new action “follows a deal struck with members of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus” over subsidies for renewables in exchange for their support for Trump’s budget bill. Meanwhile, CNN has a piece titled “how the renewable energy industry lost a massive lobbying fight over Trump’s agenda bill”. The Hill explores “why Republicans voted for the megabill despite threats to local green jobs”. Bloomberg covers new analysis from BloombergNEF that finds US annual clean-energy installations will drop 41% after 2027, “due to the rapid phase-out of wind and solar tax credits in president Donald Trump’s sweeping economic legislation”. Meanwhile, US solar panel manufacturers have asked the federal government to impose tariffs on imports from Indonesia, India and Laos, “accusing companies there of dumping cheap goods in the market to undercut new American factories”, Reuters reports.

MORE ON US

• The Republican-controlled Senate has approved the White House request to cut $9bn for foreign aid and public media, slashing support for overseas clean energy projects, Semafor reports. The package has since been approved by the House of Representatives and will go to Trump to be signed into law, Reuters says.
• Trump has granted two years of relief to coal-fired power plants, chemical manufacturers and other polluting industries from Biden-era regulations that he considers “overly burdensome”, the Associated Press reports.
• The US has imposed tariffs of 93.5% on graphite – an “essential ingredient for batteries” that is largely sourced from China – placing “an additional cost on electric-vehicle manufacturers”, according to the New York Times.
• The Trump administration’s defence spending boost will produce an extra 26 megatonnes of greenhouse gases, equivalent to the annual emissions of Croatia, according to the research covered by the Guardian.
• Mining executives and former officials have “voiced concerns” about the “China-style” US government deal to buy into MP Materials, the nation’s only producing rare earth minerals company, the Financial Times says.

Monsoon rains in Pakistan’s Punjab province have killed at least 63 people and injured nearly 300 in the space of 24 hours, according to provincial officials quoted by Reuters. This brings the death toll from the extreme weather up to at least 159 since late June, the newswire says. It adds that the impact of monsoon rains in Pakistan has “worsened in recent years due to rapid urban expansion, poor drainage systems and more frequent extreme weather events linked to climate change”. Victims were “crushed by collapsing buildings… drowned or were electrocuted”, according to BBC News. Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reports that prime minister Shehbaz Sharif made an explicit link between the rainfall and climate change in a visit to the country’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA). “Pakistan contributes minimally to global greenhouse gas emissions, but ranks among the top 10 most climate-vulnerable countries. This is a challenge, but also an opportunity to build a climate-resilient nation,” Sharif said, according to the newspaper. The Associated Press also has the story.

MORE ON EXTREME WEATHER

• At least three people have died amid “torrential” rains in South Korea, with one region hit by the most rainfall per hour since records began, Channel News Asia reports.
• The US national weather service has issued a record number of flash flood warnings in the year so far, according to Axios.
• Recent wildfires in Scotland have been confirmed as the biggest in the nation’s history, the Scotsman reports.
• Le Monde reports that, as of 8 July, around 214,000 hectares across the EU have been “ravaged by flames”, more than double the average.
• The US state of North Carolina has declared an “emergency” after Tropical Storm Chantal triggered floods and led to at least six deaths, according to the Independent.
• In the New York Times Climate Forward newsletter, David Gelles talks to his colleagues around the world about the extreme heat they are experiencing.

The Brazilian chamber of deputies – its lower house – has approved a bill to “ease environmental licensing” in a move widely considered “the nation’s most significant environmental setback in nearly 40 years”, Mongabay reports. The law, which NGOs have dubbed the “devastation bill”, changes several rules in the environmental licensing framework, “which is mandatory for all enterprises that use natural resources and may cause damage to the environment or local communities”, the article explains. The outlet adds that the law also creates a special environmental license for infrastructure projects deemed “strategic” by the federal government, “such as oil exploration on the Amazon coast”. Brazilian newspaper Folha de S Paulo says the move comes “amid silence” from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration – “even after appeals from the environmental wing, led by minister Marina Silva, for the bill to be rejected”. Reuters describes the bill as a “potential blow” to Lula as he “seeks to burnish his country’s green credentials” ahead of hosting the COP30 climate summit later this year. Among other things, civil society groups tell the Guardian that the bill will drive deforestation and threaten Indigenous communities.

The National Energy Agency (NEA) has said that the electricity load in China exceeded 1,500 gigawatts (GW) on Wednesday, with extreme heat across many parts of the country contributing to “record high” power demand for the “third time this month”, Reuters reports. It adds that extreme temperatures, which were thought to “reach as high as 50C” in some places, have “enveloped an area home to over 200 million people”. The newswire also notes that, at the provincial level, temperature records have been “broken 36 times” since the start of summer. Chinese news outlets BJX News, International Energy Net and CCTV also cover the NEA announcement. 

MORE ON CHINA

• President Xi Jinping questioned the “need for local governments…to crowd into the same emerging industries”, such as electric vehicles (EV), Bloomberg reports. 
• China will address “irrational competition” in its EV sector, according to Bloomberg coverage of a recent State Council meeting. 
• Xue Lan, dean of Tsinghua University’s influential Schwarzman College, writes in the China Daily that the “idea that China ‘wins’ when the US ‘loses’ in climate action is a geopolitical mirage”.
• New research finds Chinese investment in “energy-related” projects under the ​​Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2025 was the “highest…since the BRI’s inception”, the Financial Times reports.
• Xinhua reports that the number of patents China is granting for new “green and low-carbon technologies” has grown at an average of 19% per year since 2020.

The UK’s biggest clean-energy investors have “accused the Reform UK party of undermining the national interest” by threatening to remove public subsidies from renewables if it wins the next general election, the Guardian reports. The newspapers quote industry leaders who say such action would risk “thousands of green jobs and could push up energy bills for homes and businesses by making the UK more reliant on volatile global gas markets”. This comes after Reform’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, gave “formal notice” to developers that the party would axe any deals struck in the upcoming renewables subsidy auction, known as allocation round 7 (AR7), this summer. The letter explicitly says “we will seek to strike down all contracts signed under AR7”. Despite this, Tice appears to have immediately backtracked when pressed on the issue in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s PM. He tells the programme: “I think some people may have misread the wording of the letter…A legally binding contract is a legally binding contract.” Meanwhile, Energy Monitor reports that the UK government has announced reforms for the AR7 “contracts for difference” subsidy scheme. This includes extending the contract terms for offshore wind, onshore wind and solar projects from 15 to 20 years, in a move the outlet says “is designed to distribute costs over a more extended period for consumers while providing increased certainty for investors”.

MORE UK

• This summer could see more than 5,000 deaths due to extreme heat in the UK as “temperatures look likely to exceed one of the deadliest heatwave years on record”, according to the Daily Mirror.
• “Unusually dry” conditions have cut hydropower output by 40% over the last quarter at energy company SSE’s UK hydroelectric plants, the Times reports.
• UK households with heat pumps could receive around £200 off their annual energy bills under new plans reportedly backed by energy secretary Ed Miliband, according to the Daily Express.
• UK energy supplier OVO Energy plans to launch a new renewable energy arm to modernise ageing onshore wind farms, prolong their lifespan and boost output, Reuters says.
• The Conservative party wants to end the “absurd” blocking of new nuclear power sites by “NIMBYs” through environmental impact assessments and regulations on habitats, according to the Daily Telegraph.
• Another Daily Telegraph story reports that Miliband has “taken a bet on nuclear fusion one day powering Britain” by making it easier to build new reactors with minimal planning restrictions.

The Guardian has launched a new series profiling the climate plans of the world’s 10 highest-emitting countries. “Every climate summit is crucial but COP30 is taking place during extremely challenging times,” the newspaper’s environment team writes, in an article introducing the new series. It continues: “So we thought it was a good time to take a look at the world’s biggest emitting countries and their plans – constructive or otherwise – for addressing their carbon emissions. Some are autocracies, some democracies tumbling towards right-wing populism, some are straining to hold together a consensus on climate action.” Over the coming weeks, the newspaper will cover Russia, South Korea, India, the US, Germany, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Japan, and Indonesia. (Carbon Brief has country profiles of nearly all of these nations.) As part of this series, the Guardian’s environment editor Fiona Harvey has an article about “how we can negotiate with autocracies” on climate change. She notes that “the bulk of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from countries that are not democratic”, as do much of the world’s fossil fuels. She adds: “The power over the planet wielded by a small number of autocratic states is greater than ever. Their actions could effectively determine whether the world succeeds in limiting global heating to less than catastrophic levels.” Harvey speaks to various senior figures in UN climate talks and other relevant areas about this issue, including former US lead negotiator Todd Stern, former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and director general of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

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

Subscribe for free.