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Daily Briefing |

TODAY'S CLIMATE AND ENERGY HEADLINES

Briefing date 27.08.2025
UK’s hottest summer | Global renewables investment sets new record | Pakistan flooding blamegame

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News.

UK: Summer 2025 ’almost certainly’ the hottest on record
BBC News Read Article

This summer has been “almost certainly” the hottest on record across the UK, BBC News reports, based on provisional statistics from the Met Office. The average temperature is 16.13C, which is “well ahead of 2018, the previous warmest summer, which had a mean temperature of 15.76C”, the broadcaster says. It adds: “Temperatures during the rest of August would need to be 4C below normal to prevent the record being broken – and this does not seem likely. This is in line with evidence that summers are getting hotter and drier because of climate change.” This summer has been “notable” due to long-lasting, widespread heat rather than record-breaking, single-day temperatures, BBC News says. The Independent reports that, if summer 2025 is confirmed as a new record, “all of the UK’s top five warmest summers will have occurred since the year 2000”. The Times says “official confirmation will come next week”.

MORE ON UK

  • Business Green reports that the government has put forward plans to “streamline environmental permitting rules and processes for the industrial and energy sectors”. 
  • The UK’s National Wealth Fund and two institutions are investing £500m in a “UK-focused battery storage developer”, the Financial Times reports. 
  • US president Donald Trump claims wind turbines have caused UK energy prices to go “through the roof”, the Times reports, without factchecking his remarks. (Carbon Brief explained earlier this year “why expensive gas – not net-zero – is keeping UK electricity prices so high”.)
  • Prime minister Keir Starmer and energy minister Ed Miliband are “locked in a battle” over Starmer’s support for building the “largest data centre in Europe”, according to the Daily Telegraph
  • A Financial Times article looks at whether the “UK’s giant new nuclear power station” is “unbuildable”.
  • Reform UK has pledged to lift the country’s moratorium on fracking, if it is elected to power, the Daily Mail reports. Labour has called the hard-right populist party’s actions against renewables “outrageous and unpatriotic”, according to Business Green.
US halt of wind project defies explanation, New England officials say
Reuters Read Article

The Trump administration’s order to stop work on a “nearly completed” wind farm “threatens grid reliability and jobs and defies explanation”, businesses and government leaders in the region tell Reuters. The newswire says state leaders in Rhode Island, where the wind farm is located, and Connecticut have “demanded details from the administration” to explain the order. Reuters adds: “In its letter to project developer Ørsted, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management cited unspecified national security concerns.” The New York Times notes that this is the third time Trump has “revoked permits or halted work on wind farms that had already received federal approval while offering little legal justification for doing so”. Axios reports that Trump officials “plan to scuttle another offshore wind project”. The Hill notes that Trump’s “war on wind” and solar has “rattle[d]” the clean industry sector. Meanwhile, Reuters provides a timeline of Trump’s moves against wind and solar.  

MORE ON US 

  • More than a dozen Federal Emergency Management Agency staff have been placed on leave after signing an “open letter of dissent about the agency’s leadership”, the Washington Post reports. 
  • The Associated Press has spoken to dozens of scientists who say that “two key documents from the Trump administration aimed at revoking the long-standing finding that climate change is dangerous were filled with errors, bias and distortions”. (Carbon Brief has already extensively factchecked one of the reports.) 
  • Firefighters are tackling blazes from “California wine country to central Oregon”, with risks of more fires to come, the Guardian says. 
  • A “towering wall of dust” has spread through the Phoenix metropolitan area after a “powerful” storm known as a haboob, reports the Associated Press
  • Another Associated Press story says that the senate in California has approved a resolution calling for a review and eventual phase-out of crude oil imports from the Amazon rainforest.
Global renewables investment sets fresh record for first half of the year
BusinessGreen Read Article

Global renewables investment increased by 10% in the first half of the year, when compared to last year, to a record $386bn, according to new data from BloombergNEF covered by BusinessGreen. The rise is “driven by surging investment in small scale solar installations worldwide and a series of offshore wind projects in leading markets” and comes “despite a slump in funding in the US”, the publication says. Axios notes that US renewables investment dropped by 36%, when compared to the second half of 2024, adding: “Trump 2.0’s reversal of federal support is starting to show up in hard financing data.”

MORE ON RENEWABLES

  • Mitsubishi Corp is planning to pull out of three offshore wind projects in Japan, Bloomberg reports. Reuters adds that the move is due to “concerns over profitability”.
  • Reuters says that the Japanese government has proposed revising guidelines to extend offshore wind project leases by an extra 10 years to “help developers manage soaring construction costs and complete projects”.
  • Germany and Canada on Tuesday “pledged to expand cooperation on securing supply chains for the critical minerals that are key to energy and defense technologies”, Bloomberg reports.
  • German carmaker Porsche has scrapped plans to build its own electric vehicle batteries, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Pakistan on ‘exceptionally high’ flooding alert, says India released water from dam
Reuters Read Article

Pakistan’s government has said that its Punjab region faces a “very high to exceptionally high” danger of flooding because of heavy rains and “India’s decision to release waters from two dams”, Reuters reports. According to the newswire, 16 villages “are currently at risk of flooding”, and more than 150,000 people have been displaced by floods in Pakistani Punjab, with authorities evacuating people from “hundreds of villages in the vicinity” of the Ravi, Sutlej and Chenab rivers that it shares with India. “Due to climate change, eastern rivers are experiencing heavier rainfall compared to the past,” says Kazim Raza Pirzada, the province’s irrigation minister quoted in the article. Reuters adds that Pakistan’s disaster authorities said yesterday that India “had opened all the gates” of its Thein dam, a day after India had warned it intended to “release water from the rapidly filling Madhopur dam”, with both dams located on the Ravi river. While the story adds that “any flooding blamed on India could inflame ties” between the two nations, an unnamed Indian source said New Delhi was sharing warnings with Islamabad on “humanitarian grounds” to “help avert catastrophe as the rains have caused havoc in India, too”. Al Jazeera, Times of India, Financial Express, Dawn, NDTV and Euronews also cover the story.

Less than 5km away in India, the Hindustan Times reports that the historic Sikh shrine Gurdwara Sri Kartarpur Sahib is “almost completely submerged” in floodwaters. Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann “announced [the] closure of all schools in the state from 27-30 August”, as “incessant rains” and the “release of surplus water from the Pong and Bhakra dams” have inundated villages and “large swathes of farmland”, according to another Hindustan Times article. Further north, NDTV reports that at least 30 people have been killed in a landslide enroute to the Vaishno Devi shrine” in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, “triggered by heavy rains”. According to the Times of India, north India is experiencing its “wettest” and “most destructive” monsoon since 2013, logging 21 “extremely heavy rain” events.

MORE ON SOUTH ASIA 

  • Mint’s Bibek Bhattacharya writes that climate “catastrophes do not discriminate” between India and Pakistan.
  • India’s power ministry is considering using gas-fired power plants “to meet the surge of electricity demand” during the peak summer months, Reuters reports.
  • The US administration’s additional 25% punitive tariffs on India “over its purchases of discounted Russian oil” takes effect today, the Financial Times reports, “rais[ing] duties on India to among the highest in the world”.
NEA official: China set to fulfill key energy goals for 14th five-year plan period on schedule
Xinhua Read Article

China “will achieve key energy development targets for the 14th five-year plan period (2021-2025) on schedule”, Xinhua reports, quoting the National Energy Administration (NEA) head, Wang Hongzhi. These targets include raising “annual domestic energy production capacity to more than 4.6bn tonnes of standard coal” and increasing non-fossil energy’s share to “around 20%” of total energy consumption, adds the state news agency. (Previous analysis for Carbon Brief has found a “record fall” in carbon emissions is needed to meet its five-year plan target for carbon intensity.) Wang notes that, between 2021-2025, energy security was “effectively safeguarded” and China’s “green and low-carbon development…garnered global attention”, state broadcaster CCTV reports. He also says Chinese patents accounted for more than 40% of global patents for “new energy” technologies, Xinhua reports. Chinese wind and solar exports have allowed other countries to cut emissions by 4bn tonnes, according to Wang, another Xinhua report adds. The Global Times, Yicai and Securities Times also cover the press conference, while BJX News publishes the transcript.

MORE ON CHINA

  • China has developed an “advanced” nuclear industry, “despite stringent US sanctions”, SCMP says. Meanwhile, Trump has stated the US will impose 200% tariffs on China, if it does not ensure a “supply of rare-earth magnets”, SCMP also reports.
  • Nikkei Asia says sales of large “new energy” trucks are “soaring” in China, with 2025 sales up to June surpassing the 2024 total.
  • The solar sector is showing “signs of progress” on overcapacity, despite companies losing more than 13bn yuan ($2bn) in the first half of 2025, Bloomberg says.
  • The world’s first “ultra zero-carbon building” is now operating in China, Xinhua reports.
  • A new pilot programme has “loosened curbs” on allowing companies to raise foreign capital for certain climate-related projects, Bloomberg reports. Africa Sustainability Matters says that, “if mechanisms similar to China’s were adapted to African contexts, they could help unlock concessional and commercial flows” for low-carbon projects.
  • SCMP reports that China and Mongolia are discussing “combat[ing] desertification and sandstorms”, which are being exacerbated by “dramatic climate change”.

Comment.

Green eggs and sun: How long will Trump be able to deny reality with his energy policy?
Bill McKibben, The New Yorker Read Article

Writing in the New Yorker, Bill McKibben says the Trump administration’s “irrational dislike of solar and wind energy imperils both the environment and the economy”. McKibben says that the “war on wind and solar power just keeps getting more aggressive”, adding that “the Seussian rancor with which every layer of the administration views clean energy would be almost funny if it weren’t so tragically shortsighted”. 

MORE COMMENT 

  • Anisha Steephen, a former senior advisor at the US Treasury, writes in Time about “skyrocketing” US energy costs, saying that “you can blame Trump and big tech”. 
  • Melanie Brusseler, the US programme director of the thinktank Common Wealth, says in the Financial Times that Trump has “functionally repealed former president Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act”. 
  • A Financial Times comment article by Jonathan Guthrie looks at how a “high-profile drive to sell carbon offsets to air passengers appears to have been a resounding failure”. 
  • For Bloomberg, Javier Blas argues that “rice can feed the world – even with fewer farmers”. 
  • Roger Boyes writes in the Times: “Climate migration en masse is the big bogeyman that will keep border security at the top of the agenda for decades, and not just for hard-right alarmists.” 
  • In the Daily Mail, climate-sceptic commentator Andrew Neil claims over a full-page that net-zero policies are the “most costly self-inflicted wound in modern British history”. 
‘You had to fend for yourself’: Hurricane Katrina haunts New Orleans as Trump guts disaster aid
Dharna Noor and Thalia Juarez, The Guardian Read Article

Several publications cover the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the deadliest and most costly storm to ever strike the US. The Guardian speaks to survivors and experts, who warn that cuts to disaster response funding introduced by Donald Trump could “leave the US just as underprepared to take on a hurricane like Katrina as it was in 2005”. The Times also covers the anniversary, including an interactive timeline of the storm’s path and key failures that were made in protecting people from its impacts. Inside Climate News covers the “dark legacy” left by Katrina, noting that “impacts still linger today”.

Research.

A study of rural workers in India’s Dimapur district reveals that agricultural labourers have the highest “livelihood vulnerability” to climate change, followed by cultivators, “household industry workers” and other workers
Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Climate Change Read Article
A review of research into the “gaps between supply and demand” of “biodiversity impact finance” in the global south finds that “investees” are concerned about “power imbalances from the past finding their way into new products”
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability Read Article
Research explores how marine heatwaves over 2012-16 impacted the quality of life of coastal communities in the US and Australia
Global Change Biology Read Article

 

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Orla Dwyer, with contributions from Daisy Dunne, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Anika Patel and Henry Zhang. It was edited by Leo Hickman.

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