In what the New York Times calls “his latest attempt to reduce the power of the nation’s most populous state”, US president Donald Trump has signed legislation seeking to block California’s effort to phase out fossil fuel-powered vehicles. The newspaper explains that the Republican-led Congress passed resolutions in May to reverse the Biden administration’s approval of California’s efforts to boost electric vehicle sales. The president has now signed these joint resolutions “at a time when he was battling California on several fronts, most notably in a dispute over immigration enforcement”, it adds. The “ambitious” and “landmark” rules being advanced in California would eventually have barred sales of new petrol and diesel-only cars in the state by 2035, according to the Los Angeles Times. It says attorneys general immediately filed a lawsuit to challenge Trump’s laws, arguing that “Congress unlawfully acted to upend California’s emission rules”. Among the rules that Trump has reversed were measures to phase out the sale of medium- and heavy-duty diesel vehicles and cut tailpipe emissions from trucks, according to the Associated Press. The Guardian explains that California has “for decades been able to seek waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency that have allowed the state to adopt stricter emissions standards than the federal government”, due in part to its high air pollution. Inside Climate News notes that California is joined in its legal complaint by 10 states that follow its “pioneering emissions standards”.

Meanwhile, the Republican-led House of Representatives has voted to pass Trump’s proposal to cancel $9.4bn in previously approved federal funding, including $8.3bn for foreign aid, NBC News reports. [As Carbon Brief has previously reported, climate aid programmes have been targeted specifically by the administration’s aid cuts.] Politico reports that the Trump administration is also working on a new effort to “weaken Congress’ grip on the federal budget”, aiming to freeze billions of dollars more in spending at several government agencies. It says that the Office of Management and Budget is targeting $100m in science funds for NASA, which includes climate research. Inside Climate News covers analysis from the University of Maryland that finds Trump’s climate-policy rollbacks will reduce US gross domestic product (GDP) by $1.1tn by 2035. Another article in the same publication focuses on how the administration’s removal of federal tax credits could “kill” the rapidly growing US solar industry. And Axios reports that a business-backed group with Republican ties called Built for America is running an advertising campaign on right-leaning news outlets to preserve federal tax credits for the energy sector.

Following on from the news yesterday, the Guardian has an article analysing the impact of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reversing power-plant pollution standards. It notes that rather than benefiting “Americans”, any financial savings “will go entirely to power plant operators”. Scientific American has a piece titled “inside the EPA’s attempt to roll back climate regulation”.

Meanwhile, for the first time in three decades, the US will not attend the annual climate summit in Bonn, Germany, which has long served as a “stepping stone” to broader international talks at the COP climate summits later in the year, E&E News reports. The move follows the Trump administration announcing the nation’s departure from the Paris Agreement. Finally, the Financial Times reports on a new initiative, led by the $12.5bn Climate Investment Fund, which aims to help developing countries decarbonise sectors such as cement and steel. The article says multilateral financiers are going ahead with the initiative “despite the pushback from the Trump administration”.

China’s offshore wind power generation last year grew by 28%, compared to 2024, according to a report by the Ministry of Natural Resources, industry media outlet International Energy Network says. It also notes that the number of “newly approved sea- and island-use projects” last year rose 70%, “effectively securing…[China’s] needs for [more] major oil and gas and offshore wind projects”. He Kebin, dean of the Tsinghua University Institute for Carbon Neutrality Research, pointed out that technological challenges remains one of the biggest “obstacles” to achieving the “dual carbon goals”, with about half of the technologies needed still at the “experimental stage”, including the “low-carbon fuels…carbon storage and negative-carbon technologies”, commerce newspaper National Business Daily reports. The National Energy Administration called on officials to develop areas with a good “business environment for electricity use”, including with a “power supply of high-quality, green power”, energy news outlet BJX News reports. Business newspaper China Economic Daily says China has developed “world-leading electrified railway technology”.

Meanwhile, China is likely to “cut imports of the lowest grades of coal” due to oversupply and “tightened emissions controls”, Bloomberg reports. As the coal industry shifts from “scale to quality”, industry players have acknowledged that the operation of coal-fired power will “undergo profound changes” to play a “support role” in energy security, reports BJX News. International Energy Net covers the launch of the outlet’s “energy data” report for 2025, in which it says coal-fired power consumption has “not yet peaked”, but has “significantly slowed” and become “highly dependent on industry fluctuations”. 

An opinion article in state-supporting newspaper Global Times says western news outlets have been “rolling out a predictable set of suspicions” around the security of Chinese electric vehicles and “green innovation originating in China”, adding that the technologies’ “popularity, especially in the global south, is the clearest and strongest rebuttal to the Western smear campaign”. An opinion article in China Energy Network by Tao Guangyuan, executive director of the Sino-German Renewable Energy Center, urges China to follow Germany’s example of “consum[ing] excess wind power in all areas where fossil energy is used”. Finally, Najib Saad, the secretary-general of the Arab Forum for Environment and Development, says in a commentary for state-run newspaper China Daily that the new US administration’s “climate change policies are perhaps the most striking example of [its] moral decline”.

With the European Commission about to release a new climate target – expected to be a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, from 1990 levels – Politico has conducted a “survey” of the EU’s 27 environment and climate ministries to gauge views on the goal. It finds that only six countries have offered “more or less unconditional support” for the target, with the rest seeking “industry-friendly compromises” that will make it easier to meet. Among the “loopholes” being proposed is the use of “controversial” international carbon credits, the article notes. 

A separate Politico article reports that, as lawmakers in the European parliament and country delegations in the Council of the EU discuss proposals to simplify the EU’s environmental rules for companies, a decision has been made to “distance technical experts from the simplification work”. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that the European Commission’s competition directorate is blocking an effort to allow governments to subsidise the clean-energy sector’s operating costs using state aid. DeSmog has an article about how “US climate science deniers” are lobbying to undermine the EU’s corporate sustainability due diligence directive, which seeks to align large companies with the Paris Agreement. An article in Euractiv says environmental NGOs are urging EU ministers not to roll back the bloc’s methane regulations.

Finally, Bloomberg reports that a draft of the European Commission’s plan to scale up nuclear power as part of the bloc’s 2050 net-zero target shows that the effort will cost €241bn ($280bn). This poses funding challenges, with market-based instruments to fund the expansion “lacking”, according to outlet’s coverage of the document.

Oil prices have increased the most in more than three years after Israel launched air strikes against Iran, threatening supplies across the region, the Financial Times reports. “Brent crude” – which serves as the international benchmark – was up by 8% in London after earlier spiking more than 12%, the newspaper explains. It highlights the risks to the energy sector from conflict in the region, including Iran blocking off seaborne oil supplies and attacking key oilfields in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. BBC News notes that “in an extreme scenario, Iran could disrupt supplies of millions of barrels of oil a day if it targets infrastructure or shipping in the Strait of Hormuz”. The outlet adds: “The strait is one of the world’s most important shipping routes, with about a fifth of the world’s oil passing through it.”

Chinese electric-vehicle manufacturer BYD has launched its cheapest and smallest electric vehicle in Europe, a model called the Dolphin Surf, which will retail for around $25,000 in the UK and EU, Semafor reports. The article describes this as a sign of “the Chinese electric-vehicle price war spread[ing] worldwide”, noting that the price is still three times the domestic one paid in China, partly thanks to tariffs. With other companies releasing their own compact models in order to compete, Semafor notes that the release could help bring electric-vehicle prices in line with those of petrol cars. “Analysts suggest that BYD has a lot of room to cut the price of the Dolphin Surf further,” the Guardian states. However, in an interview with Bloomberg, BYD executive vice president Stella Li describes China’s electric vehicle price war as “not sustainable”. She “stopped short of saying the country’s largest electric-vehicle maker would scale back the aggressive discounting it helped trigger”, the article adds. Elsewhere, the Independent covers a study that finds Europe, China and the US “will all struggle to produce enough lithium domestically to satisfy the demand for electric vehicle batteries”.

Meanwhile, General Motors is investing $4bn to produce more fossil fuel-driven vehicles in the US to deal with “high tariffs and low demand for electric vehicles”, Axios says. As it does so, Politico says the company “quietly closed the door this week on a goal to make only electric vehicles by 2035”. While the company is not retreating from electric vehicles, the article cites analysts who say that the new investment will make GM’s target unachievable. In France, Reuters reports that the industry minister Marc Ferracci has said he is “ready” to think about relaxing the ban on the sale of fossil-fuel cars by 2035. The article notes that “it was not immediately clear what steps France would take”, given the EU-wide 2035 target. Amid this, data from market research firm Rho Motion shows that global sales of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles rose 24% in May, compared to the same period last year, “as strength in China offset slower growth in North America”, Reuters reports.

Finally, France energy giant EDF has agreed to buy Pod Point – which has a network of more than 250,000 electric-car charging points in the UK – for £10.6m, after the company “grappled with weaker electric-vehicle sales and a plunging share price”, according to the Press Association. In its coverage, the Daily Telegraph blames a “downturn in demand for electric vehicles”. [In reality, electric-vehicle sales have continued to grow and have already exceeded 2024’s total-year sales this year.] The Times also has the story.

Germany’s Green party is pushing the federal government to expropriate the Schwedt refinery from Russia’s oil giant Rosneft, which is headed by “a close associate” of Russian president Vladimir Putin. The newspaper quotes the Green MP Michael Kellner, who emphasises that the move would “show unity with Europe and send a clear signal to Putin”. According to the New York Times, in its efforts to reduce the energy dependence on Russian gas, Germany is building facilities to enable more liquefied “natural” gas (LNG) imports, especially from the US. The outlet notes that since the summer of 2022, Europe has been increasing its LNG capacity by about 30% each year, with a significant portion of this increase occurring in Germany. In addition, Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that Germany’s new gas power plants will be concentrated in southern Germany, where the government plans a “southern bonus”. 

Meanwhile, Die Zeit highlights findings from the heat vulnerability assessment by not-for-profit Deutsche Umwelthilfe, which shows that cities in southern Germany are especially exposed to heat stress. It also notes that, according to the Robert Koch Institute, around 6,000 people in Germany died due to extreme heat in 2023 and 2024, with deaths occurring in “densely built-up cities with little greenery, lots of concrete and a high proportion of socially disadvantaged population groups”. Tagesschau notes that Germany is “disproportionately affected by global warming”, with temperatures now reaching 2.5C above pre-industrial levels.

Finally, the Kyiv Independent reports that the EU and Germany have added €18m to Ukraine’s Energy Efficiency Fund to boost its “energy independence and green recovery”.

Climate scientist Kate Marvel has an essay in the Wall Street Journal, adapted from part of her upcoming book, on why a “Plan B” of “geoengineering” will be required alongside other efforts to tackle climate change. Geoengineering, she explains, involves “deliberately manipulating our planet’s atmosphere and climate”. She describes different technologies that could be employed, including using aerosols to reduce the solar radiation reaching the planet, direct air capture (DAC) of carbon dioxide (CO2) and dumping an “antacid” of rock dust into the oceans to reduce ocean acidification. Marvel acknowledges that these technologies are controversial – with “unpredictable” and potentially “catastrophic” consequences – but argues that “in a true emergency, you throw everything you have at the problem”. She writes that all of the methods she outlines “have the potential to help, if deployed correctly. The problem is that none has been attempted on a large scale, so no one knows for sure what the impacts might be.” Marvel notes that “with so much at stake, cooling the planet should be a decision made by all of humanity”, but laments the lack of global institutions capable of overseeing such a consensus.

Writing in his Climate Brink newsletter, Carbon Brief climate science contributor Zeke Hausfather looks into what the latest World Meteorological Organization temperature projections mean for the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C warming target. He writes: “If we use the central estimates from the report…they would likely imply a crossing date for 1.5C…that would be earlier than previously expected.”

Daily Telegraph world economy editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard uses his column to criticise the UK Labour government’s decision to financially support the Sizewell C nuclear power plant. He argues that the technology underpinning the plant is outdated and instead makes the case for small modular reactors (SMRs) and nuclear fusion. [The UK government has also committed to supporting both of these technologies.] Energy secretary Ed Miliband “would have done better with our money to order 10 or 12 Rolls-Royce [SMR] reactors. That would have reached critical mass and crowded in hesitant buyers,” Evans-Pritchard writes. He also says nuclear fusion is “further away than SMRs, but it is no longer science fiction. High-temperature superconductors have suddenly made it possible to build a fusion plant 40 times smaller than once was the case.” Evans-Pritchard concludes: “Let me make a wager. Sizewell C will not survive real scrutiny or the next austerity crisis. It has HS2 written all over it.” 

Increased meltwater from glaciers on the western Antarctic Peninsula has a “positive effect” on phytoplankton, which can “likely mitigate the negative impact” of sea-ice loss there in recent years. Using 20 years of field observations, remote-sensing data and reanalysis, researchers observe a “strong correlation” between the amount of meltwater and chlorophyll in phytoplankton. The researchers postulate that the glacial meltwater provides excess nutrients to the ocean, potentially driving phytoplankton blooms. They conclude: “Our findings underscore the critical need to consider glacial meltwater as a key ecological driver in polar coastal ecosystems.”

A new study finds that the global population’s exposure to heatwaves will “increase tenfold” by 2100 – with some regions, such as south Asia, experiencing even higher increases due to both climate and population changes. Researchers use an atmospheric circulation model and water storage data to investigate the drivers of heatwaves in different regions for both a historical period and under two future warming scenarios. They find that while in most regions, heatwaves accompany drought conditions, there are some places where heatwaves can occur concurrently with wet conditions, such as western north America. They write that their results “emphasise the need for tailored adaptation strategies to mitigate heatwave impacts and ensure resilience in a warming world”.