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Daily Briefing: US windfarm ‘battle’ | Gulf oil ‘rebound’ | Mapping Africa’s ‘energy wealth’

14.10.26

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Article Contents

News

Trump renews battle to upend offshore windfarms in the US

Ari Natter and Mark Chediak, Bloomberg

The US justice department has asked a federal court to remand the approval of a wind project by the interior department, reports Bloomberg. It explains that Orsted AS’s Revolution Wind project began producing power off the coast of Rhode Island in March. The article says that the interior department wants to “re-evaluate the wind farm’s permit to make sure it’s in compliance with a federal law governing energy development off the US coast, according to a court filing Friday”. Bloomberg adds that this is a potential setback for the renewables sector, following some progress in gaining “assurances the Trump administration would stop blocking some fully permitted wind and solar developments from moving ahead”.

MORE ON US

  • The New York Times’s Climate Forward newsletter explores former president Barack Obama’s “climate legacy” as a new exhibit opens.
  • Politico reports that US senators are calling on Trump to rescind the diesel deal with Russia. 
  • The Financial Times explores “how America’s dying coal industry found a lifeline in Trump’s White House”. 
  • Reuters reports that the US Environmental Protection Agency has proposed to make larger refiners blend more biofuels into their products over the next two years.

Gulf oil production rebounds ahead of increase in Iran war hostilities

Verity Ratcliffe, The Financial Times

Oil produced in the Middle East “rebounded” in September, as more tankers travelled from the Gulf through the strait of Hormuz, reports the Financial Times. Saudi Arabia, Opec’s biggest member, procured 8.4m barrels a day last month, its highest level since before the start of the Iran war in February, it adds. However, an “increase in hostilities this month has threatened the revival”, notes the article. The Daily Telegraph reports that Iran has intensified attacks on oil tanks in the strait of Hormuz, striking six commercial vessels in a single day. Relatedly, the New York Times explores how the Iran war is “testing” the world’s “energy order”.

MORE IN OIL AND GAS

  • The Times reports that BP’s chief executive Meg O’Neill will announce a new strategy for the energy giant in December, as high oil and gas prices help it cut its debt sooner than expected.
  • Climate Home News looks at how south-east Asia is speeding up plans for clean energy amid the oil shock caused by the start of the Iran war.
  • The Financial Times reports that European benchmark gas prices have hit their highest level in nearly four years, as “the stand-off between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy over Russian diesel unsettled markets at a time when colder weather is forecast across central Europe over the coming two weeks”.

UK: Not building third runway would be ‘huge missed opportunity’, warns Heathrow boss

Michael Race, BBC News

Heathrow Airport’s chief executive Thomas Woldbye has warned that not building a third runway would be a “huge missed opportunity” for the UK, reports BBC News. Speaking on BBC Radio, Woldbye said that if the owners of the airport can not invest in expanding it, the money “will be invested somewhere else in the world”, the article adds. BBC News notes that building a third runway at Heathrow “has been debated for decades”, adding that the “project has proved controversial, facing steep opposition from local residents, politicians and climate campaigners”. [Heathrow’s expansion could push flights to 80% of UK emissions by 2050, as Carbon Brief reported.] 

MORE ON UK 

  • Bloomberg covers a report by not-for-profit Inside Track, which suggests insurers are withdrawing coverage for climate-driven risks and increasingly passing on losses to governments and homeowners.
  • An essay in the Financial Times looks at two new books that explore the “mess that is the UK energy system – and how it ended up this way”.
  • The Daily Telegraph reports that a minister has rejected “calls to invest in Britain’s largest gas storage facility despite growing fears of winter fuel shortages”. 
  • The Daily Telegraph reports that according to a study by Adura, the energy company behind the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields, blocking the two projects would cost the Treasury £10.9bn of revenue by 2049-50.

IRENA: ‘Electrification and renewables must accelerate dramatically’

James Murray, BusinessGreen

A new report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has warned that the clean energy transition is “off track”, reports BusinessGreen. IRENA’s World Energy Transition Outlook states that despite record levels of renewables deployment and generation, the world is still “badly off track” to meet a clean energy transition in line with the 1.5C goal set under the Paris Agreement, it adds. The article quotes the report, which states: “While renewable additions continue to set records in 2025, grid enhancements fail to keep pace and energy demand keeps surging rapidly. Furthermore, energy efficiency improvements remain significantly below the required rate and fail to offset the growing power demand.”

India may need to raise coal power capacity as demand surges, official says

Sethuraman NR, Reuters

The head of India’s Central Electricity Authority (CEA) Ghanshyam Prasad has said that “rapidly growing demand for electricity could force [the country] to add substantially more coal-fired power capacity” than currently planned, reports Reuters. Daily peak electricity ​demand “has been running about 45-50GW higher than a ‌year ⁠earlier, partly because weaker monsoon rains reduced hydroelectric output and increased reliance” on coal, per the story. The newswire adds that India’s power shortages “surged” in September to “the highest” since August 2023. According to the Indian Express, Prasad “stressed the need to maintain adequate baseload capacity” to address the “intermittency of renewable energy sources”, given the “limited availability of energy storage” and high evening demand. 

Separately, a Scroll investigation examines how the Adani group “profited from a government coal import order that raised electricity prices” across India. The group’s chairperson Gautam Adani is quoted by the Tribune as saying: “Decarbonisation cannot be an ideological decree that prices out ordinary citizens, shuts down factories or stalls the global south.”

MORE ON INDIA

  • The Economic Times: “India could face a warmer and drier start to winter, a hotter summer in 2027 and fresh stress on water, crops, power and health as a super El Niño builds.” 
  • Down to Earth covers new research that estimates that 117 million people in India “experienced at least a month of [climate change-induced] risky heat” between June and August, “among the highest totals recorded globally”.
  • According to energy thinktank Ember, India “outpaced” the US in its share of new electric car sales for six consecutive months starting in April, reports the Economic Times.

Indonesia wildfire fuelled by El Niño razes 300 homes

Jonathan Watts, The Guardian

A fire in Indonesia’s island of Sumatra, fuelled by El Niño, has razed nearly 300 homes, forcing hundreds of people to evacuate, reports the Guardian. An official said residents spotted the forest fire approaching a village in Bangka Belitung province on Saturday and tried to put it out themselves, it adds. The article quotes the head of South Bangka regency, Riza Herdavid, who said: “[Residents] thought it was taken care of. But it’s peatland and there was still a fire smouldering underneath. So, when they assumed it was over, the wind shifted and quickly drove the fire toward the settlement.” It adds that Indonesia is among the countries worst affected by heat, drought and fire in El Niño years. Reuters covers the news that Indonesia’s president ‌Prabowo Subianto has ordered the mobilisation of additional resources to combat wildfires. 

China state media warns EU against ‘new tricks’ after car deal

Nectar Gan, Bloomberg

A social media account affiliated with state media has signalled that China is “prepared to act” if the EU introduces new restrictions following its hybrid-car agreement with China, reports Bloomberg. It says the post “warns” the EU against “new tricks” and says China’s measures “will not be merely for show”. China’s commerce minister said the EU-China talks reached a consensus, which has “stabilised expectations for businesses”, says Singapore-based newspaper Lianhe Zaobao. Hong Kong-based the South China Morning Post reports that EU officials said their argument for limiting exports hinged on the fact that the “customer is always right”. Europe is “not closing its doors” to Chinese new-energy vehicles (NEVs), but is reshaping how they enter, argues Ningbo University professor Zhang Mengting in an opinion article for energy news outlet China Energy Net.

MORE ON CHINA

  • The NEA called for “improving” the unified power market, “early planning” for winter energy security and greater “integration” of renewables, says BJX News.
  • Climate envoy Liu Zhenmin called for China-US cooperation on renewables, reports the Paper.
  • Chinese premier Li Qiang called for ​cooperation with New Zealand in NEVs, solar and wind ​power, says Reuters.
  • A five-year action plan aims to “advance” use of electric vessels in inland shipping by 2030, reports China Transportation News. Another action plan calls for peaking railway emissions “before 2030”, according to Xinhua.
  • Xinhua says a super El Niño “could strain” China’s energy system this winter and next summer. An editorial by the Paper says El Niño requires China to “learn to live with a more volatile climate”.
  • China Youth Daily: “The climate has changed. How should the land be farmed?”

Comment

World Bank and IMF should lead the financial system in responding to the climate crisis

Sandra Guzmán and Raju Pandit Chhetri, Climate Home News

In Climate Home News, Sandra Guzmán, director at the Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean, and Raju Pandit Chhetri, lead climate finance negotiator for the least-developed countries at the UNFCCC, discuss the risk that climate finance is “sidelined” at the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. They argue that the recent floods in Nepal “starkly remind us” that climate change requires “urgent action”. The article continues to discuss the “critical role” that multilateral development banks can play in mobilising climate finance; however, they have been pulling back on climate commitments and refocusing on loans. The authors conclude that when the “World Bank and IMF management meet with finance ministers this week in a region battered by the worst climate impacts, they must not leave climate finance off the agenda”. 

MORE COMMENT

  • In his substack, the Crucial Years, veteran environmental campaigner and writer Bill McKibben discusses his reservations about a bill to make permitting energy projects in the US easier.
  • In the Daily Telegraph, world economy editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes that Trump’s “cynical” diesel deal with Russia “makes the UK’s energy predicament even more dangerous”.
  • In the Daily Telegraph, Conservative MP and former chancellor Jeremy Hunt calls for the government’s next budget to include the “go-ahead” for the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas projects, as well as “decoupling gas prices from international markets”. 

Research

  • Nearly 10,000 newly digitised weather records from the Congo Basin reveal a “consistent and accelerating warming signal since the 1960s” | Earth System Dynamics
  • Changes in temperature and rainfall due to climate change are likely to increase the amount of forest area under threat from 22 major forest pests, although the range of most of these pests individually will decrease | Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
  • A survey of nearly 400 farmers and ranchers in California finds “no statistically significant relationship” between belief in climate change and the use of climate-based decision support tools, such as seasonal forecasts | Climatic Change

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Molly Lempriere, with contributions from Henry Zhang, Anika Patel and Aruna Chandrasekhar. It was edited by Robert McSweeney.

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