Germany’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2023 fell to their lowest level since the 1950s, Reuters reports, due to “less coal-fired power and reduced output by energy-intensive industries”. The analysis, by the Berlin-based thinktank Agora Energiewende, shows that emissions in Germany dropped to 673m tonnes (Mt) last year, 46% below 1990 levels and beating the government’s 2023 climate goal of 722Mt, the newswire explains. However, it adds, the analysis suggests that “the decline is unsustainable without climate policy changes”. Deutsche Welle notes that emissions were impacted by energy-intensive manufacturers scaling down production due to “spiking” gas prices following a shift away from Russian piped gas supply to liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports. The Financial Times says that emissions in 2023 were 21% lower than the previous year, adding: “Roughly half of this drop, which Agora said reflected a “sharp” decline in coal-fired power generation, could be attributed to a slowdown in German industrial activity. Only 15% stemmed from technology improvements such as greater use of renewable energy.” It reports that German vice-chancellor Robert Habeck “welcomed” the figures, but acknowledged that much of the decrease in fossil-fuel use was due to “slowing industrial production – an issue of mounting concern for Berlin”. Der Spiegel ​​quotes Agora’s director, Simon Müller, who said: “The crisis-related production slump weakens the industrial sector in Germany. If, as a result, emissions are simply shifted abroad, there is no climate gain.” The Guardian says that “electricity generation from renewable sources was more than 50% of the total in 2023 for the first time, while coal’s share dropped to 26% from 34%”. Müller tells the outlet that the renewables record brought Germany in line with its target to produce 80% of its electricity from wind and solar by 2030. However, Agora warns that “most of the emissions cuts in 2023 are not sustainable from an industrial or climate policy perspective”, the newspaper reports. The Hill, Forbes and Bloomberg also cover the story. 

Meanwhile, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reports that in 2023, Germany received “a record amount” from the sale of CO2 pollution rights – a total of around €18.4bn, which is 40% more than in 2022. The article notes that a key driver was the national emissions trading system for heat and transportation. FAZ explains that the funds flow entirely into the German Climate and Transformation Fund (KTF), which finances energy transition and climate protection measures. Reuters reports that Germany cut its gas imports by 33% in 2023, mainly as it saved on energy and exported less after Russia cut off westbound shipments the previous year. Politico reports that “Germany’s three-party ruling coalition [yesterday] partly backed down from a proposal to cut tax privileges for farmers after facing emotional protests”. Finally, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal argues that the costs of net-zero for Germany “keep rising and rising”.

The government of Azerbaijan has appointed its environment minister Mukhtar Babayev to be the president of the COP29 climate summit in Baku this November, reports Climate Home News. Babayev spent 26 years at Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company Socar, the outlet says, “where he tried to limit the company’s environmental damage, before becoming environment minister in 2018”. However, it adds, “with Azerbaijan’s media severely restricted, there is not much information publicly available about Babayev other than his official ministry biography and leaked US diplomatic cables”. While Babayev will chair the talks, Azerbaijan’s deputy foreign minister Yalchin Rafiyev will be his lead negotiator, the article explains, adding: “Rafiyev is a newcomer to climate diplomacy. He did not attend the COP26 or COP27 climate talks and his active [Twitter] account has only mentioned climate change once in over six years.”

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said the party could further reduce the amount it had pledged to borrow for its flagship “green prosperity plan”, reports the Financial Times, even as he called the scheme an essential “investment in the future”. The newspaper continues: “The plan initially outlined £28bn a year of additional state borrowing for green projects, but has already been reduced in scope since it was unveiled two years ago at a time of low interest rates. Some senior Labour figures are nervous that the proposal is rapidly becoming the focal point for Conservative political attacks.” Speaking to an audience in Bristol yesterday, Starmer said he had delayed the £28bn plan by several years, removed existing government spending of about £8bn a year and pledged it must be carried out within the party’s fiscal rule that debt must be falling as a share of national income after five years, the article says. Starmer said: “It would be subject to our fiscal rules. That means that if the money is from borrowing, which it will be, borrowing to invest, but the fiscal rules don’t allow it then we will borrow less.” The Guardian describes the speech as “the clearest sign yet that the party is willing to scale back one of its headline policies in the face of Conservative attacks”. In addition, Starmer said that there was “no question of pushing back” on Labour’s main green policy to reach zero-carbon power by 2030. Starmer claimed the Conservatives were engaged in a “misconceived attack” on the plan, notes the Evening Standard. In his speech, Starmer “also again touted Labour’s plan to establish a new publicly-owned clean-energy developer dubbed GB Energy, which he said would help to deliver cheaper bills and ensure the country runs on ‘clean British power not foreign oil and gas’”, reports BusinessGreen. The Times and City AM also cover the speech, while BBC News looks into the details of the £28bn plan. Freddie Hayward, political correspondent at the New Statesman, says that “we already knew that any green investment would be subject to the party’s fiscal rules”, but describes Starmer’s comments as “a sleight of hand”. He writes: “What was interesting was how Starmer tried to imply that he had no choice, as if he has no control over the fiscal rules…Labour could decide to loosen them to create space for that investment. The rules are self-imposed; Starmer and [shadow chancellor Rachel] Reeves are free to amend them as required.”

The UK government has admitted that oil from the controversial Rosebank field will be sold on the international market rather than to UK consumers, reports the Guardian. The Rosebank field to the west of Shetland was given the green light in September and has the potential to produce 500m barrels of oil in its lifetime, the newspaper explains. Government ministers have “repeatedly claimed [it] will improve UK energy security and help UK consumers, overriding concerns from climate experts and their own advisers”, the outlet adds. However, it continues, in a written answer to a parliamentary question, “the government appears to accept that the private companies extracting the oil will sell the vast majority internationally, saying: “Due to UK refinery specifications and global market conditions, around 80% of the oil produced in the UK is refined overseas into the products demanded by the UK market. It is not desirable to force private companies to ‘allocate’ oil and gas produced in the North Sea for domestic use.” The article quotes the response of Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle, who submitted the parliamentary question, who said: “This government’s answer proves Rosebank is not about supplying the UK with oil and gas, it’s purely another gimmick designed to appeal to a section of the electorate which has no concern for either the future of the planet or their own children. And a spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said that as a “net importer” it makes sense for the UK to use “home-grown British resources to manage the decline in domestic oil-and-gas production in a way that reduces our vulnerability to hostile states”.

China’s national development and reform commission (NDRC), the state economic planner, has issued “new rules on strengthening the integration of new energy vehicles with the electric grid”, reports Climate Home News and Reuters. The move comes as the country “aims to manage its power demand amid a transition to renewable energy”, the article notes. It adds that the NDRC wants energy vehicles to “become an important part of the country’s energy storage system by 2030”. Chinese energy outlet IN-EN.com reports that according to Chinese government agencies, new energy vehicles purchased in 2024 and 2025 will be exempt from vehicle purchase tax. Chinese financial outlet Yicai reports that the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) announced that in December 2023, market retail sales of new energy vehicles in 2024 reached 936,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 46%. It also calculates that China’s new energy vehicle market accounts for 60% of the global share. The Financial Times reports that Chinese carmaker Chery is looking to “build a car factory in the UK this decade”. The state news agency Xinhua describes the challenges posed by illegal sales of gasoline, diesel and methanol in China, such as how illegal fuels’ “sulphur content seriously exceeds standard requirements”, increasing pollution.

Meanwhile, the state-run newspaper China Daily reports that the government has issued guidelines to promote funding of environmental conservation. The policy is expected to “alleviate pressure on the government to raise funds for environmental protection and boost investment from social capital and financial institutions”. China Dialogue reports that Shanghai has begun “trialling China’s first transition finance taxonomy”, which aims to “support companies with high emissions that need to shift gears but don’t fit the bill for the green finance which goes to wind power generators, battery plants and other climate solutions”. China Economic Net reports on a mid-way assessment on China’s energy targets in the 14th five-year plan, which finds that the country’s “comprehensive energy production capacity” target has been achieved ahead of schedule, but that progress on reducing energy intensity and CO2 emissions per unit of GDP is lagging. Finally, Xinhua reports that China “held 289 officials accountable for environmental protection problems” discovered during a third round of high-profile central inspections, according to the ministry of ecology and environment (MEE). 

Heavy flooding continued across parts of England yesterday as a major incident was declared in Nottinghamshire and communities in Gloucestershire were left almost totally surrounded by water, reports the Guardian. As of yesterday evening, there were still more than 550 flood warnings and alerts in place for England and Wales as Storm Henk swept across the country, the newspaper says, with hundreds of homes flooded. The article says that “people were forced out of their homes in Shrewsbury, while parts of Worcester city centre were under water and emergency planners warned people in at-risk areas along the River Trent to make preparations in case they needed to evacuate”. In addition, “Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire was almost completely surrounded by flood water, with several roads cut off and authorities telling people who need to evacuate to make their way to a dedicated rest centre”, the Guardian notes. An 87-year-old woman died after her car struck a fallen tree, reports the Times, and Thames Valley police has referred itself to the police watchdog over the incident because the woman hit the tree 90 minutes after it had been reported to the force. BBC News reports on the travel disruption caused by the storm. The Daily Mirror, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph all cover the floods, while BBC News reports that “flood-hit farmers are calling on the government to invest more in river defences in rural areas to protect UK food production”.

The news this week that China’s BYD has overtaken Tesla as the world’s best-selling brand of electric vehicles is “just one of the green milestones that China has recently achieved”, says an editorial in the Financial Times. China’s advances in deploying clean technology “should be applauded, even if it is continuing to expand its use of fossil fuels such as coal”, the FT says: “The country remains the world’s biggest emitter of CO2…Its progress towards a green transformation is therefore of vital importance.” Key insights “lurk among the detail”, the newspaper says: “One is that new renewable energy was more profitable than relying on coal and gas for 14 Chinese electricity generators…While China’s renewables installation in its early days was pushed by state policy, it now seems increasingly to be driven by the profit motive. Another revelation is that China’s state-owned enterprises, often seen as lumbering giants, are helping to accelerate the adoption of clean tech.” For the west, “China’s growing prowess in clean tech represents a dilemma”, the FT says: “The US and European countries risk becoming overly reliant on a strategic rival for some key renewable technologies. To avoid this, rather than engaging in knee-jerk protectionism, they need to do more to nurture their own green sectors through incentives, faster planning procedures and investment in infrastructure.” But, the article concludes, “when it comes to climate change, Beijing’s green advances should be seen as positive for China, and for the world”. 

A feature in the Economist takes a close look at the “enormous undertaking” needed to expand the UK’s electricity grid to meet the “demands of decarbonisation”. While the power grid has “barely featured in British politics” for decades, its “days of quietly efficient obscurity are over”, the outlet says: “Renewable sources of power, such as wind turbines and solar panels, must be plugged into the grid; so must banks of batteries to smooth out variable supply.” Yet, “the current system is not equipped to meet this challenge”, with regulatory processes “geared to slow and predictable change”, the article says: “In an independent review of the grid commissioned by the government and published in August, Nick Winser, an energy grandee, wrote that it currently takes between 12 and 14 years for new transmission lines to go from conception to being switched on. If this sort of sluggishness persists it will torpedo both [Conservative and Labour] parties’ grid ambitions, not to mention Britain’s hopes of meeting its climate targets.” The article looks at the action already being taken and the challenges that remain: “The best way to minimise these risks is to maximise the amount of efficiency that can be squeezed from the existing grid…Flexibility would mean changing the way the electricity market is regulated to allow different prices to be charged to consumers on different parts of the grid.” The article also considers the implications of Labour’s plans to set up a state-owned company called GB Energy that would “run a purchasing consortium for all buyers of grid gear, aping a successful Dutch system, in order to ensure that equipment is procured upfront and on time”. It concludes: “Labour believes that the task of rewiring Britain is important enough and urgent enough that public money and central planning are the only way to achieve it quickly. Even if Labour’s goal of making the grid net-zero by 2030 is arbitrary, speed is undoubtedly necessary. But the risk is that state intervention dampens price signals, leaving Britain with an expensive, overbuilt grid. The costs of that would, as ever, end up being paid by consumers.”

“Rapidly increasing rice cultivation” in Africa accounts for 7% of the recent rise in global methane emissions, according to new research. A group of scientists use updated maps of rice-growing areas across Africa to estimate how methane emissions from the continent changed over 2008-18. They find that the total emissions of methane from rice are nearly 70% higher than estimated in previous global emissions budgets. As a result, they write, achieving global methane goals “may require even greater reduction of methane emissions from other sectors”.

A new study reviews the scientific literature on climate-driven extinctions and estimates that even under intermediate warming scenarios, Earth may lose 14-32% of its animal and plant species. The researchers review recent extinction studies that use species distribution models, finding that many such models exclude the most-vulnerable species. They also analyse species’ responses to climate change, finding that a key assumption of these species models – that the temperature of the environment in which a species can survive does not change over time – “may be frequently violated”. They find that these “thermal niches” increase by an average of 0.02C each year.