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Rachel Millard and Clara Murray, Financial Times
The Financial Times reports in a story trailed on the frontpage that there has been a record amount of renewable energy capacity granted planning permission in the UK, during the second quarter of 2025. It says that more than 16.1 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable energy capacity, across 323 projects, was granted permission in a “sign of the growing momentum behind the UK government’s push for clean power”. The FT says its analysis of government data shows these figures represent a 195% rise on the same quarter last year. The article adds: “The figures will be welcomed by the government, which wants 95% of Britain’s power generation to be carbon-free by 2030, to meet a flagship Labour party manifesto pledge. However, the speed of grid connections remains an obstacle to projects getting built, as is legal challenges by local opponents of the projects.”
MORE ON UK
In a frontpage story, the Daily Express covers projections that domestic energy bills will rise by 1% in September, adding that this will mean “families will be paying nearly £300 more a year than when Labour took power last summer”. [See Comment.] The Daily Telegraph covers news that as Hurricane Erin moves across the Atlantic, it is bringing to an end the UK’s “hottest summer”. The Times reports that farmers are struggling after a “devastatingly dry” growing season, following temperatures being 1.6C above the long-term meteorological average between 1 June and 17 August. The Guardian reports that the number of wasps in the UK has soared due to warm weather. The Guardian covers a legal challenge against deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, over the lack of an environmental assessment for a datacentre on greenbelt land.
Stuti Mishra, The Independent
Wildfire emissions have “surged to their highest levels in at least 23 years” as Spain “battl[es] one of its most destructive fire seasons in decades”, reports the Independent. It says that new figures from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) found that carbon emissions from Spain “rose almost vertically on monitoring charts” during the first two weeks of August. The article quotes prime minister Pedro Sánchez saying: “Science tells us so, and common sense tells us so as well, especially that of farmers and those who live in rural areas, that the climate is changing, that the climate emergency is worsening, that it is becoming more recurrent, more frequent, and each time has a greater impact”.Euronews covers figures from the European Forest Fire Information System that found more than 391,000 hectares have been burned in Spain so far this year. The Daily Telegraph reports that more than 1,100 deaths in Spain have been linked to the heatwave that ended on Monday.
MORE ON EXTREME WEATHER
Bloomberg reports that the “deadly monsoon season” has killed at least 1,860 people in India and Pakistan, “with flash floods, landslides and inundated cities exposing the region’s growing vulnerability to climate-related disasters”. The Guardian covers news that Californians are “bracing for the first major heatwave of the year, a multiday scorcher that could bring triple-digit temperatures”. BBC News reports that Hurricane Erin is “soaking parts of coastal North Carolina as the storm brushes along the US East Coast”.
Pedro Rafael Vilela, Agência Brasil
The Brazilian COP30 presidency has urged countries to update their emission reduction targets, Agência Brasil reports. The outlet points out that 80% of 197 parties to the Paris Agreement have not published their emissions reduction targets for 2035. It adds that countries are expected to submit their pledges by 24 September this year against the backdrop of the 80th UN General Assembly in New York. Folha de São Paulo also covers the news and says only 13 countries have submitted their 2035 pledges to date, including Brazil, whereas major emitting countries such as China, the EU and the US have not yet done so. The Guardian notes that the letter comes as Brazil “markedly steps up its diplomatic efforts…as the prospects for COP30 look increasingly difficult”. It adds that Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, held an hour-long call with China’s president Xi Jinping last week, in which climate was a core topic.
MORE ON LATIN AMERICA:
Lula will travel to the fifth summit of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), which takes place in Colombia this week, to seek support from Amazonian countries to create a fund to preserve forests, reports Folha de São Paulo. More than 50 civil society and Indigenous organisations urged ACTO to declare the Amazon the “world’s first no-go zone for fossil fuel[s]”, says El Espectador. In a comment for Dialogue Earth, Adolfo Mejía Montero, a lecturer in energy, society and sustainability at the University of Edinburgh writes under the headline: “It’s time to centre justice in Latin America’s energy future.” Mexico’s national banking and securities commission will order non-financial companies to submit their sustainability reports as of 2026, which will require them to do verifiable emissions records, according to a commentary in Excélsior. Chile is expecting a “possible return” of La Niña for the rest of 2025, which could lead to droughts in the central and southern regions of the country, BioBioChile reports, citing the NOAA Climate Prediction Center. There was a 65% drop in the area of Amazon “burned by fire” during July, compared with a year earlier, reports Agence-France Presse.
Yang Yang, The Paper
Two “high-profile” government meetings with solar industry representatives have been held in Beijing in less than two months, sending out a “clear signal” that the “battle” to tackle overcapacity and unnecessary competition in the solar sector has been “fully escalated”, the Shanghai-based news outlet Paper reports. Reuters cites a statement from China's industry ministry saying “parties must ‘curb low-price disorderly competition’, referring to overcapacity in the sector”. State news agency Xinhua’s coverage says the most recent meeting stresses that the industry should better manage investment in new solar production projects and promote the exit of “outdated capacity” through “market-based approaches”, while supporting “stronger technological innovation”.
MORE ON CHINA
The US-China trade in rare-earth magnets, widely used in low-carbon technologies, “continue[s] to recover”, with monthly volumes rising 76% in July, Bloomberg reports. Xinhua reports that three people were killed and one remained missing after a mudslide caused by heavy rainfall in Yunnan, a province in China’s south-west. Xinhua says that “clean energy” now accounts for 89% of heat generation among all “central heating systems” in Tibet, where Xi visited for its “60th founding anniversary”. Dialogue Earth publishes an article under the title: “How to future-proof China’s grid?”
Ken Moritsugu and Ng Han Guan, The Associated Press
The Associated Press reports that China’s CO2 emissions have fallen even as it uses more electricity, citing new analysis published by Carbon Brief. It says that according to the analysis, electricity demand grew by 3.7% during the first half of 2025, but the increase in power from solar, wind and nuclear “easily outpaced that”. The newswire quotes Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, who undertook the analysis: “We’re talking really for the first time about a structural declining trend in China’s emissions.” Bloomberg reports that CO2 emissions fell by 1% between January through June on an annual basis, with the power sector leading the decline and the steel and cement sectors also contributing. It adds that the coal-chemicals sector “emerge[d] as a new hotspot”, with a “surge” in emissions.
Damian Carrington, The Guardian
There has been a “dramatic slowdown” in the melting of Arctic sea ice over the past 20 years, reports the Guardian. It says the finding is “surprising, the researchers say”, given the continued rise of greenhouse gas emissions. The newspaper says that natural variations in the climate are probably balancing out the rise of global temperatures, according to the research, adding: “However, they said this was only a temporary reprieve and melting was highly likely to start again at about double the long-term rate at some point in the next five to 10 years.” The article says that the findings “do not mean Arctic sea ice is rebounding”, with the sea ice area annual minimum having halved since 1979. [Carbon Brief has a guest post from one of the authors of the research, explaining why the slowdown is “only temporary”.]
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