|
|
New on Carbon Brief
• Webinar: Carbon Brief’s second ‘ask us anything’ at COP30
News
• COP30: UN climate conference host Brazil urges nations to negotiate and find solutions to global warming | Associated Press
• COP30: South Korean decision to close all coal-fired power plants by 2040 sounds alarm for Australian exports | Guardian
• COP30: China continues to promote multilateralism as US absence widens climate finance gap | Paper
Comment
• Global goal on adaptation: Weighing the cow won’t make it fatter | Mohamed Adow, Climate Home News
Research
• New research on the future demise of Europe’s largest ice cap, heatwaves under a delayed net-zero and urban cooling with nature-based solutions
Other stories
• Clamour for change inside the world's COP30 climate negotiations | Reuters
• FEMA head resigns. Richardson had been hard to reach during Texas floods | Washington Post
• This oil-rich country has stood in the way of climate action. It’s quietly building a clean energy empire | CNN
|
|
|
|
|
Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer, Simon Evans, Josh Gabbatiss, Leo Hickman and Molly Lempriere
Carbon Brief hosted the second of three webinars to answer questions about COP30.
|
|
|
|
|
Melina Walling, Seth Borenstein and Anton Delgado, The Associated Press
COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago sent a “direct letter” to nations yesterday, asking leaders to “hash out many aspects of a potential agreement by Tuesday night so that much is out of the way before the final set decisions [on] Friday, when the conference is scheduled to end”, the Associated Press reports. The newswire adds that the letter comes ahead of further high-level speeches due today from the UK, the Netherlands and leaders from small island states and developing countries including Barbados and Bangladesh. O Globo reports: “Lula returns to COP30, and the roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels gains momentum.” Bloomberg says: “There’s little expectation that a fully realised plan on fossil fuels will emerge by Friday. A commitment to discuss it over the next year or longer could be one potential solution.” Another O Globo article says: “Agreement on climate adaptation financing could help unlock plan on fossil fuels.”
Climate Home News reports that the letter from the presidency “said the aim was to hold a plenary session to gavel through the first ‘Belém political package’ by the middle of this week”. It adds: “That would mean completing ‘a significant part of our work’ by Tuesday evening, [do Lago] wrote – to which end negotiations will continue late into the night ‘in task-force mode’. The presidency added that countries wanted this unusual structure to the UN climate summit – where the hardest decisions are usually made at the end – to demonstrate that the multilateral process is working.”
There is widespread media coverage of other individuals and groups calling for more urgent action. The Associated Press reports that Pope Leo XIV “urged countries at UN climate talks to take ‘concrete actions’ to stop climate change that is threatening the planet’”, in a video message played at COP30. Agence France-Presse reports that UN climate chief Simon Stiell “urged ministers on Monday to speed up negotiations”. The Guardian reports that “Jamaica has led calls from vulnerable nations at the COP30 climate summit to urge immediate action on climate breakdown”. Bloomberg reports that India’s environment minister said “developed countries must reach net-zero far earlier than current target dates and deliver new, additional and concessional climate finance at a scale of trillions, not billions”. A letter signed by organisations representing small and medium businesses “called for more climate policy support from leaders at COP30”, according to BusinessGreen.
MORE ON COP
Agence France-Press reports that “Australia's climate minister Chris Bowen launched a last-ditch blitz Monday to host next year's UN climate summit, saying his country was ‘fighting hard’ to beat a rival bid from Turkey”. Bloomberg covers a UN assessment, which finds that “the world remains far behind global commitments to slash methane”. The outlet says: “Fulfilling a pledge by roughly 160 nations to cut methane emissions 30% from 2020 levels by 2030 ‘is technically still possible’, but only with swift action, according to the report”. Denmark’s climate minister announced yesterday that his government would submit a binding target to cut emissions to 82% below 1990 levels by 2035, Bloomberg reports. The outlet says that this is “one percentage point higher than the UK goal”, meaning that “the UK is no longer the most ambitious nation in the world”. “Brazil has kicked off a plan to cut industrial emissions, a key step toward its goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050,” Bloomberg reports. The Guardian has an explainer on the “Belém action mechanism” (BAM) – a “proposal for states to drive action on a just transition”. DeSmog reports that more than 300 lobbyists for food and farming organisations have participated at COP30.
Adam Morton, The Guardian
South Korea has announced that it is joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance, the Guardian reports. It explains that this is a group of “about 60 nations and 120 sub-national governments, businesses and organisations” who have pledged to phase out coal. The newspaper quotes South Korea’s minister of climate, energy and environment, Kim Sung-hwan, as saying: “The shift from coal to clean power is not only essential for the climate. It will also help both the Republic of Korea and all other countries increase our energy security, boost the competitiveness of our businesses, and create thousands of jobs.” It adds: “The pledge commits Korea to retiring 62 coal plants, 40 of which already have confirmed closure dates.” It reports that South Korea is Australia’s third-biggest market for coal burned to generate electricity, adding: “The north Asian country has the world’s seventh-largest coal power fleet and is the world’s fourth-largest thermal coal importer behind China, India and Japan, responsible for about 8% of global trade.” Agence France-Presse says that South Korea currently gets about one-third of its electricity from coal.
MORE ON ASIA
India’s environment minister announced that the country will publish its revised “nationally determined contribution” for 2035 and its first “biennial transparency report” by the end of the year, according to the Hindustan Times. The Hindu reports that ”developing countries, including India, have demanded that the impact of climate [action] on trade be given more prominence and discussed in future climate meets”. Carbon Herald reports: “EU doubles down on carbon import tax, rejects India pushback.” “Indonesia's plan to retire 6.7 gigawatts of coal-fired power plant capacity by 2030 to fight climate change is at risk of failure due to stalled disbursal of funding from rich countries, the country's top official overseeing the program told Reuters.” Reuters reports that “rainfall caused floods in parts of western Iran on Monday, after months of drought led to the worst water crisis in decades and pushed authorities to begin cloud seeding over the weekend”.
Diao Fanchao, the Paper
Liu Zhenmin, China’s climate envoy, says the US’s absence at COP30 has a “limited impact on multilateral cooperation, but it will weaken the coordination capacity within the group of developed countries” and will make climate finance “even more difficult”, according to the Shanghai-based news outlet the Paper. He also calls for “creating a global environment conducive to green trade and investment” to help “reshape the global energy structure”, the outlet continues. In a comment for state-run Economic Daily, Hu Bin, associate professor at Tsinghua University, says that the establishment of a “new generation of climate finance architecture” – an important task at COP30 – will be a “key factor shaping the global green transition”. Bloomberg reports that the Chinese delegation to COP30 “said trade rules and restrictions, including US president Donald Trump’s tariffs and measures adopted by the EU, are undermining global efforts to limit warming and are weakening climate ambition”. The Independent publishes an article under the headline: “China basks in the spotlight at COP30 as Trump forces the US to stay away.”
MORE ON CHINA
Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the China Passenger Car Association, says that the sale of China’s “new energy vehicles” (NEVs) has accounted for 46% of the total vehicle sales from January to October this year, reports DaHe Fortune Cube. Following the September agreement between the presidents of China and Russia, Russian energy company Gazprom is “pushing ahead” with building plans for the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline, the Financial Times reports. Forbes: “China’s carbon plateau: a turning point or a temporary pause?” CNN publishes a video discussing China’s position as a global leader in the energy transition, while continuing to build coal-power capacity. SCMP reports that the EU is in “de-escalation mode”, seeking to “convince China to issue more licences for the export of the critical minerals”. Deutsche-Welle has published a piece under the subheading: “As the US steps back from climate diplomacy, China is presenting itself as a responsible power leading in clean, green technology.”
|
|
|
|
|
Mohamed Adow, Climate Home News
Mohamed Adow, the founder and director of Power Shift Africa, writes in Climate Home News that “COP30’s global goal on adaptation (GGA) will be a white elephant if it is not paired with predictable, grant-based finance”. Adow says that according to the latest UN adaptation report, “needs are skyrocketing” and “finance is collapsing”, but “the global community continues to debate how to measure progress, rather than how to enable it”. He continues: “At COP30, countries must resist the impulse to rush through a weak indicator framework simply to claim progress…A meaningful GGA must track whether finance actually reaches those who need it, whether technologies are shared equitably, and whether vulnerable countries are being supported to build early-warning systems, climate-resilient infrastructure, water security, and heat-resilient health systems.” Adow adds: “Some will argue that indicators and finance should remain separate discussions. But this is a fiction. You cannot track progress on adaptation without the means to adapt.”
MORE COMMENT
Amber Rudd, the UK energy and climate change secretary over 2015-16, writes in the Times that “we cannot rely on governments alone to deliver net-zero”. Rudd argues that “business, not bureaucracy, will determine whether we succeed”. The Guardian has a piece from Indigenous journalist Wajã Xipai, under the headline “‘the haste feels contagious…I fear it’: a Xipaya journalist on attending COP30”. The Guardian includes a testimonial from Neha Singh – a 25-year-old who works at a warehouse in India – about intense heat in the country. Reuters energy columnist Ron Bousso writes that “the future of the energy transition will be fractured, bumpy and long”. Tristan Edis, the director of analysis and advisory at Green Energy Markets, criticising the climate policy decisions of the leader of Australia’s opposition party, Sussan Ley, in the Guardian. Separately, reporter Anne Davies writes in the Guardian of Australia’s NSW Coalition: “Without a coherent position on the most pressing problem of our generation – how to slow climate change – voters, in particular younger cohorts, have fled in droves.” The Financial Times has published a “big read” on “the revival of
| | |
