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Lisa Friedman and Maxine Joselow, The New York Times
The Trump administration has advanced a plan to open almost 45m acres of pristine forest to road construction and logging, removing protections in place for the last 25 years, reports the New York Times. It reports: “The proposal by the US Forest Service would repeal the 2001 ‘roadless rule’, enacted during the Clinton administration to preserve the wild nature of forest land. It comes as Trump pressures the agency to increase logging and to thin forests to reduce wildfire risk. The repeal would hand a major victory to Republican-led states and industry groups that have argued for years that the prohibitions have hindered economic development. More than a dozen lawsuits have unsuccessfully sought to strike down the rule.” The Associated Press says that the Forest Service will now gather “public comment on the proposal and on a draft of the environmental impact statement that was filed Tuesday in the Federal Register”. There is further coverage in the Los Angeles Times, Al Jazeera, the Wall Street Journal and Scientific American.
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The Financial Times: “Clean energy booms under Trump despite effort to undercut renewables.” The New York Times: “Environmentalists sue to halt first sale of seabed-mining rights.” Nearly four in 10 US citizens say their community was affected by extreme weather in the last year, reports the Hill.
James Murray, BusinessGreen
The opposition Conservatives will today claim that the UK could save £320bn by “ditching ‘net-zero dogma’ and prioritising ‘cheap power’”, reports BusinessGreen. It says the claim is based on a report from thinktank Onward, which calls for the UK to rely on nuclear and gas instead of renewables. The outlet adds: “However, the plan sparked immediate criticism from the government and green groups, which argued it underplayed the risks associated with failing to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and relied on hugely optimistic assumptions about the cost and feasibility of new nuclear and gas projects.” Separate figures published today show a spike in UK inflation driven by what the Office for National Statistics calls the “largest rise in gas prices for almost four years”, reports BBC News. The Press Association, Daily Mail and Daily Express all cover the Onward report, which has sparked a wave of reaction [see Comment below].
The Times reports the claims from Conservatives that greater reliance on nuclear and gas could cut the cost of the UK electricity system by the equivalent of £540 per household over the period to 2050. [Cornwall Insight’s Tom Edwards posts on Bluesky that the report’s assumptions are “not really realistic at all”. Aurora Energy’s Ashutosh Padelkar tells Carbon Brief that, among other things, the gas price assumptions in the report are “hard to fathom”.] The Times includes a response from energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh saying: “By following Reform’s lead, the Tories will tie Britain to the fossil-fuel rollercoaster and keep bills higher for families…As global fossil-fuel prices continue to rise amid conflict overseas and wildfires rage across the UK, we can’t turn our back on clean power. That won’t bring down bills and it won’t address the climate crisis.”
Meanwhile, the Guardian covers an official report finding that the UK “risks running out of gas in the 2030s despite its growing clean-energy sources, unless ministers take ‘unprecedented’ action to guard against a future supply shock”. The Daily Telegraph notes that some of these potential actions might come with taxpayer costs. Several outlets report that energy entrepreneur Dale Vince has, as the Independent puts it, “changed his mind” on the need for new oil and gas extraction in the North Sea. His comments were also covered by the Daily Telegraph and the Times.
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The Guardian and the Times report on how incoming heavy rain in the UK “may cause floods, but will not reverse drought”. The Associated Press: “The UK and Google are testing changes to flight paths to tackle aviation’s climate impact.” The Daily Mail has its own take on the story. The Guardian covers a report highlighting that the UK is vulnerable to food price shocks as it is reliant on importing fruit and vegetables from heat-stressed countries. The Daily Mail has an “exclusive” saying the Home Office plans to spend nearly £4.5m on electric car chargers.
Bernadette Christina, Reuters
Wildfires in Indonesia burned through nearly 95,000 hectares of land in July, reports Reuters, “almost doubling the damage done in the previous six months as the El Niño weather pattern intensified”. According to government data, “202,004 hectares of land had been hit by wildfire from January to July, surging from 107,465 hectares burned from January to June”, says the newswire. [El Niño often makes south-east Asia more dry and prone to wildfires.] Reuters adds: “Indonesia's weather agency expects El Niño to last into early 2027, with the critical period for forest and land fires expected to peak from August to September.”
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The Atlantic: “The American west is quietly having a terrible fire season.” The Independent: “Australia braces for bushfires in almost every state as El Niño strengthens.” Agence France-Presse reports that firefighters are working to “encircle” raging fires in Belgium. The Daily Telegraph joins soldiers battling Welsh wildfires. The Independent reports that firefighters have left the site of fires in the Scottish Cairngorms after five weeks. BBC News carries footage of how a fire in a peatland nature reserve near Peterborough in the UK “continues to burn underground”.
Sam Li and Lewis Jackson, Reuters
China’s “oil throughput” – how much crude oil is refined into usable fuels – increased 0.3% from June to July, marking the “first month-on-month rise” since the start of the Iran war and despite a 15.8% year-on-year drop, reports Reuters. Citing data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the newswire says that China “processed 53.11m metric tonnes of oil in July, or 12.5m barrels per day”. It adds that China also “continued to draw on oil stockpiles” in July and its drawdown rates would “last for years”. Reuters energy columnist Clyde Russell says that China’s return to oil stockpiling last month comes as a “surprise given the huge decline in imports”, with seaborne oil arrivals down more than 3m barrels per day from levels prior to the conflict. Russell adds that, based on “deducting the amount of oil processed from the total crude available from imports and domestic output”, China’s surplus oil for July amounted to 210,000 barrels per day. Separately, there is ongoing analysis of the recently-released “five-year plan” for China’s oil and gas sector in BJX News, Jiemian, the South China Morning Post, Caixin and CCTV.
MORE ON CHINA
China Youth Daily says the target to peak coal consumption does not undermine coal’s position as a “foundational energy source”, adding that coal will underpin the new energy system security. Dianlian Xinmei says carbon pricing increases will raise the cost of coal-fired power generation, which will “inevitably pay the bill” as the carbon market’s “largest buyer”. China’s National Climate Centre said that this year’s El Niño could become the strongest on record since observations began, according to Jiemian. China has allocated 60m yuan ($8.9m) to support flood prevention, emergency response and disaster relief efforts in Henan, reports Xinhua. People’s Daily says that energy intensity in China’s industrial sector fell 3.5% year on year in the first seven months, according to the NBS. The South China Morning Post: “China’s green dominance a ‘fundamental dilemma’ for western governments, report says.” A Global Times editorial says China’s first “regularly operated” Arctic shipping route opens up a “green” and “low-carbon” logistics corridor for China-Europe trade.
Nikhil Ghanekar, The Indian Express
On Tuesday, BRICS environment and climate ministers in New Delhi opposed the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), reports the Indian Express, describing it as a “unilateral, punitive, discriminatory and protection[ist] measure not in line with international law”. Chaired by India, the bloc of nine developing countries said in a joint statement that measures like CBAM “undermine efforts” by developing countries to “address the adverse impacts of climate change, increased adaptive capacity and resilience”, the story adds. The bloc’s climate and environment working groups “urged wealthy nations to deliver” on the new climate finance goal and to “triple adaptation finance to developing countries by 2035”, it continues, with India “formally hand[ing] over hosting duties” to China.
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