Climate Home News

Chinese industry is beginning to shift from fossil fuels to clean electricity, with wind, solar and batteries progressively displacing coal, oil and gas across the industrial sectors that made the country the world’s factory and largest carbon emitter, a new analysis shows. Clean electricity met all of China’s demand growth in 2025 and coal generation fell for the first time in a decade, even as electricity demand rose by 5%, the report found. Despite a rebound in coal power generation in

Carbon credit developers, corporate buyers and some leading conservation NGOs are challenging new proposed rules to stop UN carbon credits being wiped out by fire, drought or logging, in what critics have called a “coordinated lobbying campaign” to weaken the nascent market’s push for greater integrity. According to documents seen by Climate Home News – including a briefing given to government officials – companies, NGOs and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) ha

A relatively ambitious deal to reduce the shipping industry’s 3% of global emissions now looks more likely after four days of closed-door talks in London, observers say. The International Maritime Organization (IMO), which oversees the negotiations, said there had been “constructive discussions” and “genuine willingness within the group to make concrete further progress”. Em Fenton, senior director at the NGO Opportunity Green who attended the talks last week,

At a key leaders’ summit in Palau, Pacific island nations burdened by worsening climate change impacts and costly fossil fuel imports called for November’s COP31 climate summit to deliver finance to help the region transition to renewable energy and build more resilient communities. Heads of government from the 18-member Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) – which includes COP31 co-president Australia – met in Palau’s capital Koror for a week-long summit, where they demanded access

Israel’s bombardment of Gaza during the conflict that broke out in October 2023 has wrecked progress towards adapting the enclave to climate change and left two million Gazans vulnerable to heatwaves, drought and disease, the Palestinian Authority (PA) said in a new climate plan submitted to the United Nations. Palestine’s third nationally determined contribution (NDC), uploaded to the UN climate body’s website this week, says that while “the aggression on the Gaza Strip did not make th

As efforts to expand energy access across Africa grow, experts and policymakers have called this week for greater coordination and investment to power food production with renewables, arguing the sector has been treated separately from energy policy and therefore faces barriers in going green. Hailemariam Desalegn, former prime minister of Ethiopia, said energy is critical across the food value chain – from irrigation and processing to cold storage and transport – and should there

Euan Ritchie is a senior research associate in the Europe programme at the Center for Global Development. Andy Burnham, the UK’s latest prime minister, has suggested reducing the amount the British government gives as climate finance grants and providing some of its climate finance through loans instead, in a move it anticipates will save £400 million.  The government plans to use the savings to fund a cap on bus fares in the UK, triggering accusations from the development sector that Burn

After last week’s catastrophic flash flooding caused hundreds of deaths and an estimated $5 billion of destruction in Nepal, some board members of the UN’s new loss and damage fund board have called for an extraordinary meeting to allocate money to help the Himalayan country. Following a direct appeal for funding from Nepal’s government on Monday, developing-country board members gathered online and eight signed a letter, seen by Climate Home News, asking the fund’s board to

Could a new mechanism to help countries transition to a cleaner, safer and fairer world be one of the main deliverables from the COP31 climate summit in Türkiye this November? Civil society groups – which played a key role in winning last year’s agreement in Brazil to set up a mechanism – want to see it come to life in Antalya and take shape in 2027. The concept of a “just transition” has gained momentum and widespread support in recent years. It recognises that countries have var

Laurence Tubiana is CEO of the European Climate Foundation and was formerly France’s Climate Change Ambassador and Special Representative for COP21 in Paris. The UN has released a report this week confirming what many people have feared: the world is going to pass 1.5C of warming. At current emissions, the remaining carbon budget will be exhausted within roughly three years. We are heading into “exceedance” of the 1.5C threshold: a sustained breach of the Paris Agreement’s prim

Governments must slash emissions further and faster, and keep every climate promise they have made for the planet to be able to return to 1.5C of warming by the end of the century after an inevitable overshoot, a group of prominent climate scientists has said. In a flagship new report sketching out a way not to lose the most ambitious Paris Agreement goal, the scientists said that global temperatures need to peak at no higher than 1.8C above pre-industrial levels to give the world “a fighting

Gill Einhorn is head of the Forest Future Alliance and Natalie Çilem is community lead of the Global Wildfire Leadership Network. Wildfires have devastated communities across the world this summer, claiming lives, displacing thousands of people and leaving billions in economic damage in their wake. In Europe alone, wildfires have already caused an estimated €19 billion in losses this year. They are an economic, financial and public health challenge that is growing faster than many governm

Anuradha Barua, Aakriti Wanchoo and Swapan Mehra are from Iora Ecological Solutions, a New Delhi-based company focused on nature-based solutions, climate action, conservation and environmental policy. When Rojo Neog’s village in northeast India was hit by a power cut in July, he headed out to buy candles. Three days later, his body was recovered – swept away by surging floodwaters. His niece said the water had risen from knee- to neck-level in about half an hour. The devastating floods&nbs

The African continent’s hopes for a legally binding agreement to combat drought have been dashed again, as UN land restoration talks in Mongolia passed the issue onto the next set of talks in Egypt in two years’ time. For over a decade, Africa has pushed for a UN protocol on drought risk management that would acknowledge drought as an issue requiring a regional and global – not just a national – response, potentially paving the way for more finance to help ensure water is av

Burdened by rising fuel import costs and an “ocean crisis” of record-breaking heat, Pacific island nations are seeking to build support for a new regional fund ahead of COP31, intended to channel investment into renewable energy, community resilience and ocean protection, experts said. Leaders from the 18-member Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), including Australia and New Zealand, are expected to issue a call for global pledges to the Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF) at a high-level

The US is expected to resume its attempt to sink measures for a greener global shipping sector at closed-door talks between governments at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in early September. The US and oil-producing allies like Saudi Arabia want to weaken a proposed plan for cleaner fuels that aims to reduce planet-heating emissions from the industry, which relies heavily on dirty bunker fuels. Shipping currently represents 3% of global emissions. Those that want a softer sys

New Zealand’s parliament has adopted a controversial new law blocking a whole avenue of climate litigation and shutting down its most advanced corporate lawsuit, which has been blamed by the government for shaking business confidence and investment. The Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill, expected to take effect in the coming days after it is formally signed by the Governor-General, prevents all current and future civil claims for climate loss or harm under tort law.

Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara is the Executive Director of the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS), an Indonesia-based economic think tank. Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is the Director of the China-Indonesia desk at CELIOS.  Indonesia produces around 60% of the world’s nickel, a metal used to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) – more than any other country in the world. But in 2026, the government sharply reduced how much of its nickel can be extracted from the ground. 

Inger Andersen is Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme When you live on the edge, you become acutely aware of balance. As a young woman straight out of university in 1982, I had the privilege of teaching English at a Sudanese girls’ high school. After a couple of years, I landed a job supporting the emergency and relief work during the Sudanese drought and associated famine.  Those communities in Sudan knew very well that their two most precious asse

With record-breaking ocean temperatures weakening the world’s largest carbon sink, a group of countries is pushing for the UN COP31 summit to deliver meaningful commitments to protect marine ecosystems. Yet this effort could be hobbled by a shrinking pool of climate finance, experts warn. While discussions on oceans at UN climate talks have so far been limited to annual informal dialogues on the sidelines, African countries, the European Union, some Latin American nations and small isla