UK & EU Climate News

• According to analysis, the number of heat-related deaths in the UK is predicted to increase more than six-fold by the end of the century if the world warms by 3C. Deaths related to cold are currently much higher than those related to heat, however these are predicted to rise only slightly, reaching nearly 70,000 per year by 2100. The analysis also looks at the data under a current climate policies scenario in 30 European countries; heat-related deaths are expected to increase from 43,729 to 128,809 per year.

• The draft Scottish National Adaptation Plan (2024-2029) was published on the 25th September. The draft plan seeks the public’s views on how to protect and restore nature, improve green spaces, and help prepare businesses for the risks and the opportunities presented by climate change.

• More than 250,000 heat pumps have now been installed in UK homes, according to industry figures. Data released on the 20th August by the Microgeneration Certification Scheme shows that more than 30,000 certified heat pumps were installed in homes and small businesses across the UK during the first six months of 2024, marking a 45% increase on the same period last year.

• The European Commission announced that it has sent letters to 17 EU member states, opening infringement procedures with the states over their failure to communicate how they have fully transposed the new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) into their national laws. The deadline for states to transpose the CSRD into national law was 6th July 2024. The states receiving the letters include Belgium, Czechia, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Cyprus, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, and Finland. Following the Commission’s action to send the letters, the 17 member states have two months to respond and to complete the transposition, after which the Commission may send a reasoned opinion with a formal request to comply with the law, and then may refer the matter to the Court of Justice and ask the court to impose penalties.

• Microsoft has announced the launch of a new pilot project with Irish state-owned energy company ESB, testing the use of green hydrogen as part of the tech giant’s range of clean energy solutions aimed at decarbonising its growing data centre footprint. Under the new agreement, Microsoft’s data centre power control and administration building in Dublin will be powered by zero emissions green hydrogen power, supplying up to 250 kW of energy over an eight-week period. The agreement marks the first time that hydrogen fuel cells will be used to provide electricity to a Microsoft data centre in Europe. Microsoft recently reported that their Scope 3 emissions in 2023 were more than 30% higher than in 2020, driven largely by the significant growth in data centres to meet increasing demand for AI computing power.

• Electricity generation from solar energy in Germany reached a record high in 2024. In July, around 10TWh of solar power were produced, more than ever before in a single month, even though sunshine levels were lower than last year. According to the economy ministry, the total capacity of installed solar power systems exceeded 90GW by the end of June, meaning that Germany’s target of 88GW of installed capacity for the year 2024 was already achieved in the first half of the year. In 2030, the installed solar capacity in Germany is expected to reach 215GW. Similarly, China’s wind and solar capacity reached 1,206 gigawatts recently, which is almost six years earlier than planned.

End of an era as Britain’s last coal-fired power plant shuts down.

The UK’s last coal-fired power station, Ratcliffe-on-Soar closed on the 1st of October, after generating electricity for 57 years. This marks a major milestone in the country's ambitions to reduce its contribution to climate change.

Separately, the UK’s coal regulator the Coal Authority has refused to grant licences for what would have been the country’s first coal mine in 30 years. The authority has not publicly revealed why it refused permission. The decision came weeks after the Labour government withdrew support for it over environmental concerns.

Global heating ‘doubled’ chance of extreme rain in Europe in September

The latest analysis from scientists at World Weather Attribution finds that climate change doubled the chances of the extreme rainfall that drove flooding in central Europe in September. The rains were also made at least 7% stronger by climate change. Storm Boris stalled over central Europe in mid-September and unleashed record-breaking amounts of rain upon Austria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. The heavy rains turned calm streams into wild rivers, triggering floods that wrecked homes and killed two dozen people.

Government to drop legal defence of UK's largest untapped oil and gas fields.

The UK government will not defend legal challenges brought against plans to develop the largest untapped oil and gas field, along with a second site in the North Sea. Rosebank, off the coast of Shetland contains around 300m barrels of oil and is the UK’s largest undeveloped site, along with Jackdaw located off the Aberdeen coast. These sites have faced legal challenges from environmental groups such as Uplift and Greenpeace. Oil and gas giants Equinor and Shell – which are behind the development of the oil fields – can continue to oppose the legal challenges and their exploration licences have not been revoked, but the government itself will no longer oppose environmental groups in court over the developments.

The announcement follows the landmark supreme court decision (on the application of Finch on behalf of Weald Action Group) (Appellant) v Surrey County Council and others (Respondents) [2024]) in June on drilling at Horse Hill in Surrey, which said that the environmental impact on emissions from burning fossil fuels must be considered in planning applications for extraction projects, and not just the emissions from extraction.

Mario Draghi’s pitch to save green growth.

There is widespread media coverage of a new report on EU competitiveness led by Mario Draghi – the former Italian prime minister and president of the European Central Bank. The report calls for a fundamental re-think of the EU’s green growth drive. Stating that ‘the energy transition will be gradual’ the report argues that ‘fossil fuels will continue to play a central role in energy pricing for the remainder of this decade’ and calls for more joint purchasing of gas by national governments.

Some of the points Draghi promotes include lowering energy taxes, and greater bending of EU environmental law to facilitate the build-out of renewables. His report is unconvinced of the effectiveness of the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), which aims to help European companies compete against their international rivals who do not face carbon pricing. If CBAM is found to be ineffective, Draghi wants European companies to continue to receive free carbon allowances.

Draghi’s central argument is that Europe’s economic travails will deepen unless it can become more competitive in emerging clean-tech and digital sectors, areas the Chinese and US governments subsidise heavily.

Global Climate News

• A study published on the 22nd August examining the effectiveness of 1,500 climate policies implemented over the past two decades has concluded that just 63 – or 4% – of them substantially reduced emissions. While these effective policies cut emissions by as much as 1.8bn metric tons of carbon (GtCO2), these reductions are not enough to reach targets laid out in the Paris Agreement. The UN estimates that emissions must fall by 23GtCO2 by 2030 to reach these targets.

• UN secretary general Antonio Guterres warned on the 27th August that rising sea levels is a “crisis that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale, with no lifeboat to take us back to safety”. Ahead of the speech, the UN released two separate reports on rising sea levels and how they threaten Pacific Island nations. One of which was the UN Climate Action Team’s report called ‘surging seas in a warming world’, showing that global average sea levels are rising at rates unprecedented in the past 3,000 years. According to the report, the levels have risen an average of 9.4cm in the past 30 years, but in the tropical Pacific, that figure was as high as 15cm.

• Australia’s House of Representatives voted on the 9th September to pass the Treasury Laws Amendment bill, including new mandatory climate-related reporting requirements for large and medium sized companies. This includes disclosures on climate-related risks and opportunities, and on greenhouse gas emissions across the value chain. This requirement would start as soon as 2025 for the largest companies. The vote follows the approval of the bill in August by the Senate.

• On 25th September, the IFRS announced the publication of a new guide aimed at helping companies to voluntarily apply the International Sustainability Standards Board’s (ISSB) recently issued climate and sustainability-related disclosure standards and communicate their progress to investors. The IFRS released the inaugural general sustainability (IFRS S1) and climate (IFRS S2) reporting standard in June 2023. Since the release last year, several regulators globally have announced plans to utilize the standards, with the IFRS reporting in May 2024 that more than 20 jurisdictions have decided to use the ISSB standards, or are taking steps to introduce the standards in their own frameworks, with the jurisdictions representing nearly 55% of global GDP, more than 40% of global market capitalization, and over half of global greenhouse gas emissions. Access to the new guide can be found here.

• The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced on the 18th September the release of a new compliance guide for fashion brands and retailers, aimed at helping the companies to comply with the regulator’s Green Claims Code when making environmental claims about their products and services. Alongside the launch of the new guide, the CMA announced that it has sent letters to 17 well-known fashion brands, advising them to review their business practices. The letters highlight several areas of concern regarding the companies’ green claims.

• Due to a continuing drought thought to be Brazil’s most intense and widespread ever recorded, many rivers in the Amazon have reached record-low levels, according to the Brazilian Geological Society. It is particularly concerning because it has worsened relatively early in the Amazon’s dry season, which typically runs from June to November. That suggests the situation in the Amazon may not significantly improve for some months in a region which is critical in the fight against climate change, as well as being a rich source of biodiversity.

• Floods in northern Nigeria have affected thousands of people and killed more than 80% of animals in a large zoo, also washing crocodiles and snakes into community areas. Floods in the northern Borno state began when a dam overflowed following heavy rains. The flooding killed 37 people and displaced 200,000 others in Borno state, it also allowed more than 200 inmates to escape from a prison.

The planet endures its hottest summer on record – for the second straight year.

This summer was the hottest since records began, breaking global heat records for the second year in a row and putting 2024 firmly on track to be the hottest year in recorded history. The period between June and August, which defines northern hemisphere summer, was the warmest since at least 1940, according to new data published by European climate service Copernicus; it is the latest in a slew of global heat records to fall.

The summer averaged an absolute temperature of 16.8C, pushing it up 0.03C warmer than the old record, which was set in 2023. With a La Niña weather pattern on the horizon, which will bring temperatures down, the last four months of the year are less likely to set records, but temperatures will most likely not cool enough to stop 2024 breaking the overall annual records.

As a result, rising global temperatures continued to fuel disasters this summer, such as deadly flooding in Sudan, severe drought in Sicily and Sardinia, and an intensified Typhoon Gaemi, which hit the Philippines, Taiwan, and China.

African nations are losing up to 5% of their GDP per year with climate change.

A new report from the World Meteorological Organization finds that African countries are already losing up to 5% of their GDP every year as a result of climate change. According to the report, many African nations are spending up to 9% of their budgets on climate adaptation actions.

Africa is responsible for less than 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions but it is the most vulnerable region to extreme weather events including droughts, floods, and heatwaves. The new report focuses on 2023, one of Africa’s three hottest years on record. It urged African governments to invest in early warning systems as well as meteorological services. If adequate measures are not put in place, up to 118 million Africans will be exposed to droughts, floods, and extreme heat by 2030, the report warned.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the report estimated that the costs of adapting to extreme weather could be $30-50bn per year over the next decade. The 54-nation continent has been attracting more funds for climate mitigation and adaptation projects in recent years, but it still gets less than 1% of annual global climate financing.

Climate change discussions lacking in first televised US presidential debate.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris faced off in the first televised presidential debate ahead of the US election on the 10th September, however many have criticised the lack of focus on climate change from both candidates, despite wildfires raging in Nevada, southern California, Oregon, and Idaho at the time.

In the last question of the debate, “what would you do to fight climate change?” Trump seemed to completely ignore the question and went on to speak about auto manufacturing plants in China. Whilst this is what many would expect from Donald Trump given his poor climate action during his presidency, many were also disappointed with Harris’ response.

While Harris pointed out the existence of these worsening climate-related problems, she did not say what she plans to do about them, choosing instead to cite investments in climate change actions made by the current president. Harris has previously been a figurehead for climate action, including when she investigated oil companies as California attorney general, however she dedicated much of her time towards the end of the debate to promote fracking, rather than laying out a bold vision for a clean energy future.

New research

• Solar geoengineering could help to reverse the negative impact of extreme climate change on water availability in four key Central African river basins, a new modelling study finds. The research uses modelling to simulate how two different solar geoengineering technologies could affect water availability in the Niger Basin, Lake Chad Basin, Cameroon Atlantic Basin, and Congo Basin under various emissions scenarios. With extreme climate change predicted to reduce water availability over the basins by 60%, solar geoengineering could be vital in reducing this deficit.

• New research suggests that extreme heat killed more Americans in 2023 than any other year in over nearly a quarter century of records; at least 2,325 people died from the heat in the US last year. The study, which used records dating back to 1999, found that annual deaths mostly remained steady, including a low point in 2004, until the mid-2010s, when an upward trend began. In total, US heat-related deaths have increased 117% since 1999, with at least 21,518 people dying in that period. Co-author Dr Jeffrey Howard has also said that heat-related deaths are probably undercounted: “The way that death certificates are filled out, the people that are filling them out don’t always know the full circumstances that led to the death. So, we’re only probably scratching the surface of it…The fact that you see this trend tells me that there’s probably many more deaths that are we just are unable to measure”.

• Canadian wildfires in 2023 released more greenhouse gases than some of the largest emitting countries, according to a new study. Wildfires in 2023 released 647 mega tonnes of carbon, exceeding the emissions of 10 of the largest emitters in 2022, including Germany, Japan and Russia. Just China, India and the US had higher emissions, meaning, if the Canadian wildfires were a country, they would be the fourth biggest emitter globally. The abnormally hot temperatures experienced in 2023 are projected to be common by the 2050s, which is likely to lead to severe fires across 347m hectares of woodlands that Canada uses to store carbon.

• A new study finds that last year’s Atlantic hurricane season was “above normal” in both number of named storms and the total energy of its storms, despite the strong El Niño, which typically results in below-normal seasons. Using Earth system models, researchers evaluate how sea surface temperatures may have affected the atmospheric circulation in 2023. They find that the “record warm” temperatures in the tropical Atlantic Ocean “effectively counteracted some of the acknowledged impacts of El Niño.”

• Racial minorities are more likely to die in extreme heat in the US, a new study finds. The research uses a “new database of linked administrative and census data with precise meteorological information” to analyse how deaths from 1993-2005 were linked to episodes of extreme heat and extreme cold. The authors say: “Our analysis suggests that recent temperature increases could exacerbate racial disparities in temperature-related deaths, highlighting the need to investigate how climate change affects different population subgroups and exacerbates social inequities.”