Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
US climate credentials and consequences
CLIMATE VEEP: US vice president Kamala Harris’s selection of Tim Walz as her running mate is being heralded by climate advocates, Inside Climate News wrote. The Star Tribune summarised Walz’s environmental record, saying that the current Minnesota governor has “passed ambitious climate policy” while in office – but “also clashed with environmental advocates” on other issues, including the Line 3 oil pipeline.
RAINFALL WRECKAGE: Tropical Storm Debby has wreaked havoc across the south-eastern US, with slow wind speeds contributing to the historic rainfall levels, NPR said. The Post and Courier documented some of the storm’s impacts, including flooding and downed trees and powerlines. Meanwhile, fire- and flood-prone areas of the US are seeing a net influx of residents, the Washington Post reported.
Around the world
- CARBON CAP: China’s State Council announced a new “dual control” plan for its emissions that will put a cap on carbon for the first time, Carbon Brief’s China Briefing said. Analysis published by Carbon Brief also revealed that China’s emissions have seen their first quarterly fall since the nation’s Covid lockdowns.
- CLIMATE COLLAB: Brazilian president Lula da Silva stressed the need for regional cooperation against climate change at a meeting with Chilean president Gabriel Boric that saw the two countries sign 19 bilateral agreements, Agencia Brasil reported.
- HEAT STRESSED: The Korea Times reported that five Koreans died of heat-related causes over the weekend, bringing the year’s total to 13. Meanwhile, heatstroke claimed more than 120 lives in Tokyo during July, according to the Associated Press.
- IPCC UNCERTAINTY: Governments failed to agree upon the timeline for producing the next set of climate change assessment reports amid “deep divergences” at the meeting of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Home News reported. (See Carbon Brief’s detailed summary.)
- KEEPING THE COAL: Global commodity company Glencore walked back on its plan to split its business in two, deciding instead to retain its coal division – a “major profit engine”, the Financial Times wrote. The newspaper explained that most shareholders had opposed the proposed restructure.
- REQUESTING RELIEF: Bloomberg reported that the UN World Food Programme “is seeking 290,000 tonnes of corn from as far afield as Mexico and Ukraine” in an attempt to alleviate the effects of the El Niño-driven drought that decimated harvests across southern Africa.
$52,071,133
The amount of “lifetime campaign contributions” that the 123 climate-sceptic members of the current US Congress have together received from the fossil-fuel sector, according to a report from the Center for American Progress.
Latest climate research
- Ocean temperatures around Australia are the hottest they have been in 400 years, imperilling the Great Barrier Reef’s iconic corals, a Nature study found.
- According to research published in Earth’s Future, sea-level rise, land subsidence and other factors may cause increasingly saline groundwater in coastal areas by the end of the century.
- A study in Nature Cities concluded that urbanisation increases local drought severity, while a majority of urban areas will “consistently suffer exacerbated drought severity” by mid-century.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Many of the world’s largest emitting countries also stand atop the Olympic medal table, with the US and China securing the most medals so far, with Japan, France and South Korea all in the top 10 across both categories. In contrast, the world’s most populous country and third-highest annual emitter – India – has received four medals, while Dominica is the lowest-emitting country to win a medal at these games. (One notable omission from the chart is Russia, the world’s fourth-largest emitter of CO2. Russia is officially excluded from the Paris games following its invasion of Ukraine.)
Spotlight
What will sport look like in a warming world?
This week, Carbon Brief looks at the impact of climate change-driven warming on global sport.
Amy Steel was an Australia-based professional netball player, in peak physical condition, when she collapsed following a pre-season match on a 39C day in 2016.
At the time, she was not aware that heat could have such devastating long-term consequences. “It was sort of like, ‘All right, well, off you go and get better then,’” she said. But she “just really never got better after that day”.
Today, Steel shares her experience in order to raise awareness of the risks that heat poses to athletes and to advocate for change. She told Carbon Brief:
“As an athlete, you do feel a little bit invincible. You do feel like – you’re at your peak fitness; nothing can really touch you.”
Feeling the heat
Exertional heat illness – that which arises from intense exercise – is “not the same thing as the heat stroke that would kill your grandma sitting in her apartment without AC”, Dr Madeleine Orr, an assistant professor of sport ecology at the University of Toronto, told Carbon Brief.
Exertional heat stress occurs when the body accumulates heat during exercise and – whether due to protective gear or environmental factors – is unable to dispel it. “You can experience exertional heat illness in almost any condition,” Orr said.
However, climate change is making dangerous conditions more likely – as well as expanding the range over which they occur. By 2050, 60% of urban areas around the world will be unsuitable for holding an Olympic Games in late July and early August, according to a recent analysis published by Axios.
Dr Jessica Murfree, an assistant professor of sport administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Carbon Brief:
“These things are happening frequently. They’re severe. They’re happening to men and women, boys and girls.”
Murfree added that heat-related illness is “not going to necessarily discriminate” in terms of who it affects. But, she stressed, the reality of who is most affected by heat is influenced by myriad other factors, including socioeconomic status and historical discrimination.
Rethinking sport
According to Orr, there are four actions that can help mitigate the dangers of heat in sport: educating people on what heat illness looks like; providing safety equipment, such as shade and ice baths; creating and enforcing policies around heat; and rearranging the sporting calendar.
These changes do not occur without resistance, Orr said:
“The challenge again, always, is that sport is very traditional…The way things are is the way they should be. And that’s not necessarily an equation that works.”
Heat policies, when in place, are not always enforced. And particularly at the grassroots level, Steel said, there is “not a great amount of understanding of the policy and what [are] the actual risks”.
Steel told Carbon Brief she worries about the future of grassroots sport and the “ability to rock up on a weekend and know that there’s going to be sport”. Whereas professional leagues can afford to build high-tech facilities to protect their athletes, most communities do not have that luxury.
At the same time, Murfree said, those organisations have the advantage of being “ingrained in their immediate community” and, thus, being able to advocate most directly for the solutions that will work for them. That gives her hope, she told Carbon Brief:
“No one knows the realities of climate change in a community more than the people who are in it every single day.”
Watch, read, listen
ISLAND IN THE SUN: Channel News Asia documented Kiribati’s efforts to fortify its land – and its geopolitical alliances – to keep the island nation from being swallowed by the sea.
HIDDEN HISTORY: A historian of science has uncovered documents revealing that US politicians have known the dangers of climate change since at least the 1960s, Grist reported.
DEADLY HOT: The Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast looked at the dangers of extreme heat – and how society can mitigate them.
Coming up
- 12-16 August: Meeting of the working group on benefit-sharing from digital sequence information, Montreal
- 14 August: Kiribati parliamentary election
- 26-30 August: Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, Tonga
Pick of the jobs
- EarthRights International, Mekong campaign director | Salary: ฿110,000-160,000 per month. Location: Chiang Mai, Thailand
- University of Helsinki, doctoral researcher in biodiversity change science | Salary: €2,400-2,600 per month. Location: Helsinki
- Alliance Bioversity & CIAT, system agronomist | Salary: unknown. Location: Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Carbon Brief, section editor (science) | Salary: £47,000. Location: UK/hybrid
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 9 August 2024: China’s first quarterly emissions fall since Covid; Harris chooses ‘climate vice president’; Athletes feel the heat appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Climate Change
Scientists Outplant Experimental ‘Flonduran’ Corals in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park
Researchers are testing whether cross-breeding elkhorn corals from Florida and Honduras can help restore lost genetic diversity and improve the threatened species’ ability to withstand warmer waters.
Nearly three dozen young lab-grown elkhorn corals were outplanted onto reefs in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park this spring, including a group of “Flondurans,” marking the first time this experimental cross-breed of Florida and Honduran elkhorn corals was introduced to the remote park about 70 miles from Key West.
Scientists Outplant Experimental ‘Flonduran’ Corals in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park
Climate Change
DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
UK, Europe and India battle heatwaves
‘MIND-BOGGLING’ MAY: The UK and continental Europe have set “mind-boggingly crazy” temperature records for May amid a deadly heatwave, reported the Financial Times. According to the Associated Press, the UK “smashed a century-old temperature record for the second time in 24 hours on Tuesday”. The newswire added that records “also fell in France, where temperatures reached 36C on Monday in the country’s south-west”. On Wednesday, Portugal hit a record May temperature of 40.3C, said BBC News.
‘BRUTAL REMINDER’: In parts of Italy, the heatwave triggered blackouts, reported Reuters. The heatwave has also been linked to more than a dozen deaths in the UK and France, including from people drowning and suffering heat-related deaths while competing in sporting events, said ABC News. Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, said the intense heatwaves were a “brutal reminder” of the cost of global warming, reported Politico. Carbon Brief has in-depth coverage of the record-shattering heatwave.
INDIA’S DEADLY HEAT: In the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, more than 100 people died within three days following an intense heatwave, reported the Khaleej Times. The publication noted that authorities urged people to stay indoors and avoid direct exposure to the heat. Meanwhile, some parts of India are “grappling with power cuts as record-breaking heat has pushed electricity demand to an all-time high”, reported Reuters.
Around the world
- CRUDE DIPS: The International Energy Agency (IEA) said global investments in oil projects will fall below $500bn in 2026, continuing a three-year decline, reported Bloomberg. Carbon Brief’s analysis of the data shows the US’s “data-centre boom” means it is now investing more in fossil-fuel power than China.
- DODGING NET-ZERO: The world’s biggest miner, Australian giant BHP, has backtracked on climate action by halting or delaying projects to cut “vast” amounts of emissions, according to a Guardian investigation.
- SOLAR SLIP: China’s new solar installations dropped for a fourth straight month, reflecting weakening domestic demand, said Bloomberg.
- NO LOGGING: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell last year to its lowest level since 2019, according to a new report, said Agence France-Presse.
- EXECUTIVE ACTION: Puerto Rico’s governor announced a state of emergency to fight a surge in coastal erosion, citing the need to protect natural resources and vulnerable communities, reported the Associated Press.
Four million
The number of homes in the UK with air conditioning, double the figure from three years ago, reported the Guardian. There are 29m households in the UK.
Latest climate research
- Carbon Brief will soon be launching a new fortnightly newsletter focused on climate research. Sign up for free today.
- LGBTQ+ households in the US are “significantly more likely” to face energy poverty and insecurity than the general population | Energy Research & Social Science
- Global rice-paddy greenhouse gas emissions have doubled over the past six decades | Nature Food
- Vegetation greening and human-caused warming are the “main drivers” of a surge in flash floods over the last decade | Science Advances
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
A Carbon Brief investigation has shed light on the impact of weather-related flooding on National Health Service (NHS) facilities across the UK. At least 67 NHS hospital wards, departments and other sites have been forced to temporarily close or relocate due to weather-related flooding. The chart above shows sites of weather-related flooding incidents at NHS facilities. The size of the circles indicates the number of incidents reported at each site.
Spotlight
How solar mini-grids can ‘help boost’ Nigeria’s economy
This week, Carbon Brief covers a new report on Nigeria’s solar mini-grid industry.
Amid the impact of the US-Iran war on the Nigerian economy, a new report has argued that solar-mini grids can help to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and create more than 200,000 jobs.
In Nigeria, Africa’s third-largest economy, the war has led to an increase in energy prices and a decrease in petrol consumption. Petrol is one of the country’s main sources of transport and household fuel. According to one estimate, prices have surged by up to 40% since the conflict commenced in February.
Although the Nigerian treasury has benefited from rising crude oil prices – the country is a major exporter of oil and gas – the impact has been most visible on the wider population.
Rising energy prices “have affected the purchasing power of workers”, Agnes Funmi Sessi, a labour union leader in Lagos, told Carbon Brief.
However, scaling the deployment of solar “mini-grids” could help the country move away from fossil fuels, stimulate rural economies and improve livelihoods, according to the new report authored by the thinktank, the Africa Policy Research Institute.
“We estimate that, by deploying over 10,000 mini-grids, the sector could create 212,688 direct full-time informal and productive-use jobs across the off-grid and under-grid market segments,” the report said.
A nascent industry
Solar “mini-grids” are small-scale, localised electricity generation and distribution systems powered by solar panels.
The report positioned Nigeria’s mini-grid sector as one of the fastest-growing in Africa, with the country having just 11 mini-grids in 2015 and 155 by 2024, along with at least 42 active developers.
Many of the companies within the sector are young and apply novel local techniques in their deployment of solar technology, the report said.
However, access to finance remains a huge barrier. According to the report, the sector may require up to $8bn to connect 35.4 million people to mini-grids.
“Most Nigerians want solar power in their homes, but it is a capital intensive business for vendors and customers,” Dr Ben Iheagwara, a renewable energy entrepreneur and policy analyst, told Carbon Brief.
The report urged the Nigerian government and its international partners to “attract private capital by de-risking investments and ensuring regulatory clarity and long-term planning”.
Other key recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders include investment in skills development and paying attention to the gender gap.
Powering rural communities
Many rural communities, which make up about 37% of the country, are disconnected from the national grid system, so often have to generate their own electricity through mini-grid systems.
According to Nigeria’s electricity regulator, NERC, a mini-grid is defined as a power generating system with an installed capacity of up to 10 megawatts.
A mini-grid can be powered by fossil fuels such as diesel or petrol, but solar power is now considered a cheaper and cleaner source.
With more than 80 million people lacking access to electricity in Nigeria, solar mini-grids are increasingly viewed as the lowest-cost electrification solution, the report said.
Watch, read, listen
MOVING FORWARD: The Energy Transition Show dug into electricity reform in South Africa, discussing the country’s coal legacy and the role of renewables.
ENERGY POVERTY: In an opinion article for Project Syndicate, executive director of the African Climate Foundation, Saliem Fakir, argued that the energy transition in emerging and developing economies is driven by economics and security rather than emissions targets.
VANISHING CITY: BBC News reported on a coastal community in Nigeria where the ocean has “already swallowed more than half of the town”.
Coming up
- 31 May: Colombia presidential elections
- 31 May-5 June: Global Environment Facility council meeting, Samarkand, Uzbekistan
- 2-5 June: The Venice Agreement for Peatlands workshop, Kisumu, Kenya
Pick of the jobs
- National Oceanography Centre, engagement assistant (external communications) | Salary: £28,254. Location: Southampton, UK
- Dangote Industries, decarbonisation specialist | Salary: Unknown. Location: Lagos, Nigeria
- City of New York, chief decarbonization officer | Salary: $261,469. Location: New York City
- Climate Central, writer and associate editor | Salary: $72,000-$75,000. Location: US (Remote)
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids appeared first on Carbon Brief.
At the African Development Bank (AfDB) annual meetings this week, several African leaders called for investments in electricity infrastructure which go beyond lighting homes to powering economies.
Applauding the AfDB for its energy programmes like Mission 300 – which aims to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030 – the Central African Republic’s President Faustin-Archange Touadera said that without power supply “we will not be able to achieve development”.
Speaking alongside him, the Republic of Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso echoed this, saying that “as we need to help our people to turn towards agriculture, to turn towards livestock rearing, we also need to provide power to them.”
As the Mission 300 initiative advances, attention is increasingly shifting from simply connecting households to ensuring that electricity access translates into economic opportunities and livelihoods. That shift is driving the launch of a new Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy being developed under Mission 300 by the philanthropically funded Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP).
-
Kenya seeks regional coordination to build African mineral value chains
Kenyan President William Ruto is the latest African leader to announce an end to raw mineral exports as governments want to add more value to their resources -
Africa needs more than export bans to cash in on critical minerals, experts say
Restricting raw materials exports is well-intentioned but without other policies to foster domestic processing, they can backfire -
Africa records fastest-ever solar growth, as installations jump in 2025
Africa’s solar power installations have increased sharply, driven by utility-scale projects and privately financed rooftop and commercial systems
In an interview with Climate Home News, Carol Koech, GEAPP’s vice president for Africa, said the initiative is designed to ensure that electrification supports income generation, agriculture and local economic development rather than only basic household access.
Q: What is the Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy aiming to achieve with Mission 300?
A: Mission 300 is increasingly being seen as a job platform and so the role of the Centre of Excellence in translating those electricity connections to jobs. So we want the centre to do four things. First, as a delivery engine, which enables countries to embed a cross-institutional advisor that supports the electrification components, but also other components that are happening in the country.
Second, we want the centre to be an innovation and strategy hub. Today, there’s really no place where you can go to find the state of the industry for productive use of energy across the globe, and we want to make the centre of excellence the place where you can go and get information about what technologies are available, where deployment is happening and how much is being deployed.
(Photo: Lighting Global/SunCulture/World Bank)
The third pillar is to coordinate and mobilise capital. We anticipate the centre coordinating internally within the ecosystem but also mobilising additional financing to help productivity. The last piece is how to scale businesses, enterprises and partnerships around this centre because we anticipate that as we grow this space, new industries will emerge and those industries will need to be supported.
Q: Why is productive use of energy becoming important under Mission 300?
A: Mission 300 gave us a bigger platform to demonstrate that energy is truly an enabler for economic development. It’s not sufficient to just provide a connection, but it is required that that connection truly translates to economic development for the communities that benefit.
We shouldn’t bring electricity and then start thinking about what people can do with it. We need to think about both at the same time and ensure electricity arrives together with the things that will make a difference in people’s lives. Historically, we’ve brought electricity and imagined a miracle would happen, but we know that hasn’t been the case.
The question is how to ensure universal access in the cheapest way while still transforming communities. Some mini-grids have been deployed in places where demand is extremely low, making them too expensive to sustain. But when mini-grids are paired with productive uses, the economics start to change. If businesses currently running on fossil fuel generators move to solar or renewable energy, operating costs fall and the business case for mini-grids becomes much stronger.
Q: How could this work in practice for agriculture and rural communities?
A: I’ll give you a practical example in our pilot country Zambia. Zambia has two programmes, they have the ASCENT programme for energy access and they also have the Zambia agribusiness and trade platform (ZATP). Some of the components of the ZATP programme – which is an agri-business program to help farmers to be productive – have a productive use component but don’t have an energy supply component. So we’re offering things like mills, processing facilities, irrigation and others. In some parts of Zambia, these productive use equipment has been supplied but has not been powered, so communities are not benefiting from that.
So the whole point is if we coordinate where the agribusiness programme is deployed together with where the energy access programme is deployed and layer those two programmes together in one place, then you could solve the energy access problem and solve productive use together and therefore have really meaningful outcomes for communities.
Q: How will the centre help both households and small businesses use electricity productively?
A: The question on whether we should electrify households or businesses is neither here nor there. We need to electrify all. The argument is really once we electrify businesses, the owners of those businesses will be able to pay what they need for their households as well as increase production for their businesses.
Electricity consumption is usually an indicator of economic development and by pushing productive use into households, especially where households are also smallholder farmers, the question becomes: how can electricity access translate to additional economic development for them? If you are connected onto a mini-grid, then you can actually use that connection to run irrigation, put in a dryer, or a cold storage system, whatever you require to improve your income but the fact that you have energy means that you can access productive use. Now, we need to ask ourselves how do these farmers or these households then get access to these appliances, because that’s another barrier.
Q&A: Will subsidy cuts for Chinese clean-tech exports hurt Africa’s solar boom?
The cost of these appliances is usually extremely high, and when you have programmes such as the ZATP running in Zambia, that’s already a public funding approach to making these appliances available and potentially reachable for farmers, either at household level, at farm level or at community level.
Q: How does this complement the already existing Mission 300 national energy compacts designed by countries?
A: Each of the national energy compacts have a productive use component, a pillar that talks about distributed renewable energy, productive use, and clean cooking. This is actually complementing the work of the countries, and this centre is like an available support, back office for countries to tap into as they implement their national energy compacts, if they have specific requirements and support for that pillar three.
So the advisers that will be embedded into countries, their role is to coordinate within country programs that are running where energy could make a difference. The advisers will be sourced from the country and so they will make sure that the donor money is coordinated to benefit the country fully. Their role will include going to ministries of agriculture or any related ministries and understanding where they are prioritising programmes that require electrification. In many cases, programmes and money have already been allocated, but this component is about how do we deploy it in a way that it actually truly brings a difference, so those advisers will do that.
Q: How will the centre address financing and private sector investment challenges?
A: What we’re really looking at is different financing mechanisms. In the past, we have provided subsidies and results-based financing to suppliers, distributors and manufacturers to help create markets for productive-use appliances. I see this as one mechanism the centre could use, but the bigger opportunity is aligning public funding across different programmes so that more of it can support productive uses, either through direct funding or subsidies.
Nigerians bet on solar as global oil shock hits wallets and power supplies
When it comes to private sector investment, the reality is that Africa’s energy sector still faces serious constraints. Most private investment has gone into power generation, particularly through independent power producers, and even then that has only been possible in places where the off-takers, usually utilities, are bankable.
To unlock more private capital, countries need the right policies, reforms and regulations, but even more importantly, utilities must become financially viable. If the off-taker is not bankable, then the project is not bankable.
Another major question is how to attract private investment into transmission infrastructure. There are different models being explored, but the reality is that public funding alone is not sufficient to achieve Mission 300, so finding new ways to mobilise private capital will be critical.
The post Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs?
Scientists Outplant Experimental ‘Flonduran’ Corals in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park
Biggest Threat to Human Civilization
DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids
-
Climate Change10 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases10 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Renewable Energy7 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Greenhouse Gases11 months ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测