Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
This week
Loss-and-damage fund agreement
LOSS AND DAMAGE: Global climate negotiators have agreed a draft framework for the loss-and-damage fund, Bloomberg reported, but the breakthrough was “marred by sparring over exactly how the programme would be funded”. Delegates agreed at a meeting in Abu Dhabi that the World Bank will host the fund on an interim basis for four years, along with the basic guideposts for funding.
COMPROMISE: The Times of India noted that the framework includes a compromise that the “fund will be based on ‘voluntary’ instead of ‘mandatory’ contribution from the rich nations as part of their historical responsibility”. However, the US objected to the wording within the final text, with the state department noting it does not reflect consensus concerning, the Financial Times reported. Carbon Brief covered the final draft in a detailed Q&A, including the questions around consensus.
‘FRAGILE AGREEMENT’: The “fragile agreement” came after hours of “acrimonious haggling”, Politico stated. It quoted Lien Vandamme, senior campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law, who said: “That the US finally could not even agree with the massively watered down text after cornering developing countries into accepting it, is a testimony to its lack of good faith effort to actually deliver an effective fund.”
Petrostates plan carbon budget-busting projects
CARBON BUDGETS: According to a new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report, fossil fuel-producing nations are planning expansions of coal, oil and gas that would “blow the planet’s carbon budget twice over”, reported the Guardian. Existing plans would lead to 460% more coal production, 83% more gas and 29% more oil in 2030 than it is possible to burn if global temperature rises are to be kept at 1.5C.
NET-ZERO PLEDGES: The report analysed more than 20 major fossil fuel producers, finding they plan to produce around 110% more fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with 1.5C, and 69% more than would be consistent with 2C, reported Reuters. Of these, 17 of the countries have pledged to reach net-zero.
‘INSANITY’: Experts called the plans “insanity” that will “throw humanity’s future into question”, the Guardian article noted. It quoted Inger Andersen, the executive director of UNEP, who said “the addiction to fossil fuels still has its claws deep in many nations”.
Around the world
- CHINESE METHANE: China has unveiled a “long-awaited” plan to tackle methane emissions, as it reached the end of a four-day meeting with the US, Reuters reported. However, the plan includes no firm targets for cutting those emissions, “only goals for re-using them as fuel”, the article noted.
- KING’S SPEECH: The UK government has used the king’s speech before the next election to set out plans that would mandate the North Sea Transition Authority to run annual oil-and-gas licensing rounds, BusinessGreen reported.
- DEFORESTATION DROPS: Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research has announced that deforestation has fallen to a five-year low within the nation’s Amazon rainforest, reports the New York Times. This is a “sign” that Brazil is making progress on its pledge to halt all deforestation by the end of the decade, it noted.
- CANADIAN EMISSIONS: Canada is set to miss its 2030 target to reduce emissions by at least 40% below 2005 levels, according to a new government audit, the Globe and Mail reported. The country has never met an emissions-reduction goal despite devising more than 10 separate plans to do so since 1990, it said.
- WARMEST ON RECORD: It is “virtually certain” that 2023 will be the warmest year on record, after global average air temperatures last month were 0.4C warmer than the previous October high in 2019, BBC News reported. This is according to new data released by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, which confirms what Carbon Brief first revealed last month.
85%
Wind and solar generated enough electricity in 2022 to power about 85% of all households in the EU, according to the International Energy Agency.
Latest climate research
- A new meta-analysis of 400 studies published in Nature Ecology & Evolution found native species are more vulnerable to extreme weather events than non-native species.
- “Artisanal” gold mining in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has a “major environmental impact”, according to new research published in Nature Sustainability that looked at energy consumption and the release of mercury.
- Reducing carbon emissions so atmospheric levels of CO2 remain constant – rather than reaching net-zero, where atmospheric CO2 would fall – could see major tipping points crossed in the Earth system, research published in Earth’s Future has warned.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Ahead of the king’s speech, the UK government announced that the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) is to invite applications for new production licences on an annual basis, to “support the UK’s transition to net-zero in a pragmatic, proportionate and realistic way”. Analysis of NSTA figures by Carbon Brief’s Dr Simon Evans found that the UK’s North Sea gas production is set to drop 97% by 2050 and, even with new licensing rounds, this will still fall by 95%.
Spotlight
Q&A: Did a 1910 kidnap change the history of solar energy?
This week, Carbon Brief takes a look at Dr Sugandha Srivastav’s thought experiment, which asks how far solar energy could have come had it not been for the kidnapping of George Cove.
Who was George Cove?
Cove was a Canadian inventor, who moved to the US in the early 1900s and filed numerous patents, including for a technology that harnessed solar power around which he created his company Sun Electric.
He had purportedly created a new semiconductor and a battery energy storage solution, which were gaining significant attention.
However, in October 1909, Cove was kidnapped by two men. According to the New York Herald at the time, the kidnappers asked Cove to give up the rights to his solar patent and close down his business.
There have been various theories around who the kidnappers were, including questions as to whether companies with vested interests – such as Standard Oil or Edison Electric – played a part.
A smear campaign was launched against Cove, with claims that – despite its patent – the solar technology did not work, or simply drew electricity from the grid.
His kidnap and the repeated attack on Sun Electric meant Cove’s technology was not able to develop – and Sun Electric failed.
Dr Sugandha Srivastav, British Academy postdoctoral fellow and lecturer in Environmental Economics at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment in Oxford, who has been researching Cove, told Carbon Brief:
“I really think that we would have had a very interesting tranche of early solar innovation, but instead what we had was entrepreneurs and investors getting spooked because here’s a man who was kidnapped on the grounds of his solar innovation.”
How might solar have developed in the 20th century?
Following Cove’s kidnapping, it was more than 40 years until the invention of the silicon solar cell.
Dr Srivastav conducted an experiment to explore the impact of Cove’s kidnapping, using Wright’s Law, to model what solar development could have looked like had it been developed in 1910.
She used data on cost and cumulative installed capacity – which found that for every doubling of solar PV capacity there is a 20% decline in cost – to “hindcast” costs within two scenarios: one that assumed Cove’s solar had a capacity of 1,000 kilowatt hours (kWh); and one that assumed 5,000kWh.
The analysis assumes solar PV growth is slow to begin with during the experimental phase, then picks up pace, before tapering as the market saturates.
When could solar PV have become cheaper than coal?
While there are limitations and uncertainties inherent in any hindcasting exercise, this experiment provides a view of what the development of solar PV could have looked like in the 20th century.
Depending on the scenario, solar PV would have become cheaper than coal in 2007 or even 2002. In reality, solar PV only became cheaper than coal in 2016, according to Our World in Data.
In the Cove counterfactual, the 2016 cost of electricity from solar PV is US$24-40 per megawatt hours, which is between two and four times cheaper than the actual costs that year.
Following the recent publication of Srivastav’s report on Cove’s kidnapping, she said:
“An earlier transition to renewables would have spared the world huge amounts of carbon emissions, and far fewer deaths from air pollution and other climate related disasters. We cannot say for certain how solar PV’s trajectory would have panned out if George Cove was not kidnapped. But we can say with greater clarity that in 1909 a vision of a solar-powered world was lost, and it is only being revived now, over 100 years later.”
Watch, read, listen
MONSTERS OF THE ROAD: SUVs “have higher emissions, hog roadspace and are more dangerous for other road users, yet are more popular than ever”, said an article in the Guardian, which explores what can be done in the UK about the surge in SUVs.
CHINA’S CARBON PRICING: Chen Ji, executive director at the China International Capital Corporation Global Institute, and Yan Qin, lead carbon analyst at Refinitiv, discuss the topics of finance and carbon- pricing on the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies’ China Programme podcast.
MOMENT OF TRUTH: The Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations runs through what to expect from the upcoming COP28 summit, looking at the global stocktake, energy transition, global goal on Adaptation and more.
Coming up
- 15 November: Lancet Countdown Report release
- 14-16 November: APEC CEO Summit, San Francisco, California
- 13-17 November: Asia-Pacific Climate Week 2023, Jahor, Malaysia
Pick of the jobs
- Carbon Brief, multimedia producer | Salary: £30,000 a year, dependent on experience. Location: A UK/Europe time zone
- IPCC, head of science for the IPCC working group III technical support unit | Salary: Unknown. Location: Preference given to those in US eastern time zone and/or Washington DC area
- Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, factchecking programme lead | Salary: £45,000 – £55,000. Location: Hybrid, but must be able to travel into London
- Grist, climate fellowships (four positions available) | Salary: $55,000. Location: Any state, US
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org
The post DeBriefed 10 November: Loss-and-damage fund; UNEP warns of petrostate plans; Solar’s forgotten kidnapping appeared first on Carbon Brief.
But a $345 million U.S. verdict against the environmental group hangs over the case.
A lawsuit filed by Greenpeace International against the U.S.-based fossil fuel company Energy Transfer in the Netherlands is moving forward after a Dutch court recently ruled in favor of the environmental organization in rejecting the company’s bid to toss out the case.
Greenpeace’s Dutch Anti-SLAPP Case Against Oil Pipeline Giant Advances
Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and oceans correspondent Teresa Tomassoni as they discuss the search for heat-resilient coral reefs that are somehow defying the odds to survive a warming planet.
The world has already lost more than half of its coral reefs, and most of what remains is at risk of disappearing in the next 25 years.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 19 June 2026: Bonn talks end in ‘gridlock’ | Energy’s ‘new era’ | Oceans in climate negotiations
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Bonn talks close
‘SIDE-STEPPING AND STALLING’: UN climate talks in Bonn have ended in “gridlock”, according to Climate Home News. The outlet reported on the failure to balance developing countries’ need for climate-adaptation finance with “richer nations’ desire to move forward” on emissions cuts. It added that both topics were subject to “rule 16”, meaning no agreement could be reached and work will be pushed to the COP31 summit in Turkey. Inside Climate News quoted UN climate executive secretary Simon Stiell, who said the talks had seen “side-stepping and stalling”.
JUST TRANSITION: One “glimmer of hope” came from negotiations on achieving a “just transition”, reported Euronews. The news outlet said negotiators “made headway on operationalising the Belém-Antalya mechanism”, intended to support people in the shift to a low-carbon economy. However, Politico concluded that much of the focus in Bonn had “shift[ed] to efforts outside diplomatic talks – raising questions about the future of global climate negotiations”.
‘ATTACKING SCIENCE’: Agence France-Presse reported on the EU, Switzerland and “dozens of developing nations” warning of “attacks on science” by a “small group of fossil-fuels interests” in Bonn. Table Briefings explained that “the 1.5C target is increasingly being challenged” and the role of the UN climate-science panel – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – in an upcoming assessment of global climate progress “remains controversial”. See Carbon Brief’s full write-up of the talks for more detail.
US-Iran deal
PRICE DROP: The US and Iran announced that they have reached an interim agreement to halt the war and reopen the strait of Hormuz, reported Bloomberg. Oil prices have fallen, as the “long-awaited deal” began the process of “eas[ing]” the global energy crisis triggered by the conflict, according to the New York Times. The Associated Press noted that high fuel prices will “likely outlast the Iran war”.
‘OIL GLUT’: The Financial Times reported that the International Energy Agency (IEA) has forecast a “glut of oil” emerging next year, if the peace deal holds. The IEA said this would allow countries to build new strategic reserves, as they “review their energy strategies and policies in response to the crisis”, according to Reuters.
‘NEW ERA’: Agence France-Presse reported that oil and gas companies have “few illusions about a return to normal for the Gulf energy industry after more than three months of blockage”. One analyst told the newswire that the war “showed the oil and gas industry that Hormuz risk is no longer just a geopolitical headline”.
Around the world
- OCEAN MONITOR: The Trump administration is “abandoning its plan” to dismantle a $368m ocean monitoring system key for tracking climate change after a “bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill”, reported the New York Times.
- CORAL HAVEN: The New York Times covered preliminary research, presented at the Our Ocean Conference in Kenya, suggesting there could be three times as many “coral refugia” – where corals are relatively safe from climate change – than previously thought.
- BAD CREDIT: Down to Earth reported that the first carbon credits issued under the Paris Agreement’s new Article 6.4 mechanism are “facing scrutiny over alleged links to institutions controlled by Myanmar’s military junta”.
- OIL BACKTRACK: Reuters reported that oil-and-gas company Equinor has dropped a renewable-energy target and scaled back clean investments, while another Reuters story noted that Shell is selling off its offshore wind assets.
1.1 billion
The number of children facing “at least three overlapping climate hazards”, according to a new Unicef report covered by Agence France-Presse.
Latest climate research
- Including the “permafrost carbon-climate feedback” in climate models increases the chance of exceeding “tipping elements” – such as the Greenland ice sheets, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or Amazon rainforest – by up to 50% | Environmental Research Letters
- The intensity of influenza outbreaks could decline in temperate regions, but increase in tropical areas over the next century, as the climate warms | PNAS Nexus
- European snow cover has declined by 20% for December and January since the start of the industrial era, revealing an “unprecedented ongoing shrinkage of European winters” | Communications Earth & Environment
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The more than 2m battery electric vehicles (BEVs), 1m “plug-in” hybrids (PHEVs) and 100,000 electric vans on UK roads are already saving drivers a total of around £3bn a year, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. This amounts to savings of more than £1,100 a year in fuel costs for each BEV driver in the UK. The analysis comes amid reports in UK media this week that the government is considering “watering down” its EV sales targets.
Spotlight
Oceans rising at UN climate talks
The state of the world’s oceans is inextricably linked to the changing climate – and many delegates at UN climate talks want to see more focus on this issue, reports Carbon Brief.
Oceans are often described as the world’s “greatest ally” against climate change – absorbing 30% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and most of the heat generated by those emissions.
They are also the site of important climate solutions, such as huge offshore windfarms and the shipping industry’s transition to cleaner fuels.
At the same time, the oceans themselves present a growing danger to coastal communities and sea life due to sea level rise, marine heatwaves and ocean acidification.
These diverse issues have led to growing calls within the UN climate process for more focus on oceans. During climate negotiations this week in Bonn – known as SB64 – nations and civil society had a chance to air these views during an “ocean and climate change dialogue”.
‘Elevate action’
Oceans first entered UN climate outcomes in 2019, when the final COP25 negotiated text requested a new “dialogue” on “the ocean and climate change to consider how to strengthen mitigation and adaptation action”.
The following years saw this dialogue established as an annual event. However, the political weight of these discussions has been limited.
COP31 is being co-led by Turkey and Australia, but with Pacific islands playing a supporting role. These small islands sometimes self-identify as “large ocean states”, stressing the ocean’s centrality in their societies.
In Bonn, figures from across the presidency threw their weight behind this issue. Chris Bowen, an Australian minister and incoming COP31 “president of negotiations”, told attendees:
“Australia, Turkey and the Pacific see an important opportunity to elevate ocean-based climate action.”
Strategies and finance
The two-day dialogue in Bonn involved a series of panels, statements and breakout groups.
One of the main topics was how oceans are integrated into national climate plans under the Paris Agreement, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs).
Three-quarters of the latest round of NDCs mention oceans, with conservation of “blue carbon” ecosystems the most frequently described action. (Landscapes such as mangroves can both absorb CO2 and protect coastal areas.)
Delegates also discussed alignment with the UN biodiversity process, as well as ocean finance, which currently makes up less than 1% of all climate finance.
(As discussions were taking place in Bonn, country officials also gathered in Mombasa, Kenya for the 11th Our Ocean Conference. Carbon Brief’s associate editor Giuliana Viglione attended the conference and will publish a full summary shortly.)
Developing countries were clear that many of the ocean-related actions in their NDCs would depend on receiving more financial support.
‘Political momentum’
With the backing of the COP31 presidency, delegates were hopeful about where this year’s dialogue could lead.
Charles Hamilton, an advisor for the Bahamas who spoke for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) in the dialogue, told Carbon Brief that island representatives “are not traveling thousands of miles to just talk and pat ourselves on the back”. He added:
“A dialogue that just remains a dialogue is just more talk – no action.”
Given that, he said “discussions in the dialogue must move into COP decisions and the decisions must be actioned”, noting the importance of finance.
Marina Corrêa, oceans lead at WWF-Brazil, pointed to an upcoming UN climate change Standing Committee on Finance forum as a space to ramp up pressure on ocean finance.
More broadly, she wanted to see the presidencies translate their support into a “leader-level ocean initiative” that could “mainstream” oceans across negotiations.
“We have a really interesting opportunity, in terms of political momentum,” Corrêa told Carbon Brief.
Watch, read, listen
‘HOTTER THAN HELL’: An episode of the BBC’s Rare Earth podcast titled “hotter than hell” considered the issue of extreme heat, with input from experts and “people facing up to the hottest temperatures on the planet”.
NOT BROKEN?: John Drake, a professor of ecology at the University of Georgia, wrote an essay for Aeon – also re-published as a Guardian “long read” – questioning the framing of ecosystems and climate systems “breaking down”.
ON COURSE: On his Volts podcast, US climate journalist David Roberts interviewed UK climate minister Katie White, quizzing her about whether the UK will “stay the course with its climate plans”.
Coming up
- 20-28 June: London climate action week
- 21 June: Colombia presidential runoff
- 24 June: UK Climate Change Committee progress in reducing emissions 2026 report to parliament
Pick of the jobs
- Mongabay, managing editor – Africa | Salary: Unknown. Location: Global
- Contexte, environment reporter – Brussels | Salary: €45,000-€60,000. Location: Brussels
- Climate 200, communications director | Salary: Unknown. Location: Australia
- Energy Tracker Asia, energy transition correspondent | Salary: $3,000-$4,000 per month. Location: South-east Asia (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 19 June 2026: Bonn talks end in ‘gridlock’ | Energy’s ‘new era’ | Oceans in climate negotiations appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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