Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Trump leaves Paris pact
US EXIT: Donald Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement on his first day in office, the New York Times reported. By exiting, the world’s biggest historic emitter will join Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only countries not committed to the global deal to keep global warming well-below 2C by the end of the century. The decision will take one year to take effect, the newspaper added.
‘FATAL SIGNAL’: European leaders speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week condemned Trump’s decision, Bloomberg said. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said the Paris Agreement was “the best hope for all humanity”, while Germany’s economy minister described Trump’s exit as a “fatal signal to the world”, according to the publication. The Times reported that UK prime minister Keir Starmer refused to condemn Trump’s withdrawal from the pact.
CHINA ‘CONCERN’: The Associated Press reported that China expressed concern over Trump’s move, with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun saying: “Climate change is a common challenge facing mankind. No country can be outside of it. No country can be immune to it.” At a press conference, however, he said China’s “resolve” to act was “unchanged”. African Business reported that the chair of the African climate negotiating bloc said the group was “deeply disappointed” by the decision.
US climate regime shift
WIND WOES: Amid shattering the record for the number of executive orders signed in one day, Trump also signed a bill temporarily halting offshore wind lease sales in federal waters and pausing the issuance of approvals, permits and loans for both onshore and offshore wind projects, the Associated Press reported. The Washington Post examined how the move could “significantly curtail” wind power growth over the next four years.
OIL AND GAS ‘UNLEASHED’: Trump became the first president to announce an “energy emergency”, as part of “a barrage of pro-fossil fuel actions to unleash already booming US energy production”, the Guardian reported. This included lifting the moratorium on new US licenses to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) put in place by Joe Biden, Bloomberg reported. The Financial Times reported that Trump could be thwarted by Wall Street’s “reluctance to approve another drilling binge” due to “investor pressure…[and] economic realities”.
EVS AXED: Reuters reported that Trump also signed an order to revoke a 2021 bill signed by Joe Biden, which sought to ensure half of all new vehicles sold in the US were electric by 2030. A Lex opinion article in the Financial Times said the move could be enough to have a “chilling effect on the market”. An FT editorial contrasted Trump’s approach with China’s push for EVs, calling it a “bet on the energy status quo, not on the future”.
Around the world
- COP30 HEAD: Brazil appointed André Aranha Corrêa do Lago – an “experienced climate negotiator” and the country’s secretary for climate, energy and environment – as incoming president of the COP30 climate talks, the Guardian reported.
- HEATHROW SPAT: The UK Labour Party is “split” over a plan from chancellor Rachel Reeves to approve a third runway at Heathrow airport, with energy secretary Ed Miliband and the mayors of London and Manchester strongly opposed to the move, according to the Independent.
- INDONESIA FLOODS: At least 21 people have been killed and 300 more displaced in flash floods and landslides in Indonesia’s Java province, the Associated Press reported.
- NIGERIA OIL PROTESTS: More than 20 environmental groups and local communities are protesting the planned return of oil drilling to Ogoniland, Nigeria – an area already deeply affected by pollution from oil spills, Reuters said.
- LA ABLAZE: Multiple new fires have erupted amid continuing dry conditions in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times reported. It added that rain is now forecast for the weekend.
One-third
The proportion of Arctic tundra and ecosystems that has become a source of emissions, rather than a carbon sink, according to research covered by the Guardian.
Latest climate research
- Anti-climate change groups are more likely to develop in countries with strong environmental plans, according to an analysis drawing on 30 years of data published in PLOS One.
- A study in Limnology and Oceanography Letters recorded how corals in one area of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef fared after facing their most widespread bleaching event on record in 2024.
- Arctic “ice roads” – temporary roads formed from the build up of snow that act as lifelines for isolated communities – have reduced because of climate change and are likely to decline further this century, according to research in Communications Earth and 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 EU generated more electricity from solar than coal for the first time ever in 2024, according to analysis by the thinktank Ember covered by Carbon Brief. Solar power output in the EU more than tripled between 2014 and 2024, while coal has plummeted by 61%. The analysis also found that wind and solar growth over the past decade has pushed EU fossil-fuel generation in 2024 to its lowest level in 40 years, despite a long-term decline of nuclear power.
Spotlight
Tracing climate fingerprints on tropical storms
This week, Carbon Brief explores a new tool that could be used to calculate the economic damages from tropical storms that can be attributed to climate change.
Tropical storms – known as hurricanes, typhoons or cyclones depending on what part of the ocean they form in – are typically the most costly of all extreme weather events.
Amid a growing field aimed at understanding the influence of climate change on extreme weather, they have also emerged as one of the most difficult events for scientists to study.
There are several reasons for this. One is that tropical storms are rare in comparison to other types of extreme weather events, meaning scientists have less data to draw on to try to work out how they may have changed because of fossil-fuelled warming.
Another is that one of the main tools that scientists use to study climate change – climate models – are often not of high enough resolution to recreate the relatively small-scale structure of a storm. Global models can typically simulate Earth down to around a 100 kilometre (km) by 100km scale, whereas the eye of a storm tends to be just 30-40km wide.
To try to address these issues, researchers at Imperial College London have come up with a new tool for examining the influence of climate change on tropical storms.
Rapid attribution
The “Imperial College storm model” (IRIS) is a statistical technique that can be used to calculate how the potential intensity of any given tropical storm globally could have been affected by climate change.
IRIS has been used to create a database of millions of virtual tropical storms. The computing power for this is supported by a citizen science project, where people can download an app to donate the processing power of their smartphones.
Researchers can draw on this database to rapidly calculate how the potential intensity of a tropical storm occurring today compares to one in a hypothetical world without human-caused climate change.
IRIS works in a similar way to models used by the insurance sector, explained its creator Prof Ralf Toumi, co-director of the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and Environment at Imperial. He told Carbon Brief:
“There’s been a few academic attempts to replicate these models. We’ve taken a very different approach to everyone else and that allows us to do this attribution quite quickly.”
Toumi’s team outlined the workings of IRIS in a paper published in Scientific Data in 2024.
Earlier this month, they published their first climate attribution study using the tool in Atmospheric Science Letters.
This study found that Typhoon Haiyan, the second-strongest landfalling tropical storm on record, which struck the Philippines in 2013, was “very unlikely to have occurred without the increase in potential intensity driven by global warming”.
In addition to this, Toumi and his team have been using the model to calculate how climate change may have affected the intensity of a wide range of recent storms, choosing to publish the results directly on Imperial’s website.
“We feel we should communicate [our results] immediately,” he told Carbon Brief, adding that the peer-review process for publishing scientific papers is comparatively “slow and painful”.
Loss and damage
In a recent analysis using the tool, the team estimated that around 45% of the $50bn in economic damages caused by Hurricane Milton, which struck Florida in 2024, can be attributed to climate change.
Toumi hopes that the tool could one day be used to inform discussions about how much money polluting countries should pay into a new fund for loss and damage from climate change agreed at UN climate talks. He told Carbon Brief:
“If a Pacific island says ‘we’ve just been hit by a category 5 storm, we need some money’, a donor country may argue ‘your nation is bound to be hit by hurricanes, how do we know the extra risk from climate change?’ With this model we could provide answers to such statements.”
Harjeet Singh, a UN climate veteran involved in aiding negotiations for the loss and damage fund, said that advances in attribution science could be a “game changer” in assigning responsibility for damages from climate change. He told Carbon Brief:
“However, rigorous, event-specific attribution studies can be time-consuming and may not always be feasible – especially for communities needing urgent support. Simpler frameworks based on historical emissions, technological capacity and GDP can be more practical, while still being guided by scientific insights.
“Ideally, a hybrid approach would apply detailed attribution for unprecedented or contested events, while a simpler, responsibility-based funding mechanism covers more frequent climate impacts to ensure fair and timely financing.”
Watch, read, listen
PARIS EXIT EXPLAINED: Veteran US climate diplomat, Sue Biniaz, explained the ramifications of the wording of Trump’s Paris Agreement exit order, in Just Security.
‘THIRSTY’ AI: The Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast explored what the UK government’s plan to boost artificial intelligence could mean for energy and water resources.
SAVIOUR OR VICTIM: In the Conversation, a group of female academics explained why the portrayal of women as either “climate victims” or “saviours of nature” can be problematic.
Coming up
- 26 January: International Day of Clean Energy
- 26 January: Belarus presidential election
- 28 January: EU event on public funding for carbon removal, Brussels and online
Pick of the jobs
- La Trobe University, river communities research fellow | Salary: Unknown. Location: Bundoora/Albury-Wodonga, Australia
- Climate Litigation Network, science adviser | Salary: £42,500 or €50,000. Location: London or Amsterdam
- British Antarctic Survey, marine biologist | Salary: £30,201. Location: Rothera, Antarctica
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 24 January 2025: Trump leaves Paris Agreement; EU solar outshines coal; Tracing climate fingerprints on tropical storms appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The moratorium is the first of its type to pass a legislative chamber, but about a dozen other states have pending proposals.
Maine is now the first state to pass a moratorium on the development of large data centers, and others may follow.
Maine Presses Pause on Large Data Centers. Will Other States Follow Its Lead?
The Trump EPA’s repeal of the 2009 endangerment finding revokes the agency’s authority to regulate climate pollution. Environmental activists are mourning the loss while vowing to resurrect it.
A procession of mourners representing sea level rise, melting permafrost, ecocide and other climate calamities grieved the demise of a groundbreaking climate rule outside the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 9 headquarters in downtown San Francisco on Tuesday.
Climate Activists Stage Mock Funeral for Landmark Climate Rule
Global oil demand is expected to be almost one million barrels per day less than was forecast before the Iran war, as shortages and soaring costs prompt drastic cutbacks by consumers and businesses, a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday.
With the closure of the Strait of Hormuz choking off supplies and keeping prices high, less oil is being used to make products such as jet fuel, LPG cooking gas and petrochemicals, the Paris-based IEA said in its monthly oil report, forecasting the biggest quarterly demand drop since the COVID pandemic.
The Iran war “upends our global outlook”, the government-backed agency said, adding that it now expects oil demand to shrink by 80,000 barrels per day in 2026 from last year.
Before the conflict began, the IEA said in February it expected oil demand to rise by 850,000 barrels per day this year, meaning the difference between the pre-war and current estimates is 930,000 barrels a day, or 340 million barrels a year.
That could have a significant impact on the outlook for planet-heating carbon emissions this year.
At an intensity of 434 kg of carbon dioxide per barrel of oil – the estimate used by the US Environmental Protection Agency – the annual reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from oil for 2026, compared with the pre-war forecast, is similar to the amount emitted by the Philippines each year.
Harry Benham, senior advisor at Carbon Tracker, told Climate Home News that he expects at least half of the reduction in oil demand to be permanent because of efficiency gains, behavioural change and faster electrification.
The oil shock is leading to oil being replaced, especially in transport, with electricity and other fuels, just as past oil shocks drove lasting reductions in consumption, he said. “The shock doesn’t delay the transition – it reinforces it,” he added.
Demand takes a hit
While demand for oil has fallen significantly, supplies have fallen even further. Supply in March was 10 million barrels a day less than February, the IEA said, calling it the “largest disruption in history”.
This forecast relies on the assumption that regular deliveries of oil and gas from the Middle East will resume by the middle of the year, the IEA said, although the prospects for this “remain unclear at this stage”.
-
Italy pushes coal exit back after gas prices rise
Analysts say the move sends a negative signal, but its impact will be limited given coal’s marginal role in Italy’s energy mix -
Charging worries, high prices put brakes on EV growth in Bangladesh
Sales of e-bikes and rickshaws are up amid queues at fuel stations, but a lack of charging infrastructure and high prices still deter many Bangladeshis from going electric -
Fossil Free Zones can be on-ramps to the clean energy transition
Oil and gas blocks overlap with a fifth of forests in the Amazon, Congo Basin and SE Asia – policies are needed to transition away from fossil fuels and halt deforestation together
Last month, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the CERAWeek oil industry conference that prices were not high enough to lead to permanent reductions in demand for oil, known as demand destruction.
But the IEA said on Wednesday that “demand destruction will spread as scarcity and higher prices persist”.
Industries contributing to weaker demand for oil include Asian petrochemical producers, who are cutting production as oil supplies dry up, the report said, while consumers are cutting back on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), which is mainly used as a cooking gas in developing countries, the IEA said.
Flight cancellations caused by the war have dampened demand for oil-based jet fuel, the IEA said. As well as cancellations caused by risk from the conflict itself, airports have warned that fuel shortages could lead to disruption.
Across the world, governments, businesses and consumers have sought to reduce their oil use after the war. The government of Pakistan has cut the speed limit on its roads, so that people drive at a more fuel-efficient speed, and Laos has encouraged people to work from home to preserve scarce petrol and diesel.
Nepal’s EV revolution pays off as oil crisis causes pain at the pumps
Consumers in Bangladesh are seeking electric vehicles (EVs) to avoid fuel queues and, in Nigeria, more people are seeking to replace petrol and diesel generators with solar panels, Climate Home News has reported.
In the longer term, the European Union is considering cutting taxes on electricity to help it replace fossil fuels and France is promoting EVs and heat pumps.
IEA urged to help “future-proof” economies
Meanwhile, the IEA came under fire last week from energy security experts, including former military chiefs, who signed an open letter in which they accused the agency of offering “only a temporary response to turbulent markets”, calling for stronger structural action “to future-proof our economies”.
They said that besides releasing emergency oil stocks and offering advice on how to reduce oil demand in the short term, the IEA should show countries how to reduce their exposure to volatile oil and gas markets.
The IEA has also been under pressure from the Trump administration to talk less about the transition away from fossil fuels.
This article was amended on 15 April 2026 to correct the drop in 2026 forecast oil demand from “nearly a billion” to “nearly a million”
The post IEA slashes pre-war oil demand forecast by nearly a million barrels per day appeared first on Climate Home News.
IEA slashes pre-war oil demand forecast by nearly a million barrels per day
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