China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions stayed at, or just below, last year’s levels in the third quarter of 2024, after a fall in the second quarter.
The new analysis for Carbon Brief, based on official figures and commercial data, leaves open the possibility that China’s emissions could fall this year.
However, recent record-high temperatures caused emissions to go up in September and new government stimulus measures mean there is now greater uncertainty over the country’s emissions trajectory.
Heatwaves through much of August and September caused a major increase in electricity demand for air conditioning, which, combined with weak hydropower output, meant a 2% increase in coal-fired power generation and a 13% rise for gas-fired power in the third quarter, despite wind and solar growth continuing to break records.
The increase in emissions in the power sector was offset by falling emissions from steel, cement and oil use, plus stagnating gas demand outside the power sector, meaning China’s CO2 output in the third quarter was flat or slightly declined, relative to a year earlier.
Other key findings from the analysis include:
- Solar generation rose 44% in the third quarter of the year and wind by 24%, with both continuing to see record-breaking additions of new capacity.
- Hydro generation was up 11% compared with last year’s drought-affected figures, but remained short of expected output. Nuclear power was up 4%.
- Oil demand fell by around 2%, due to falling construction activity, the rise of electric vehicles (EVs) and natural gas (LNG) trucks, as well as weak consumer spending.
- Emissions from steel fell by 3% and cement by 12% in the third quarter, as both sectors continued to see the effect of falling construction activity.
- The coal-to-chemicals industry received renewed political backing and coal consumption in the sector has risen by nearly a fifth in the year to date.
Emissions would need to fall by at least 2% in the last three months of the year, for China’s annual total to drop from 2023 levels. This outcome is supported by the ongoing slowdown in industrial power demand growth and the end of the air-conditioning season.
However, new economic stimulus plans announced in late September with no apparent emphasis on emissions, add uncertainty to this outlook.
In any case, China will remain off track against its 2025 “carbon intensity” target, which requires emissions cuts of at least 2% in 2024 and 2025, after rapid rises in 2020-23.
Looking further ahead, policymakers recently provided new indications of the country’s plans for peaking and reducing emissions, signalling a gradual and cautious approach which falls short of what would be needed to align with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
But, if the country’s rapid clean energy growth is sustained, it has the potential to deliver emission reductions more swiftly.
Clean-energy expansion met all power-demand growth over summer
Defying predictions of slowing growth, China’s electricity demand increased by 7.2% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2024, up from an already rapid 6.9% in the second quarter.
The make-up of growth changed, however. Some 60% of the increase in demand came from the residential and services sectors, with household demand up by a blistering 15%.
Industrial power-demand growth continued to slow down, increasing by 4.6% in July–September, down from 5.9% in the second quarter.
At the same time, solar power generation increased by 44% year-on-year and wind power generation by 24%. Hydropower grew 11%, despite falling short of average utilisation, and nuclear power generation growth was muted at 4% due to few new reactors being commissioned.
The rapid rise of electricity demand outpaced these increases from low-carbon sources, with the gap between demand and rising clean supply being met by a 2% increase in coal-fired power generation and a 13% rise for gas-fired power, as shown in the figure below.
This caused a 3% increase in CO2 emissions from the sector in the third quarter of the year.
However, looking at the whole summer period, whether taken as May-September or June-August, clean-energy expansion covered all of electricity demand growth.
This year, August and September were hotter than last year, resulting in rapid growth in power demand for air conditioning. Last year, in contrast, June and July were hotter.
Thermal power generation from coal and gas fell overall during the summer period, despite the rapid increase in residential power demand, with a 7% drop in June, 5% drop in July, a 4% increase in August and a 9% increase in September. Growth rates during individual months are heavily affected by which months the worst heatwaves fall on.
In terms of newly built generating capacity, solar continued to break last year’s records, with 163 gigawatts (GW) added in the first nine months of 2024. This is equal to the combined total capacity in Germany, Spain, Italy and France, the four EU countries with the most solar capacity. China’s solar capacity additions in the third quarter were up 22% year-on-year, as shown in the figure below.
The growth in China’s solar power output this year alone is likely to equal the total power generation of Australia or Vietnam in 2023, based on growth rates during the first nine months of the year.
Wind power additions accelerated as well, with 38GW added in the year to September, up 10% year-on-year and exceeding the total wind power capacity in the UK of 30GW.
China’s State Council approved 11 new nuclear reactors for construction in one go in August. The total power generating capacity of the approved projects is about 13GW. With 10 reactors approved in both 2022 and 2023 – and now 11 in 2024 – the next batch of nuclear power capacity is getting off the ground and adding to China’s clean-energy growth.
Hydropower capacity only increased 2% year-on-year, implying that most of the 11% third-quarter increase in generation was due to a recovery in capacity utilisation.
In response to severe droughts, utilisation had fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade in 2022, and recovered only partially in 2023, so this year’s recovery was expected and is closer to expected average hydropower generation.
China’s approvals of new coal power plant projects plummeted by 80% in the first half of 2024. Just 9GW of new capacity was approved, down from 52GW in the first half of last year. However, according to the Polaris Network, an energy sector news and data provider, eight large coal power projects were approved in the third quarter, likely representing an uptick in the rate of approvals compared with the first half of the year.
Construction and oil demand slowdown continued to pull down total emissions
While power sector emissions saw a small amount of growth in the third quarter of 2024, the ongoing contraction in construction volumes pulled down total emissions.
As a result, CO2 emissions stayed flat in the third quarter of 2024, at or just below the levels seen in the same period a year earlier, as shown in the figure below.
Digging deeper into the construction-led decline in emissions outside the power sector, steel output fell 9% and cement 12%, as real estate investment contracted 10% in the third quarter, maintaining the same rate as in the first half-year.
This translated into an 11% (24m tonnes of CO2, MtCO2) reduction in CO2 emissions from cement compared with the same period in 2023, shown in the figure below.
Steel emissions only fell by 3% (13MtCO2), despite the 9% fall in steel production. The reason is that the brunt of the drop in demand was borne by electric arc steelmakers rather than the coal-based steel plants with a much higher emission intensity.
The sector lacks the incentive to prioritise electric arc furnaces, which use recycled scrap and have much lower emissions. In theory, this could be encouraged by the inclusion of steel in China’s emissions trading system.
However, if the sector is treated in the same way as power, with separate benchmarks for coal-based and electric steelmaking, it will not create incentives to switch to electricity.
As one step towards structural change in the sector, the industry ministry issued a policy suspending all permitting of new steelmaking capacity, turning a de-facto stop to new permits – observed since the beginning of the year – into a formal moratorium. Until last year, the sector had been investing heavily in new coal-based steel capacity.
The other major area where emissions fell is oil consumption, which saw a 2% (13MtCO2) reduction in oil-related CO2 emissions in the third quarter of the year, also shown in the figure above. This is based on numbers from the National Bureau of Statistics.
The reduction in oil demand and related CO2 emissions may have been even steeper. The supply of oil products, measured as refinery throughput net of imports and exports, fell much more sharply. Based on this measure, CO2 from burning oil fell 10% (63MtCO2) in the third quarter, meaning that China’s CO2 emissions overall would have fallen by 2%.
The much more modest drop reported by the statistics agency could reflect the tendency of China’s statistical reporting to smooth downturns and upticks.
Another possible explanation is that refineries had previously been producing more than was being consumed, and have now had to cut output to reduce inventories.
Regardless of the magnitude of the drop, it is possible to identify the drivers of falling oil consumption. The fall in construction volumes is a major factor, as a significant share of diesel is used at construction sites and for transporting building materials.
The increase in the share of EVs is eating into petrol demand. Demand was also driven down by household spending, which remained weak until picking up in October in response to expectations of government stimulus.
The increasing share of trucks running on LNG also contributed to the fall in diesel demand. LNG truck sales accounted for about 20% of total truck sales in the nine months to March 2024, but weak overall gas demand growth indicates that this had a limited impact.
Gas consumption growth slowed down to 3% in the third quarter, from 10% in the first half of the year. Growth took place entirely in the power sector, with demand from other sectors stagnating, likely due to weak industrial demand.
After an increase in emissions in January-February, falling emissions in March-August and an increase in September, emissions would need to fall by at least 2% in the last three months of the year, for China’s annual total to drop from 2023 levels.
There is a good chance this will happen, due to an ongoing slowdown in industrial power demand growth and the end of the air conditioning season. But, even then, China would remain off track against its 2025 carbon intensity target, which requires emissions to fall by at least 2% in both 2024 and 2025, after rapid increases from 2020 to 2023.
The fundamental reason why emissions have not fallen faster – and may not have fallen at all in the third quarter – is that energy consumption growth this year continues to be much faster than historical trends.
Total energy consumption – including, but not limited to electricity consumption – grew 5.0% in the third quarter, faster than GDP, which gained 4.6%.
Until the Covid-19 pandemic, China’s energy demand growth had been much slower than GDP growth, implying falling energy intensity of the economy.
The post-Covid economic policy focused on manufacturing appears to have reversed this trend.
Coal-to-chemicals industry received new political backing
One additional wildcard in the outlook for China’s CO2 emissions is the coal-to-chemicals industry. The sector turns domestic coal into replacements for imported oil and gas, albeit with a far higher carbon footprint.
A recent policy from the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s powerful planning agency, called for ”accelerating” the development of the coal-to-chemical industry, including “speeding up the construction of strategic bases for coal-to-oil and coal-to-gas production”.
The past weeks after the issuance of the new policy have seen construction starts of a major coal-to-oil project in Shanxi, a coal-to-chemicals park in Sha’anxi and approval of a similar project in Xinjiang.
The coal-to-chemicals industry is expected to use more than 7% of all coal consumed in China in 2024, according to China Futures Research, a consultancy.
Coal consumption by the chemicals industry increased 18% in the first eight months of 2024, after a 9% increase in 2023, based on data from Wind Financial Terminal. This increase in coal consumption for coal-to-chemicals contributed two thirds of the 0.9% increase in total fossil CO2 emissions during the January to August period.
Coal consumption growth in the sector slowed down to 5% in July-August, however, and output of chemical products continued to slow in September. This smaller contribution to growth in CO2 emissions is shown in the graph above (“chemical industry”).
The recent rise in oil and gas prices, together with efforts to increase China’s domestic coal production and drive down domestic coal prices, have provided a major boost to the coal chemicals sector, which has a high sensitivity to both oil and coal prices.
Coal-to-chemicals is the sector where China’s policy priorities of energy security and emission reductions are most directly at odds.
Economic stimulus adds uncertainty to emissions outlook
After economic data indicated continuing slowdown and shortfall against GDP growth targets over the summer, expectations of a stimulus package built up.
The government responded in late September with a set of announcements, pledging various stimulus measures. The measures were focused on financial markets, but also included a commitment to “stabilise” the housing market.
The size of the stimulus package is not very large by China’s standards, and further details have disappointed those who hoped for a more radical policy turnaround. Yet, the package is clearly thought-through and coordinated, offering insights into how China’s top policymakers are planning to address the economic headwinds.
Direct income transfers of government money to households, which have been a hot topic for the past couple of years, are now going to be tried out.
Efforts to boost household spending, instead of the energy-intensive manufacturing and construction that has been the focus of previous rounds of government stimulus, would enable China to grow in a much less energy- and carbon-intensive way.
However, the sums allocated to income transfers are very small in relation to the size of the whole package. Much more money will be spent on subsidies to car and white-goods purchases. This will free up household cash for other types of spending, but it also directs household spending in the most energy-intensive direction.
Most of the stimulus is directed through the traditional routes of local government borrowing and bank lending, which tend to go into industrial and infrastructure projects.
There is no explicit climate-related emphasis to this stimulus. Quite a bit of it is likely to flow to clean energy-related investments, simply because those have been so dominant in China’s investment flows recently, but there is no further push in that direction.
Policymakers do not see an ‘early’ peak
While the rapid clean-energy growth points to the possibility of China’s emissions peaking imminently, policymakers are still setting an expectation that emissions will increase until the end of the decade and plateau or fall very gradually thereafter.
In August, China’s National Energy Administration played down the possibility of the country’s emissions having already peaked, in response to a question from a reporter referencing analyses suggesting this was possible.
The NEA department head who responded to the question emphasised that the timeline for peaking the country’s emissions – “before 2030” – has already been set by the top leadership, implying that the NEA has no mandate to change it.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party – one of the country’s highest leadership groups – reaffirmed that the aim is to “establish a falling trend” in emissions by 2035.
An earlier State Council plan said that China would focus on controlling total CO2 emissions, rather than emissions intensity, after the emission peak has been reached, and indicated that this would not happen in the 2026-30 period.
A very gradual approach to peaking emissions and reducing them after the peak, leaving more substantial emission reductions to later decades, is permissible under China’s current commitments under the Paris Agreement.
However, such a pathway would see the country use up 90% of the global emission budget for 1.5C. In scenarios that limit warming to 1.5C, China’s emissions are cut to at least 30% below 2023 levels by 2035. And recent International Energy Agency (IEA) analysis found that emerging markets such as China would need to cut emissions to 35-65% below 2022 levels by 2035, to align with the global pledges made at COP28 or national net-zero targets.
In contrast with the cautious approach telegraphed by Chinese policymakers, maintaining the rate of clean energy additions and electrification achieved in recent years could deliver a 30% reduction in CO2 emissions from fossil fuels by 2035, relative to 2023 levels.
Similarly, the IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook found clean-energy growth would help cut China’s CO2 emissions to 24% below 2023 levels by 2035, based on current policy settings. This reduction would increase to 45% by 2035 if China met its announced ambitions and targets, the IEA said.
China’s upcoming nationally determined contribution (NDC), due to be submitted to the UN under the Paris Agreement by February 2025, is expected to provide more clarity on which emissions pathway the policymakers are pursuing.
About the data
Data for the analysis was compiled from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, National Energy Administration of China, China Electricity Council and China Customs official data releases, and from WIND Information, an industry data provider.
Wind and solar output, and thermal power breakdown by fuel, was calculated by multiplying power generating capacity at the end of each month by monthly utilisation, using data reported by China Electricity Council through Wind Financial Terminal.
Total generation from thermal power and generation from hydropower and nuclear power was taken from National Bureau of Statistics monthly releases.
Monthly utilisation data was not available for biomass, so the annual average of 52% for 2023 was applied. Power sector coal consumption was estimated based on power generation from coal and the average heat rate of coal-fired power plants during each month, to avoid the issue with official coal consumption numbers affecting recent data.
When data was available from multiple sources, different sources were cross-referenced and official sources used when possible, adjusting total consumption to match the consumption growth and changes in the energy mix reported by the National Bureau of Statistics for the first quarter, the first half and the first three quarters of the year. The effect of the adjustments is less than 1% for total emissions, with unadjusted numbers showing a 1% reduction in emissions in the third quarter.
CO2 emissions estimates are based on National Bureau of Statistics default calorific values of fuels and emissions factors from China’s latest national greenhouse gas emissions inventory, for the year 2018. Cement CO2 emissions factor is based on annual estimates up to 2023.
For oil consumption, apparent consumption is calculated from refinery throughput, with net exports of oil products subtracted.
The post Analysis: No growth for China’s emissions in Q3 2024 despite coal-power rebound appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: No growth for China’s emissions in Q3 2024 despite coal-power rebound
The UN Environment Assembly on Friday approved its first-ever resolution to address the environmental aspects of Artificial Intelligence (AI), but it did not include a provision to monitor AI systems across their lifecycle. Experts say this approach is essential to understand AI’s water, power and critical minerals consumption.
The resolution proposed by Kenya aims to harness “the opportunities and benefits of artificial intelligence systems in support of the environment and by minimizing its environmental impacts”.
It also requests the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to produce a report on the “environmental benefits, risks and impacts of artificial intelligence”.
As negotiations progressed over the week in Nairobi, the draft resolution on AI had called for UNEP’s executive director to explore environmental benefits, risks and impacts of artificial intelligence “systems across their lifecycle”.
However, while governments including Kenya, Norway, Colombia and the European Union supported such wording, annotated draft texts showed that Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United Arab Emirates wanted it to be deleted.
When the final resolution was gavelled on Friday, all trace of the AI lifecycle had been removed from the text. References to AI’s water and energy consumption – which featured in previous draft texts – were also removed.
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“We cannot talk about sustainable AI without addressing the full lifecycle, from the traceability of critical minerals, to the water used in data centres, to how much renewable energy is being redirected from developing countries to power AI systems in wealthier regions,” said Faith Munyalo, Kenya’s contact point on AI.
Munyalo said that while the adoption of the resolution is an important first step, UNEA must now move forward in future negotiations to address the “blind spots” and deliver stronger language and clearer commitments on lifecycle accountability.
“Sustainability must be built into AI from extraction to disposal, otherwise we risk repeating the same patterns of inequity seen in earlier technological transitions,” she told Climate Home News.
No direct finance expected
As the negotiations reached mid-way point on Wednesday, the AI resolution was on the brink of collapse, essentially over finance, which Saudi Arabia and Iran insisted should primarily flow from developed to developing countries while the UK and the EU argued funding should come from all sources.
Finally, countries landed on a compromise that avoids any obligation for wealthy nations to directly finance AI capacity in the Global South. All countries instead are encouraged to “enhance partnerships” that can mobilise funding, alongside “increased investment, including from the private sector and philanthropy” in AI that supports sustainable development.
AI is finding greater uses in environmental circles, and in developing countries it is already being deployed, boosting funding needs. For example, Sierra Leone in its new NDC climate plan needs almost $7 million, including from donor countries, to build an AI-based climate and weather forecasting system to improve resilience. Also, in Kenya, AI is helping conservationists monitor forest degradation, launch reforestation and predict carbon storage capacity in new forest areas.
Kenya’s Munyalo said most data centres are concentrated in developed countries while Africa lacks the expertise and finance to develop its own AI data systems. A lack of direct funding promises puts the burden back on developing countries and could undermine environmental projects like these, she added.
AI good or bad for energy transition?
Somya Joshi, research director at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), said AI has critical impacts both for climate and biodiversity and needs to be designed in ways that don’t “replicate the same mistakes we made before with extractive technology transitions”.
The debate going forward will need to be informed by science and the environmental impacts along the entire AI value chain, she said, including for water, electricity, critical minerals and rare earths to make semi-conductor chips, as well as pollution and what happens to AI systems at the end of their life.
Joshi said there is a need to prevent growing power demand from AI to reinforce dependency on fossil fuels, which would undermine the clean energy transition.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres earlier this year made a call for Big Tech to power all data centres with 100% renewables by 2030.
Data centres accounted for about 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption in 2024. But this figure is set to more than double by 2030 as tech giants continue to build out the infrastructure needed to support their power-hungry AI technologies.
While renewable energy sources – combined with batteries – are expected to supply half of the additional electricity, increased demand from data centres will be a “significant” driver of growth for fossil gas and coal-fired generation until the end of this decade, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Geopolitics limit Nairobi results
The resolution on AI was largely seen by observers as a win for the UNEA, which played out in a tense political environment that limited steps forward on a range of key environmental issues.
The US rejected the outcomes, decrying what it called “climate change theatre”, in line with the denial of climate science by the administration of President Donald Trump and his efforts to thwart climate action.
Behind the scenes, oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Türkiye – host of the COP31 climate talks next year – pushed to water down wording on climate change including the science of melting glaciers.
This rejection of well-established evidence elicited strong criticism from small island nations Fiji and Barbados, as well as the European Union and Australia, in the final session of the conference. Speaking at the closing plenary, the EU delegate said the bloc had arrived at UNEA-7 with high hopes for the environment and multilateralism but have to come to terms with the fact that the Assembly could only achieve good results in some resolutions “and less in others”.
There was also disappointment over a weak resolution on mining and transition minerals, which agreed only on further talks around international co-operation instead of setting up an expert group to identify new instruments to make supply chains greener and more transparent as proposed by Colombia and Oman.
However, fears that some member states would use UNEA as an opportunity to reopen the mandate to negotiate a global treaty on plastic pollution did not come to pass, according to Andrés del Castillo, Senior Attortney at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).
Talks on a new pact were suspended in August as they were unable to reach agreement with fossil fuel-producing countries blocking proposed caps on plastic production – a major market for petrochemicals. They will resume in February with the election of a new chair.
Del Castillo pointed to the ministerial declaration adopted in Nairobi on Friday, which reaffirms countries’ “shared commitment to engaging constructively and actively, with a sense of urgency and solidarity, to conclude the [plastics] negotiations”.
The post UN adopts first-ever resolution on AI and environment, but omits lifecycle appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN adopts first-ever resolution on AI and environment, but omits lifecycle
Countries gathered at the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) this week failed to back a proposal to establish a panel of experts to look at ways to limit the environmental harm caused by mining, agreeing instead to hold more talks on tackling the issue.
A draft resolution proposed by Colombia and Oman had sought to make mineral supply chains more transparent and sustainable amid booming demand for the minerals and metals needed to manufacture batteries, electric cars, solar panels and wind turbines as well as digital and military technologies.
It had called for the creation of an expert group to identify options for binding and non-binding international instruments to shape global action.
But amid divisions among nations and staunch opposition by some governments to any process that could eventually lead to binding instruments, country delegates meeting in Nairobi only agreed to a watered-down proposal to hold “dialogues” on “enhancing international cooperation on [the] sustainable management of minerals and metals”.
Governments also agreed to discuss how to recover minerals from waste, known as tailings, best practices for the sustainable management of minerals and metals, and strengthening the technological, financial and scientific capabilities of developing countries.
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Pedro Cortes, Colombia’s ambassador to Kenya, told an event on Wednesday that the negotiations had been “difficult” but that the agreement will enable governments to continue the discussion.
Mauricio Cabrera Leal, Colombia’s former vice minister of environmental policy who initiated work on the proposal last year, told Climate Home News that the outcome was not what he had envisaged but said it was “good” in light of the “hard” geopolitics at play in Nairobi.
Colombia’s push for a minerals treaty
Colombia has called for an international minerals treaty to define rules and standards to make mineral value chains more traceable and sustainable as the world scrambles to boost supplies of materials needed for the energy transition.
For resource-rich developing countries, demand for these minerals is an opportunity to diversify their economies, spur development and create jobs. But the extraction and processing of minerals also brings the risk of environmental damage and human rights abuses.
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Ambassador Cortes told an event on the sidelines of the UNEA that more stringent global oversight was needed.
“While various efforts have sought to promote the environmentally sustainable management of mining through voluntary guidelines, national legislations and industry-led initiatives, it is clear that greater international cooperation is needed at this critical moment to elevate ambition and accelerate action,” he said.
“This action will be essential to balance the growing demand for minerals required for the renewable energy transition with the imperative of ensuring environmental integrity and social sustainability,” he added.
Opposition to binding rules
But numerous governments – including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran as well as resource-rich Chile, Peru, Argentina and some African countries such as Uganda – opposed any discussion of possible binding rules on mineral value chains, several observers with access to the negotiations told Climate Home News.
While UNEA resolutions are not legally binding, they can kick off a process towards binding agreements, such as the launch of negotiations on a treaty to end plastics pollution – a process that has since stalled.
China, which dominates the processing and refining of minerals and metals, stayed largely quiet during the negotiations. But Nana Zhao, an official from the Chinese delegation, told Climate Home News that China was “satisfied” with the wording of the resolution.
The UNEA should stay focused on environmental matters and not bring in issues relating to supply chains, she added.
An opening for more co-operation
Campaigners, who are calling for binding rules to prevent environmental and social harms linked to mineral extraction and processing, expressed disappointment at the agreement but welcomed the prospect of further talks on the issue.
“The initial aim was to start with negotiations for [a] binding treaty and to get countries together to start talking about joint rules,” Johanna Sydow, a resource policy expert who heads the international environmental policy division of Germany’s Heinrich-Böll Foundation, told Climate Home News.
The agreement reached in Nairobi is “very weak” compared to that initial proposal but it creates the “foundation to stay in dialogue and try to find solutions and work on something constructively”, she said. “This is an opening for more co-operation”.
UN taskforce to deliver equitable supply chains
On the sidelines of the assembly, UN agencies launched a taskforce on critical energy transition minerals to coordinate UN activities in building more transparent, sustainable and equitable supply chains.
The taskforce will help deliver on recommendations by a panel of experts convened by UN Secretary-General António Guterres which called for putting equity and human rights at the core of mineral value chains.
It will be chaired by the UN Environment Programme, UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the UN Development Programme, and draw on expertise across the UN system.
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Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, said the sustainable management of minerals cuts across trade, environment and development.
“Multilateral cooperation and partnerships beyond the UN [are] absolutely essential for us to respond to what we can see is a driving demand and hunger for minerals and metals. But before we have a ‘race’ to this, let’s make sure we look at these aspects that can lead to injustice, environmental harms, biodiversity loss, water pollution and human rights [harms],” she added.
Suneeta Kaimal, president and CEO of the Natural Resource Governance Institute and a member of the UN panel of experts, said the taskforce was “a timely and necessary step toward making the panel’s ambitions real”.
“It must work boldly and inclusively with communities and civil society, and it will need political commitment and financial resources – not only technical efforts – to drive a just and equitable new paradigm that safeguards people, ecosystems and economies in producer countries,” she said.
The post Push for global minerals deal meets opposition, more talks agreed appeared first on Climate Home News.
Push for global minerals deal meets opposition, more talks agreed
Climate Change
DeBriefed 12 December: EU under ‘pressure’; ‘Unusual warmth’ explained; Rise of climate boardgames
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
EU sets 2040 goal
CUT CRUNCHED: The EU agreed on a legally binding target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% from 1990 levels by 2040, reported the EU Observer. The publication said that this agreement is “weaker” than the European Commission’s original proposal as it allows for up to five percentage points of a country’s cuts to be achieved by the use of foreign carbon credits. Even in its weakened form, the goal is “more ambitious than most other major economies’ pledges”, according to Reuters.
PETROL CAR U-TURN: Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has agreed to “roll back an imminent ban on the sale of new internal combustion-engined cars and vans after late-night negotiations with the leader of the conservative European People’s Party,” reported Euractiv. Car makers will be able to continue selling models with internal combustion engines as long as they reduce emissions on average by 90% by 2035, down from a previously mandated 100% cut. Bloomberg reported that the EU is “weighing a five-year reprieve” to “allow an extension of the use of the combustion engine until 2040 in plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles that include a fuel-powered range extender”.
CORPORATE PRESSURE: Reuters reported that EU countries and the European parliament struck a deal to “cut corporate sustainability laws, after months of pressure from companies and governments”. It noted that the changes exempt businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees from reporting their environmental and social impact under the corporate sustainability reporting directive. The Guardian wrote that the commission is also considering a rollback of environment rules that could see datacentres, artificial intelligence (AI) gigafactories and affordable housing become exempt from mandatory environmental impact assessments.
Around the world
- EXXON BACKPEDALS: The Financial Times reported on ExxonMobil’s plans to “slash low-carbon spending by a third”, amounting to a reduction of $10bn over the next 5 years.
- VERY HOT: 2025 is “virtually certain” to be the second or third-hottest year on record, according to data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, covered by the Guardian. It reported that global temperatures from January-November were, on average, 1.48C hotter than preindustrial levels.
- WEBSITE WIPE: Grist reported that the US Environmental Protection Agency has erased references to the human causes of climate change from its website, focusing instead on “natural processes”, such as variations in the Earth’s orbit. On BlueSky, Carbon Brief contributing editor Dr Zack Labe described the removal as “absolutely awful”.
- UN REPORT: The latest global environment outlook, a largest-of-its-kind UN environment report, “calls for a new approach to jointly tackle the most pressing environmental issues including climate change and biodiversity loss”, according to the Associated Press. However, report co-chair Sir Robert Watson told BBC News that a “small number of countries…hijacked the process”, diluting its potential impact.
$80bn
The amount that Chinese firms have committed to clean technology investments overseas in the past year, according to Reuters.
Latest climate research
- Increases in heavy rainfall and flooding driven by fossil-fuelled climate change worsened recent floods in Asia | World Weather Attribution
- Human-caused climate change played a “substantial role” in driving wildfires and subsequent smoke concentrations in the western US between 1992-2020 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Thousands of land vertebrate species over the coming decades will face extreme heat and “unsuitable habitats” throughout “most, or even all” of their current ranges | Global Change Biology
(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 years 2023 and 2024 were the warmest on record – and 2025 looks set to join them in the top three. The causes of this apparent acceleration in global warming have been subject to a lot of attention in both the media and the scientific community. The charts above, drawn from a new Carbon Brief analysis, show how the natural weather phenomenon El Niño, sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions from shipping, Chinese SO2, an eruption from the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano and solar cycle changes account for most of the “unusual warmth” of recent years. Dark blue bars represent the contribution of individual factors and their uncertainties (hatched areas), the light blue bar shows the combined effects and combination of uncertainties and the red bar shows the actual warming, compared with expectations.
Spotlight
Climate change boardgames
This week, Carbon Brief reports on the rise of climate boardgames.
Boardgames have always made political arguments. Perhaps the most notorious example is the Landlord’s Game published by US game designer and writer Lizzie Magie in 1906, which was designed to persuade people of the need for a land tax.
This game was later “adapted” by US salesman Charles Darrow into the game Monopoly, which articulates a very different set of values.
In this century, game designers have turned to the challenge of climate change.
Best-selling boardgame franchise Catan has spawned a New Energies edition, where players may choose to “invest in clean energy resources or opt for cheaper fossil fuels, potentially causing disastrous effects for the island”.
But perhaps the most notable recent release is 2024’s Daybreak, which won the prestigious Kennerspiel des Jahre award (the boardgaming world’s equivalent of the Oscars).
Rolling the dice
Designed by gamemakers Matteo Menapace and Matt Leacock, Daybreak sees four players take on the role of global powers: China, the US, Europe and “the majority world”, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Through playing cards representing policy decisions and technologies, players attempt to reach “drawdown”, a state where they are collectively producing less CO2 than they are removing from the atmosphere.
“Games are good at modelling systems and the climate crisis is a systemic crisis,” Daybreak co-designer Menapace told Carbon Brief.
In his view, boardgames can be a powerful tool for getting people to think about climate change. He said:
“In a video game, the rules are often hidden or opaque and strictly enforced by the machine’s code. In contrast, a boardgame requires players to collectively learn, understand and constantly negotiate the rules. The players are the ‘game engine’. While videogames tend to operate on a subconscious level through immersion, boardgames maintain a conscious distance between players and the material objects they manipulate.
“Whereas videogames often involve atomised or heavily mediated social interactions, boardgames are inherently social experiences. This suggests that playing boardgames may be more conducive to the exploration of conscious, collective, systemic action in response to the climate crisis.”
Daybreak to Dawn
Menapace added that he is currently developing “Dawn”, a successor to Daybreak, building on lessons he learned from developing the first game, telling Carbon Brief:
“I want the next game to be more accessible, especially for schools. We learned that there’s a lot of interest in using Daybreak in an educational context, but it’s often difficult to bring it to a classroom because it takes quite some time to set up and to learn and to play.
“Something that can be set up quickly and that can be played in half the time, 30 to 45 minutes rather than an hour [to] an hour and a half, is what I’m currently aiming for.”
Dawn might also introduce a new twist that explores whether countries are truly willing to cooperate on solving climate change – and whether “rogue” actors are capable of derailing progress, he continued:
“Daybreak makes this big assumption that the world powers are cooperating, or at least they’re not competing, when it comes to climate action. [And] that there are no other forces that get in the way. So, with Dawn, I’m trying to explore that a bit more.
“Once the core game is working, I’d like to build on top of that some tensions, maybe not perfect cooperation, [with] some rogue players.”
Watch, read, listen
WELL WATCHERS: Mother Jones reported on TikTok creators helping to hold oil companies to account for cleaning up abandoned oil wells in Texas.
RUNNING SHORT: Wired chronicled the failure of carbon removal startup Running Tide, which was backed by Microsoft and other tech giants.
PARIS IS 10: To mark the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, climate scientist Prof Piers Forster explained in Climate Home News “why it worked” and “what it needs to do to survive”.
Coming up
- 15-19 December: American Geophysical Union (AGU) annual meeting, New Orleans
- 15-19 December: 70th Meeting of the Global Environment Facility (Gef) Council, online
- 16 December: International Energy Agency: Future of electricity in the Middle East and North Africa webinar, online
Pick of the jobs
- Natural Resources Wales, senior strategic environmental policy specialist | Salary: Unknown. Location: Wales (hybrid)
- The Nature Conservancy, director of conservation – Mata Atlântica | Salary: Unknown. Location: São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro and nearby cities, Brazil
- Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, postdoctoral researcher – downscaling for climate services | Salary: Unknown. Location: Barcelona, Spain
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 12 December: EU under ‘pressure’; ‘Unusual warmth’ explained; Rise of climate boardgames appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 12 December: EU under ‘pressure’; ‘Unusual warmth’ explained; Rise of climate boardgames
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