UN Secretary-General: COP30 must deliver global response plan
UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged world leaders to deliver climate plans that go “much further, much faster” as he kicked off today’s climate summit at UN headquarters.
Hinting at an expected shortfall in the ambition needed to reduce emissions in line with the Paris Agreement 1.5C temperature limit, he said November’s COP30 must end with a “credible global response plan” to get world efforts back on track.
Guterres, who convened the gathering, outlined five areas for priority action, putting energy at the top. Despite clean energy’s competitiveness, fossil fuels still dominate, he said, calling on countries to “supercharge” the energy transition by investing in grids and storage, lowering investment costs for developing countries and shifting subsidies away from fossil fuels.
“Drastic cuts” in methane emissions are essential and can be achieved quickly and cheaply, Guterres added. A potent gas with a shorter lifespan than carbon dioxide, methane is widely considered a low-hanging fruit to slow global warming.
The International Energy Agency reckons around 40% of methane emissions from fossil fuels could be cut at no net cost. That’s because interventions like identifying and repairing leaky infrastructure cost less than the market value of the additional gas fossil fuel operators would be able to capture and sell, the watchdog said.
The UN chief then highlighted the need to end the destruction of forests, which he described as “nature’s greatest carbon sinks”. At COP28 two years ago, countries committed to ending and reversing deforestation by 2030. Guterres said that could deliver a fifth of the needed emission reductions by the end of this decade. At the moment, that goal remains way off track as forest loss keeps rising.
Guterres also called for governments to urgently deploy new technologies that can cut emissions from steel and cement production, as well as heavy transport. Those sectors are generally considered harder to decarbonise because they require substantial amounts of energy, and efforts to make them greener rely on less mature, or more expensive, solutions like hydrogen or alternative fuels.
Finally, Guterres made an appeal for climate justice. The finance gaps preventing investment in climate resilience across the developing world should be plugged, he said. That means reforming the international financial architecture, offering “effective” debt relief, raising contributions to the loss and damage fund, and boosting adaptation finance.
Brazil’s president: Submitting NDCs is “not an option”
Opening the summit together with the UN chief, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva urged countries to submit their new climate plans (Nationally Determined Contributions – NDCs) before COP30, which is happening in the Brazilian state of Pará this November.
“The submissions of NDCs is not an option. As it was made clear by the International Court of Justice, it is an obligation,” he said referring to its advisory opinion on climate change and human rights handed down in July.
He added that only by having all countries respect their commitments and submit their NDCs, will the world know where it stands in the battle against climate change. No one is safe from the effects of it, he said, not even the countries that are part of what he called “multilateral denialism”.
As he spoke, only 47 countries had presented their plans.
Brazil was the second country to present its NDC, last November. It aims to reduce emissions of all greenhouse gases by between 59% and 67% across all sectors of the economy and end deforestation by 2030.
Lula championed multilateralism in multiple parts of his speech, saying that COP30 can be “the stage for a decisive moment in” its history. “I call on the countries that have not yet submitted their NDCs. The success of COP30 in Belém depends on you.”
He also said that if the world doesn’t come together and take decisions that respect what science says, civil society will stop trusting its leaders, “and instead of strengthening the struggle against global warming, we are going to help discredit multilateralism policies and in democracy. And all of us will lose because denialism may actually win.”
China unveils 2035 emissions-cutting goal of 7-10%
China announced a much-anticipated new target to reduce its emissions at the summit. It said it will aim for a 7-10% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 compared to “peak” levels, without specifying which year that would be. Experts said that pledge is not enough to align with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C.
In a video message, Chinese President Xi Jinping told world leaders that the “green and low carbon transition is the trend of our time”, despite “some countries acting against it”.
“China will by 2035 reduce economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions by 7-10% from peak levels, striving to do better,” the Chinese leader announced.
The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) has warned that only emissions cuts of around 30% by 2035 by China would be consistent with the 1.5C limit.
A range, such as the one delivered by Xi at the New York summit, could be interpreted as “the lower bound is effectively the guarantee, while the upper bound represents potential ambition”.
The baseline year for the target – a key measure for how ambitious the target is – was not clarified in Xi’s announcement. The country will take as reference the “peak” in its emissions, with some experts saying that could be as early as last year or this year.
China’s rapid renewable energy rollout has kept the country on track to meet its existing goal of peaking carbon pollution before the end of the decade. It plans to reach net zero by 2060.
The world’s largest carbon polluter, China is responsible for about a third of global emissions. As countries are expected to deliver new climate plans at the climate summit, China’s new nationally determined contribution (NDC) has been one of the most anticipated and is viewed as an indicator of global climate ambition.
The Chinese president also announced a target to “increase the share of non-fossil fuels in total energy consumption to over 30%”, and “expand the installed capacity of wind and solar power to over six times the 2020 levels, striving to bring the total to 3,600 GW”.
He also pledged to “scale up the total forest stock volume to over 24 billion cubic metres”, make EVs the “mainstream in the sale of new vehicles”, and expand China’s emissions trading market to cover “major emitting sectors”.
European Union promises to submit formal NDC before COP30
To no-one’s surprise, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the bloc’s 2035 target would “range between 66% and 72%” below 1990 levels and promised to formally submit it before COP30.
“The clean transition is moving on and let me assure you that Europe will stay the course on our climate ambition,” she said.
She also plugged the EU’s support for clean cooking and other climate finance projects overseas. “No mother, no child should die because [of] simply cooking dinner under abhorrent circumstances”, she said.
Von der Leyen could only give an emissions-reduction range – known as a “statement of intent” – because the European Union has not yet been able to agree exact targets for 2035 or 2040, on the road to meeting its overarching goal of net zero by 2050.
In July, the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, proposed a goal to cut emissions 90% on 1990 levels by 2040. That would have formed the basis for the 2035 target.
But the 2040 goal still needs approval from the EU’s other two arms – the European Parliament and the European Council, which represents member states.
At a meeting last week in Brussels, environment ministers from the bloc’s 27 member states said they had been unable to agree on the targets, asking heads of state to give them a steer at a European Council meeting in October.
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At climate summit, UN chief urges countries to go “much further, much faster” on NDCs
When oil and gas shipments stopped flowing through the Strait of Hormuz at the start of the Iran war, Southeast Asian nations were left reeling as the supply crunch laid bare their acute reliance on fossil fuel imports.
As prices soared, governments in the region scrambled to introduce emergency energy-saving measures – from a four-day working week to curbs on air conditioning. Thailand revived decommissioned coal plants while the Philippines, which imports nearly all of its oil, declared a “national energy emergency”.
But the crisis has also prompted renewed resolve to find a long-term solution to their vulnerability at a time when electricity demand is booming to power the region’s growing industry, cooling needs and the mushrooming of energy-hungry data centres.
At the heart of Southeast Asian nations’ response is a longstanding infrastructure project to connect the region’s power grids by 2045 and enable cross-border trading of clean electricity through a network of underground and subsea interconnectors.
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The plans will allow nations with high renewable energy generation potential to trade surplus power to their neighbours and major demand centres like Singapore, helping to integrate more renewables into the power mix and reduce reliance on fossil fuel imports.
“[It] will give us more energy security,” the Philippines’ energy secretary, Sharon Garin, told a press conference after a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) energy ministers last week, when they discussed accelerating the delivery of the regional grid as part of measures to respond to the energy crisis.
“The Philippines is rich in solar power, Malaysia is rich in hydropower and Indonesia has geothermal: different countries have different resources. [The ASEAN Power Grid] will optimise the utilisation of renewables to the benefits of each member state,” said Garin.
But turning this decade-old political vision into a reality has been slow, held up by painstaking work to harmonise a patchwork of regulatory and legal frameworks and mobilise the private capital needed to build cross-border infrastructure.
More than $300 billion is needed to expand and modernise the region’s fragile grids to support the projected energy demand increase by 2050. This includes $27 billion required to deliver the cross-border interconnections by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Every year of delay could cost the region billions of dollars in additional fuel costs and lock in new gas infrastructure for decades to come, according to analysis by global energy think-tank Ember.
The building block for energy security
With electrification high on the agenda of the COP31 climate talks in Türkiye next month, there is growing attention on the need to modernise and expand grid infrastructure to cope with growing electricity use and more renewables in the power mix.
Clean electrification and energy efficiency could deliver about a third of cumulative carbon emission reductions between 2026 and 2050, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook. But delivering that would require doubling annual global grid investment to $1 trillion between now and 2035.
Last month, the UN launched an initiative to accelerate investment into expanding and modernising grids in Southeast Asia and Africa.
First conceptualised in 1997, the ASEAN Power Grid has gained fresh impetus in recent years as countries turn to renewables to cut their emissions and move away from volatile fossil fuel markets.
Energy supply disruption caused by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East has strengthened the case for regional grid connections. Before this year’s conflict began, the Middle East accounted for 60% of Southeast Asia’s crude oil imports. Competition for fewer, more expensive oil and gas shipments has left Southeast Asia facing a $160 billion energy import bill this year. Based on current policies, this could rise to $400 billion by mid-century.
In the Philippines last week, energy ministers agreed on an enhanced planning framework to deliver the ASEAN Power Grid and made progress on regulatory guidelines.
Garin said ministers were considering accelerating the project’s delivery. “The first study was to connect [by] 2045 – that’s too far,” she said.
A strong business case
The economic benefits of the plan have “captured the political imagination” of leaders in the region, Robert Cooke, grids advocacy lead at the Global Renewables Alliance, told Climate Home News. “The business case is stronger than ever,” he said.
“If countries were to go about building their own separate grids, of course that would be an expensive endeavour. But the discussion around the ASEAN Power Grid includes what costs could we share in building out this grid,” added Tiza Mafira, director of the Indonesia office for the Climate Policy Initiative.
Stronger grids would help the region meet collective targets to increase the share of renewable energy in total primary energy supply from 14% to 30% and in installed power capacity from 34% to 45% by 2030.
Connecting and pooling dispersed renewable resources would also help smooth local power shortages caused by daily and seasonal variations, reducing the need for backup gas plants and battery storage.
The IEA found the ASEAN Power Grid could help unlock some of the 20 terawatts of untapped solar and wind potential across Southeast Asia – an amount around 55 times the region’s current total power capacity.
From lines on a map to shovels in the ground
Rather than building a single unified network, the ASEAN Power Grid is developing cross-border links between neighbouring countries and smaller groups of nations.
As of 2025, nine of 18 priority interconnection projects are operational – accounting for around 10 GW of capacity with an additional 13.7 GW planned by 2040.
Source: Ember
A power line channelling up to 200 MW of clean electricity generated from hydropower in Laos to Singapore via Thailand and Malaysia has emerged as a key building block for grid-to-grid trading.
Progress on technical discussions will also help provide the clarity the private sector needs to invest in bankable projects, said Cooke.
In 2025, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank announced a dedicated funding initiative to support the project.
“The enabling pieces are emerging,” said Monalisa Dimalanta, former chair of the Philippine Energy Regulatory Commission and the National Renewable Energy Board. “But the timelines remain unclear and a 2045 vision cannot answer today’s emergency,” she said.
“A power grid… that exists only on paper will not keep the lights on.”
Singapore: the delivery test
The implications of failing to deliver the ASEAN Power Grid are most acute in Singapore.
Constrained by space, with few renewable energy resources and dependent on gas for more than 90% of its electricity mix, Singapore has emerged as a leading proponent of a regional power grid as it seeks to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
To meet its power needs, the city-state aims to import 6 GW of low-carbon electricity by 2035, around one-third of its energy demand – a target which it is set to miss, however.
The plans heavily rely on building interconnectors to import solar power from Indonesia across the South China Sea. Around 40% of the ASEAN Power Grid’s planned interconnections are directed towards Singapore.
Ember’s analysis found that delivering the planned interconnectors by 2035 could enable renewables to meet nearly half of Singapore’s electricity demand. Delays could drop this to only a fraction of the country’s needs, and risk locking in new gas capacity until the 2050s. Without the ASEAN Power Grid, Singapore would need to install an additional 300 MW of gas-fired power capacity to bridge the gap by 2035.
Already home to the largest data centre capacity in Southeast Asia, Singapore’s electricity demand keeps rising, driven by the boom in AI infrastructure. “At one point, [it] either has to build a new gas plant, or it has to get the interconnection to supply that demand,” Lam Pham, an Ember energy analyst and the report’s author, told Climate Home News.
A region at a crossroads
With capital increasingly available, political will is now the biggest risk standing in the way of timely execution, said Pham.
But there are other challenges too, including the lack of frameworks on transmission tariffs and how to share the benefits of clean power trading. “It’s really hard to justify projects without that,” he said.
In addition, climate-fuelled weather events, including extreme heat and tropical storms, pose major threats to the region’s grid infrastructure. Experts say stronger grid interconnection can isolate damage and build the system’s resilience.
Efforts to deliver on the ASEAN Power Grid also come as ministers stressed the “continued importance of oil and gas” for economic development and seek to secure fossil fuel supplies and stockpile oil to prepare for the next crisis.
Despite an acceleration of renewable deployment, particularly solar, coal still generates nearly half the electricity supply in ASEAN member states and dominates the power mix in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, while Singapore and Thailand rely on gas.
While these measures might help the region with the immediate crisis, “the long-term answer is more domestic renewable energy, electrification, storage, efficiency and regional power trade”, Dimalanta said.
Main image: An aerial view of the MTerra solar project in the Philippines, set to become one of the world’s largest solar-and-battery developments (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
The post SE Asia speeds up plan for connected clean power grid after oil shock appeared first on Climate Home News.
SE Asia speeds up plan for connected clean power grid after oil shock
Climate Change
“Sink or swim”: WA Gov hugely underestimating decline in regional gas demand while sleeping on green exports, new report finds
PERTH, Tuesday 13 October 2026 — A new report from Greenpeace Australia Pacific and Springmount Advisory reveals green commodity exports are an untapped economic opportunity for Western Australia in a declining Asian gas market, while offering a genuine solution for decarbonising Asia.
From Gas to Green: Building Western Australia’s Future State is a comprehensive analysis of the declining gas market in Asia, and the untapped economic opportunity for WA to become a global leader in green commodity exports while driving the regional shift away from fossil fuels.
The report offers key recommendations for the WA Government to support regional decarbonisation through an orderly phase out of gas exports in favour of green iron and other green exports. It comes as global climate leaders from across business, politics and advocacy prepare to meet for the Global Citizen Now: Perth event focused on decarbonising WA.
Key findings:
- Gas demand is falling across WA’s core markets in Asia: Gas demand fell in 2025 and is projected to continue to decline, driven by a combination of global geopolitical factors and domestic concerns.
- Policy shifts in key markets since the war on Iran now prioritise renewables and nuclear over gas: Japan, South Korea and China have legislated energy plans that prioritise renewables and nuclear over gas.
- New WA gas would arrive in a saturated, uncertain Asian market filled with cheaper gas: The US is now the world’s largest liquefied gas producer and plans to double its capacity as it also targets Asian markets.
- Green commodities offer a real solution to sustain WA’s economy: WA can lead Australia’s green commodity exports, which by 2060 could be worth almost a trillion dollars.
- Exporting more WA gas is likely to delay or impede Asia decarbonisation: Despite claims by the gas industry, there is no evidence that WA gas is displacing coal in Asia, and in fact diverts resources from genuine decarbonisation options.
Geoff Bice, WA Campaign Lead at Greenpeace Australia Pacific said: “As our export partners in Asia shift away from expensive and polluting gas, the WA Government has a golden opportunity to pivot our economy to green exports, like green iron, which is the most effective way to help our region to decarbonise.
“The writing is on the wall: gas is in decline, renewables are our future. In this context, it makes zero sense for the government to encourage high risk projects like Woodside’s reckless Browse gas proposal at Scott Reef.
“This report clearly shows that the WA Government faces a choice: sink or swim. They can either allow the gas industry to keep ripping off West Australians and continue propping up its decline, or choose the path that will deliver enormous benefits to the state and the world by becoming a leader in the rapidly expanding green economy.”
Tom Quinn, Managing Director of Springmount Advisory: “Western Australia prospers when it looks to the future and builds for future demand. Twenty years from now, what the world needs is green commodities made using WAs abundant renewable resources. Just like it did with iron ore in the 1950s and gas in the 1970s, WA should look to the future and build what the world will need, not sunsetting industries like gas that are already past their peak.”
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Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
Lucy Keller on 0491 135 308 or lucy.keller@greenpeace.org
A report from Greenpeace Australia Pacific and Springmount Advisory reveals the untapped green economic opportunity for Western Australia in a declining Asian gas market, which also offers a genuine solution for decarbonisation in Asia.
Is Western Australia clinging to a fading gas industry while a thriving green future passes it by? As major Asian trading partners rapidly pivot away from volatile gas imports toward cheap solar and battery storage, this report exposes a high-stakes choice: risk becoming stranded in an oversupplied fossil fuel market, or harness WA’s unmatched sun and wind to lead the global clean energy transition.