Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.
China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Rain, typhoons and heat
GUANGXI FLOODS: Severe floods hit south-western China’s Guangxi province after heavy rains, killing 39 people and leaving another nine missing, reported the state-run newspaper China Daily. “Torrential rain” caused by Typhoon Maysak overwhelmed rivers and reservoirs in the province, said the New York Times. The Southern Weekly reported that several villages in Guangxi’s Hengzhou city were submerged. An unnamed researcher told the outlet that “small and medium-sized reservoirs”, not just in Guangxi but nationwide, are “severely aged, making it difficult for them to effectively withstand floods caused by extreme weather events against the backdrop of global [climate] change”.
TORNADOES AND 50C HEAT: At least 11 people were killed by two “extremely rare” tornadoes in central China’s Hubei province also linked to Maysak, according to Reuters. Typhoon Bavi is “on course to hit China’s eastern coast” in the coming days, said BBC News. Meanwhile, Xinjiang province in the north-west and Hainan province in the south both experienced “prolonged and intense heatwaves” in June, reported finance outlet National Business Daily. It added that temperatures in Xinjiang reached 50C.
‘MORE FREQUENT AND SEVERE’: China is “warming faster than the global average”, reported state-run newspaper China Daily. It said the China Meteorological Administration’s 2026 “blue book” on climate change in China found that from 1961 to 2025, China’s “annual average temperature increased by 0.31C per decade”. The blue book also found that “extreme weather and climate events in China have become more frequent and severe”, said China National Radio. The outlet said this included extreme heat, precipitation events and typhoons.
New five-year plans and action plans
‘BEAUTIFUL CHINA’ PLAN: The full text of the 15th five-year plan for building a “Beautiful China” outlines “seven key tasks”, including “actively addressing climate change”, reported Xinhua. The plan, re-published by BJX News, set quantitative targets for 2030. These included a 3% cut in carbon emissions per unit of production at industries included in China’s national carbon market. It added that the plan also called for “controlling and reducing coal use” and “reasonably controlling” the scale of coal-power capacity. Meanwhile, the outlet says, the government will “accelerate efforts” to ensure new electricity demand is met by clean energy. It also reported that the plan notes the need to “improve the capacity to respond to climate change” and to “actively participate and lead in” global climate governance. An op-ed attributed to a “commentator from this newspaper” in the environment ministry-run China Environment News said that the next five years are “pivotal” for the “Beautiful China” initiative.
OTHER FIVE-YEAR PLANS: The government also published a 15th five-year plan on “meteorological development”, calling for “enhanced” support for addressing climate change, said BJX News. It added that the plan emphasises the need to “participate deeply” in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and “actively participate” in the World Meteorological Organization’s work on greenhouse gas monitoring. A third 15th five-year plan on developing a circular economy pledges to “address the shortcomings” in the recycling of clean-tech, reported finance outlet EastMoney. In a Q&A, a government official noted that used batteries, solar and wind power equipment “currently present particularly prominent challenges”, according to BJX News. The five-year plan for tourism encourages the use of carbon offsets and promotes “low-carbon travel”, said industry outlet China Travel News.
PEAKING ‘ACTION PLAN’: China released an “action plan” for peaking its carbon emissions “by 2030”, reported state news agency Xinhua. It added that the action plan reiterated China’s existing targets for carbon intensity and share of non-fossil energy in energy consumption. The plan calls on officials to “vigorously promote” non-fossil energy development and to accelerate efforts to improve “absorption” of new energy into the grid, according to International Energy Net. The plan “doesn’t seek to rein in the country’s fast-growing coal-to-chemicals industry”, said Bloomberg. It noted that the focus instead is on “low-carbon retrofits, reductions in coal consumption per unit of output and a gradual substitution of some fossil-based feedstocks and energy inputs”.
Dialogue deadline
EU-CHINA TALKS: The EU and China have set an October deadline to “reset trade ties” as tensions over cleantech exports and other economic matters “rise”, reported Bloomberg. In a joint statement, the two sides established a “trade and investment consultation mechanism” with four workstreams, including trade and investment balancing and export controls, reported state news agency Xinhua. A joint statement, released by the European Commission, said the two sides agreed to “strengthen” dialogue and to “maintain…the stability of global industrial supply chains”.
AVENUES OF COOPERATION: A Chinese state-affiliated consulting firm and several European certification bodies have established a consortium to coordinate on “green electricity certificates”, aiming to “establish a network for mutual recognition of green power”, reported financial outlet Yicai. Meanwhile, China’s foreign ministry described increasing air-conditioner and fan exports to Europe during a record heatwave as a sign of the “complementary advantages” of EU-China trade, said Xinhua. This message was echoed in several articles by Chinese state-backed outlets. The People’s Daily noted that “as climate change drives more frequent and intense heatwaves…China’s industrial and energy capabilities are…helping address rising demand in Europe”.
PRESSURE ON COMPETITION: Meanwhile, China issued strict mandatory energy consumption and efficiency standards for the solar power industry in efforts to “curb overcapacity”, said financial news outlet Caixin. The country is “rolling back” tax exemptions for plug-in hybrids and electric commercial trucks, Caixin also reported, adding that fully electric passenger cars will not be affected.
More China news
- US FRICTION: The US is “drafting a ban on imports of foreign inverters…over concerns China could use them to disrupt power supplies”, reported Reuters.
- ‘ZERO-CARBON CORRIDORS’: China called for developing “zero-carbon transport corridors” and vehicle hubs, including the promotion of low-carbon vehicles and vessels, says power news outlet BJX News.
- ‘SCALE UP SUPPORT’: At a climate meeting in Bangkok, climate envoy Liu Zhenmin advocated “scaling up support to developing countries” and creating an “inclusive, just transition mechanism”, said Earth Negotiations Bulletin.
- BRICS MEETING: The BRICS grouping will “emphasise the continued role of fossil fuels” in providing energy security, according to a joint communiqué. China will act as chair of BRICS in 2027, noted industry outlet International Energy Net.
- VENTURING NORTH: China has launched its 16th Arctic Ocean expedition, said state broadcaster CGTN. It added that “climate change and its impacts” is a key focus of the mission.
Captured
China received $4.3bn in climate finance from the World Bank in 2020-2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis. The World Bank has dropped a pledge on climate-related lending, reported the Financial Times. The newspaper also reported that the bank will also “phase out its lending to China by 2031”. (China is estimated to have provided $3-4.5bn of climate finance annually to other countries, according to estimates by different thinktanks.)
Spotlight
Interview: Dr Sun Yixian on his new database tracking Chinese climate ‘leadership’
A new database has mapped every climate initiative launched or run by China.
In this issue, Carbon Brief interviewed Dr Sun Yixian, professor of sustainability governance at the University of Bath, on what this data shows about China’s approach to climate “leadership”.
Below are highlights from the conversation. The full interview is published on the Carbon Brief website.
Carbon Brief: Your team has compiled a database of China’s “environmental leadership”. What do you mean by leadership?
Sun Yixian: In this project, what we are trying to look at is China’s role in global environmental governance – China’s shifting role, especially from a more passive participant in global governance processes to play a more proactive role in developing or managing its own initiatives on transnational or cross-border environmental governance.
So, [this includes] different environmental issues, but, of course, we found that climate change is a very important issue area. We have come up with a typology of different governance functions, trying to look at what specific activities Chinese actors are doing, or what kind of public goods Chinese actors are delivering, to the audiences of different initiatives.
CB: Could you explain what some of these climate initiatives look like in practice?
SY: In practical terms, there are all different kinds of initiatives. [The majority focus on] sharing information and building platforms, or developing capacity – capacity building activities, which can be training delivered by China to other countries.
Or also by providing funding, for example, China has created this south-south climate fund. It can also include research collaboration.
It can be traditional leadership activities, in the sense of developing certain international regulatory frameworks or rules or standards. It can also be pilot projects. China sometimes can start to work directly with some international partners to trial new ideas and new practices.
CB: The database stops at 2024 – just before the current administration withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement. Have you noticed any changes in China’s global climate engagements following this?
SY: I would say the trend is a continuous one, even [before] the withdrawal of the US…Over the past 10 years, we have seen an upward trend, with more and more new initiatives created by Chinese actors.
But I think the shift will probably help Chinese initiatives get more traction from their international partners – or countries or actors that haven’t been engaged very closely with China – to work more closely with China.
Whether or not this will translate into new initiatives or strengthen existing initiatives, I think that’s an open question.
CB: The theme of the data set is environmental leadership, but…Chinese officials have eschewed being called a climate leader. Would you say that China wants to be seen as a climate leader?
SY: We are entering into the implementation phase for the Paris Agreement. That means it is very difficult to create new agendas at this stage. [Instead the focus is] trying to see if countries can deliver.
If we want to see whether China is becoming a leader, we have to look at how fast, for example, China is accelerating its energy transition and how fast China can reduce its emissions.
Then, in terms of international engagement, what our data is trying to show is that China has become more proactive in that space.
When I was in China a few months ago, [leading experts] said the government…[is] not ready to become a global leader. But, at the same time, I think…in climate governance, but also in clean-energy supply chains – China is playing a leading role.
So, I think the question is whether this…will translate into the understanding, or mindsets, of policymakers or decision-makers.
This interview was conducted by Anika Patel via Zoom on 1 July 2026.
Watch, read, listen
ENVOY INTERVIEW: Climate envoy Liu Zhenmin spoke to state broadcasting station CGTN about climate finance, expectations for China to “lead climate action” and trade tensions.
VIEW FROM THE US: The Atlas Live podcast hosted a debate on “what it will take” for the US to match China’s strength in manufacturing clean-energy technologies.
‘ELECTROSTATE’ EXPLORED: The state media-affiliated WeChat blog Yuyuan Tantian discussed how becoming an “electrostate” would boost China’s “resilience against external risks”.
HYDROGEN TARGETS: The Switched On podcast explored what China’s new targets for “green hydrogen” mean for the development of the industry.
New science
- Offshore wind could provide 3-18% of China’s electricity by 2050 | Communications Earth and Environment
- A new “environmental and nutritional database” of the eight major cuisines of China, including Sichuan, Cantonese and Hunan, reveals “significant variability” in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and nutrient content | Scientific Data
Recently published on WeChat
China Briefing is written by Anika Patel, with contributions from Lekai Liu. It is edited by Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org
The post China Briefing 9 July 2026: Guangxi floods | ‘Beautiful China’ plan | New EU-China mechanism appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China Briefing 9 July 2026: Guangxi floods | ‘Beautiful China’ plan | New EU-China mechanism
Claver Gatete is Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. Jason Veysey is Energy Modeling Program Director and Senior Scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute. Lisa Sachs is Director of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment at Columbia University.
The case for global energy transition has rarely been clearer. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year exposed the cost of unplanned, fossil-dependent systems, while the falling cost of renewables, the rising penetration of electric vehicles, and the growing value of demand flexibility have made the direction of travel obvious. The benefits of a clean, secure, integrated system are no longer in dispute. What remains unclear is how to build it.
Countries around the world have called for faster renewable energy deployment and alternative energy arrangements. A secure, affordable, resilient, decarbonised system requires specific investments in specific places in a specific sequence, optimised across sectors and borders. But very few governments have the analytical foundation to translate those imperatives into investment.
The two instruments that are supposed to determine investment priorities for decarbonisation – Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and country platforms – cannot answer the most basic question facing any country undertaking an energy transition: what should the energy system look like?
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To close this gap, every country needs a bankable, economy-wide optimisation model for its energy system. A model is not a plan, but it can help answer the critical question of what the future energy system should look like. It shows how optimal scenarios vary as assumptions and policies are adjusted, calculates investment requirements and sequencing, and quantifies how system costs are affected by assumptions, policies, and exogenous variables like trade policy and financing terms.
Tool for efficient investment
Optimisation is a simplified way of simulating an energy system, but it can be an extremely powerful tool for moving energy planning from reactive (how do we manage the disparate actions in the energy system?) to intentional (what energy system underpins our national objectives?). A model can show how optimal scenarios vary as assumptions and policies are adjusted, and how investment requirements are quantified and sequenced.
Optimisation models can treat the energy system and the sectors it serves as an integrated whole, optimising across sectors and projects in ways that can be mutually reinforcing. If considered independently, growth in industrial demand, transport electrification, and digital infrastructure can add stress to the energy system. But an optimised plan can arrange these and other changes in an efficient, synergistic way.
Two to tango: How governments can unlock private investment for national climate goals
New load can be added where low-cost power is available; industrial customers can ensure the viability of investments in energy supply; electric vehicle charging policy can smooth load curves and reduce costs for all consumers.
Additionally, optimisation modeling can also change the financeability of investments. Taken alone, each project faces uncertainty about the rest of the system, which raises the cost of capital and causes projects to stall or unwind after contracts are signed. A coherent, optimised plan makes visible the coordination that private capital would otherwise have to bet on: identified offtake, sequenced and committed transmission, contracted power supply, and so on.
What COP31 and COP32 should do
The upcoming COPs in Turkey and Ethiopia can shift the center of gravity of international climate cooperation from fragmented commitments to planning. Three moves are urgently needed.
First, optimised, economy-wide, long-term energy system planning must be the foundation on which any meaningful NDC, country platform, or finance commitment rests. NDCs are typically drafted by environment or single-line ministries, with limited cross-sectoral input from ministries of energy, finance, and planning. They contain targets, derived from sectoral strategies or national commitments, not from an analytically grounded picture of what the energy system should look like and what investments would make it work. Country platforms are generally a portfolio of investments assembled from existing project pipelines, rather than derived from a system-level analysis of what an optimised, decarbonised energy system would require.
Second, recognise regions as a key planning unit. Modern integrated energy systems are inherently regional. Renewable endowments are unevenly distributed; balancing variable supply across borders lowers aggregate cost, reduces redundant backup capacity, and unlocks economies of scale no individual nation can achieve. Many energy investments in Southeast Asia, East Africa, Southern Africa and Central Asia may only be financeable in a regional context. Assessing domestic infrastructure without regional optimisation perpetuates the perception that decarbonisation is more expensive than it is.
COP31 leaders unveil global targets, with spotlight on electrification
Third, finance the planning capacity. A coordinated commitment by multilateral development banks, bilateral donors, and philanthropic partners to help every region and its constituent countries develop and maintain their own modelling capability, with open-source tools and regional analytical hubs, would close the most consequential gap in the current architecture. The cost is small relative to current spending on country platforms, failed project preparation, and misallocated infrastructure investment.
This includes supporting regional institutions such as the ASEAN Centre for Energy, the African Energy Commission, regional power pools, and the Latin American and Caribbean Energy Organization to determine what optimised regional systems require. Country-by-country pledging, repeated at every COP, will not deliver what meaningfully integrated systems can.
The 2026 energy crisis made the cost of unplanned, fossil-dependent systems newly visible. That window of clarity will close. The international community should seize the moment to build the planning foundation that has been missing for thirty years, rather than commissioning another round of NDCs or pledges, striving for outcomes neither was designed to deliver.
The post Every country needs a model to help optimise its energy transition appeared first on Climate Home News.
Every country needs a model to help optimise its energy transition
The world is currently experiencing what is expected to become the strongest El Niño on record – dubbed a “super El Niño” by many.
El Niño is the warm phase of a recurring climate pattern in the tropical Pacific that releases heat from the ocean into the atmosphere.
This temporarily raises global temperatures and reshapes rainfall and extreme weather around the world – impacting the lives of billions of people.
The current El Niño event began in June and is expected to last into 2027.
El Niño is part of a wider climate pattern called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle.
The ENSO cycle also has a cool phase, known as La Niña, as well as a “neutral” phase. El Niño and La Niña events typically last between nine and 12 months, but can go on longer.
Below, Carbon Brief explains how the ENSO cycle works, its impacts on extreme weather and global temperatures and why this El Niño event is projected to be the most intense since records began.
The post Explainer: How the ‘super El Niño’ will reshape the world’s weather appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/el-nino-explainer/index.html
The second-largest reservoir in the US reached a record-low water height on Saturday – just days after the country’s largest reservoir broke its own record.
Both Lake Mead and Lake Powell are located on the Colorado River.
They provide water for populations across seven US states in the south-western US, with around 40 million people getting some or all of their municipal water from the Colorado River.
The river also provides water for around 5.5m acres (22,258 square kilometres) of farmland across Colorado, Arizona, California and the other states in the river basin.
Experts tell Carbon Brief that climate change, population growth and over-consumption are all contributing to the current record-low levels of the reservoirs.
Record lows
At full capacity, Lakes Mead and Powell can hold a combined 68 cubic kilometres of water – enough to supply all household consumption in the contiguous US for nearly 1.5 years. However, the water level in both reservoirs has been declining for decades.
The chart below shows the water level of Lake Mead, in metres above mean sea level. The reservoir, which began to fill in 1935 following the construction of the Hoover Dam, has a “full pool” maximum capacity of 347.60 metres. The water level in Lake Mead reached a record low of 317.11 metres on 7 August.
The following chart shows the water level of Lake Powell, in metres above mean sea level. Lake Powell’s full-pool level is 1,127.76 metres.
While the reservoir reached its maximum capacity several times in the 1980s, it has not done so since. On 15 August, the water level in Lake Powell was recorded at a new record-low of 1,072.87 metres.
Both reservoirs have continued to decline in the days since breaking their respective records. The downward trend will largely continue in both lakes until next spring, when the snowpack in the mountains of the Upper Colorado River Basin begins to melt, says Dr Jack Schmidt, a senior research scientist at Utah State University’s Center for Colorado River Studies. He tells Carbon Brief:
“The big dilemma of the moment is that we’re only in the middle of August, and we have no assurance of what the coming winter will be. The only thing we can be sure of is that we will be depleting overall total basin reservoir storage from now until, roughly, early April.”
Compounding factors
The record lows across the two reservoirs are the result of several compounding factors, experts tell Carbon Brief.
Since the turn of the 20th century, the amount of water flowing along the Upper Colorado River has declined by about 20%. Research suggests that half of this decline can be attributed to human-induced climate change.
Most of the river’s streamflow comes from the snowpack of the Upper Colorado River Basin, which stretches across five western US states but is primarily located in Colorado and Utah.
This region has been gripped by a historic “megadrought” for more than a quarter of a century. Nearly half of the megadrought’s intensity over 2000-18 is attributable to climate change, according to a 2020 study.
At the same time, the increasing population in the US south-west has put added pressure on the Colorado River’s water supply. The number of people obtaining some or all of their water from the Colorado system has grown by 15 million (around 60%) since 1992.
Schmidt tells Carbon Brief:
“There’s an ultimate cause of the present water crisis, and there’s a proximate cause. The ultimate cause is a warming climate, a warming planet and a pretty clear correlation between warming conditions and decreased runoff in the Colorado River Basin.
“The proximate cause is that in this messy democratic republic of ours, big policy decisions that match the variability of the climate occur painfully slowly – with intense political negotiations – and only incrementally.”
On 31 July, the US Bureau of Reclamation, which manages water resources in the western US, released an environmental impact statement on its proposed post-2026 strategy for managing Lakes Powell and Mead. The strategy itself has not been released yet.
Schmidt notes that the statement does appear to give the Bureau flexibility to “respond to crisis” by reducing the delivery of water to several states. However, he adds:
“They acknowledge it won’t work if we just stay critically dry, and of course every climate model for the 21st century, especially with a continually warming planet, says that that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
The post Analysis: The two largest reservoirs in the US have hit record-low levels appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: The two largest reservoirs in the US have hit record-low levels
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