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Welcome to the final COP28 special edition of DeBriefed, an essential guide to all the key developments at the Dubai climate talks. Subscribe to DeBriefed here for free.

This week

Global stocktake

FOSSILS AWAY: Nearly 200 countries have agreed to help the world “transition away from fossil fuels”, as part of the “global stocktake” decided at COP28, according to Carbon Brief’s in-depth summary of the talks. The deal “call[ed] on” all countries to contribute, using the weakest-possible UN legal language to ask for action. Yet even this was hard-won, with an earlier draft deal having left action on fossil fuels entirely optional.

WHITHER FINANCE? The stocktake also called for the tripling of renewables, doubling of energy efficiency and “substantially reducing” methane emissions, all by 2030. These targets ticked four of the five “pillars” to keep 1.5C in reach, set out by the International Energy Agency (IEA) ahead of COP28. The crucial fifth pillar – finance for developing countries, which could have unlocked greater ambition elsewhere – was largely missing.

‘MOMENT OF TRUTH’: COP28 agreed new targets, but only countries can deliver action. The stocktake “encourages” them to submit ambitious new 2035 pledges aligned with 1.5C, with a deadline of 2025. This will be the “moment of truth”, one expert told Carbon Brief.

ACTION STATIONS: The stocktake also launched a four-year “dialogue” on implementing the deal, as well as “mission 1.5C”, designed to boost “ambition…action and implementation”. This mission will be run by COP30 hosts Brazil – who said it would work towards cutting fossil fuel dependence – along with the UAE COP28 presidency and COP29 host Azerbaijan. The role of the “mitigation work programme” – launched at COP26 to “urgently scale up mitigation ambition and implementation in this critical decade” – remains unclear.

FREE WEBINAR: Carbon Brief’s team of journalists will be available to answer questions on the global stocktake – and all of the other key outcomes of COP28 – during a free webinar taking place at 3pm UK time today. Register here.

Adaptation

MONEY TALKS: Negotiations over a “framework” to guide a “global goal” on climate adaptation faced significant tensions. African countries and others said they needed strong commitments that developed countries would financially support them. The US and the EU did not want to discuss money. Large, emerging economies were accused of blocking talks by insisting on references to the different responsibilities facing developed and developing countries.

NEW FOCUS: The final text did not contain any of the developing countries’ major priorities. Parties agreed to focus adaptation on several key themes and decided on a handful of ill-defined targets. However, it kick-starts a formalised global effort for countries to scale up their adaptation efforts, with a first round of planning and reporting given a deadline of 2030.

Loss and damage

FUND AGREED: Nations launched a new “loss-and-damage fund” on day one of COP28, in what one observer called a “diplomatic coup” for the UAE. This was welcomed as the first time a major outcome had emerged from a COP opening session. It marked the culmination of a decades-long effort by climate-vulnerable nations to secure funds for the unstoppable harm caused by climate disasters. 

MONEY NEEDED: With no obligation to pay into the fund, filling it will largely depend on the generosity of wealthy countries. Several parties, including the UAE, Germany and the EU, kick-started the fund with $770.6m of pledges, some of which were existing funds that had been re-pledged. Campaigners pointed out this amounted to less than 0.2% of developing countries’ annual needs.

Emirati leadership

OVERSHADOWED PRESIDENCY: COP28 president and oil executive Dr Sultan Al Jaber hailed the “world-first” achievement of getting “fossil fuels” in a UN climate change agreement. However, his presidency was overshadowed by allegations the UAE intended to use COP28 to make oil-and-gas deals – and by resurfaced remarks he made questioning the science of a fossil-fuel phase-out at an online event on the need to include women in climate action.

‘LOW-CARBON’ OIL: Mere hours after the summit, Al Jaber told the Guardian that his company, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), will continue investing in oil. He claimed to the paper that his oil can be considered “low-carbon” because it is “extracted efficiently and with less leakage than other sources”.

Food, forests and nature

FOOD: Carbon Brief has just published a separate in-depth look at what COP28 delivered for food, land, forests and nature. “Food day” at COP28 saw the launch of the Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation – a group of five countries committed to pushing the agenda of systemic change in food systems. But the Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on agriculture and food security failed to reach an agreement, leaving parties frustrated.

FORESTS: The global stocktake “emphasises” that halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation by 2030 will be key to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement – the first time such a pledge has garnered formal recognition in a UN climate change legal text. Several countries put forward new ideas for protecting forests at COP28, but Brazil stole the show with its $250bn “tropical forests forever” fund proposal.

NATURE: COP28 hosted an unprecedented number of high-level events on the links between climate change and nature loss. In a first-of-its-kind initiative, COP28 president UAE and COP15 president China released a Joint Statement on Climate, Nature and People acknowledging the interconnected nature of climate change and biodiversity loss, signed by 20 countries. The world’s landmark nature deal agreed in 2022, the Global Biodiversity Framework, was also referenced in a UN climate change text for the first time.

Around the COP

  • FOSSIL FUELS: New fossil-fuel pledges dominated the start of COP28, with the US among nine new countries to sign up to the Powering Past Coal Alliance – and Kenya, Samoa and Spain signing up to the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance.
  • RENEWABLES: Some 130 countries pledged to triple installed renewable capacity and double the rate of energy efficiency improvements by the end of COP28. Notable exceptions include China and India.
  • METHANE: Turkmenistan – a major methane emitter – and other countries joined a pledge to cut global methane emissions by 30% by 2030 at COP28. The US, China and UAE held a methane summit and more than $1bn was put forward to reduce emissions of the potent greenhouse gas. 
  • HEAVY INDUSTRY: Some 36 countries joined a new alliance led by Germany and Chile to cut emissions from heavy industry, such as steel and cement making.
  • GENDER BIAS: A COP28 presidency image celebrating the outcome of the summit featuring a large group of men raised eyebrows, including with Spain’s ecological transition minister Teresa Ribera and UN greenwashing tsar Catherine McKenna.

23

The number of hours COP28 went into overtime, making it the 13th longest UN climate summit.


Latest climate research

  • In npj Ocean Sustainability, a group of ocean scientists examined the inequities in their field and proposed ways to address these gaps.
  • A new study, published in Communications Earth & Environment, found that seagrass meadows off the coast of the Bahamas store as much as 590m tonnes of organic carbon in the top metre of sediment.
  • By 2100, up to 18% of species in south-east Asia could become regionally extinct under a “business-as-usual” deforestation scenario, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

Global stocktake verbs at COP28

UN climate change texts can be difficult to interpret for countries, observers and journalists alike. One way to glean deeper meaning from the texts is to examine the type of verbs that they use. According to Carbon Brief analysis, the global stocktake text agreed at COP28 uses few “operative” verbs – words that demand action from countries (shown in red on the chart above). What’s more, the key passage on fossil fuels merely “calls on” countries to take action. As Carbon Brief’s editor Leo Hickman noted, this is the weakest of all of the terms that COP texts can use to invite countries to act.

Watch, read, listen

PIPE DREAMS: An Al Jazeera documentary released before COP28 looked at the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline and what major oil projects mean for Uganda.

COLOMBIA LEADS: A Bloomberg feature examined how Colombia led from the front at COP28 and became the first major coal producer to join a group of nations calling for a fossil-fuel non-proliferation treaty.

LINE HELD: UK climate justice activist Asad Rehman wrote in the Guardian that the agreement on a fossil fuel phase-out had “more loopholes than a block of Swiss cheese”.

Coming up

  • 15 December: International Energy Agency (IEA) Coal 2023 report launch
  • 17 December: Serbian parliamentary elections
  • 18 December: Green Alliance event on what COP28 means for UK politics
  • 20 December: Democratic Republic of Congo presidential and national assembly elections

Pick of the jobs

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org

The post COP28 DeBriefed 15 December: Carbon Brief’s key takeaways; Food, forests and nature; Free webinar today appeared first on Carbon Brief.

COP28 DeBriefed 15 December: Carbon Brief’s key takeaways; Food, forests and nature; Free webinar today

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Scientists Outplant Experimental ‘Flonduran’ Corals in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park

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Researchers are testing whether cross-breeding elkhorn corals from Florida and Honduras can help restore lost genetic diversity and improve the threatened species’ ability to withstand warmer waters.

Nearly three dozen young lab-grown elkhorn corals were outplanted onto reefs in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park this spring, including a group of “Flondurans,” marking the first time this experimental cross-breed of Florida and Honduran elkhorn corals was introduced to the remote park about 70 miles from Key West.

Scientists Outplant Experimental ‘Flonduran’ Corals in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park

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DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids

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Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week

UK, Europe and India battle heatwaves

‘MIND-BOGGLING’ MAY: The UK and continental Europe have set “mind-boggingly crazy”  temperature records for May amid a deadly heatwave, reported the Financial Times. According to the Associated Press, the UK “smashed a century-old temperature record for the second time in 24 hours on Tuesday”. The newswire added that records “also fell in France, where temperatures reached 36C on Monday in the country’s south-west”. On Wednesday, Portugal hit a record May temperature of 40.3C, said BBC News.

‘BRUTAL REMINDER’:  In parts of Italy, the heatwave triggered blackouts, reported Reuters. The heatwave has also been linked to more than a dozen deaths in the UK and France, including from people drowning and suffering heat-related deaths while competing in sporting events, said ABC News. Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, said the intense heatwaves were a “brutal reminder” of the cost of global warming, reported Politico. Carbon Brief has in-depth coverage of the record-shattering heatwave.
INDIA’S DEADLY HEAT: In the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, more than 100 people died within three days following an intense heatwave, reported the Khaleej Times. The publication noted that authorities urged people to stay indoors and avoid direct exposure to the heat. Meanwhile, some parts of India are “grappling with power cuts as record-breaking heat has pushed electricity demand ​to an all-time high”, reported Reuters.

Around the world

  • CRUDE DIPS: The International Energy Agency (IEA) said global investments in oil projects will fall below $500bn in 2026, continuing a three-year decline, reported Bloomberg. Carbon Brief’s analysis of the data shows the US’s “data-centre boom” means it is now investing more in fossil-fuel power than China.
  • DODGING NET-ZERO: The world’s biggest miner, Australian giant BHP, has backtracked on climate action by halting or delaying projects to cut “vast” amounts of emissions, according to a Guardian investigation.
  • SOLAR SLIP: China’s new solar installations dropped for a fourth straight month, reflecting weakening domestic demand, said Bloomberg.
  • NO LOGGING: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell last year to its lowest level since 2019, according to a new report, said Agence France-Presse.
  • EXECUTIVE ACTION: Puerto Rico’s governor announced a state of emergency to fight a surge in coastal erosion, citing the need to protect natural resources and vulnerable communities, reported the Associated Press.

Four million

The number of homes in the UK with air conditioning, double the figure from three years ago, reported the Guardian. There are 29m households in the UK.


Latest climate research

  • Carbon Brief will soon be launching a new fortnightly newsletter focused on climate research. Sign up for free today.
  • LGBTQ+ households in the US are “significantly more likely” to face energy poverty and insecurity than the general population | Energy Research & Social Science
  • Global rice-paddy greenhouse gas emissions have doubled over the past six decades | Nature Food
  • Vegetation greening and human-caused warming are the “main drivers” of a surge in flash floods over the last decade | Science Advances

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

Map of the UK showing that at least 67 NHS sites have been forced to close due to weather-related flooding since 2021

A Carbon Brief investigation has shed light on the impact of weather-related flooding on National Health Service (NHS) facilities across the UK. At least 67 NHS hospital wards, departments and other sites have been forced to temporarily close or relocate due to weather-related flooding. The chart above shows sites of weather-related flooding incidents at NHS facilities. The size of the circles indicates the number of incidents reported at each site.

Spotlight

How solar mini-grids can ‘help boost’ Nigeria’s economy

This week, Carbon Brief covers a new report on Nigeria’s solar mini-grid industry.

Amid the impact of the US-Iran war on the Nigerian economy, a new report has argued that solar-mini grids can help to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and create more than 200,000 jobs.

In Nigeria, Africa’s third-largest economy, the war has led to an increase in energy prices and a decrease in petrol consumption. Petrol is one of the country’s main sources of transport and household fuel. According to one estimate, prices have surged by up to 40% since the conflict commenced in February.

Although the Nigerian treasury has benefited from rising crude oil prices – the country is a major exporter of oil and gas – the impact has been most visible on the wider population.

Rising energy prices “have affected the purchasing power of workers”, Agnes Funmi Sessi, a labour union leader in Lagos, told Carbon Brief.

However, scaling the deployment of solar “mini-grids” could help the country move away from fossil fuels, stimulate rural economies and improve livelihoods, according to the new report authored by the thinktank, the Africa Policy Research Institute.

“We estimate that, by deploying over 10,000 mini-grids, the sector could create 212,688 direct full-time informal and productive-use jobs across the off-grid and under-grid market segments,” the report said.

A nascent industry

Solar “mini-grids” are small-scale, localised electricity generation and distribution systems powered by solar panels.

The report positioned Nigeria’s mini-grid sector as one of the fastest-growing in Africa, with the country having just 11 mini-grids in 2015 and 155 by 2024, along with at least 42 active developers.

Many of the companies within the sector are young and apply novel local techniques in their deployment of solar technology, the report said.

However, access to finance remains a huge barrier. According to the report, the sector may require up to $8bn to connect 35.4 million people to mini-grids.

“Most Nigerians want solar power in their homes, but it is a capital intensive business for vendors and customers,” Dr Ben Iheagwara, a renewable energy entrepreneur and policy analyst, told Carbon Brief.

The report urged the Nigerian government and its international partners to “attract private capital by de-risking investments and ensuring regulatory clarity and long-term planning”.

Other key recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders include investment in skills development and paying attention to the gender gap.

Powering rural communities

Many rural communities, which make up about 37% of the country, are disconnected from the national grid system, so often have to generate their own electricity through mini-grid systems.

According to Nigeria’s electricity regulator, NERC, a mini-grid is defined as a power generating system with an installed capacity of up to 10 megawatts.

A mini-grid can be powered by fossil fuels such as diesel or petrol, but solar power is now considered a cheaper and cleaner source.

With more than 80 million people lacking access to electricity in Nigeria, solar mini-grids are increasingly viewed as the lowest-cost electrification solution, the report said.

Watch, read, listen

MOVING FORWARD: The Energy Transition Show dug into electricity reform in South Africa, discussing the country’s coal legacy and the role of renewables.

ENERGY POVERTY: In an opinion article for Project Syndicate, executive director of the African Climate Foundation, Saliem Fakir, argued that the energy transition in emerging and developing economies is driven by economics and security rather than emissions targets.
VANISHING CITY: BBC News reported on a coastal community in Nigeria where the ocean has “already swallowed more than half of the town”.

Coming up

Pick of the jobs

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

The post DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids appeared first on Carbon Brief.

DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids

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Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs?

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At the African Development Bank (AfDB) annual meetings this week, several African leaders called for investments in electricity infrastructure which go beyond lighting homes to powering economies.

Applauding the AfDB for its energy programmes like Mission 300 – which aims to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030 – the Central African Republic’s President Faustin-Archange Touadera said that without power supply “we will not be able to achieve development”.

Speaking alongside him, the Republic of Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso echoed this, saying that “as we need to help our people to turn towards agriculture, to turn towards livestock rearing, we also need to provide power to them.”

As the Mission 300 initiative advances, attention is increasingly shifting from simply connecting households to ensuring that electricity access translates into economic opportunities and livelihoods. That shift is driving the launch of a new Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy being developed under Mission 300 by the philanthropically funded Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP).

    In an interview with Climate Home News, Carol Koech, GEAPP’s vice president for Africa, said the initiative is designed to ensure that electrification supports income generation, agriculture and local economic development rather than only basic household access.

    Q: What is the Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy aiming to achieve with Mission 300?

    A: Mission 300 is increasingly being seen as a job platform and so the role of the Centre of Excellence in translating those electricity connections to jobs. So we want the centre to do four things. First, as a delivery engine, which enables countries to embed a cross-institutional advisor that supports the electrification components, but also other components that are happening in the country.

    Second, we want the centre to be an innovation and strategy hub. Today, there’s really no place where you can go to find the state of the industry for productive use of energy across the globe, and we want to make the centre of excellence the place where you can go and get information about what technologies are available, where deployment is happening and how much is being deployed.

    Campaigners in Africa are demanding their governments stop the development of fossil fuels on the continent and embrace the opportunities of renewable energy
    (Photo: Lighting Global/SunCulture/World Bank)

    The third pillar is to coordinate and mobilise capital. We anticipate the centre coordinating internally within the ecosystem but also mobilising additional financing to help productivity. The last piece is how to scale businesses, enterprises and partnerships around this centre because we anticipate that as we grow this space, new industries will emerge and those industries will need to be supported.

    Q: Why is productive use of energy becoming important under Mission 300?

    A: Mission 300 gave us a bigger platform to demonstrate that energy is truly an enabler for economic development. It’s not sufficient to just provide a connection, but it is required that that connection truly translates to economic development for the communities that benefit.

    We shouldn’t bring electricity and then start thinking about what people can do with it. We need to think about both at the same time and ensure electricity arrives together with the things that will make a difference in people’s lives. Historically, we’ve brought electricity and imagined a miracle would happen, but we know that hasn’t been the case.

    The question is how to ensure universal access in the cheapest way while still transforming communities. Some mini-grids have been deployed in places where demand is extremely low, making them too expensive to sustain. But when mini-grids are paired with productive uses, the economics start to change. If businesses currently running on fossil fuel generators move to solar or renewable energy, operating costs fall and the business case for mini-grids becomes much stronger.

    Q: How could this work in practice for agriculture and rural communities?

    A: I’ll give you a practical example in our pilot country Zambia. Zambia has two programmes, they have the ASCENT programme for energy access and they also have the Zambia agribusiness and trade platform (ZATP). Some of the components of the ZATP programme – which is an agri-business program to help farmers to be productive – have a productive use component but don’t have an energy supply component. So we’re offering things like mills, processing facilities, irrigation and others. In some parts of Zambia, these productive use equipment has been supplied but has not been powered, so communities are not benefiting from that.

    So the whole point is if we coordinate where the agribusiness programme is deployed together with where the energy access programme is deployed and layer those two programmes together in one place, then you could solve the energy access problem and solve productive use together and therefore have really meaningful outcomes for communities.

    Q: How will the centre help both households and small businesses use electricity productively?

    A: The question on whether we should electrify households or businesses is neither here nor there. We need to electrify all. The argument is really once we electrify businesses, the owners of those businesses will be able to pay what they need for their households as well as increase production for their businesses.

    Electricity consumption is usually an indicator of economic development and by pushing productive use into households, especially where households are also smallholder farmers, the question becomes: how can electricity access translate to additional economic development for them? If you are connected onto a mini-grid, then you can actually use that connection to run irrigation, put in a dryer, or a cold storage system, whatever you require to improve your income but the fact that you have energy means that you can access productive use. Now, we need to ask ourselves how do these farmers or these households then get access to these appliances, because that’s another barrier.

    Q&A: Will subsidy cuts for Chinese clean-tech exports hurt Africa’s solar boom?

    The cost of these appliances is usually extremely high, and when you have programmes such as the ZATP running in Zambia, that’s already a public funding approach to making these appliances available and potentially reachable for farmers, either at household level, at farm level or at community level.

    Q: How does this complement the already existing Mission 300 national energy compacts designed by countries?

    A: Each of the national energy compacts have a productive use component, a pillar that talks about distributed renewable energy, productive use, and clean cooking. This is actually complementing the work of the countries, and this centre is like an available support, back office for countries to tap into as they implement their national energy compacts, if they have specific requirements and support for that pillar three.

    So the advisers that will be embedded into countries, their role is to coordinate within country programs that are running where energy could make a difference. The advisers will be sourced from the country and so they will make sure that the donor money is coordinated to benefit the country fully. Their role will include going to ministries of agriculture or any related ministries and understanding where they are prioritising programmes that require electrification. In many cases, programmes and money have already been allocated, but this component is about how do we deploy it in a way that it actually truly brings a difference, so those advisers will do that.

    Q: How will the centre address financing and private sector investment challenges?

    A: What we’re really looking at is different financing mechanisms. In the past, we have provided subsidies and results-based financing to suppliers, distributors and manufacturers to help create markets for productive-use appliances. I see this as one mechanism the centre could use, but the bigger opportunity is aligning public funding across different programmes so that more of it can support productive uses, either through direct funding or subsidies.

    Nigerians bet on solar as global oil shock hits wallets and power supplies

    When it comes to private sector investment, the reality is that Africa’s energy sector still faces serious constraints. Most private investment has gone into power generation, particularly through independent power producers, and even then that has only been possible in places where the off-takers, usually utilities, are bankable.

    To unlock more private capital, countries need the right policies, reforms and regulations, but even more importantly, utilities must become financially viable. If the off-taker is not bankable, then the project is not bankable.

    Another major question is how to attract private investment into transmission infrastructure. There are different models being explored, but the reality is that public funding alone is not sufficient to achieve Mission 300, so finding new ways to mobilise private capital will be critical.

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