Published

3 months ago

July 18, 2025

Alice Rush

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

This week

UK parliament’s climate takeover

MILIBAND SPEECH: UK energy security and net-zero secretary Ed Miliband delivered a “scathing” address to parliament on the “state of the climate and nature” in the UK, Edie reported. Ahead of his speech, Miliband told the Guardian he intends it to become an annual event, adding: “I feel a deep sense of responsibility to the British people to tell them the truth about what we know about the climate and nature crisis.”

RENEWABLES ‘BOOST’: Elsewhere, the government unveiled a strategy for “longer clean power contracts”, reported BusinessGreen, with the aim of “boost[ing] investor confidence” and “curb[ing] consumer costs”. It said the government will amend its “contracts for difference scheme” (CfD), raising contract duration from 15 to 20 years. Carbon Brief’s Simon Evans provided more details.

REFORM U-TURN: The Financial Times reported that the hard-right Reform UK party wrote a letter to “green energy bosses” threatening to “strike down” renewable energy subsidies and “reassess all net-zero related commitments” due to “intolerable costs to the economy”, if successful in the next election. However, deputy leader Richard Tice appeared to backtrack just 24 hours later in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s PM, claiming the letter had been “misread” and that a “contract is a contract”.

Around the world

NASA DATA: In the US, the Trump administration aborted plans to publish major climate change reports on NASA’s website, the Associated Press reported. This will “make it harder to find major, legally mandated assessments of how climate change is endangering the nation and its people”, the newswire added.
‘LANDMARK’ BATTLE: The Australian government has no obligation to protect Torres Strait islanders from the impacts of climate change, concluded a major federal case covered by BBC News. It added that the verdict left community leaders “in shock”.
‘FAIR COMPETITION’: The European Union seeks “fair competition” with China on clean energy, Agence France-Press said. However, “tensions are high” ahead of an upcoming summit in Beijing on 24 July, according to the Economist, with electric vehicles a “particular crunch point”.
MONSOON DEATHS: More than 60 people were killed in 24 hours in ongoing torrential monsoon rains in Pakistan, the nation’s Dawn newspaper reported.
CANCELLED CELEBRATIONS: Traditional Bastille Day celebrations were cancelled across France due to the risk of fire amid extreme temperatures, Le Monde reported.

£113bn

The potential UK economic losses by 2040 due to stranded fossil-fuel assets, according to a new report covered by Edie.

Latest climate research

There were a “record number” of compound drought and heatwaves in the Amazon over 2023-4, compared to the period since 1981 | Environmental Research Letters
The “clean-up” of aerosol emissions in east Asia is likely a “key contributor” to a recent acceleration in global warming | Communications Earth & Environment
Transformation of abandoned open-pit mines into “solar hubs” could “meet projected 2050 global electricity needs” | Nature Sustainability

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

Captured

India has reached a milestone of 50% of its installed electricity capacity coming from “non-fossil fuel” sources (renewables and nuclear) – ahead of its 2030 target under the Paris Agreement, Reuters reported. The newswire said the move “signal[s] accelerating momentum in the country’s clean-energy transition”. A press release from India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy stated that, “despite having one of the lowest per-capita emissions globally, India remains among the few G20 countries that are on track to meet – or even exceed – their NDC commitments”. The research group Climate Action Tracker rates India’s climate pledges as “highly insufficient“.

Spotlight

‘Climate justice and cultural survival’ in Kenya

This week, Carbon Brief interviews Julianna Loshiro, an Indigenous Yaaku activist working in Kenya to conserve nature and her native language.

Carbon Brief: Can you explain who you are, where you come from and the projects you work on?

Julianna Loshiro: I’m a proud Yaaku woman from Mukogodo Forest, north in Laikipia, Kenya, where our language, Yaakunte, and way of life have been passed down through generations. Raised by my grandparents, I was immersed in Indigenous knowledge systems.

Living in the forest is a struggle because of land insecurity. Evictions have been happening to the Ogiek of Mau, the Sengwer community from Cherangany, and even the Yaaku community.

Currently, I am leading efforts to revitalise the Yakuunte language through storytelling, theatre, curriculum development and digital tools. My work is driven by a commitment to cultural resilience and intergenerational justice.

CB: You’ve recently published a book, “Climate Justice is Gender Justice”. Could you outline the key messages that you are trying to get across and also what motivated you to write the book?

JL: My book is an extension of our ancestral wisdom. Every chapter echoes the values and land-based knowledge that I grew up with in the Mukogodo forest. It is an urgent call to centre Indigenous knowledge in the climate conversation and to understand justice through the lens of lived experience. I wrote this book to amplify the stories and wisdom that often go unheard, especially from rural Indigenous communities.

One of the key ideas I share is that climate solutions are not just scientific, they are also cultural, emotional and relational. The book reflects how climate change impacts everyday lives and how different genders experience this crisis differently, but it also shows how we can heal by listening to those closest to the land.

Writing the book was a way of sharing our Yaaku worldview with the wider world, where nature is family and language is spirit. Culture is a form of resistance. So, by linking climate justice with our cultural survival, I am showing that language and environmental conservation are deeply intertwined. If we lose one, we risk losing the other. This book is a living testimony that our Indigenous identity is key to the future of our planet.

CB: Your book promotion also references the organisation, Indigenous Young Moms, for which you serve as project manager. What perspectives does motherhood lend to efforts to achieve both climate and gender justice?

JL: Motherhood sharpens our sense of urgency and hope. As an indigenous young mother, I don’t just see climate change in statistics, I see it in the drying rivers, the struggling bees and the questions my child will ask tomorrow.

Climate justice is gender justice because it demands that we account for these differences. It means dismantling systems that exclude women, men, non-binary and gender-diverse people from decisions, and it is Indigenous women who often lead the way.

CB: What has been missing from the conversation around preserving Indigenous cultural heritage and empowering Indigenous communities? How do you see your book filling this gap?

JL: Indigenous systems are too often ignored in development efforts. As a Yaaku woman, I have felt the silence imposed on both my language and my gender. We need to create solutions led by Indigenous people. We must be trusted as experts and storytellers in this journey.

Now, it is young people bringing positive and impactful solutions, at the grassroots level, and to even bigger platforms, like speaking at Indigenous caucuses. We’re really happy to see individuals and organisations holding out their hands to us. It’s really moving because it’s been hard for our voices to be heard.

Watch, read, listen

FRUITS OF LABOUR: Migration Story highlighted the “daily struggle” of informal workers in Asia’s “largest wholesale fruit and vegetable market” as they endure the economics of heat stress.

COMMODIFICATION: Indigenous storyteller Nina Gualinga, in a Guardian documentary, explored the “extractivism” associated with “spiritual healing in the Amazon”.

HOLIDAY HEATWAVES: In the BBC’s The Climate Question podcast, host Graihagh Jackson asked how more frequent extreme temperatures will transform the travel industry.

Coming up

14-23 July: High-level political forum on sustainable development, New York
19 July: Tasmanian state election, Australia
21-22 July: International Conference on Climate Leadership, Harbin, China
24-25 July: EU-China summit, Beijing, China

Pick of the jobs

Ember, digital communications intern | Salary: £25,207. Location: Remote
Sequoia Climate Foundation, programme manager | Salary: $185,000-$190,000. Location: Irvine, California (hybrid)
Australian National University, research fellow | Salary: $118,632-$134,507. Location: Canberra, Australia
WWF, head of policy (climate) | Salary: £56,297-£65,680. Location: Woking, UK
The Conversation, commissioning editor, environment | Salary: £34,000-£40,000. Location: London (hybrid)

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 18 July 2025: India’s clean-energy milestone; Climate reaches UK parliament; Conserving trees and culture in Kenya appeared first on Carbon Brief.

DeBriefed 18 July 2025: India’s clean-energy milestone; Climate reaches UK parliament; Conserving trees and culture in Kenya

Climate Change

Efforts to green lithium extraction face scrutiny over water use

Published

1 day ago

October 13, 2025

Alice Rush

Mining companies are showcasing new technologies which they say could extract more lithium – a key ingredient for electric vehicle (EV) batteries – from South America’s vast, dry salt flats with lower environmental impacts.

But environmentalists question whether the expensive technology is ready to be rolled out at scale, while scientists warn it could worsen the depletion of scarce freshwater resources in the region and say more research is needed.

The “lithium triangle” – an area spanning Argentina, Bolivia and Chile – holds more than half of the world’s known lithium reserves. Here, lithium is found in salty brine beneath the region’s salt flats, which are among some of the driest places on Earth.

Lithium mining in the region has soared, driven by booming demand to manufacture batteries for EVs and large-scale energy storage.

Mining companies drill into the flats and pump the mineral-rich brine to the surface, where it is left under the sun in giant evaporation pools for 18 months until the lithium is concentrated enough to be extracted.

The technique is relatively cheap but requires vast amounts of land and water. More than 90% of the brine’s original water content is lost to evaporation and freshwater is needed at different stages of the process.

One study suggested that the Atacama Salt Flat in Chile is sinking by up to 2 centimetres a year because lithium-rich brine is being pumped at a faster rate than aquifers are being recharged.

Oct 3, 2025

Clean Energy Frontier

Colombia proposes expert group to advance talks on minerals agreement

A draft resolution aimed at advancing talks on a global minerals treaty will be discussed at a major UN environment meeting later this year

Read more
Oct 8, 2025

Politics

Panama environment minister backs calls for reform of UN climate process

Panama’s environment minister told Climate Home that decision-making rules at the UN climate talks should be reformed to deliver faster changes.

Read more
Oct 7, 2025

Energy

Global renewables goal slips off course after Trump, China moves

The IEA downgrades its forecast for renewables growth due to the US cutting renewable tax credits and China’s electricity market reforms

Read more

Lithium extraction in the region has led to repeated conflicts with local communities, who fear the impact of the industry on local water supplies and the region’s fragile ecosystem.

The lithium industry’s answer is direct lithium extraction (DLE), a group of technologies that selectively extracts the silvery metal from brine without the need for vast open-air evaporation ponds. DLE, it argues, can reduce both land and water use.

Direct lithium extraction investment is growing

The technology is gaining considerable attention from mining companies, investors and governments as a way to reduce the industry’s environmental impacts while recovering more lithium from brine.

DLE investment is expected to grow at twice the pace of the lithium market at large, according to research firm IDTechX.

There are around a dozen DLE projects at different stages of development across South America. The Chilean government has made it a central pillar of its latest National Lithium Strategy, mandating its use in new mining projects.

Last year, French company Eramet opened Centenario Ratones in northern Argentina, the first plant in the world to attempt to extract lithium solely using DLE.

Eramet’s lithium extraction plant is widely seen as a major test of the technology. “Everyone is on the edge of their seats to see how this progresses,” said Federico Gay, a lithium analyst at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. “If they prove to be successful, I’m sure more capital will venture into the DLE space,” he said.

More than 70 different technologies are classified as DLE. Brine is still extracted from the salt flats but is separated from the lithium using chemical compounds or sieve-like membranes before being reinjected underground.

DLE techniques have been used commercially since 1996, but only as part of a hybrid model still involving evaporation pools. Of the four plants in production making partial use of DLE, one is in Argentina and three are in China.

Reduced environmental footprint

New-generation DLE technologies have been hailed as “potentially game-changing” for addressing some of the issues of traditional brine extraction.

“DLE could potentially have a transformative impact on lithium production,” the International Lithium Association found in a recent report on the technology.

Firstly, there is no need for evaporation pools – some of which cover an area equivalent to the size of 3,000 football pitches.

“The land impact is minimal, compared to evaporation where it’s huge,” said Gay.

A drone view shows Eramet’s lithium production plant at Salar Centenario in Salta, Argentina, July 4, 2024. (Photo: REUTERS/Matias Baglietto)

The process is also significantly quicker and increases lithium recovery. Roughly half of the lithium is lost during evaporation, whereas DLE can recover more than 90% of the metal in the brine.

In addition, the brine can be reinjected into the salt flats, although this is a complicated process that needs to be carefully handled to avoid damaging their hydrological balance.

However, Gay said the commissioning of a DLE plant is currently several times more expensive than a traditional lithium brine extraction plant.

“In theory it works, but in practice we only have a few examples,” Gay said. “Most of these companies are promising to break the cost curve and ramp up indefinitely. I think in the next two years it’s time to actually fulfill some of those promises.”

Freshwater concerns

However, concerns over the use of freshwater persist.

Although DLE doesn’t require the evaporation of brine water, it often needs more freshwater to clean or cool equipment.

A 2023 study published in the journal Nature reviewed 57 articles on DLE that analysed freshwater consumption. A quarter of the articles reported significantly higher use of freshwater than conventional lithium brine mining – more than 10 times higher in some cases.

“These volumes of freshwater are not available in the vicinity of [salt flats] and would even pose problems around less-arid geothermal resources,” the study found.

The company tracking energy transition minerals back to the mines

Dan Corkran, a hydrologist at the University of Massachusetts, recently published research showing that the pumping of freshwater from the salt flats had a much higher impact on local wetland ecosystems than the pumping of salty brine. “The two cannot be considered equivalent in a water footprint calculation,” he said, explaining that doing so would “obscure the true impact” of lithium extraction.

Newer DLE processes are “claiming to require little-to-no freshwater”, he added, but the impact of these technologies is yet to be thoroughly analysed.

Dried-up rivers

Last week, Indigenous communities from across South America held a summit to discuss their concerns over ongoing lithium extraction.

The meeting, organised by the Andean Wetlands Alliance, coincided with the 14th International Lithium Seminar, which brought together industry players and politicians from Argentina and beyond.

Indigenous representatives visited the nearby Hombre Muerto Salt Flat, which has borne the brunt of nearly three decades of lithium extraction. Today, a lithium plant there uses a hybrid approach including DLE and evaporation pools.

Local people say the river “dried up” in the years after the mine opened. Corkran’s study linked a 90% reduction in wetland vegetation to the lithium’s plant freshwater extraction.

Pia Marchegiani, of Argentine environmental NGO FARN, said that while DLE is being promoted by companies as a “better” technique for extraction, freshwater use remained unclear. “There are many open questions,” she said.

AI and satellite data help researchers map world’s transition minerals rush

Stronger regulations

Analysts speaking to Climate Home News have also questioned the commercial readiness of the technology.

Eramet was forced to downgrade its production projections at its DLE plant earlier this year, blaming the late commissioning of a crucial component.

Climate Home News asked Eramet for the water footprint of its DLE plant and whether its calculations excluded brine, but it did not respond.

For Eduardo Gigante, an Argentina-based lithium consultant, DLE is a “very promising technology”. But beyond the hype, it is not yet ready for large-scale deployment, he said.

Strong regulations are needed to ensure that the environmental impact of the lithium rush is taken seriously, Gigante added.

In Argentina alone, there are currently 38 proposals for new lithium mines. At least two-thirds are expected to use DLE. “If you extract a lot of water without control, this is a problem,” said Gigante. “You need strong regulations, a strong government in order to control this.”

The post Efforts to green lithium extraction face scrutiny over water use appeared first on Climate Home News.

Efforts to green lithium extraction face scrutiny over water use

Climate Change

Maryland’s Conowingo Dam Settlement Reasserts State’s Clean Water Act Authority but Revives Dredging Debate

Published

2 days ago

October 12, 2025

Alice Rush

The new agreement commits $340 million in environmental investments tied to the Conowingo Dam’s long-term operation, setting an example of successful citizen advocacy.

By Aman Azhar

Maryland this month finalized a $340 million deal with Constellation Energy to relicense the Conowingo Dam in Cecil County, ending years of litigation and regulatory uncertainty. The agreement restores the state’s authority to enforce water quality standards under the Clean Water Act and sets a possible precedent for dozens of hydroelectric relicensing cases nationwide expected in coming years.

Maryland’s Conowingo Dam Settlement Reasserts State’s Clean Water Act Authority but Revives Dredging Debate

Climate Change

A Michigan Town Hopes to Stop a Data Center With a 2026 Ballot Initiative

Published

4 days ago

October 10, 2025

Alice Rush

Local officials see millions of dollars in tax revenue, but more than 950 residents who signed ballot petitions fear endless noise, pollution and higher electric rates.

By Tom Perkins

This is the second of three articles about Michigan communities organizing to stop the construction of energy-intensive computing facilities.