Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Shifting political players
EU LEADERSHIP: Ursula von der Leyen has secured another five years as president of the European Commission following a vote yesterday in which she won the backing of 401 MEPs – 40 more than needed, reported Bloomberg. In her reelection bid, von der Leyen committed to EU climate goals including the still-pending 90% emissions reduction by 2040 target and a new Clean Industrial Deal, Euractiv reported. However, the publication noted that her comments on nature protection were limited to “positive rhetoric” only.
PARIS PM: Elsewhere in Europe, veteran climate negotiator Laurence Tubiana has been proposed as the next French prime minister, with backing from the Socialist, Green and Communist parties in the current hung parliament, reported Climate Home News. Tubiana, who is currently CEO at the European Climate Foundation [which funds Carbon Brief], was one of the “architects” of the Paris Agreement in 2015, according to Bloomberg.
VANCE’S STANCE: In the US, Donald Trump’s newly selected running mate JD Vance has come under scrutiny for his climate scepticism. The Republican vice presidential candidate is “a staunch supporter of the oil and gas industry and an opponent of renewable energy”, according to the Independent, but has reportedly only held such views in recent years, a shift that coincides with his bid for Trump support. He also has investments in “green” technologies, reported E&E News, but the New York Times emphasised his public anti-climate sentiments and his sponsorship of green legislation repeals as a senator for Ohio.
AFRICAN COAL: In South Africa, a political ecologist wrote in the Conversation that the country’s newly appointed environment minister has shown support for continuing to use coal and said his government would not be “bullied” into transitioning away from fossil fuels too quickly. It comes as Agence France-Presse reported that the country’s president Cyril Ramaphosa has “reaffirmed the coal-dependent nation’s commitment to moving towards renewable energy, but insisted that communities and workers must not lose out”.
Labour must ‘make up lost ground’
KING’S SPEECH: The UK’s new Labour government has confirmed a legislative agenda with the environment “front and centre”, reported the Guardian. The king’s speech mentioned that the government will set up the publicly owned GB Energy to “own, manage and operate clean power projects” across the UK, reported BBC News. The company is set to be capitalised with an £8.3bn investment. Meanwhile, Politico reported that Labour is set to appoint a climate envoy, a role that has been empty for more than a year.
NEW ADVICE: The Climate Change Committee (CCC), which advises the UK government on its climate policies, released its annual progress report on Thursday, urging Labour to “make up lost ground” after a lack of sufficient action under the last Conservative government. Carbon Brief covered the recommendations in detail (more on this below). Elsewhere, the Times reported that Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive of the industry group Energy UK, has been appointed “preferred candidate” for the next chief executive of the CCC.
Around the world
- ‘HELLISHLY HOT’: A heatwave across southern Europe and the Balkans has led governments to issue severe weather warnings, said France 24, with temperatures rising above 40C.
- CHINA ‘THIRD PLENUM’: A communique from China’s highly influential “third plenum” meeting called for a “coordinated approach to carbon cutting, pollution reduction, green development and economic growth”, as well as for the country to “actively respond to climate change”, according to state news agency Xinhua.
- CARIBBEAN VULNERABILITY: In the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, which killed at least a dozen people and destroyed infrastructure across the Caribbean, the Associated Press reported that officials are demanding more funding from “financial and development institutions” to rebuild and address climate change.
- PROTEST IN PERIL: Five UK climate activists from Just Stop Oil received record-length jail sentences of up to five years for a plan to block London’s M25 motorway, reported Reuters. Meanwhile, the right to peaceful protest in Australia is also “in peril”, the Guardian reported.
- GLOBAL FLOODS: Downpours and flooding have killed hundreds in South Asia, caused “emergency alerts” in China, left more than 50 people dead in Niger and caused damage in Toronto, Canada.
$8.4bn
The amount of debt eradicated through “debt-for-nature” swaps from 1987-2023.
$7.6tn
The total amount of debt service paid by low- and middle-income countries over the same timescale, illustrating how swap schemes are “far too small to have any impact”, experts told the Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- European “fire weather” – conditions favourable to the ignition and spread of wildfires – will become “more severe” due to climate change, showed a new study in Environmental Research Letters.
- Optimising the conversion of organic waste into biogas for energy has considerable decarbonisation potential in China, said new research in Nature Communications, which found that their proposed system could contribute 3.77% of the emissions reduction needed for the country’s 1.5C-aligned target.
- Nature-based solutions have “consistently proven to be a cost-effective approach” to address disaster risk, reported researchers in Science of the Total Environment.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
UK emissions have been falling steadily for years, largely driven by the phaseout of coal and the growth of renewable power. However, only one-third of the reductions required to achieve the UK’s goal under the Paris Agreement of cutting emissions 68% by 2030 are covered by plans the CCC deems to be “credible”, according to its latest progress report. There is an even larger credibility gap for the sixth carbon budget for 2033-2037, with only a quarter of the cuts needed covered by “credible” policies. This is illustrated in the chart above, which shows the emissions cuts needed to reach net-zero (red), compared to cuts expected from policies that the CCC deems “credible”.
Spotlight
The climate impact of generative AI
Carbon Brief investigates the climate implications of the accelerating use of generative AI tools.
Google’s latest environmental report indicated that its total emissions have increased by almost 50% since 2019 and 13% year-on-year – a change it puts down to the growth of its data centres and rising emissions in its supply chain.
The report added that rolling out artificial intelligence (AI) services might make it “challenging” to cut emissions due to the “increasing energy demands from the greater intensity of AI compute”.
Since March, Google has been integrating its generative AI tool Gemini into search functions, matching the exponential uptick in day-to-day AI use through Chat-GPT, Microsoft Copilot and other such tools. (“Generative AI” is AI that is capable of generating text, images, videos or other data from scratch in response to a prompt.)
But there’s a catch: when a query is sent to a generative AI model (a process known as inference), it uses a lot more energy than a traditional search, creating an expectation that the energy demand of data centres will shoot up as a result.
Soaring energy demand
A recent study, still awaiting peer review, found that a multipurpose AI system could use up to 33 times more energy than computers running task-specific software and that generating two images with AI uses as much energy as charging a smartphone.
Dr Sasha Luccioni, AI and climate lead at AI company Hugging Face and lead author of the study, explained to Carbon Brief that multipurpose models “tend to be larger in size” and are trained for several different outputs, “which makes them more computationally-intensive”.
Training AI models before they are available for use also takes large amounts of energy. OpenAI’s GPT-3 required 1,287MWh during training, enough electricity to power 120 average US households for one year.
Direct energy consumption is not the only factor to consider. Felippa Amanta, a PhD researcher of digital services at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute, told Carbon Brief that “generative AI can have quite unpredictable indirect energy effects from how they’re being used by households”.
People are also using AI assistants for things they never needed it for before – a phenomenon Amanta explained as “induced demand”.
AI is changing our day-to-day behaviour, “from finding recipes, to writing emails, making CVs and the list goes on”, she said. It is this increase in user inference that can drive up data centre energy demands.
A report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), released today, said that the rise of AI was putting an increased focus on the energy use of data centres. (AI currently accounts for around 10% of data-centre electricity use.)
It said that electricity consumption from data centres as a whole accounted for a “limited” 1-1.3% share of global electricity demand in 2022. This could rise to between 1.5% and 3% by 2026, according to its projections. (By contrast, electric vehicles are expected to account for between less than 1.5% and 2% by 2026.)
The agency noted that expectations of future data centre energy demand growth were highly uncertain, depending on the uptake of AI services and the efficiency of the chips used to run them. (It noted that chipmaker Nvidia recently unveiled a new chip that was 25 times more energy efficient than previous models.)
As with any electricity-intensive technology, the climate impact of surging AI use will be determined by the extent to which renewables can meet the demand. In April, the Financial Times reported that fossil-fuel companies are hoping that surging energy demand from AI use will “usher in a golden era” for gas production.
Efficiency and regulation
On the flip side, AI has the potential to be a tool for climate action, chiefly by increasing energy efficiency. For example, AI could be used to improve the efficiency of power grids or daily commutes.
But as generative AI tools become integrated into our lives, there is a risk of a rebound effect, where the ease and ubiquity of AI solutions make us use services more, countering any efficiency savings, Amanta said.
Another issue facing the rapidly changing AI environment is a lack of transparency.
The climate impacts of AI models can potentially be mitigated by increasing their computational efficiency, powering data centres with clean energy, or using more task-specific models – but a lack of transparent data is slowing the development of legislation to regulate this shift, Dr Luccioni told Carbon Brief:
“The fact that we can’t get an accurate estimate of the energy usage or emissions of the many AI-enabled tools used by millions of people daily is problematic.”
Without understanding the scope of the issue, it is difficult to regulate energy intensity or add constraints on companies, she added. The IEA’s report also called for more reliable data.
Amanta pointed to examples of policies being proposed in the US and Singapore that recognise the environmental impacts of AI’s growth and aim to regulate their efficiency and sources of energy. The EU’s AI Act, which came into force in June, includes environmental considerations.
Watch, read, listen
SEA LEVEL RISE: A coastal village in Myanmar is being eroded away due to rising sea levels and residents are struggling to access fresh groundwater, reported the Mekong Eye.
CLIMATE CONFLICT: Earthrise released a video exploring the intersectionality of climate change and conflict, speaking to Sudanese climate activist, Watan Mohamed.
FACTCHECKING TWISTERS: The new tornado disaster film gets a lot of things right about climate science, said experts in Nature.
Coming up
- 15 July-2 August: Second part of the 29th Session of the International Seabed Authority Assembly and Council, Kingston, Jamaica
- 22-26 July: 27th Session of the FAO Committee on Forestry, Rome
- 25-26 July: G20 3rd Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting, Rio de Janeiro
Pick of the jobs
- International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), senior communications officer, India energy programme | Salary: Unknown. Location: Delhi, India (remote)
- Environment America, climate solutions associate | Salary: $32,500. Location: Pennsylvania, US
- Climate Outreach, fundraising administrator | Salary: £23,000. Location: Oxford, UK (remote)
Climate Central, vice president for science | Salary: $140,000-$160,000. Location: Princeton, New Jersey, US (remote)
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 19 July 2024: New political players in EU and US; UK govt urged to make up ‘lost ground’ on targets; AI’s climate impact appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The EPA released its latest enforcement and compliance report and touted the agency’s crackdown on environmental crimes under the Trump administration, yet 75 percent of the criminal cases closed last fiscal year originated before the president took office.
For over a decade, Hino Motors Ltd. imported and sold more than 105,000 vehicles and engines with misleading or fabricated emissions data, until testing by the Environmental Protection Agency revealed the emissions-fraud scheme.
Trump’s EPA Claims Strong Enforcement. But the Data Tells a Different Story.
The “cost” of cutting UK emissions to net-zero is less than the cost of a single fossil-fuel price shock, according to a new report from the Climate Change Committee (CCC).
Moreover, a net-zero economy would be almost completely protected from fossil-fuel price spikes in the future, says the government’s climate advisory body.
The report is being published amid surging oil and gas prices after the US and Israel attacked Iran, which has triggered chaos on international energy markets.
It builds on the CCC’s earlier advice on the seventh “carbon budget”, which found that it would cost the UK less than 0.2% of GDP per year to reach its net-zero target.
In the new report, the CCC sets out for the first time a full cost-benefit analysis of the UK’s net-zero target, including the cost of clean-energy investments, lower fossil-fuel bills, the health benefits of cleaner air and the avoided climate damages from cutting emissions.
It finds that the country’s legally binding target to reach “net-zero emissions” by 2050 will bring benefits worth an average of £110bn per year to the UK from 2025-2050, with a total “net present value” of £1,580bn.
The CCC states that its new report responds to requests from parliamentarians and government officials seeking to better understand its cost assumptions, amid the ongoing cost-of-living crisis in the UK.
The report also pushes back on “misinformation” about the cost of net-zero, with CCC chair Nigel Topping saying in a statement that it is “important that decision-makers and commentators are using accurate information to inform debates”.
Co-benefits outweigh costs
The CCC’s new report is the first to compare the overall cost of decarbonising with the wider benefits of avoiding dangerous climate change, as well as other “co-benefits”, such as cleaner air and healthier diets.
It sets the CCC’s previous estimate of the net cost of net-zero – some £4bn per year on average out to 2050 – against the value of avoided damages and other co-benefits.
These “co-benefits” are estimated to provide £2bn to £8bn per year in net benefit by the middle of the century, according to the report.
The CCC notes that this approach allowed it to “fully appraise the value of the net-zero transition”.
It concludes that the net benefits of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 are an average of £110bn per year from 2025 to 2050.
These benefits to the UK amount to more than £1.5tn in total and start to outweigh costs as soon as 2029, says the CCC, as shown in the figure below.
In addition, the CCC says that every pound spent on net-zero will bring benefits worth 2.2-4.1 times as much.
This updated analysis includes the value of benefits from improved air quality being 20% higher in 2050 than previously suggested by the CCC.
However, the “most significant” benefit of the transition is the avoidance of climate damages, with an estimated value of £40-130bn in 2050. The report states:
“Climate change is here, now. Until the world reaches net-zero CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions, with deep reductions in other greenhouse gases, global temperatures will continue to rise. That will inevitably lead to increasingly extreme weather, including in the UK.”
The CCC’s conclusion is in line with findings from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in 2025, which suggested that the economic damages of unmitigated climate change would be far more severe than the cost of reaching net-zero.
The CCC notes that its approach to the cost-benefit analysis of the net-zero target is in line with the Treasury’s “green book”, which is used to guide the valuation of policy choices across UK government.
It says that one of the key drivers of overall economic benefit is a more efficient energy system, with losses halved compared with today’s economy.
It says that the UK currently loses £60bn a year through energy waste. For example, it says nearly half of the energy in gas is lost during combustion to generate electricity.
In a net-zero energy system, such energy waste would be halved to £30bn per year, says the CCC, thanks to electrified solutions, such as electric vehicles (EVs) and heat pumps.
For example, it notes that EVs are around four times more efficient than a typical petrol car and so require roughly a quarter of the energy to travel a given distance.
Collectively, these efficiencies are expected to halve energy losses, saving the equivalent of around £1,000 per household, according to the CCC.
Net-zero protects against price spikes
The CCC tests its seventh carbon budget analysis against a range of “sensitivities” that reflect the uncertainties in modelling methodologies and assumptions for key technologies. This includes testing the impact of a fossil-fuel price spike between now and 2050.
In the original analysis, the committee had assumed that the cost of fossil fuels would remain largely flat after 2030.
However, the report notes that, in reality, fossil-fuel prices are “highly volatile”. It adds:
“Fossil-fuel prices are…driven by international commodity markets that can fluctuate sharply in response to geopolitical events, supply constraints, and global demand shifts. A system that relies heavily on fossil fuels is, therefore, exposed to significant price shocks and heightened risk to energy security.”
It draws on previous OBR modelling of the impact of a gas price spike. This suggested that future price spikes would cost the UK government between 2-3% of GDP in each year the spike occurs, assuming similar levels of support to households and businesses as was provided in 2022-23.
The CCC adapts this approach to test a gas-price spike during the seventh carbon budget period, which runs from 2038 to 2042.
It finds that, if a similar energy crisis occurred in 2040 and no further action had been taken to cut UK emissions, then average household energy bills would increase by 59%. In contrast, bills would only rise by 4%, if the UK was on the path to net-zero by 2050.
The committee says that when considering the impact on households, businesses and the government, a single fossil-fuel price shock of this nature would cost the country more than the total estimated cost of reaching.
The finding is particularly relevant in the context of rising oil and gas prices following conflict in the Middle East, which has prompted some politicians and commentators to call for the UK to slow down its efforts to cut emissions.
In his statement, Topping said that it was “more important than ever for the UK to move away from being reliant on volatile foreign fossil fuels, to clean, domestic, less wasteful energy”.
Angharad Hopkinson, political campaigner for Greenpeace UK, welcomed this finding, saying in a statement:
“Each time this happens it gets harder and harder to swallow the cost. The best thing the UK can do for the climate is also the best thing for the cost of living crisis – get off the uncontrollable oil and gas rollercoaster that drags us into wars we didn’t want but still have to pay for. Inaction on climate is unaffordable.”
Benefits remain even if key technologies are more expensive
In addition to testing the impact of more volatile fossil-fuel prices, the CCC also tests the implications if key low-carbon technologies are cheaper – or more expensive – than thought.
It concludes that the upfront investments in net-zero yield significant overall benefits under all of the “sensitivities” it tested. As such, it offers a rebuttal to the common narrative that net-zero will cost the UK trillions of pounds.
The net cost of net-zero comes out at between 0% and 0.5% of GDP between 2025 and 2050, says the CCC, under the various sensitivities it tested.
“This sensitivity analysis shows that an electrified energy system is both a more efficient and a more secure energy system,” adds the CCC.
Finally, the report takes into account the costs of the alternative to net-zero. It looks at what would need to be spent in an economy where net-zero was not pursued any further.
The CCC says that the gross system cost of the balanced pathway falls below the baseline cost from 2041, which is consistent with its previous seventh carbon budget advice.
As shown in the chart below, costs fall under a net-zero pathway between 2025 to 2050, whereas they rise in the baseline of no further action.
Moreover, the total costs of the alternatives are broadly similar, with the relatively small difference shown by the solid line.
The decline in energy system costs shown in the figure above is broadly driven by more efficient low-carbon technologies, says the CCC, helping costs to fall from 12% of GDP today to 7% by the middle of the century.
The CCC’s new analysis comes ahead of the UK parliament voting on and legislating for the seventh carbon budget, which it must do before 30 June 2026.
The post CCC: Net-zero will protect UK from fossil-fuel price shocks appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Climate change and urban development are exacerbating floods in the region, experts say.
After months of intense drought conditions, Kenya was inundated by rain late last week, triggering severe flooding that killed more than 40 people. In the country’s capital city, Nairobi, a month’s worth of rain fell in 24 hours.
Following Months of Drought, Floods in Kenya Kill More Than 40 People
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