Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Global heatwave
SOUTH ASIA: Extended and severe heatwaves that continue to grip 50% of northwest India have claimed at least 110 lives and caused 40,000 to suffer from suspected heatstroke, the Hindustan Times reported. Delhi recorded its highest ever minimum temperature in a 55- year record this week, when night-time temperatures did not drop below 35.2C, the Hindu reported. Reuters reported that a senior government official said “Indian cities have become heat traps” due to unbalanced urban growth reducing water availability.
EAST ASIA: Meanwhile, state-run newspaper China Daily reported that the nation is “experiencing more frequent and intense heatwaves due to global warming”, according to China’s National Climate Centre. It added that the average heatwave starting date has advanced by 2.5 days per decade. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported that extreme weather has continued in China this week, including deadly torrential rain and drought conditions.
DEADLY PILGRIMAGE: In the Middle East, more than 1,000 hajj pilgrims have reportedly died amid scorching heat in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Sky News reported. Agence France-Presse said that temperatures reached 51.8C in Mecca as around 1.8 million people took part in the “days-long, mostly outdoor” pilgrimage. It added that the death toll is expected to rise further as many continue to search for family members.
US FURNACE: Tens of millions of people in the US were under dangerous heat warnings this week as some cities faced record-breaking temperatures, the Associated Press reported. The Guardian reported that about 80% of the country’s population are experiencing “a kind of heatwave not seen in decades”, which brought prolonged periods of temperatures above 32.2C, “under a weather phenomenon known as a heat dome”.
‘BRUTAL’ EUROPE: After registering Europe’s highest recorded temperature of 48.8C in 2021, Sicily is again having to turn away tourists as “brutal heatwaves” have led to crops dying and farm animals facing slaughter, reported the Times. Elsewhere in Europe, a wildfire near Athens, Greece forced dozens to flee their homes, reported Reuters. Officials said the fire was the result of arson and spread quickly in hot, dry conditions, the newswire added.
Around the world
- G7 DROPPED: The G7 group of major economies has pledged to speed up their transition away from fossil fuels at a summit in Italy, Reuters reported. It added that activists were unhappy at the pace of progress.
- RECORD RENEWABLES: Wind and solar combined added more new energy to the global mix than any other source for the first time in history in 2023, according to Carbon Brief analysis of newly released data.
- PEAKING CHINA: China has reduced power from fossil fuels and boosted solar and hydro, “feeding hopes that the world’s biggest polluter may have peaked emissions years before its own deadline”, Bloomberg reported. Carbon Brief analysis in May found China may have peaked its emissions in 2023.
- CONFLICT DAMAGE: A UN report found that Israel’s assault on Gaza has caused environmental damage, “deeply harming people’s health, food security and Gaza’s resilience”, according to Reuters.
- NATURE WIN: After months of stagnation, the EU’s nature restoration law was voted through by ministers at the EU council, the Financial Times reported.
- STRANDED BY SLIDES: Al Jazeera reported that landslides triggered by heavy rain have left hundreds of thousands of people stranded and at least 15 dead in India and Bangladesh.
$1.1-1.3 trillion
The amount of climate finance developing countries at Bonn want developed countries to provide to them every year, according to Climate Home News.
Latest climate research
- New research in Environmental Research Letters suggested that the Arctic will be “ice-free” – that is, where sea ice extent drops below one million square kilometres – at the end of summer when global warming reaches between 1.5C and 2.2C above pre-industrial levels.
- Ocean-based carbon dioxide removal techniques such as ocean alkalinity enhancement have been “overlooked”, a research paper in Environmental Research Letters argued.
- The extreme heat that hit southwestern US, Mexico and Central America from May to June this year was 35 times more likely and 1.4C hotter due to climate change, new analysis by the World Weather Attribution network found.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
New Carbon Brief analysis by Dr Simon Evans revealed that the UK’s energy bills were £22bn higher over the past decade than they would have been if successive Conservative governments had not cut the “green crap” by rolling back climate policies for areas such as insulating homes, new home building standards and onshore wind and solar growth. The chart above shows how lack of progress on various climate measures has added to UK energy bills from 2015-2024. The cutting back on green measures has also raised net gas imports by a third, making the UK more reliant on gas imports and leaving customers more exposed to high gas prices, the analysis said. Carbon Brief is continuing to track where UK parties stand on climate change and energy ahead of the country’s general election.
Spotlight
Can beavers help the UK adapt to climate change?
This week, Carbon Brief looks at the evidence on the potential pros and pitfalls of reintroducing beavers to help deal with rising climate risks in the UK.
From Narnia to the Ice Age franchise, beavers have a spot as a charismatic, comical and – until recent years – somewhat mythical animal in British popular culture.
Beavers were hunted to extinction in Britain 400 years ago, and to near extinction in Europe. Memory of their presence in Britain survives in place names, such as Beverley Brook in London.
Given their reputation, it is perhaps surprising that they have also been called “climate heroes”, “ecosystem engineers” and, more recently, “heatwave heroes”.
Such labels come from beavers’ ability to alter the landscapes around them, offering benefits such as lowering flood risk or providing new habitats for biodiversity.
It is these benefits that have seen beavers reintroduced to some areas of England and Scotland.
Climate and biodiversity benefits
Beavers are a keystone species, which means they have an inordinately large impact on their natural environment, with the ability to define their ecosystem.
They use their huge front teeth to fell trees, building dams and lodges,which subsequently hold back huge volumes of water to create a wetland habitat.
The animals do this to create their ideal environment – one with deep water so they can hide from predators. However, they also inadvertently create an oasis for a variety of wildlife.
Earlier this week, the Guardian reported that, after living in the wild for 15 years in Scotland, beavers create the “perfect conditions” for endangered native water voles to flourish.
Prof Richard Brazier, director of the Centre for Resilience in Environment, Water and Waste at the University of Exeter, said the main climate benefits beavers can provide were enhancing water and carbon storage. He told Carbon Brief:
“Beaver ponds store a lot of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. Beavers coppice [chop down] species like willow. When they regrow, it enhances carbon storage in the landscape.”
Climate change is making many types of extreme weather events, including droughts, more likely and more intense.
Beaver wetlands are known to remain oases in otherwise cracked, dry land. The water stored in beaver ponds slowly seeps into the surrounding soil during dry periods, keeping the area green.
In the US, research found that wetland habitats created by beavers are resistant to wildfires because the area is simply too wet to burn.
Perhaps the most well-known link between beavers and climate adaptation is their alleviation of flood risks.
In March, the UK government’s Environment Agency reported that, after five years of beaver activity in an enclosed area, the impact of flooding was reduced in Spains Hall Estate, Essex.
In Devon, scientists last month concluded a 10-year study finding that beavers are “having a positive impact on flood and drought alleviation” by storing 24m litres of water and reducing storm flows by 30% during heavy rainfall, keeping downstream homes safer from floods.
Human-animal conflict
Other studies on beavers have warned that friction between the animals and adjacent landowners must be a central consideration for successful reintroduction.
Under certain circumstances, their natural engineering can interfere with human infrastructure and farming.
Some farmers are concerned that beaver activity causes flooding and damage to crops. Others worry that tree felling could cause damage to houses nearby.
Occasionally, beaver burrows can collapse, and damage property or machinery nearby.
Brazier told Carbon Brief that “tensions can arise” when humans “try to resist the natural instinct of the beaver to create deep water pools”. He added:
“If there are downsides, these relate to the ways in which, by building dams, beavers put water back on floodplains, when humans tend to want to remove this water, such as for agriculture. But these low-lying landscapes are floodplains, they are meant to be underwater periodically, and indeed, whether beavers are reintroduced or not, they will be more inundated by flooding in the future, under climate change scenarios.”
Beaver releases
Despite opposition from some groups, momentum has been gradually building for beavers’ return to the wild.
It is still illegal to reintroduce beavers in Britain without a licence.
In 2009, illegal releases were made in Tayside, Scotland and Devon, England. It is unknown where the beavers came from.
The first licence for beaver reintroduction was given for an enclosed area in Ham Fen in Kent in 2001.
In 2009, the first licensed reintroduction of beavers into the wild occurred in Knapdale, Scotland, with the animals shipped in from Norway.
In 2021, the government allowed the illegally released beavers in Devon to remain wild.
Beavers are also being reintroduced into cities. They were reintroduced in Enfield, north London in 2022 – and it was there that the first kit was born in London last summer.
Beavers were declared a native species in 2016 in Scotland and in 2022 in England.
However, the UK government is yet to introduce a national strategy for beaver reintroduction – “missing a huge opportunity to deliver profound benefits”, according to Brazier.
Watch, read, listen
MOVIE MAGIC: Showing in UK and Irish cinemas, Wilding tells the story of a couple who in 2001 handed over their 4,000-year-old estate and struggling farm to nature.
STORY TIME: With the help of woolly mammoths and dinosaurs, Christine Shearer and illustrator Kaz Clarke have published “The Everywhere Atom: A Journey Through The Carbon Cycle and Climate Change”, telling the story of the carbon cycle to children.
NATURE VOTE: With the UK general election two weeks away, Carbon Brief’s Dr Simon Evans spoke to Radio 4’s Rare Earth about how climate and the environment feature in the main political parties’ manifestos.
Coming up
- 22-30 June: London Climate Action Week
- 28 June: Iran presidential election
- 28 June: Mongolia parliamentary election
Pick of the jobs
- UN Environment Programme, project coordinator | Salary: Unknown. Location: Dominica
- West of England Combined Authority, south west net-zero hub programme manager | Salary: £60,204-£65,858. Location: Bristol, UK
- HM Treasury, policy adviser, green finance | Salary: £39,500-£48,720. Location: UK
- University of Cambridge, Climate Governance Initiative programme director. Salary: £61,823-£63,029. Location: Cambridge, UK
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed: Deadly heat grips globe; Cost of cutting ‘green crap’ in UK; Rewilding with beavers appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed: Deadly heat grips globe; Cost of cutting ‘green crap’ in UK; Rewilding with beavers
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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New coal mine openings slow as East Asian demand plateaus
China and Australia drove global decline in new capacity additions in 2025, but planned production kept growing
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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