Published

2 years ago

January 30, 2024

Alice Rush

Although 2024 has just begun, the coming months will determine if Cop29 will be a success and whether benefits will trickle down to vulnerable communities in developing countries.

The Cop29 summit in Baku in November will focus on climate finance.

Government negotiators in the Global North always tell us that their ambition on finance depends on their parliaments.

This has been highlighted by developed countries in so many negotiations.

They stress that they have no mandate, or possibility to scale up funds, as parliaments will not approve.  

So, as parliamentarian debates about budgets and allocations begin early in the year, they need to act now. 

Biden misses chance to tackle “huge” US landfill emissions

Just a few weeks ago, Cop28 concluded. The result has been presented as a success, with a new fund for loss and damage, a global goal for adaptation and the first steps towards a transition away from fossil fuels.

But all commitments, and promises at Cop28, as well as previous summits, depend on available, scaled up and accessible climate finance. 

This is why the next summit, Cop29, will become so important. In Baku, governments will set a new post-2025 finance goal and this will have implications for all previous agreements about scaled up ambition on cutting emissions, adapting to climate change, loss and damage and technology transfer.

The climate finance gap is huge, and yet growing. Without more, and accessible funding, humanity will never manage or tackle the climate crisis. 

Mobilisation of more climate finance is crucial, especially for the least developed countries, where access to funding has been lacking, not for years, but for many decades.

US government pauses new gas export terminals in ‘historic win’ for climate

Without more grant-based funding, our plans to adapt to climate change and cut emissions will not be implemented; our efforts to ensure green and sustainable growth and development will not be successful and our possibilities to address the growing threat of climate-related loss and damage will never occur.

So the Cop29 decision on climate finance is vital. Apart from an agreement about scaled up funding, it must also address timeframes, measures and tools for tracking and accounting, and an agreement about where and how funding should be spent and directed.

Scaled up funding can be achieved in different ways. Some parties stress the possibilities for “innovative finance”. That is certainly an area which must be explored. The Least Developed Countries group proposed an air ticket levy already in 2008, and since then many suggestions have been proposed.

However, innovative finance will only become a supplement, to the funding commitments by the Global North, building on historical responsibility and capability.

I hope governments of the global north will arrive at Cop29, with strong and ambitious parliamentarian mandates, including scaled up climate finance, to engage in the negotiations.

We must all remember that without finance, there is no action, and without action we will never be able to manage the climate crisis.

Evans Njewa is the chair of the Least Developed Countries group and an official in Malawi’s environment ministry

The post For Cop29 to succeed, rich nations must get their parliaments to agree more finance now appeared first on Climate Home News.

For Cop29 to succeed, rich nations must get their parliaments to agree more finance now

Climate Change

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

Published

14 hours 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.

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

Climate Change

The AI Data Center Boom Comes to Vernon

Published

15 hours ago

October 10, 2025

Alice Rush

While nationwide, neighborhoods have fought to keep the electricity- and water-hungry data centers away, Vernon is welcoming another data center, seemingly without opposition.

By Ashley Orona, LA Public Press

At the corner of 48th Street and Santa Fe Avenue in industrial Vernon, a three-story building looms large among rumbling factories and warehouses. Long, vertical, tinted windows with green outlines punctuate the two-acre structure’s grey and white facade–all in the service of keeping its tenants cool inside. Its tenants aren’t people, but giant servers, storage drives and networking equipment.

The AI Data Center Boom Comes to Southeast LA

Climate Change

DeBriefed 10 October 2025: Renewables power past coal; Legacy of UK’s Climate Change Act; Fukushima’s solar future

Published

1 day ago

October 10, 2025

Alice Rush

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

This week

Renewables overtake coal

‘HISTORIC FIRST’: Renewables have overtaken coal to become the world’s leading source of electricity for the first six months of this year in a “historic first”, BBC News said. The analysis, from the thinktank Ember, found the world generated “almost a third” more solar power in the first half of the year, compared with the same period in 2024, while wind power grew by “just over 7%,” reported the Guardian.

HEAVY LIFTING: According to the report, China and India were “largely responsible for the surge in renewables”, while the US and Europe “relied more heavily on fossil fuels,” the Guardian wrote. China built more renewables than every other country combined in the first half of this year, the newspaper added.

CONTINENTAL SHIFTS: A second report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted a “surge” in global wind and solar capacity by 2030, but shaved 5% off its previous forecast, the Financial Times said. The IEA revealed that India is set to become the second-largest growth market for renewables after China, “with capacity expected to increase 2.5 times by 2030”, Down to Earth reported. The IEA also upped its forecast for renewables in the Middle East and north Africa by 23%, “helped by Saudi Arabia rolling out wind turbines and solar panels”, but halved the outlook for the US, the FT noted.

Around the world

EV BOOM: Sales of electric and hybrid cars made up “more than half” of all new car registrations in the UK last month, a new record, according to data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers, reported BBC News.
BANKING COLLAPSE: A global banking alliance launched by the UN to get banks to slash the carbon footprint of their loans and investments and help drive the transition to a net-zero economy by 2050 has collapsed after four years, Agence France-Press reported.
CUTS, CUTS, CUTS: The Trump administration plans to cut nearly $24bn in funding for more than 600 climate projects across the US, according to documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.
PEOPLE POWER: A farmer, a prison guard and a teacher were among those from the Dutch-Caribbean island Bonaire who appeared at the Hague on Tuesday to “accuse the Netherlands of not doing enough to protect them from the effects of climate change”, Politico reported.

400,000

The number of annual service days logged by the US National Guard responding to hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters over the past decade, according to a Pentagon report to Congress, Inside Climate News reported.

Latest climate research

Politicians in the UK “overwhelmingly overestimate the time period humanity has left to bend the temperature curve”, according to a survey of 100 MPs | Nature Communications Earth and Environment
Fire-driven degradation of the Amazon last year released nearly 800m tonnes of CO2 equivalent, surpassing emissions from deforestation and marking the “worst Amazon forest disturbance in over two decades” | Biogeosciences
Some 43% of the 200 most damaging wildfires recorded over 1980-2023 occurred in the last decade | Science

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

Captured

The UK’s Climate Change Act, landmark legislation that guides the nation’s response to climate change, is increasingly coming under attack from anti-net-zero right-leaning politicians. In a factcheck published this week, Carbon Brief explained how the UK’s Climate Change Act was among the first comprehensive national climate laws in the world and the first to include legally binding emissions targets. In total, 69 countries have now passed “framework” climate laws similar to the UK’s Climate Change Act, with laws in New Zealand, Canada and Nigeria among those explicitly based on the UK model. This is up from just four when the act was legislated in 2008. Of these, 14 are explicitly titled the “Climate Change Act”.

Spotlight

Fukushima’s solar future

This week, Carbon Brief examines how Fukushima helped to recover from nuclear disaster by building solar farms on contaminated farmland.

On 11 March 2011, an earthquake off the pacific coast of Japan caused 15m-tall waves to crash into the eastern region of Tōhoku, killing 19,500 people and injuring a further 6,000.

In the aftermath, flooding at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant caused cooling systems to fail, leaching radioactive contaminants into the soil and leading to a major nuclear incident.

Some 1,200km2 around the site was restricted and up to 100,000 people were evacuated – in some cases forever.

In the years following, Japan entered a fraught debate about nuclear energy.

In 2010, nuclear power provided 25% of Japan’s electricity, but, in the years following the disaster, its 54 nuclear reactors were taken offline.

Successive governments have fought over reintroducing nuclear power. Today, some 14 reactors are back online, 27 have been permanently closed and another 19 remain suspended. (Japan’s newly-elected prime minister Sanae Takaichi has promised to make nuclear central to her energy strategy.)

Against this backdrop, Fukushima – a prefecture home to 1.8 million people – has emerged as a surprise leader in the renewables race.

In 2014, the Fukushima Renewable Energy Institute (FREA) opened with the twin goals of promoting research and development into renewable energy, while “making a contribution to industrial clusters and reconstruction”.

That same year, the prefecture declared a target of 100% renewable power by 2040.

Contaminated land

“A lot of these communities, I know, were looking for ways to revitalise their economy,” said Dr Jennifer Sklarew, assistant professor of energy and sustainability at George Mason University and author of “Building Resilient Energy Systems: Lessons from Japan”.

Once evacuation orders were lifted, however, residents in many parts of Fukushima were faced with a dilemma, explained Skarlew:

“Since that area was largely agricultural, and the agriculture was facing challenges due to stigma, and also due to the soil being removed [as part of the decontamination efforts], they had to find something else.”

One solution came in the form of rent, paid to farmers by companies, to use their land as solar farms.

Michiyo Miyamoto, energy finance specialist at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told Carbon Brief:

“The [Fukushima] prefecture mapped suitable sites early and conducted systematic consultations with residents and agricultural groups before projects were proposed. This upfront process reduced land-use conflicts, shortened permitting timelines and gave developers clarity.”

As a result, large-scale solar capacity in Fukushima increased to more than 1,300 megawatts (MW) from 2012 to 2023, according to Miyamoto. Moreover, installed renewable capacity now exceeds local demand, meaning the region can run entirely on clean power when conditions are favourable, Miyamoto said.

Today, aerial pictures of Fukushima reveal how solar panels have proliferated on farmland that was contaminated in the nuclear disaster.

View of Shinchi town, Fukushima in 2011 (top) and 2016 (bottom). Credit: Newscom/Alamy Stock Photo

Charging on

Last year, 60% of Fukushima’s electricity was met by renewables, up from 22% in 2011. (The country as a whole still lags behind at 27%.)

And that is set to grow after Japan’s largest onshore windfarm started operations earlier this year in Abukuma, Fukushima, with a capacity of 147MW.

The growth of solar and wind means that Fukushima is already “ahead of schedule” for its 2040 target of 100% renewable power, said Miyamoto:

“The result is a credible pathway from recovery to leadership, with policy, infrastructure and targets working in concert.”

Watch, read, listen

OVERSHOOT: The Strategic Climate Risks Initiative, in partnership with Planet B Productions, has released a four-part podcast series exploring what will happen if global warming exceeds 1.5C.

DRONE WARFARE: On Substack, veteran climate campaigner and author Bill McKibben considered the resilience of solar power amid modern warfare.

CLIMATE AND EMPIRE: For Black history month, the Energy Revolution podcast looked at how “race and the legacies of empire continue to impact the energy transition”.

Coming up

12 October: presidential elections, Cameroon
13-14 October: Pre-COP, Brasilia, Brazil
13-18 October: World Bank Group/IMF annual meetings, Washington DC
14-17 October: 2nd extraordinary session of the Marine Environment Protection Committee at the International Maritime Organisation, London
15-16 October: Circle of Finance Ministers report

Pick of the jobs

Buckinghamshire Council, principal climate change officer | Salary: £49,354-£51,759. Location: Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
Sustainable NI, sustainable business lead | Salary: £60,000. Location: Belfast, Northern Ireland
Dialogue Earth, South Asia managing editor | Salary: £1,875 per month. Location: South Asia

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

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