This week our powerful Pacific team is in Palau for the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting. This is a major moment in our campaigns for Pacific climate justice and to stop deep sea mining. So what’s it all about, what can we expect over the coming days, and why is this year’s meeting in particular so important? Read on to find out!
*Pawa is Melanesian word meaning collective power.
Meet Moemoana Schwenke, our Pacific Climate Campaigner
“When you love something deeply, you do everything you can to protect it.”
What is the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF)?
The Pacific Islands Forum, or ‘PIF’, is our region’s most important political organisation. It is where countries of the Pacific — including Australia and New Zealand — come together to collaborate on shared challenges and to set collective goals.
The PIF Leaders Meeting is an annual weeklong event that includes a dedicated meeting of the Pacific’s small island developing states (PSIDS), many special side events organised by Pacific civil society, the leaders’ meeting itself, and more. At the end of the week, leaders issue a Forum Communiqué, capturing what they have agreed on, their shared priorities and the actions they will take together.
This year’s meeting is being held in the beautiful northern Pacific nation of Palau, the same place our Pacific team gathered back in January to plan for the year.
What’s at stake this year?
Climate change has dominated the PIF for decades. Pacific leaders have been crystal clear it is their number one priority, and the annual gathering is the moment they can exert maximum pressure on Australia over its fossil fuel record.
The voyage to COP31
This year’s meeting comes less than three months before COP31, where Australia will take on the role of President of Negotiations — a role it has committed to undertaking in partnership with the Pacific — and less than a month before the ‘Pacific Pre-COP’, to be held in Fiji and Tuvalu.
Following a fraught round of mid-year negotiations in Bonn, PIF leaders will need to set out a clear vision and priorities for COP31. These include accelerating a just global transition away from fossil fuels, defending science as the foundation of international climate cooperation, and increasing the availability and accessibility of finance for renewable energy and climate adaptation.
Accountability for Australian fossil fuel exports
Since the last PIF Leaders Meeting, Australia has signed the Belém Declaration on the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels. The declaration reaffirmed the legally binding commitment to help limit global warming to 1.5°C and recognised that this is incompatible with new fossil fuel production. Yet, Australia has continued to approve new coal and gas projects, including at least five since the last PIF Leaders Meeting.
What is Greenpeace doing?
We’re going big this year, taking six members of our team to Palau to support Pacific leaders to hold the line, hold Australia accountable, and show the world what’s at stake. We’ll lobby leaders, hold press conferences, share our messages with the world, and support our incredible local partners in Palau.
How can you get involved?
PIF is the first in a drumbeat of major moments where we’ll be carrying the voices of the Pacific to the world. Come October we’ll be voyaging to Fiji on our ship Oceania for the Pacific Pre-COP, and in November we’ll be off to Antalya for the world’s climate negotiations (COP31).
Learn more about the Pacific way to a fossil fuel free future by checking out our report and exhibition.
Follow our journey, and check back here for more ways to join the movement for climate justice. Together we have the pawa!
For the first time, new-energy vehicles (NEVs) made up 67% of new car sales in China in September, according to the latest data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).
The figures show that NEVs, which include battery electric cars and plug-in hybrids, captured a record share of sales, even though fewer were sold than last year.
This is because sales of combustion-engine cars are falling steeply, a trend that the CPCA has attributed to rising petrol prices following the start of the Hormuz crisis.
Indeed, sales of fuel-only cars were down 31% year-on-year in the first nine months of 2026, with plug-in hybrid sales down 26% – whereas battery EV sales were only down 4%.
One analyst tells Carbon Brief that China’s rapidly growing EV fleet has offset demand for 143m barrels of oil since the start of the Hormuz crisis.
Another says that the crisis is “reinforcing China’s electrification of road transport”.
Meanwhile, amid slowing domestic sales, Chinese carmakers’ exports of NEVs more than doubled [in 2026 to date / in September] from a year earlier.
NEV record
A record two out of every three cars sold in September in China were NEVs, according to CPCA data, as shown in the figure below.
(NEVs predominantly include battery electric vehicles – BEVs – and plug-in hybrids – PHEVs. BEVs only run on electricity, whereas PHEVs also have a combustion engine.)
This marks a rapid rise for NEVs from just 6% of new car sales in 2020 up to 58% in 2026 to date – and a record 67% in the month of September.
This year, NEVs’ share of sales has also bounced back from a low of 39% in January, after the full purchase tax exemption that had been in place for more than a decade came to an end in December 2025.
The gain in NEV share in 2026 has come amid a slowdown across the wider domestic passenger-car market, which has hit sales of combustion-engine vehicles particularly hard.
This September, passenger-car retail sales across all categories declined, with overall sales volumes falling 28% year-on-year.
The contraction was led by combustion-engine vehicles, which saw sales fall 43% year-on-year in September and 31% in 2026 to date.
However, sales of PHEVs also fell by 36% year-on-year in September and by 26% in 2026 to date. By comparison, BEVs performed better, although sales still declined 8.5% from a year earlier in September and 4% in 2026 to date.
As a result, NEV sales overall fell by 17% in September and 13% in 2026 to date.
While the market changes in 2026 to date were particularly dramatic, they reflect a broad continuation of trends seen over the past decade.
Indeed, sales of combustion-engine cars in China peaked in 2017 and they have been declining ever since, shown in the figure below.
Impact of Hormuz
Part of the reason for the advance of NEVs in 2026, said Chinese technology news outlet OFweek, was petrol cars “giving up market share” as they were outperformed by electric alternatives.
Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the CPCA, cited higher petrol prices as an explanation for September’s weak combustion-car sales, in comments to financial news outlet National Business Daily.
Imports of oil into China in January-September have fallen 15% compared to 2025, equivalent to 470m barrels, as ongoing conflict tightened supply and drove up prices.
China’s passenger-car NEV fleet has displaced 143m barrels of oil so far during the strait of Hormuz crisis, Euan Graham, senior energy analyst at thinktank Ember, tells Carbon Brief.
EVs “accounted for 12% of the decrease in China’s oil use post-Hormuz”, according to an estimate provided to thinktank the Brookings Institute by an unnamed analyst.
Erica Downs, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, tells Carbon Brief that the strait of Hormuz crisis and higher oil prices are “reinforcing China’s electrification of road transport”.
She says the “world’s largest oil supply disruption” vindicates China’s early bet on EVs, which was partly driven by concerns about oil-supply security.
NEV demand down
Nevertheless, NEV sales have fallen year-on-year, albeit at a slower rate than overall car sales. The growth in NEV market share has also been decelerating.
Zhang Yichao, a partner at consulting firm AlixPartners, tells Carbon Brief that NEVs benefit from government trade-in policies and a “strong pipeline” of new models, particularly those involving innovation.
He says these factors help explain why NEVs sales have fallen at a slower rate to their combustion-car counterparts.
Cui told the state-run China National Radio that the fall for NEVs and for cars overall in September 2026, is also due to a high baseline of sales from the same month in 2025, as well as changes to trade-in policies and disruptions from the holiday period.
Other factors, says consulting firm Wood Mackenzie, are the weakened demand due to “demand pull-forward” in 2025 caused by the end of subsidies, as well as “tighter financing conditions”.
Zhang tells Carbon Brief he does not “see much more room ahead” for further growth in NEVs’ market share.
He adds that, in his view, their share in China is unlikely to exceed 80%, as some premium-market segments and specific use cases will continue to require combustion-engine vehicles.
Exports surge
Meanwhile, while domestic NEV retail sales fell 17% in September 2026, exports more than doubled, increasing 164% year-on-year, according to the CPCA.
This extends the decline in domestic sales and very strong growth in exports seen across 2026 to date, as shown in the figure below.
In September, 1,084,000 NEVs were sold domestically in China, while 558,000 NEVs were exported.
Exports are becoming increasingly important to Chinese carmakers, in the face of weaker domestic demand and cut-throat industrial competition.
The CPCA says exports have become “a core priority” for some carmakers.
However, the surge in exports from China has created concern in the EU, which has placed tariffs on imports of EVs from China and recently agreed plans to cut imports of hybrids.
Countries including Mexico and Turkey have also placed tariffs on Chinese EV imports.
At the same time, the Chinese government is putting policies in place that might be expected to disincentivise exports, such as cutting VAT export rebates.
Analysts differ on what impact this policy shift will have, with some saying it will be limited, while others believe it could cause the price of exported cars to rise.
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