The head of the United Nations climate body, Simon Stiell, said on Wednesday a “quantum leap” in climate finance is needed for many countries to be able to submit strong new climate action plans next year.
“It’s hard for any government to invest in renewables or climate resilience when the treasury coffers are bare, debt servicing costs have overtaken health spending, new borrowing is impossible and the wolves of poverty are at the door,” he said in a major speech at the Chatham House think-tank in London.
Climate finance has traditionally consisted mainly of wealthy governments and multilateral development banks giving loans and grants to developing countries to help them reduce planet-heating emissions and adapt to climate change.
But Stiell’s speech focused heavily on other sources of finance, which would not burden taxpayers in rich nations but are unlikely to be agreed in time for next year’s round of climate plans under the Paris Agreement.
Stiell said governments must agree at the Cop29 UN climate summit this year “a new target for climate finance that meets developing country needs”. But, he added, “it’s not enough to agree a target. We need a new deal on climate finance between developed and developing countries.”
Billionaires and boats
That would include “new sources of international climate finance, as the G20, International Maritime Organization (IMO) and others are working on”, he noted.
The Brazilian government, as chair of the G20, wants the group’s 20 major economies to agree a minimum tax on billionaires, and has hinted that some of this levy could be spent on climate finance.
Spring Meetings can jump-start financial reform for food and climate
But this has not been agreed – and is likely to prove controversial. E3G analyst Sima Kammourieh said geopolitical splits over the wars in Ukraine and Gaza had held back G20 negotiations, as had the recent death of the Brazilian diplomat leading the discussions, Daniel Machado da Fonseca.
Governments at the IMO, meanwhile, have agreed to put a price on shipping emissions. But the IMO and government shipping negotiators have suggested they want most of this money to be used to clean up the shipping industry, not for broader climate finance such as the new UN loss and damage fund.
Spring meetings
Ahead of next week’s spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), Stiell reiterated his support for the Bridgetown Agenda, a set of international financial reforms that would shift more multilateral funding into tackling climate change.
“The Spring Meetings are not a dress rehearsal. Averting a climate-driven economic catastrophe is core business,” Stiell said. “It can’t slip between the cracks of different mandates.”
So far, the biggest reform agreed is a change to the World Bank’s debt-to-equity ratio of 1%. That will free up $4 billion a year – but while reformers are calling for more, opponents fear credit rating agencies will downgrade the bank, making it more expensive to borrow money.
European court rules climate inaction by states breaches human rights
The newest proposal in Stiell’s speech was his call for the IMF to make “more use” of an obscure pot of money called the Catastrophe Containment Relief Trust (CCRT).
The CCRT provides grants for debt relief to the world’s poorest countries when they are hit by disasters that meet a preset threshold of destruction.
But the IMF’s latest annual report described the trust as “critically underfunded” with “insufficient resources to provide significant relief” when another disaster strikes.
Old-fashioned finance?
French President Emmanuel Macron has been a vocal supporter of a new global pact on finance that would push more money into climate action into debt-strapped developing nations, hosting many world leaders at a summit in Paris last year to discuss the reforms.
But last month, France cut its aid budget by 12.5%. The UK has also reduced its aid spending in recent years, and shuffled the numbers to count more as climate finance – while a potential Donald Trump victory threatens the US’s already relatively low level of international climate funding.
Former French diplomat, Laurence Tubiana, who is now chair of the European Climate Foundation, told journalists yesterday that in Europe the “fiscal space is just non-existent”, adding “the agenda of the day is to cut public spending”.
But Sara Jane Ahmed, finance adviser to the V20 group of climate-vulnerable countries, told Climate Home that rich nations can create more fiscal space by printing money, borrowing, taxing or cutting spending elsewhere.
In London, Stiell said a “quantum leap in climate finance is both essential and entirely achievable”, and argued that providing more is in the interests of powerful developed countries.
Without climate finance, he said, poorer nations would not submit bold new climate plans and then “all economies, the G7’s included, will soon be in serious and permanent strife”.
The post UN climate chief calls for “quantum leap in climate finance” appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN climate chief calls for “quantum leap in climate finance”
Some things are too precious to risk. And Scott Reef is one of them.
Today, we’re launching a bold new campaign starring iconic Australian actor Michael Caton and a green sea turtle named Sandy to rally Australians behind one simple message: Flip off Woodside to save Scott Reef.
Off the coast of Western Australia, Scott Reef is one of Australia’s most extraordinary marine environments. It is home to vulnerable green sea turtles, endangered pygmy blue whales and thousands of other marine species.
Each year, one thousand endangered green sea turtles return to Scott Reef to nest. It’s where they lay their eggs. It’s where baby turtles hatch. It’s where they make their first brave dash from the sand to the ocean. It’s their home.
But this remarkable ecosystem is under threat from Woodside’s plans to drill for gas, with up to 57 toxic wells proposed around the reef.
Turtles can’t speak up for their home, so we’re asking Australians to make their voices heard instead.
From one Aussie icon to another
At the heart of our new campaign is an iconic Australian voice, Michael Caton. Caton is using his voice to speak out for, what will soon be, another Australian icon – Scott Reef.
In a cinematic courtroom showdown, Caton lends his unmistakable voice to one of Scott Reef’s most vulnerable inhabitants: a green sea turtle fighting to protect her home from corporate destruction.
As Sandy the turtle defiantly flips her flippers at Woodside, Caton delivers a message that every Australian can get behind.
“Some things are too precious to risk.”
Because when it comes to protecting our natural environment, sometimes being polite just isn’t enough.
Turning a gesture into a movement
We’ve launching a campaign designed to do more than grab attention. We want to turn public concern into meaningful action.
The idea is simple: flip off Woodside and make sure our political leaders know exactly where Australians stand.
We’re calling on people across the country to share the campaign, get involved on social media and, most importantly, tag their local MPs.
We need Environment Minister Murray Watt and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to hear loud and clear that Australians want Scott Reef protected, not sacrificed for another gas project.
China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 3.1% in the third quarter of 2026, as the Hormuz crisis continued to hit oil demand and coal use also dropped.
This guest post is by:
Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air
This was the largest quarterly reduction since the 2022 Covid lockdowns and means that China’s CO2 emissions have now fallen by an estimated 0.5% in the year to date.
The new analysis for Carbon Brief, based on official figures and commercial data, shows that coal use fell by 3% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2026, while oil was down 4%.
The main drivers were a fall in power-sector coal consumption, a continued sharp reduction in transport oil consumption and slowing growth in the coal-to-chemical industry.
The sharp decline in China’s CO2 emissions extends a “flat or falling” trend that began in March 2024 and has now lasted more than two years, as shown in the figure below.
The outlook for China’s CO2 emissions depends on the balance between rising energy demand, clean-energy growth and the government response to a GDP slowdown.
Decline drivers
Key drivers of the fall in CO2 in the third quarter of 2026 included a 3.3% drop in coal-power generation, after demand growth slowed and the amount of “wasted” wind and solar fell.
Power generation from solar, wind and nuclear increased by 110 terawatt hours (TWh) year-on-year, more than twice as much as the growth in total electricity demand. This added clean-power generation equal to Germany’s total power output in the same time period.
The fall in coal-power output and CO2 emissions came despite the fact that China continues to build new coal-power capacity at near-record rates. This means that average running hours for coal plants are falling even faster than total generation, eroding their profits.
Meanwhile, transport oil consumption continued to fall sharply, down 9% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2026. Electric vehicles (EVs) continued to gain market share, hitting a record 67% of passenger car sales and 50% of heavy trucks in September.
The amount of electricity used by EVs grew by 53%, much faster than the number of EVs on the road, showing increased usage of the existing fleet in preference to fuelled vehicles.
Elsewhere, growth in the coal-to-chemical industry continued to slow down in the third quarter of 2026. The sector has been a key source of emissions growth, but high coal prices have weakened profitability and higher output prices hurt downstream demand.
Finally, CO2 emissions from cement and steel production continued to fall in the third quarter, as the contraction in construction volumes accelerated.
Outlook for emissions
Energy consumption growth has been falling after a period of exceptionally high growth during Covid, while clean-power growth has been robust.
This makes it likely that the growth in clean-power generation will exceed total energy demand growth this year, maintaining the structural fall in fossil-fuel use.
Looking ahead, this balance also relies on progress in removing barriers to new solar and wind power being added to the grid, which result in some clean electricity being “wasted”.
The recent slowdown in energy demand growth is partly – but not fully – explained by exceptionally mild weather in the third quarter.
Another key factor is weaker GDP growth. Since reported GDP growth remains within target, however, there is reduced pressure for further stimulus policies.
The focus of the economic stimulus announced to date is “six networks”, which includes the power grid and the transportation network.
These networks are highly relevant for energy and emissions – and they are already covered by policies that emphasise “green” and zero-carbon solutions.
The post Analysis: China’s quarterly CO2 falls 3% in largest drop since Covid appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: China’s quarterly CO2 falls 3% in largest drop since Covid
Climate Change
Coles, Woolworths grilled as beef buyers receive fail grade on new deforestation scorecard
MELBOURNE, Friday 6 November 2026 — As Coles holds its Annual General Meeting today, Greenpeace Australia Pacific has branded the major supermarkets with a fail grade on their commitment to source deforestation-free beef, with an updated scorecard revealing none of the major beef buyers are following through on forest sustainability commitments.
It comes after Woolworths’s AGM last week where the board copped a grilling by environmentalists and shareholders over its failed sustainability commitments. Both Coles and Woolworths committed to eliminating deforestation in their supply chains by the end of 2025, but a year past the deadline, neither company could guarantee that their beef was not sourced from deforested pastures.
From outside the Coles AGM, Adele Chasson, Nature Policy Lead at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“This is a report card Coles and Woolworths should be ashamed to take home. While all major beef buyers had promised to take deforestation off the shelves, none of them followed through. Shareholders and the public demanded answers from Woolworths last week and from Coles today, and we will continue to hold their feet to the fire on their promises.
“Beef is the leading cause of deforestation in Australia, and Coles and Woolworths keep putting off action while koalas continue losing their homes. Aussies must be able to get their groceries without having to worry if their dinner is contributing to the bulldozing of forests or driving extinction of iconic Australian animals.
“Without strong, rapid implementation plans, these companies continue with business as usual, flying in the face of Australia’s deforestation crisis. Big beef buyers like Coles and Woolworths must stop the bulldozers now, make good on their sustainability promises and play their part in stopping Australian forest destruction.”
The scorecard assesses how eight of Australia’s largest beef buyers stack up against a conversion and deforestation-free target. It charts whether the major supermarkets, Aldi, McDonalds, Hungry Jacks, Teys, Metcash/IGA and JBS are taking proper action to end Australia’s deforestation crisis. They all failed.
-ENDS-
Media contact: Kimberley Bernard on 0407 581 404 or kbernard@greenpeace.org
Coles, Woolworths grilled as beef buyers receive fail grade on new deforestation scorecard
