“China is at risk of missing key climate targets for 2025 and needs to cut fossil fuel use and maintain record renewable energy investment to get back on track,” the Straits Times reports, citing new analysis for Carbon Brief. The analysis by Lauri Myllyvirta, Helsinki-based lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea) and senior fellow at Asia Society Policy Institute, is based on official figures and commercial data, the outlet notes. It shows that rapid growth in electricity demand and below-average rainfall boosted demand for coal last year, alongside the rebound front he government’s zero-Covid policy boosting demand for oil, it adds. China is  “off track on all its core 2025 climate targets”, despite clean energy now being the biggest driver of the country’s economic growth, reports the Guardian. After “years of extraordinarily rapid [economic] growth”, China is now “grappling” with a slowdown, the article continues. The government has “supercharged” the growth of renewable energy, but has simultaneously poured funds into construction and manufacturing, and continues to approve coal power, it adds. The analysis for Carbon Brief shows China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from energy jumped 5.2% in 2023, as lower rainfall and strong electricity demand required more coal, reports Bloomberg. The country will now need “even sharper pollution cuts” to reduce emissions per unit of gross domestic product by 18% through to 2025, as pledged in its 14th five-year plan, it notes. China is at risk of missing other targets including reducing energy intensity, limiting the growth of coal power and boosting the share of clean electricity in the grid, the article notes. China has pledged to bring its CO2 emissions to a peak by 2030, and to net-zero by 2060, reports AFP. Under the Paris agreement, it has committed to a series of “stepping-stone targets”, such as ensuring 20% of its energy comes from alternatives to fossil fuels and cutting the carbon intensity of its economy by 2025, it adds. Meanwhile, China has approved another 114 gigawatts (GW) of coal power capacity in 2023, up 10% from a year earlier, reports Reuters. Separate research, also from CREA alongside US thinktank Global Energy Monitor, found that after a wave of electricity shortages in 2021, China embarked on a “coal power permitting boom that could slow its energy transition”, the newswire continues. In just two years, China has approved 218GW of new coal power, enough to supply electricity to the whole of Brazil, the article notes.

The UK is set to miss its climate goals for 2030 and 2050, according to a new report for Norwegian risk management firm DNV, Reuters reports. Pointing to slow progress and policy rollbacks, DNV says buildings and transport “are two sectors which will be the largest contributors to total annual emissions in 2050”, the newswire continues. Reuters adds: “With the right incentives, decarbonisation can be accelerated by swifter deployment of technologies such as wind, solar PV, smart grids and electric vehicles, along with carbon capture and storage and hydrogen, it added.” The outlet quotes a DNV executive saying: “Without immediate action the UK will fail to deliver on its climate commitments, fall behind in the global race to decarbonise.” The Daily Telegraph focuses its coverage on DNV’s finding that – without further action – the UK will still depend on oil and gas for a third of its energy in 2050 “despite billions of pounds of investment”. The UK will also “fall short” of its target to cut emissions by 68% by 2030, with a predicted fall of 55% relative to 1990 levels, reports the Times, citing the same DNV report. Aviation will continue to be a significant contributor to emissions, as “sustainable jet fuels are slow to be adopted by the industry”, while a “sizeable proportion” of road vehicles will continue to use fossil fuels, the article continues. Internal combustion engine vehicles will dominate new passenger vehicles sales, with almost 80% of the market, it notes. This follows the government delaying the deadline to phase out petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035, the article notes. “Adoption of electric vehicles has slowed, partly due to delays in installing charging points”, the Times states. [Sales of new EVs were up 18% in 2023, according to the figures from the SMMT].

Meanwhile, Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee Lord Deben has submitted a witness statement in support of legal action accusing the government of breaching the Climate Change Act, reports BusinessGreen. The legal challenge has been launched by Friends of the Earth, ClientEarth, and the Good Law Project, who allege that the government’s carbon budget delivery plan (CBDP), is insufficiently detailed and risks the UK missing its legally-binding emissions targets, the article notes. Deben’s witness statement accuses the government of “failing to adequately consider the risks faced by decarbonisation policies and failing to provide the Climate Change Committee with information on its plans ahead of their publication”, the article states.

Separately, the UK will leave the “outdated” Energy Charter Treaty after ministers concluded it could “stymie efforts” to achieve net-zero by 2050, reports Politico. Energy minister Graham Stuart is expected to confirm today that the UK will follow countries including France, Spain and Germany in quitting the international treaty, it continues. The 1998 Energy Charter Treaty allows energy companies to sue governments over policies that damage their investment, and has been used in recent years to challenge policies that require fossil fuel plants to shut, reports Reuters. The article quotes Stuart saying: “Remaining a member [of the charter] would not support our transition to cleaner, cheaper energy, and could even penalise us for our world-leading efforts to deliver net-zero.” The UK’s exit from the treaty “underscores years of wrangling” to try to modernise it for an “era in which Europe’s biggest economies have put the green transition at the centre of their energy policy”, reports Bloomberg. The UK reached an initial deal to update the Energy Charter Treaty in 2022, which would have expanded support to technologies like renewable energy and carbon capture, it notes. But with European elections this year, further negotiations “could drag on indefinitely”, the article adds. 

Finally, UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt is expected to extend a freeze on fuel duty for the 14th consecutive year in his Spring Budget, reports the Times. The chancellor is also expected to keep in place a 5p cut to petrol taxes that was introduced in 2022 to help ease the cost of the global energy crisis, it adds. If he extends the fuel duty freeze “Hunt will be in the long line of chancellors who have failed to reverse fuel duty reductions after they were introduced”, the article notes. [Analysis by Carbon Brief last year found that freezes to fuel duty have increased the UK’s CO2 emissions by 2-7% since 2010.]

Chinese battery and battery materials suppliers have “reportedly been asked by their European clients, such as BMW, Volkswagen, and Stellantis”, to begin production in Europe “as soon as possible”, reports Yicai. The Chinese financial outlet adds that Chinese companies may face “challenges related to environmental protection laws when building plants in Europe, especially when producing graphite, an anode material for power batteries”, according to industry analysts, while “carmakers from different European countries have different production requirements”. Separately, Europe’s wind power sector will experience “the same fate as its devastated solar industry” if authorities do not restrict entry to the market for “cheap” Chinese wind power equipment, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post quotes Siemens Energy chief executive Christian Bruch as saying. It says Bruch added that Siemens would support the EU enacting “either a quota or qualitative criteria to boost the EU wind sector”. The state news agency Xinhua covers a statement from a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson saying that “trade protectionist measures taken by the US and Europe will hurt their own long-term development and encumber the progress and prosperity of the world”.

The state-run industry newspaper China Energy News reports that the ministry of industry and information technology (MIIT) issued a policy which says that by 2025 a “preliminary framework for carbon peaking and neutrality standards in industrial sectors will be established”, with a “more comprehensive” framework to be established by 2030. Another article by China Energy News reports that the national energy administration (NEA) has issued a plan for the “formulation, amendment and supplementation of industry standards in the energy sector for 2023”. The Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily reports that China’s “first green financial data product based on ecological environment data” recently completed its first on-exchange transactions. 

Bloomberg reports that China’s “coal boom is slowing” as the country’s “four biggest coal hubs, accounting for over 80% of output, have eschewed…ambitious [coal] targets” and instead “steer investment to…clean energy”. Tokyo-based Nikkei Asia covers analysis by energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie finding that China may miss their national greenhouse gas emission goals by the end of 2029, as China’s “emission intensity is on track to fall 63% between 2005 and 2030”, below the national target of 65%.

Meanwhile, an editorial by China Daily says that China should “incorporate the concept of green development into all aspects of economic and social development”. An editorial by Xinhua titled “Xi’s thought on ecological civilisation guides Xiamen’s green shift” says that “as a key birthplace and early adopter of Xi’s ecological ideas, Xiamen has pursued systematic ecological governance and contributed to high-quality development”. Finally, the Economic Daily carries a commentary by Zhou Hongchun, researcher at the development research centre of the state council, who writes that China should accelerate the “formation of industrial structures, production methods and lifestyles that conserve resources and protect the environment”. 

The Indian government has “streamlined the approvals process” for rooftop solar connections and “made it easier for people to claim subsidies and pushed mountains of cash…to encourage faster adoption”, reports the Associated Press. This includes a $9bn push announced by prime minister Narendra Modi this month, claiming the carve-out would provide “free electricity” for up to 10m homes, the newswire says. Currently, most of India’s solar power comes from “football-field-sized solar farms” while “[l]ess than 15% comes from rooftop arrays, and India has so far managed to set up only 11 gigawatts [GW] of rooftop solar…far less than the 40GW it hoped to have by 2022”. Separately, Nikkei Asia reports that India may “miss its national greenhouse gas emissions goals by the end of the decade” despite its clean energy push, with a Wood Mackenzie report projecting that the country’s emissions intensity will fall by 30% by 2030, significantly lower than its 45% target. The Economic Times reports that the country’s wind turbine exports “nearly doubled in revenue terms” in 2023 compared to 2019, according to analysis by S&P Global. 

Meanwhile, citing government sources, Reuters reports that in a first, “New Delhi is pursuing private investment in nuclear power” and is in talks with private firms, including Adani, Reliance, Tata and Vedanta, to invest about $26bn to help “build 11,000 megawatts (MW) of new nuclear power generation capacity by 2040”. The story adds that nuclear power currently “contributes less than 2%” of India’s total electricity generation. In other energy news, CNN reports that “Russia is entering its third year of war in Ukraine with an unprecedented amount of cash in government coffers, bolstered by a record $37bn of crude oil sales to India last year”, India’s purchases increasing “by over 13 times its pre-war amounts”, according to new analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

On Monday, India’s supreme court ordered that the term “forest” will continue to have a “broad and all-encompassing” meaning and include 197,000 square kilometres of “undeclared forest lands” at risk from controversial amendments to India’s forest conservation law, the Hindu reports. “The prime minister wanted to make it easier to hand over India’s forests and pollute the environment, to benefit his corporate crony friends…[t]his amendment would have made it easy [for industry] to divert ‘deemed forests’ as well as forests in the northeast,” said former environment and climate minister Jairam Ramesh, hailing the court’s order, Mint reports. Separately, while thousands of farmers continue to protest on Punjab and Haryana’s borders with the national capital, Scroll.in looks at how the current wave of protests is linked to climate change: “As climate change creates greater uncertainty and impacts the quality of farm produce, farmers say guaranteed support from the government is essential to help them move beyond rice and wheat cultivation.” Finally, Mint reports that India’s Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) released draft guidelines to prevent greenwashing, open for public consultation until 21 March.

Following Brexit, farming is now “very much in the government’s domain” argues a Daily Telegraph editorial, and yet “few are convinced it knows what it is doing”. Farmers are “often assailed by regulations and demands to make a contribution to net-zero by rewilding and investing in other environmental initiatives”, it says. The editorial continues: “Many are happy to do so but say they are not given the financial incentives and are even fined.” It concludes: “In the end, we all have a role to play. As consumers, we face a choice if we want to preserve British farming: be prepared to pay more for home-grown produce or see more farms go to the wall or be turned over to heathland.”

A new study evaluates the evidence around disease outbreaks in fish, associated with climate change. The team examines the available literature on the effect of temperature, salinity, low oxygen and increasing acidity on wild and farmed fish. The findings include that “acute and chronic changes in temperature and dissolved oxygen can compromise fish immunity which can lead to increased disease susceptibility”. Direct immune effects of acidification are limited by too few studies, the authors note, while salinity studies show contrasting results. Noting a lack of “multi-stressor” studies, which look at multiple environmental factors simultaneously, the study makes recommendations for better estimating the effects of “realistic” climate change scenarios in future.