Climate & Energy · Thursday, 3 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

The UN says the world will pass 1.5C within a few years. Its plan now is how to get back down.

Climate & Energy 1 min 49 sources

A new UN report drops the goal of holding warming to 1.5C and replaces it with overshoot, peak and decline. The return trip only works if the peak stops at 1.8C.

1.4C

how much the world has already warmed since 1850 to 1900

the UN report puts the 1.5C crossing within a few years, and one analysis in 2030 [2]

1.8C

the highest peak from which the world could still get back to 1.5C

the report says above that, the return path does not close [3]

2.7-3.0C

where today's emissions pace lands by 2100

every Paris promise kept would give about 1.7 to 1.8C instead [1]

15,000

heat-related deaths in Germany this summer, on a report co-author's figure

that is the cost at 1.4C, below the limit everyone is arguing about [1]

The lead story — what happened

The UN Environment Programme published a report on Wednesday saying the world will pass 1.5C of warming within a few years. [1][3]
The 1.5C line is the one more than 190 countries agreed to try to hold in the Paris deal of 2015. [1]
The world is already about 1.4C warmer than it was in 1850 to 1900. One analysis puts the crossing in 2030. [2]
The report does not drop the number. It changes the shape of the goal to overshoot, peak, then come back down. [3]
That only works if the peak stops at about 1.8C. Above that, the report says the way back to 1.5C closes. [3]
Today's emissions pace points to 2.7 to 3.0C by 2100. Every promise already made under the Paris deal, if kept, gives about 1.7 to 1.8C. [1]
Coming back needs emissions cut now, halved by 2035, and billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide pulled out of the air before 2100. [1]
The report itself says the world must still figure out how to remove carbon at that scale. [1]
If temperatures stay high for long, ice sheets and the ocean currents that carry heat can pass points that are difficult or impossible to reverse on human timescales, the report says. [1]
The damage is already here at 1.4C. A co-author points to about 15,000 heat-related deaths in Germany this summer, and to hospitals, schools and care homes that could not cope. [1]
Antonio Guterres, the UN's secretary-general, said the overshoot must be made as small and as short as possible. [1][3]
A separate study published this week found that limiting warming to 1.5C is no longer plausible, and that without cuts to methane the peak passes 1.7C. [38]

Who is involved

The UN Environment Programme

the United Nations agency that tracks the state of the environment; it wrote the Limiting Overshoot report [1]
Antonio Guterres

the UN's secretary-general; he said the overshoot must be as small and as short as possible [1]
Carl-Friedrich Schleussner

a climate researcher at IIASA, a research institute in Austria, and a co-author; he says the gap between the warming coming and the preparation for it is enormous [1]
Surangel Whipps Jr

president of Palau, a Pacific island country; his people fought to get 1.5C into the Paris deal and face rising seas either way [2]

What is pushing on this

The 1.5C promise High↓

Pacific island states fought to put it in the Paris deal, and the world's top court made it the main limit last year [2]

Damage arriving early High↑

hospitals, schools and care homes in Europe were overwhelmed at 1.4C [1]

Carbon removal that does not exist yet Building↑

the way back needs billions of tonnes a year pulled from the air before 2100 [1]

Emissions actually falling Easing→

China's carbon dioxide has been flat for more than two years and fell 1% in the spring quarter [5]

How it unfolded

2015 more than 190 countries agree to hold warming well below 2C and try for 1.5C [1]
Last year the International Court of Justice rules 1.5C is the main limit countries have committed to [2]
May 2026 most UN member states vote to endorse that ruling [2]
Now the world sits at about 1.4C [2]
Wednesday the UN says passing 1.5C is unavoidable and sets out the path back [1][3]
2030 the year one analysis expects the line to be crossed [2]

Where this points

Watch what governments bring to the COP31 summit in Antalya: a set of plans that peaks warming below 1.8C keeps the return path open, and anything above it does not. [3]

The rest of the day

41 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
Solar passes coal in China

China's solar capacity reached 1,286 gigawatts at the end of July, 31.5% of all its power capacity, overtaking coal for the first time. [6][4] Electrek reports 1,288 gigawatts of solar against 1,285 of coal. [7]

Why it matters — Capacity is what is built, not what runs, so coal still generates more of China's power for now.
03
China's carbon dioxide fell 1%

Carbon Brief's analysis found China's CO2 fell 1% in the second quarter, driven for the first time by falling oil use rather than falling coal. Oil use dropped 9% overall and 16% in transport after supply disruption through the Strait of Hormuz. [5]

Why it matters — The oil China's electric cars displaced in six months was more than the United Kingdom burned in the same period. [5]
04
New York's $75bn climate fund struck down

A US federal judge struck down New York state's Climate Change Superfund Act on Monday, which would have made large fossil fuel companies pay $75bn over 25 years. [9][8] Governor Kathy Hochul said the state is looking at its options. [10]

Why it matters — Twenty-two Republican-led states brought the suit [8], and lawyers are split on what it means for Vermont's similar law. [3]
05
Nepal's disaster was rock, not just ice

Better satellite images show an entire mountain slope collapsed in Nepal and Tibet on 26 August, with rock below and around the glacier falling too. [11] The death toll passed 1,000 with more than 4,400 missing. [4]

Why it matters — The frozen ground binding Himalayan rock is thawing, so the same failure can happen where there is no glacial lake to watch. [12]
06
Google buys 400 MW of hot-rock power

Fervo Energy signed a deal to supply Google with nearly 400 megawatts from its Cape Station project in Utah, the largest ever for next-generation geothermal, which drills deep into hot dry rock to make steam. Fervo is spending over $2bn; its shares rose 15%. [13]

Why it matters — A first-of-a-kind plant cannot borrow money without a named buyer, which is what this deal actually is.
07
Europe's midday power keeps going free

Negative-price hours across five big European markets in the first half of 2026 ran about 2% above 2025's record, and 2025 itself had more than 13 times as many as 2022. France had the most, Italy none. [14]

Why it matters — Evening spikes are what pay batteries, and German daily price gaps topped 650 euros per megawatt-hour. [14]
08
Solar's day is still a few hours long

Solar made just over 10% of world electricity in the first half of 2026, up from 8.9% a year before, the think tank Ember found. It supplied more than a quarter of demand between 11am and 2pm and close to nothing between 8pm and 5am. [15]

Why it matters — In Chile solar hit 71% of demand at midday, which is why storage is the binding job rather than panels.
09
US renewables closing on gas

US renewable generation ran 10.9% higher in the first half of 2026 than a year earlier, led by large-scale solar up 21.6%, while coal output fell 11.3%. [16]

Why it matters — On the same data, renewables' installed capacity overtakes natural gas within a year. [16]
10
Data centres are 9% of the biggest US grid's bill

PJM's market monitor says data centre load made up 9% of wholesale power costs so far in 2026, while the total wholesale bill jumped 46% to $116.53 per megawatt-hour. [17]

Why it matters — PJM runs the wholesale market for 13 eastern states, and that increase lands on the bills there.
11
Midwest grid wants rules for giant customers

MISO, which runs the grid from Louisiana to Minnesota, asked US regulators for reliability rules covering large customers and data centres specifically. It expects 1% to 2% annual demand growth to 2044, after 15 years of about 0.5%. [18]

Why it matters — Data centres change how much power they draw fast, and all at once, which is a different problem from growth.
12
Oklo knocked out of the connection queue

PJM dropped Oklo's Ohio project from its interconnection study cycle. Oklo says that delays by at least 14 months a 1.2-gigawatt campus mixing 150 MW of advanced nuclear, 300 MW of fuel cells and 300 MW of gas, backed by Meta. [19]

Why it matters — The queue's rules were never written for a plant with three kinds of generator inside it.
13
Wires beat power plants, a study finds

CERA Consulting modelled about a dozen transmission projects across the eastern United States and found billions of dollars in savings, concentrated in the PJM region. [20]

Why it matters — A line that lets cheap power reach an expensive area removes the need to build the plant there at all.
14
Data centres reach for reactors that do not exist

Twenty-two small modular reactor designs are under development in the United States and two have regulator approval, but as of August none is running commercially. [21]

Why it matters — The obstacle is the timeline, not the technology, and data centres are being built now.
15
Pennsylvania slows its data-centre boom

Governor Josh Shapiro is slowing approvals for enormous data centres after a public backlash, a year after Google, Amazon and Anthropic pledged more than $90bn for the region. [22]

Why it matters — In a place that lost its steel industry, the construction money is welcome and the electricity bill is not.
16
Argentina sues over Falklands oil

An Argentine environmental lawyers' group and a veterans' association went to a federal court on Tuesday. They asked it to block Rockhopper Exploration of the UK and Navitas Petroleum of Israel from drilling the Sea Lion field, about 136 miles north of the Falkland Islands. [23]

Why it matters — It ties a marine-ecosystem case to a sovereignty claim, which is a harder thing for a court to split.
17
India may fence out foreign reactors

A draft Indian framework adds approval requirements for foreign reactor designs. Experts say it could steer buyers towards domestic technology and slow the country's nuclear expansion. [24]

Why it matters — The reform it sits inside was meant to bring foreign money and expertise in.
18
Japanese utility admits false decommissioning figures

Chubu Electric said demolition volume and equipment figures for reactors 1 and 2 at its Hamaoka plant differed from the real numbers, and it will check how much it billed Japan's nuclear decommissioning agency. [25]

Why it matters — The company is trying to restart Hamaoka's other three reactors, halted since the Fukushima disaster in 2011.
19
Heat is switching Europe's nuclear off

Nuclear plants in France and Switzerland went offline this summer as river temperatures rose, and plants on the Danube in Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria shut or cut output as drought dropped water levels. [26]

Why it matters — The machines sold as weather-proof need a cool river, and the air conditioning they power is what the heat demands.
20
Maine could add two-thirds more onshore wind

Clearway's proposed 800-megawatt wind farm in Aroostook County, plus a 1,200-megawatt Avangrid line to Haynesville, would lift Maine's onshore wind capacity by 66%. The state estimates $387m of savings for bill-payers. [27]

Why it matters — Northern Maine has excellent wind and was never wired into the regional grid, which is the whole reason it is empty.
21
North Dakota goes cold on turbines

Wind development has fallen out of favour in North Dakota, where residents have grown tired of turbines in rural areas despite decades of money from them. [28]

Why it matters — Local consent, not cost, is now the limit in places where wind was cheapest first.
22
The electric Range Rover costs 154,070 pounds

Jaguar Land Rover opened orders for its first electric Range Rover, a year later than planned and built in Solihull in England. [29] It travels 372 miles on a charge and costs almost 50,000 pounds more than the petrol version. [49]

Why it matters — The top of the car market goes electric last, and charges a premium for it.
23
A $28,350 electric pickup

Ford's midsize electric pickup, the Fathom, goes on sale in early 2027 at $28,350 before a $1,595 delivery fee. [30]

Why it matters — It is the other end of the same market, and the end that decides how fast petrol volumes fall.
24
Tesla's growth thins out

Tesla's China-made sales rose 3.6% year on year in August to 86,166 cars, a tenth straight monthly gain but far slower than July. [31] In Europe its registrations rose 279% in France and 104% in Denmark while falling in Norway and Sweden. [32]

Why it matters — Electric car growth is now country by country, not one global curve.
25
Toyota's sales fall

Toyota said its global sales and production fell in July, dragged down by China, the United States and the Middle East, and offset only partly by a stronger Japan. [33]

Why it matters — The world's biggest carmaker has the same China problem Tesla does, from the opposite direction.
26
Low rivers ran the cruise ships aground

Drought dropped the Danube and Rhine to record lows this summer, upending hundreds of river cruise itineraries. Parts of the Danube in Romania and Serbia hit their lowest levels in 30 years. [34]

Why it matters — This is what an adaptation cost looks like when it arrives as a refund rather than a disaster.
27
Manhattan's flood walls are nearly finished

New York City's post-Sandy defences around lower Manhattan are close to complete. The city has more than 500 miles of coastline and over a million people living in its coastal zone. [35]

Why it matters — Every one of those miles is vulnerable differently, and the finished part is the smallest.
28
The food system misses almost every 2030 goal

Research led by the Food Systems Countdown Initiative found most UN Sustainable Development Goals on food are now virtually impossible to reach by 2030. The team published a dashboard of about 50 measures for nearly every country. [36]

Why it matters — Farming is both a large source of emissions and the first thing a hotter climate breaks.
29
Methane is the fast lever

A study published this week found that without cuts to methane, peak warming passes 1.7C, and that holding warming to 1.5C is no longer plausible whatever is done. Methane already adds more than 0.6C, and a further sustained 10% cut each year to 2050 widens the room to stay below 2C. [38]

Why it matters — Methane is the second-largest cause of warming after carbon dioxide and leaves the air far faster, so cuts show up sooner. [37]
30
Australian firms plan for a hotter world than they promise

Under Australia's new mandatory climate reporting rules, several of its biggest energy and resource companies have published the warming they treat as their base case, and it does not match the Paris goal. [39]

Why it matters — What a company plans around is a better forecast than what it pledges.
31
Southeast Asia becomes the demand engine

The IEA, the rich countries' energy watchdog, expects Southeast Asia to supply about 20% of the growth in world energy demand to 2035 under today's policies. Clean energy meets just over 40% of that growth; fossil fuels meet about 60%. [40]

Why it matters — That split is where a large share of the next decade's emissions gets decided.
32
Batteries and mini-grids for West Africa

About a third of West Africa's 565 million people had no electricity in 2023. IRENA modelled solar mini-grids with battery storage for Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal, where extending the main grid does not pay. [41]

Why it matters — It feeds Mission 300, the plan to reach 300 million people in Africa with power by 2030.
33
The pipes that heat 600 million people

District heating, which pipes hot water from one central plant to a whole neighbourhood, serves more than 600 million people over a million kilometres of network, and delivers about 35% more heat than in 2010. [42]

Why it matters — Heating and cooling are more than half of all energy used at the point of use, and this is one place to swap the fuel once instead of building by building.
34
The ocean set a new daily record

The average daily global sea surface temperature hit 21.10C on 22 August, a record, according to the Copernicus climate service. [43]

Why it matters — A warm ocean is the fuel an El Nino builds on, and one is forming in the Pacific now.
35
Warming is drying the Caribbean

A World Weather Attribution analysis found human-caused warming cut May to July rainfall by 6% in Jamaica and 9% in Puerto Rico. [43]

Why it matters — Both islands depend on farming for income and food, and El Nino may suppress the late rains too.
36
Land talks end with no drought treaty

UN desertification talks in Mongolia closed on Friday without agreeing a legally binding global drought pact. The decision moves to Egypt in 2028, having already slipped once from 2024. [4]

Why it matters — African states led the push for a binding rule; richer countries preferred a weaker framework that is quicker to set up.
37
Chevron doubles down on Venezuela

Chevron said it had agreed to expand in Venezuela and double its output there to 600,000 barrels a day within five years, investing $7bn, days after the US-Venezuela oil deal. [48]

Why it matters — That is roughly half of everything Venezuela currently exports, from one company.
38
Disasters head for $450bn a year

A new forecast from the risk modeller Verisk puts natural catastrophe losses at about $450bn in a typical year, with 62% of them uninsured, leaving about $279bn on households, firms and governments. [4]

Why it matters — Uninsured is the word doing the work: someone still pays, without a policy behind them.
39
The Obama Center becomes a solar anchor

The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago will buy about 6 gigawatt-hours a year from community solar arrays due online in 2027. [45]

Why it matters — An anchor customer taking 40% to 50% of a project's output is often what makes a lender agree to fund it.
40
New scenarios for the next climate models

Carbon Brief set out the seven new CMIP7 pathways, which replace the shared socioeconomic pathways and are named by their emissions rather than by a physics term. [46]

Why it matters — These are the futures the next round of climate models, and the next IPCC report, will be built on.
41
Half full or half empty in the US

An MIT report argued US power-sector emissions are still on track to fall substantially by 2035 despite Trump administration policy. The Natural Resources Defense Council published a rebuttal pointing at a peer-reviewed study reaching the opposite conclusion. [44]

Why it matters — Two careful models, the same data, opposite answers, which is itself the honest state of play.
42
Nepal asks who pays

Nepal called for a global effort on climate change after the floods, stressing how small its own share of world emissions is. [47] Its foreign minister said big industrial emitters have a historical responsibility to compensate vulnerable countries. [3]

Why it matters — The UN's overshoot report leaves that question open, and the money for it is not attached to anything.

02 Lesson why it matters

Coming back to the same number is not coming back

A temperature can be taken back down, but an ice sheet that has started to go cannot be put back, so the reading returns and the world does not.

The twist

A number you can go back down to sounds forgiving, and the parts of the world that do not come back with it never show up in that number.

How it works

A limit is written down as one number
The number is passed, and the goal becomes coming back below it
Some parts of the system track that number and recover with it
Others cross a threshold of their own while it is high
Those do not return when the number does
So the same reading now describes a different world

Where you've seen this

A broken arm

the bone knits and works again, and the joint that stiffened while it healed does not

A company's bank balance

the cash recovers, and the people who left during the bad months stay gone

A polluted river

the water gets clean again, and the fish that died out while it was dirty stay died out

The catch

Plenty of the world does simply come back, and treating every setback as permanent is its own mistake. The work is telling which is which, in advance.

And the whole of it

Nobody watching one number can see which parts of a system are still tracking it and which have quietly stopped. That is true of the researchers who wrote this report and of everyone reading about it: the number is the one thing all of us can see, and it is also the thing that hides the rest.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

A limit the world agreed to hold has quietly become a limit the world plans to come back to, and the return depends on removing carbon at a scale nobody has built yet.

Why it works on us — Calling it a temporary overshoot turns a missed limit into a delay, and a delay is far easier to accept than a failure.

Who gains

Fervo Energy — Google's 400-megawatt contract gives a first-of-a-kind hot-rock plant the named buyer that unlocks lending; the shares rose 15% on the news. [13]
Battery owners in Germany — Midday power going free and evening power spiking widened daily wholesale price gaps past 650 euros per megawatt-hour, and a battery is paid the gap. [14]
Large fossil fuel producers selling into New York — A bill of $75bn spread over 25 years was struck down on Monday, and no other state law of the kind has survived a court yet. [8][9]
India's domestic reactor builders — The draft framework adds approval steps for foreign designs only, which steers buyers to home technology. [24]
Chevron — It agreed to double Venezuelan output to 600,000 barrels a day, about half the country's current exports, days after the US-Venezuela deal. [48]

Who pays

People along the Bhote Koshi in Nepal — More than 1,000 died and over 4,400 are missing after a slope collapse that better images now show was rock as well as ice. [4][11]
Households on the PJM grid in the eastern United States — Wholesale power cost 46% more over the first seven months of 2026, with data centre load making up 9% of it. [17]
Farmers in Jamaica and Puerto Rico — Warming cut May to July rainfall by 6% and 9% on islands that live on agriculture. [43]
Uninsured property owners everywhere — About $279bn of a $450bn annual disaster bill falls on people and governments with no policy behind them. [4]
Older and sicker people in Europe — About 15,000 heat-related deaths in Germany this summer, at 1.4C, below the limit the report is about. [1]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

Whether anyone can remove billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

The UN's own path back to 1.5C requires it before 2100, and the report names no existing plant or industry at that scale. [1]
02

How much of China's solar capacity there actually is.

Bloomberg reports 1,286 gigawatts citing China's National Energy Administration; Electrek reports 1,288 against 1,285 of coal. Both trace to the same state release, so neither can be checked independently. [6][7]
03

Whether New York appeals the superfund ruling.

Governor Kathy Hochul said only that the state is looking at its options, and lawyers are split on what Monday's ruling means for Vermont's near-identical law. [10][3]
04

What made the mountain in Nepal give way.

New satellite images show rock fell as well as ice, and a slope failure with no glacial lake behind it is not an established mechanism. [11]
05

How long the Caribbean drought runs.

The attribution study measured a 6% to 9% rainfall cut for May to July, and the El Nino forming now may suppress the late season too, which nobody can yet quantify. [43]
06

Whether Oklo's Ohio campus ever gets built.

PJM removed it from the study cycle and Oklo puts the delay at 14 months or more; the grid has no rule for a plant combining nuclear, fuel cells and gas. [19]
07

How much Chubu Electric over-billed Japan's decommissioning agency.

The company said its Hamaoka figures were wrong and has published no amount. [25]
08

What warming Australia's biggest companies are really planning for.

The new mandatory reports disclose a base case but not the assumptions or the internal work behind it. [39]

04 Hope carry this

China's carbon dioxide fell 1% in the spring quarter, and for the first time the fall came from oil rather than coal. The oil its electric cars displaced in six months was more than the whole United Kingdom burned in the same period.