Climate, in brief

Gulf shipping still blocked

OPEC's output fell 640,000 barrels a day in August because the oil could not get out [5]; the heavy fuel that ships and some power stations burn is up more than 70% since the war began [6]

Reaching for what is already built

TotalEnergies will get oil out of an Angolan discovery three months after finding it, by tying it into a platform already anchored there [23]. A Chinese state company is paying $272m to add 310 megawatts to an existing Brazilian dam rather than build a new one [22]

The wait to connect anything new

a 107.5-mile line the grid operator PJM ordered up in 2023 only reaches its West Virginia hearings in late October [20]; MISO has asked federal regulators for a 90-day review for data centres that only draw power [21]

Electric transport growing where fuel got dear

Europeans bought 380,000 electric and plug-in cars in August, 36% more than a year earlier [14]; Africa's imports of Chinese electric bikes rose 60% to $114.6m in the first half [16]

2 pressures seen across the day run through Climate too.

• Cargo ships being attackedHigh ↑ · seen in 4 beats→
• Data centres needing more power than anyone has countedHigh ↑ · seen in 2 beats→

1. 1The world will burn a record amount of coal this year, because oil and gas cannot get out of the Gulf
2. 2Oil ends the week above $100
3. 3OPEC pumped less, not more
4. 4The fuel ships run on is running short
5. 5China stopped buying oil

Watch whether liquefied gas shipments restart through the Strait of Hormuz: the agency says coal demand could fall again in 2027 if they do, and climb further if they do not. [1]

Brent crude was trading at $108.68 a barrel on Friday morning, heading for its first weekly close above $100 in nearly four months. [3]

It rose more than 6% on Thursday alone and about 13% across the week, the steepest weekly gain since mid-July. [3]

Houthi fighters allied to Iran took the Yemeni port of Mocha on Thursday, which adds the Red Sea to the Gulf as water where shipping is now unsafe. [3]

Until this week traders had held the price nearer $95, because Gulf exporters were finding other routes out. [4]

The agency says dear oil and gas is what pushed power companies back to coal. This week the price went up again. [1][3]

The eleven countries of OPEC, the group of oil exporters that agrees production targets between its members, produced 19.71 million barrels a day in August. [5]

That is 640,000 barrels a day below July, according to a Reuters survey built on shipping data and industry sources. [5]

Seven members of the wider OPEC+ group, which includes Russia, had agreed in advance to increase output that month. [5]

The war made it impossible: a US naval blockade cut Iran's shipments and Saudi exports faced new disruption. [5]

A production target is a promise about wells. Getting the oil to a buyer needs a sea lane, and that is the part that failed. [5]

Also seen in World, Finance and Food.

Fuel oil is the thick, heavy fuel burned by large ships and by some power stations. [6]

Its price is up more than 70% since the war with Iran began, and the consultancy Rystad expects supply to be critically tight through the third quarter. [6]

Refineries damaged by strikes in Russia and the Middle East are putting their remaining capacity into diesel, which pays better, and Middle East exports of fuel oil fell 45% between March and August. [6]

Asia depends most on Gulf flows and is hardest hit. [6]

Reuters reports higher ship fuel costs can feed through into shipping rates, and shipping rates sit inside the price of anything that arrives by sea. [6]

China's seaborne crude oil imports in August ran 4.27 million barrels a day below the average of the three months before the war started. [7]

Asia as a whole imported 22.64 million barrels a day, 16% below its pre-war average, and almost the entire fall is China's. [7]

The country has a history of buying less when prices spike and more when they drop, but the size of this cut surprised analysts who track it. [7]

It is absorbing most of the world's lost Gulf supply by itself. [7]

Reuters' columnist writes that China is shouldering the bulk of the world's adjustment to lower Middle East supply. [7]

The research arm of Sinopec, China's state oil and gas company, expects the country's oil demand to fall by 600,000 barrels a day in 2026, or 8.9%. [2]

That would be the third annual fall in a row. [2]

A representative of the institute, Fairy Wang, said electric heavy trucks are now a threat to diesel sales, and that electric models could take half of new heavy-truck sales across the full year. [2]

The forecast comes from inside the company that sells the fuel. [2]

The forecast points at electric heavy trucks, whose share of new sales could reach half this year, rather than only at the war. [2]

At the APPEC oil conference in Singapore this week, one answer came back in conversation after conversation. [8]

To reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the US president should back down and leave the Gulf to the countries in it. [8]

Before the bombing began on 28 February, nearly 20% of the world's crude, refined products and liquefied gas moved through the strait. [8]

Volumes fell to near zero and have recovered only partly. [8] The same people expect none of this to happen. [8]

The industry that physically moves the oil thinks this ends politically rather than militarily, and it is planning for a long disruption either way. [8]

Iran has suspended a 10% charge on freight fees for foreign ships carrying oil, gas and liquid petroleum products in or out of the country, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Thursday. [9]

The presidential legal deputy ordered collection to stop until Iran's government approves and publishes a list of which products the charge covers. [9]

A US naval blockade has sharply cut Iran's seaborne oil exports. [9] Fars said dropping the levy could cut transport costs and encourage foreign fleets to carry Iranian cargo. [9]

A country under blockade cannot order ships to come, so it lowers the price of coming. [9]

The European Central Bank, which sets interest rates for the twenty countries using the euro, raised its rate to 2.5% and did nothing to discourage expectations of three more rises by April. [10]

A Reuters Breakingviews column argues the bank is watching the wrong danger. [10]

Workers and firms in the euro area are already absorbing high energy costs, so a slowdown is a bigger risk than inflation. [10]

Oil above $100 a barrel pushes on both at once. [10]

For a household in the euro area, dear fuel arrives first in the energy bill.

If the European Central Bank keeps raising rates because of it, the same household pays more to borrow as well. [10]

Indian steel prices are expected to rise further in the coming weeks, executives and analysts told Reuters. [11]

Two things push in the same direction: demand returning after the monsoon, and the rising cost of coking coal, the grade of coal used to make steel rather than electricity. [11]

Hot-rolled coil, the flat steel that goes into cars and appliances, is already at a four-year high. [11]

India is the second-biggest crude steel producer after China, and its mills had actually trimmed prices slightly between June and July. [11]

Indian builders and carmakers pay for that coal a second time, a few months later, when they buy the steel it made.

Their own demand is picking up in the same weeks. [11]

Investment committed to clean hydrogen projects worldwide has passed $130 billion, the Hydrogen Council, an industry group, said in Tokyo on Thursday. [12]

Its report counts more than 570 committed projects, supporting about 6.9 million tonnes a year of production capacity, and says roughly 90% of them are operating or under construction. [12]

China holds more than half the world's committed capacity for hydrogen made from renewable electricity. [12]

The council also says developers have scaled back and scrapped projects, because the cost of producing the fuel stayed high. [12]

Governments are now buying hydrogen as energy security rather than only as a way to cut emissions, and that is a different argument with a different budget behind it. [12]

The United States installed 11.4 gigawatts of solar capacity in the second quarter of 2026. [13]

That is 45% more than a year earlier and 43% more than the first quarter, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association and the analysts Wood Mackenzie. [13]

Large solar farms did most of it, at 9.6 gigawatts, as developers hurried to start before a July tax-credit deadline. [13]

The whole US fleet now generates about as much electricity as 50 million homes use. [13] Solar and batteries were 70% of all new US generating capacity in the first half. [13]

A deadline caused part of the rush, so the next few quarters will show how much of this was building early rather than building more. [13]

Worldwide sales of battery-electric and plug-in hybrid cars rose 2% in August to 1.83 million, taking the year so far to 13.4 million. [14]

Europe did all the growing, at 380,000 vehicles, up 36% on a year earlier and held up by subsidies in the larger markets. [14]

North American sales fell 33% to 140,000, because buyers had rushed in a year earlier to beat the end of the US federal tax credit. [14]

Chinese sales fell 11% to 1.03 million against a strong month in 2025. [14]

Europe grew on subsidies and North America fell because a subsidy ended a year ago. China's drop is measured against an unusually strong month in 2025. [14]

China exported more than 6.2 million passenger vehicles between January and August, beating the roughly 6 million it shipped in the whole of 2025. [15]

S&P Global Ratings expects full-year export growth of 50% to 70%. [15]

At home the market is shrinking: passenger car sales fell 25.6% in August to just under 1.5 million, squeezed by price wars and weak consumer confidence. [15]

Chinese carmakers are selling more into Europe, Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia, and are building factories in those places. [15]

AP reports that the energy shock from the Iran war and higher fuel prices have pushed more petrol and diesel drivers towards electric cars. [15]

Africa's imports of Chinese electric bikes and scooters rose 60% in the first half of the year, to $114.6 million. [16]

Morocco led with 80,188 units worth $21.7 million, followed by Egypt and Algeria; South Africa took the most in sub-Saharan Africa, at 19,635. [16]

Two and three-wheelers carry a large share of Africa's road traffic and are mostly used commercially. [16]

In East and Central Africa the money is going into local assembly plants and battery-swapping networks rather than imports, and Spiro, the continent's largest electric bike firm, raised more than $348 million over the past year. [16]

In North Africa these are commuter scooters bought by consumers.

In East and West Africa they are commercial machines covering up to 150 kilometres a day, which is a much bigger fuel bill to escape. [16]

Google said on Wednesday it will spend at least 13 billion euros on artificial intelligence infrastructure in Finland over two years, its largest investment in Europe. [18]

It plans new sites at Kajaani, Muhos and Vaala, and has signed a deal to buy nuclear power. [18]

Opposition parties responded on Thursday by calling for a national permitting system for data centres, warning of power shortages and rising energy prices. [17]

Finland has attracted these buildings for years with a cold climate, low-carbon electricity and an uncongested grid. [17] There is no national permit step at present. [17]

Finland drew the investment by having spare grid capacity. Its politicians are now arguing about who decides how much of that spare capacity gets sold, and to whom. [17]

Solar and batteries connected at distribution substations that already exist could cover about 32% of California's evening peak demand in 2032, according to a study by the analysts Kevala. [19]

The evening peak is the 4pm to 9pm stretch from June to September, when the sun drops away and demand does not. [19]

Kevala found room for 3,112 five-megawatt solar-and-storage installations across the state's three big utilities, serving 15,560 megawatts of local demand. [19]

Clean energy groups say it shows a route to reliability that avoids major new transmission. [19]

The point of the study is that the substations are already standing, so the reliability would not have to wait on new transmission being approved and built. [19]

When fuel suddenly gets dear, the electricity that fills the gap comes from plants that were already built and already wired up.

the same step, in oil: the discovery reaches production in a quarter because there is spare room on a platform already anchored over the block

310 megawatts get added to Sao Simao rather than to a new river, and the company says using what exists is the fastest way to add capacity

the consultants counted substations that are already standing, and found a third of the 2032 evening peak could be served without new long-distance wires

the other half of the same chain: the MidAtlantic Resiliency Link has not reached its hearings after three years, which is the delay that keeps sending everyone back to existing equipment

Each power company did the ordinary thing with the plants it had, and those plants were built decades ago by people who could not have known what this year would ask of them.

West Virginia's Public Service Commission refused a request from its own legal staff to delay hearings on the MidAtlantic Resiliency Link, a 107.5-mile high-voltage line. [20]

The hearings stay booked for 26 October to 2 November. [20]

The grid operator PJM picked NextEra Energy Transmission to build the 500-kilovolt line back in 2023, the company formally proposed it in January, and the route is still not final. [20]

Filings sit with regulators in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia. [20] West Virginia's summer peak demand is projected to rise 8% to 12% over the next ten years. [20]

PJM identified the need in 2023 and the route is still not final in 2026.

Every year of that is another year in which the plants that already exist keep the job. [20]

Also seen in Tech.

MISO, which runs the electricity grid from Louisiana to Minnesota, has asked US federal regulators to allow a 90-day review for very large customers that only draw power and never push any back onto the network. [21]

Google, the utility Xcel Energy and others filed in support. [21]

The Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups want the plan reworked, arguing it could shift costs onto existing customers. [21]

It is a partial answer to a June order telling grid operators to fix their rules for connecting very large loads by mid-November. [21]

MISO wants 90 days for customers that never push power back onto the network. The objection is about who ends up carrying any cost that gets shifted. [21]

Spic Brasil, part of China's State Power Investment Corporation, signed a contract worth 1.4 billion reais, about $272 million, to add 310 megawatts to the Sao Simao hydroelectric plant on the border of Minas Gerais and Goias states. [22]

The work goes to Dongfang Electric and China Gezhouba Group, who won a competitive process after the capacity was awarded at Brazil's March auction. [22]

The plant passes 2 gigawatts when the new unit starts in 2030. [22] That March auction was the first opening for new hydro projects in Brazil in several years. [22]

Spic Brasil's chief executive, Adriana Waltrick, said getting more out of what already exists is the most efficient way to expand Brazil's capacity. [22]

TotalEnergies, the French oil and gas company, announced the Acacia-5 discovery on Block 17 off Angola, and said first oil will flow three months after the find was made in June 2026. [23]

It can move that fast because there is spare room on the Pazflor floating production vessel already anchored nearby, so the new well ties straight back into it. [23]

The field adds 6,000 barrels a day. [23] The company also took 40% operated stakes in two new exploration blocks, chosen partly because they sit close to facilities it already runs. [23]

Where the equipment is already floating, three months separates a discovery from a barrel. Everywhere else that gap is measured in years. [23]

China's aluminium smelters have been running above the country's 45-million-tonne capacity ceiling for the past couple of months, helped by high Shanghai prices and unusually cheap raw materials, a Reuters commentary reports. [24]

The ceiling itself is staying in place. [24] Chinese producers have accepted that and are investing heavily in smelter projects outside the country instead. [24]

The US president has said his country desperately needs more aluminium, while the world's largest producer is building its new capacity elsewhere. [24]

A national capacity cap moves the smelter rather than the demand, and whichever country hosts it supplies the electricity to run it. [24]

Volkswagen estimates the total cost of job cuts and possible plant closures at around 16 billion euros, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. [25]

The figure covers a restructuring pact agreed last week, the largest in the carmaker's history. [25]

The plan explores alternatives for four German plants that will run out of models to build during the next decade, and cuts about 50,000 more positions than previously planned. [25]

Volkswagen has blamed Chinese competition, tariffs and too much factory capacity. [25]

Europe's largest carmaker is paying to get smaller in the same month Chinese car exports passed their entire 2025 total. [25][15]

New car registrations in the UK rose about 13% in August to more than 90,000, the highest for that month since 2018, according to preliminary figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. [26]

Battery-electric cars took about 30% of the month and 26% of the year so far. [26] Both sit below the 33% that Britain's zero-emission vehicle mandate requires of manufacturers for 2026. [26]

A separate count by New AutoMotive also put August battery-electric sales near 30%, using different sources and methods. [26]

Both the monthly and the year-to-date share sit below the 33% the mandate sets for 2026, and the year has four months to run. [26]

Pvwerk, a sister company of the German solar developer Enerparc, filed for restructuring under self-administration at the Hamburg district court on Monday, days after Enerparc itself filed for insolvency. [27]

The court ordered preliminary self-administration and appointed a general representative alongside a preliminary custodian acting for creditors. [27] Pvwerk builds solar plants and, more recently, battery storage. [27]

It says it intends to finish around 100 solar and battery projects that Enerparc commissioned and that are currently under construction. [27]

Around 100 half-built sites in Germany now depend on a court process rather than on their builder. [27]

The Democratic Republic of Congo plans to control access to a national geological databank it is building, which would extend state influence over where mining companies explore next. [28]

The country is speeding up geological mapping, airborne surveys and the digitisation of old archives, and officials expect the databank to be fully working by the end of the year. [28]

Its geological agency says only 20% of the country has been explored at all. [28]

Congo is the world's largest cobalt producer, and its export curbs have lifted the price to around $26 a pound. [28]

Congolese cobalt ends up in batteries everywhere, so whoever controls the survey data controls who gets to find the next deposit. [28]

Venezuela's mining sector is drawing interest from the Trump administration, and Reuters set out what is actually known about it. [36]

A minerals catalogue Venezuela's government published in 2018 used the words reserves and resources interchangeably, which makes it impossible to tell how much can actually be produced at a profit. [36]

A reserve is the amount that can be economically extracted; a resource is everything estimated to be in the ground, profitable or not. [36]

In 2019 Venezuela's government announced a five-year mining plan intended to replace some oil income. [36]

Congo is building the map of its minerals and Venezuela has never had a reliable one, and investors price the two very differently. [28][36]

Nepal will ask wealthier countries and international agencies for $5 billion towards the first stage of rebuilding after last month's deadly floods. [2]

Its foreign minister, Shisir Khanal, said the disaster is exactly the kind of event the UN loss and damage fund was created to address. [2]

That fund was set up to pay poorer countries for climate harm they did little to cause. [2]

Nepalese officials are arguing the case on those grounds, that the country contributed almost nothing to the warming behind the flood. [2]

Nepal is asking a fund that other governments pay into, so the answer comes from those governments rather than from any court. [2]

Mainland Spain and the Balearic Islands recorded 61 heatwave days in 2026, the most since Spanish records began in 1975, Reuters reported. [2]

Four separate heatwaves hit over the summer, including a six-day run in early September. [2] That works out at roughly two days in every three with extremely high temperatures. [2]