Climate, in brief

QatarEnergy, Qatar's state-owned gas company, is negotiating multi-year contracts to buy US liquefied gas running through 2031, three trading and industry sources told Reuters on Friday. [1]

The talks include Venture Global, Cheniere and Woodside, three companies that chill gas into a liquid and ship it out of the US. [1]

Qatar wants the gas to replace what it lost in March, when Iranian strikes damaged two of the 14 gas-chilling units at its Ras Laffan complex and a gas-to-liquids plant. [1]

QatarEnergy's chief executive, Saad al-Kaabi, said in March that the repairs would keep 12.8 million tonnes a year of export capacity out of action for three to five years. [1]

Until now Qatar has bought dozens of single US cargoes to cover its customers in Asia. Years-long contracts are a different decision, and that is the news. [1]

Its trading arm is looking for 2 to 3 million tonnes a year. US export plants still under construction have 25 million tonnes a year unsold, according to the research firm Rapidan Energy. [1]

Qatar halted production in March and has renewed its force majeure notice, the legal warning that it cannot deliver, every month since. The latest runs to November. [1]

About 80% of Qatar's gas normally goes to buyers in Asia. Some market participants are now testing plans for a world with no Qatari gas at all, a fifth source said. [1]

Saul Kavonic of MST Marquee, an energy research firm, said the search for long-term volumes shows Qatar now sees risk to its exports for several years. [1] He added that the damage may be worse than first hoped. [1]

Europe is short of the same gas. Its storage sites are about 66% full, the lowest for this point in the year in 15 years. [2] Benchmark gas prices hit 75 euros a megawatt-hour last week, double a year ago. [2]

Gulf gas exports fell more than 85% between March and August. Producers elsewhere, mostly the US and Canada, grew output 18% and covered about three-quarters of the loss, the International Energy Agency says. [2]

The EU's own auditors said on Wednesday that its plan to quit Russian gas is faltering. [3] Countries have committed 54.3 billion euros of the 300 billion set aside, and a ban on all Russian liquefied gas starts on 1 January 2027. [3]

Why it matters. Watch whether any of the three US exporters signs: a contract to 2031 would confirm Qatar expects years without its full plant, and those unsold cargoes are the ones Europe is counting on.

The European Court of Auditors, the EU's spending watchdog, said on Wednesday that the bloc's plan to stop using Russian oil and gas is faltering. [3] Russia now supplies 12% of the EU's gas imports, down from 45% before 2022. [3] The auditors said mild weather and high prices did much of that, not policy. [3] The European Commission set aside 300 billion euros for the switch; member countries have committed 54.3 billion. [3] Gas stores are 67% full against 80% a year ago, and a ban on all Russian liquefied gas starts on 1 January 2027. [3]

Why it matters. With the Gulf's gas shut in, the two supplies Europe was leaning on are short at the same time, and the Russian ban lands in the middle of the coming winter.

The cost of shipping oil in the largest tankers hit a record this week. [4] A supertanker loading in the Gulf of Oman for China now costs about $11.50 a barrel, on Baltic Exchange data. [4] The jump followed the biggest wave of attacks on ships since the war began in late February. [4] Iran said it hit 10 ships near the Strait of Hormuz after the US sank five Iranian tankers. [4] Fear of retaliation keeps ships away, which thins the tankers on offer, and rates from West Africa to Asia also set a record. [4]

Why it matters. Every barrel that sails from the Gulf of Oman to China now carries about $11.50 of freight before anyone refines it, and that cost reaches fuel prices in Asia.

About 41,000 homes in Devon and 34,500 in Cornwall rely on heating oil. [5] Heating oil has risen from about 60p a litre before the Iran conflict to about 97p, the comparison site Boiler Juice says. [5] A Devon councillor said filling a tank could cost a family 500 pounds more than it expected. [5] Unlike gas and electricity, heating oil has no Ofgem price cap. [5] In Guernsey a full tank now costs about 1,150 pounds against 750 last year. [5] The UK government says it has put 53 million pounds towards heating-oil users. [5]

Why it matters. This is where the closed strait in the lead reaches a kitchen: the households outside the price cap pay first.

Africa's capacity to make solar panels will quadruple to 3.5 gigawatts this year, the think tank Ember says. [6] Most of it is 2 gigawatts of new factories in Egypt and about 500 megawatts in Tanzania. [6] Those lines are built to sell into the US, where tariffs make Chinese panels dear. [6] China sent 19 gigawatts of solar cells into Africa in two and a half years, while Africa made 2.7 gigawatts of panels, so most cells were probably re-shipped to the US. [6] US tariff changes due in December could push the panels into African use instead. [6]

Why it matters. A tariff wall in the US decided where factories were built in Egypt; if the wall moves in December, the same factories may end up supplying African roofs.

Madagascar, an island of about 34 million people, uses barely 2.5 terawatt-hours of electricity a year, 12% of what Brussels uses. [7] Much of it comes from diesel generators. [7] The state utility Jirama sells power under a price cap while paying world prices for diesel, so it loses money on almost every kilowatt-hour and cannot afford repairs. [7] Rolling blackouts helped drive the unrest at the end of 2025 that forced out the former president. [7] A consortium led by Enerdeal, part of Portugal's EDP, has added solar and batteries to diesel plants at five sites since 2016. [7]

Why it matters. Oil at $100 lands hardest on grids that burn it to make electricity; in Madagascar it is the reason solar gets built, not a climate target.

A study in Nature Climate Change, published on Friday, matched two decades of floods, droughts, cyclones and crop failures to migration data for regions inside countries around the world. [8] After floods, more people left and fewer arrived, an effect lasting several years and stronger in poorer areas. [8] The authors point to wrecked housing and infrastructure, and to people's awareness of the risk. [8] Cyclones had a similar effect in poorer areas. [8] Droughts changed migration mainly in richer places, and only briefly. [8] Disasters have displaced roughly 265 million people over the past decade, the authors note. [8]

Why it matters. After four years of floods in a row, fewer people leave the places already losing people; the authors read that as adapting in place, or as having no means left to move. [8]

On 26 August a wall of rock and glacier ice fell from Langtang Lirung, a 7,200-metre peak in Nepal. [9] It became a debris flow that crossed into China, wrecked the Gyirong border port and ran about 100 km down Nepal's valleys. [9] Nepal counted 469 dead and 977 missing; China five and 558. [9] The first signal was logged as a magnitude 4.4 earthquake. [9] Scientists writing in Nature's natural-hazards journal this week say the part people control is the handover: turning that reading into a warning that crosses a border. [9] They want shared monitoring and pre-agreed alerts. [9]

Why it matters. The rock took minutes to reach the villages. A warning would have had to cross the border in less time than that, and no such warning exists yet.

Torrential rain flooded roads in Nagoya, central Japan, last week and sent water into venues for the Asian Games, which open on 19 September. [10] About 400 athletes and staff were evacuated and later returned; nobody was hurt, a Games official said. [10] Roofs at several venues leaked. [10] Mayor Ichiro Hirosawa said the Games will open on time, and added that he could not yet judge the damage outside the city. [10]

Why it matters. A city that spent years preparing found out how much of the event rests on ten days of weather.

The WWF, the European Environmental Bureau and three other groups complained to the European Ombudsman on Tuesday about the European Commission. [11] The Commission plans to revise the EU's main water laws this year, partly because mining companies say the rules delay permits for new mines. [11] The groups say the Commission neither gathered evidence nor consulted before announcing it, and that water law is not why mines are slow. [11] The Ombudsman can only recommend. [11] Last year it made the Commission explain why it fast-tracked other cuts to green rules without checking them against climate commitments. [11]

Why it matters. The omnibus is the EU's word for trimming environmental law to compete with the US and China, and each trim is now contested one rule at a time.

Investors have put more than $14 billion into companies trying to build fusion power plants, $4.5 billion of it in the last year, a record, Bloomberg reports. [12] Fusion joins light atoms, the sun's process. [12] In late 2022 a US laboratory's laser first got more energy out of a fusion reaction than it put in. [12] Pacific Fusion has started building a $1 billion test site in Albuquerque, New Mexico, due to run in 2030. [12] Thea Energy aims for $50 a megawatt-hour after five to ten plants, about the price of wind, solar and gas. [12]

Why it matters. Microsoft and Google have already signed as customers for plants that do not exist yet; the data-centre boom is paying for physics experiments.

BUND Niedersachsen, a German environmental group, sued the state of Lower Saxony on Friday to overturn its approval for a bigger nuclear fuel plant in Lingen. [13] The plant belongs to a subsidiary of France's Framatome, which would make fuel rods for Russian-designed reactors under licence from Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear company. [13] The group says the screening used outdated documents and that Rosatom-supplied machines in production and quality control could be manipulated. [13] The German government says it views the cooperation critically but that it was legal; stricter EU sanctions would be the tool to stop it. [13]

Why it matters. Framatome calls the deal an interim step so customers with Russian reactors can stop buying directly from Russia; Europe's Russian-built reactors still need Russian-designed fuel. [13]

Police found a cryptocurrency mining operation in a ramshackle building near Tlaola, in the mountains of Puebla state, Mexico. [14] Inside were 300 graphics processors, 80 medium-voltage terminals and eight satellite dishes. [14] It is the fourth such farm found near a hydroelectric dam there since early last year, and authorities are investigating whether it stole the dam's electricity. [14] Neighbours heard the whirring a kilometre away. [14] Electricity is the biggest expense in mining bitcoin, about $45,000 a coin by Cambridge University's estimate; with stolen power, one energy-theft expert said, the operation pays almost nothing to run. [14]

Why it matters. Analysts say cartels are turning to crypto mining to launder money, and stolen electricity turns a river into cash that is hard to trace. [14]

Chevron, one of the biggest US oil companies, will more than double the drilling rigs it runs in Venezuela, its finance chief Eimear Bonner said on Tuesday. [15] Last week its joint ventures there said they would invest more than $7 billion to more than double output to 600,000 barrels a day by 2031. [15] Bonner said production could then hold at 600,000 to 700,000 barrels a day for five to ten years. [15] Chevron's new contract also gives it the right to international arbitration, the guarantee ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips wanted after their assets were nationalised in 2007. [15]

Why it matters. The Trump administration has urged oil companies to invest since US forces removed Nicolas Maduro, and the arbitration clause is what makes a company willing to plan five years out. [15]