Climate, in brief

Fuel crisis loosening climate rules

The EU proposed delaying its methane rules after France and the US pushed. [2] Australia's opposition Coalition wants to scrap rules that make fossil fuel firms report emissions from fuel burned abroad. [8] In the US, planned gas power is now about as large as planned solar and wind, an environmental group counts. [10]

Smoke and drought on poor families

Indonesia's worst fires in a decade sent smoke into Malaysia, where schools closed. [4][5] In Afghanistan's Badghis province, families who lost their harvests to drought are marrying off young daughters to pay debts. [13]

Batteries taking the evening load

More than 85,000 California homes sent stored power to the grid in one evening, a record. [12] In Spain, a battery could have bought power in the two cheapest hours of the day for about 16 euros a megawatt-hour and sold it in the two dearest for about 147. [11] Mercedes-Benz now pays German drivers for every hour their car stays plugged in. [26]

Repair money running short

California's state-backed insurer of last resort ran out of claims money last year. [18] A South African court found that R107.5 million meant to restore two coal mines was spent on other things. [14]

One pressure seen across the day runs through Climate too.

• Diesel short and getting dearerHigh ↑ · seen in 5 beats→

1. 1The European Commission proposes delaying its methane rules for imported oil, gas and coal by a year, after pressure from France and the US
2. 2Indonesia tries dry ice to clear its haze
3. 3Scientists' yearly check finds seven records
4. 4Australia's opposition targets overseas-emissions rules
5. 5Australia will make gas exporters keep a fifth at home

The European Commission, which drafts the EU's laws, proposed on Wednesday to delay its methane rules for imported oil, gas and coal by one year. [1][2]

Watch whether the delay stays at one year, since some EU countries wanted three and environmental groups want none. [2]

Also seen in Finance, World, Food and Money.

Indonesia planned to scatter 1.5 tonnes of dry ice, which is frozen carbon dioxide, from a plane over South Sumatra on Thursday, to break up the smoke hanging over towns. [3]

The country is fighting its worst wildfire season in a decade, with more than a million fire hotspots and about 900,000 hectares burned. [3][4]

The smoke has closed schools in several Malaysian states. [5]

Greenpeace has linked burning land in Indonesia to firms based in Singapore and Malaysia, including the palm oil company First Resources, which says it has a strict no-burning policy. [4]

Singapore passed a law in 2014 to act against firms behind the haze, but when it summoned Indonesian companies in 2015, Indonesia refused to help. [4]

Malaysia's foreign minister says ASEAN, the group of ten Southeast Asian countries, has no plan for haze and will discuss one. [5]

A country's laws stop at its border, so to curb a gas leak or smoke from abroad it puts the duty on a company at home that buys from the source or owns it.

So its law makes the European company that buys the gas prove the field is checked, and the law is only as good as the facts that company can get.

This year Greenpeace named firms based in Singapore and Malaysia whose Indonesian land was burning, which are firms those countries can reach.

So is a shopper buying food made with palm oil from Indonesian plantations.

Each of them sees a price, and none of them can see the field or the plantation it came from.

An international group of scientists published its yearly check on the planet's 'vital signs' in the journal BioScience on Wednesday. [7]

It tracks 16 key markers of the climate, and seven are at record extremes, said Christopher Wolf, one of the authors. [7]

Carbon dioxide in the air reached 428 parts per million, and methane and nitrous oxide also hit records. [7]

The ocean took in a record jump in heat, and Greenland's ice lost a record amount. [7]

The authors say warming appears to be speeding up. [7]

They list floods, heat waves and fires since September 2025 from Bali and Vietnam to Europe and Florida as harm already done. [7]

Australia's opposition Coalition said this week it wants to scrap rules that make fossil fuel producers report the emissions from their fuel burned overseas. [8]

These are called scope 3 emissions, and for exporters of coal and gas they are most of their climate impact. [8]

The rules are being phased in, starting with the biggest companies. [8]

The move follows last week's High Court ruling that New South Wales planners should have considered conditions on a coal mine's overseas emissions. [8]

Australia's coal and gas is mostly burned in other countries. [8] The Coalition says UN climate rules count emissions in the country where fuel is burned. [8]

Madeleine King, Australia's resources minister, told the National Press Club that Australian industry will rely on gas for the 'foreseeable future'. [9]

Her government's reservation scheme will make gas companies set aside 20% of exports for buyers in Australia from January 2028. [9]

The energy regulator could force firms to supply 110% of the demand it expects each year. [9] King said this would push prices down, but gave no figure or date. [9]

The Greens and some independents want a 25% tax on gas exports instead, which King rejected. [9] The gas industry's body says forcing extra supply could drive smaller local producers out. [9]

A report by the Environmental Defense Fund, a US environmental group, says planned gas power in the US is now about as big as planned solar and wind. [10]

Clean power growth has slowed from its 2024 peak, and fossil plants could reach a share of the market not seen since the early 2010s. [10]

Cancellations of clean projects rose, with nearly 5% of 281.7 gigawatts of planned building cancelled in 2025. [10]

The group blames the rollback of clean energy tax credits and emergency orders keeping coal plants open. [10]

It says new gas plants are getting dearer and slower, because turbines are short. [10]

In Badghis province in north-west Afghanistan, 95% of people live off rain-fed farming and livestock, and drought has hit harvests every year since 2021. [13]

The Guardian met families who have promised girls as young as two in marriage to repay debts, buy food or pay for medicine. [13]

One farmer's wheat failed seven times in eight years, and he sold five daughters into marriage. [13] He got between 90,000 and 150,000 afghanis for each. [13]

Thousands have left their villages for the provincial capital, Qala-e-Naw, and often found no work. [13] Foreign aid is drying up, and help for these girls is disappearing with it. [13]

An analysis in PV Magazine compared power prices in Spain, Germany and Greece during this year's energy crisis with 2022. [11]

In 2022 the cheapest hour of an average day still cost at least 149 euros a megawatt-hour. [11] Between March and October 2026 it fell to 16 to 25 euros. [11]

Solar output in the peak hour has doubled in Spain and Greece since 2022, and the price rise landed at night instead, up 36 to 51 euros. [11]

Solar owners pay for it: they earned 74% to 83% less per unit than in 2022. [11] Batteries gain, because the gap between midday and evening prices widened. [11]

More than 85,000 owners of Tesla's Powerwall battery supplied over 600 megawatts of it. [12] The state's energy commission and utilities asked for the power to meet the evening peak. [12]

The record was 28% bigger than one set less than a month before. [12]

Sunrun says 745 megawatts could cover every home in San Francisco and San Jose at peak hours, and owners are paid for it. [12]

Sunrun now has more than 120,000 home batteries signed up to California's grid programmes. [12]

Seven million hectares of forest were destroyed for good in 2025, about the size of Ireland, a yearly report called the Forest Declaration Assessment said on Wednesday. [15]

That was 15% less than the year before. [15] But losses in the Congo Basin in Central Africa surged. [15]

The authors expect the improvement not to last, as the Congo Basin gets worse and a very strong El Nino, the warm swing of the Pacific, grows. [15]

South Africa's Gauteng High Court convicted two company directors and three companies on Friday of fraud and money laundering. [14]

They had taken R107.5 million from trusts meant to restore the Optimum and Koornfontein coal mines, bought in the era of the Gupta family. [14]

The money went to mining contractors and to secure a loan instead. [14] South Africa has about 6,100 abandoned and derelict mines, a law group estimates. [14]

When clean-up money goes missing, the state and nearby communities are left with the damage. [14] Lawyers say even ring-fenced trust funds need independent checks. [14]

Californians elect an insurance commissioner in November, the official who approves insurers' prices. [18] Insurers have dropped tens of thousands of customers after big wildfires. [18]

The state-backed FAIR Plan, the insurer of last resort, ran out of claims money last year. [18]

The two Democrats in the run-off differ: Ben Allen wants to win private insurers back, and Jane Kim would rather drop the private market. [18]

Nearly half of households in high-fire-risk areas lost their insurance between 2018 and 2024. [18] The result could shape insurance bills for millions of Californians. [18]

A study at the Danish Meteorological Institute modelled the AMOC, the Atlantic current that keeps Europe's climate mild. [16]

It found the current would weaken but not shut off entirely, even with up to 10C of warming. [16]

If the world cooled again, the current would start to recover within decades. [16] But that cooling would need carbon removal of about 45 billion tonnes a year. [16]

Today the world removes about 2 million tonnes a year. [16] The result comes from one model, and researchers in Germany are rerunning it on 10 others. [16]

About 100 people from Khayelitsha, a township in Cape Town, marched to Eskom and city offices on Tuesday. [20] Eskom is South Africa's state power company. [20]

They said outages were frequent and repairs slow, and asked Eskom to fix faults within 48 hours. [20]

Eskom said it had cut outstanding repairs from 6,000 in July to about 500. [20] Nationally, 90.6% of households had mains power in 2025, up from 76.7% in 2002. [21]

Gauteng, the province around Johannesburg, has the lowest share, 84.2%, lower than in 2002. [21] Parties are making power a campaign issue before local elections on 4 November. [21]

Dubai's Tasreef project will raise the city's rainwater drainage capacity by 700% when it is finished in 2033. [19]

It costs 30 billion dirhams and will handle over 20 million cubic metres of water a day. [19] It includes more than 6,500km of drains. [19]

Dubai started it in 2024, after record rainfall flooded the city that April. [19]

The city chose to rebuild for the next century rather than only repair the damage. [19] Tasreef continues drainage work Dubai began in 2019. [19]

Indian state companies and utilities put more than 130 gigawatt-hours of battery-linked tenders out in 2025, PV Magazine reports. [23] A tender is an auction where builders bid to supply.

India's first pilot in 2022 cleared at 1.08 million rupees per megawatt per month. [23] A tender in Andhra Pradesh in December 2025 set a record low of 148,000. [23]

In May 2026 India's cabinet approved 54 billion rupees for about 30 gigawatt-hours more. [23]

Cheaper cells and packs drove the fall. [23] The article says none of these tenders could be financed without government support, called viability gap funding. [23]

Researchers led by the University of Hong Kong compared plants in 751 cities with the countryside around them, using satellite data from 2001 to 2022. [17]

In more than three-quarters of the cities, city plants coped better with stress like extreme heat. [17] In a third of the cities they both lost less green and recovered faster. [17]

The authors think the reason is water: city trees get watered, and rain runs off pavements onto them. [17]

City trees shade streets and soak up floodwater. [17] Their edge may not last as heat grows, and cities are turning to drought-proof species. [17]

Tunisia's national power and gas company, STEG, opened a tender for a 50-megawatt solar farm with 20 megawatt-hours of batteries. [24] It will be built in Tataouine in the country's south. [24]

Bids are due by 10 December. [24] Tunisia has about 729 megawatts of solar running, an industry database says. [24]

Tunisia is close to one gigawatt of solar. [24] In March it also licensed four large projects of 500 megawatts in all. [24]

Oswal Pumps, an Indian maker of solar pumps and panels, will build a factory for 1.2 gigawatts a year of solar cells. [25] It expects production by April 2028. [25]

The plant will cost about 4.56 billion rupees, or $48.1 million. [25] All its cells will go into Oswal's own panels. [25]

India's rules require panels in some programmes to use Indian-made cells. [25] Making its own lets Oswal qualify and depend less on outside prices. [25]

Mercedes-Benz now offers German drivers a wallbox that can send power from their electric car back to the grid. [26]

Drivers earn 0.1175 euros for every hour the car stays plugged in. [26] The charger costs 2,990 euros, with 1,000 euros off for the first 500 buyers. [26]

For now it is open only to homes without solar panels, because of how Germany's feed-in rules work. [26]

BMW, Ford and Audi offer similar schemes in Germany. [26] Mercedes runs the scheme with The Mobility House, a Munich charging company. [26]

Modi Energy, a Copenhagen company, will put solar panels and a battery on Danish homes at no upfront cost and keep owning them. [27]

It promises power bills 20% below market price for as long as the customer stays. [27] It earns by trading the batteries in Denmark's power markets. [27]

Denmark added 191 megawatts of batteries in the year to June. [27]

Another Danish firm reports falling earnings in those markets as more batteries arrive. [27] Modi says trading in several markets protects its promise. [27]

Ford invited buyers to sign up for the chance to pre-order its Fathom electric pickup. [28]

It will start at $28,350, about half the price of Ford's first electric pickup, the F-150 Lightning. [28] Real pre-orders open in early 2027. [28]

It is the first car on Ford's new, cheaper electric platform. [28]

Ford has not yet given the truck's range or towing figures. [28] Ford says it will have more room inside than a Toyota RAV4. [28]

Volvo told US dealers in late September that it had delayed deliveries of the EX60, its new mid-size electric SUV. [29]

Volvo expected to sell about 7,000 in the US this year and is on pace for a fraction of that, a dealer said. [29]

Volvo said the delay is about production, not quality. [29] Its global sales fell 10% in the third quarter. [29]

The EX60 starts at $60,750 and charges faster than any Volvo before. [29] Rivals BMW and Mercedes are launching their own new electric models now. [29]

Schneider Electric unveiled a home thermostat built with Apple. [36] It uses the owner's iPhone to tell when they are home. [36]

It moves heating and cooling to hours when electricity is cleaner or cheaper. [36] It goes on sale in the US and Canada in early 2027 at about $200. [36]

It works through Apple's Home app with no separate account. [36] Smart thermostats from Google and ecobee sell for about $100 to $280. [36]

Engineers in Spain studied two years of data from a 50-megawatt solar farm with two-sided panels on trackers. [30] Such panels also catch light bouncing off the ground behind them. [30]

The panels were rated to gain 70% as much from their back as their front. [30]

In practice they reached about 61%, up to 15% below the rating, and less in strong sun. [30]

The gap was largest in strong sun, which makes much of a year's power. [30] Data from four more plants in Spain and the UK backed the finding. [30]

Researchers in Sweden and Italy grew broccoli under see-through magenta solar panels. [31] The panels let through mostly red and blue light, the colours plants use. [31]

Broccoli heads weighed 168 to 174 grams, against 188 grams in open fields, a difference the study found not significant. [31] The broccoli took 25 days longer to ripen. [31]

The team estimates that crops and panels together get about 18% more from the land than either alone. [31] The team is now testing panels that pass single colours. [31]

The UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, a charity, is sending specialists 9,000 miles to Port Lockroy, a British base over 80 years old. [22]

It holds the world's southernmost post office and more than 1,000 gentoo penguins. [22] Warming is bringing more rain and snow that strain its buildings. [22]

This year a team of eight will fit beams and props over five months. [22]

The Antarctic Peninsula is warming fast. [22] A second team will survey Wordie House, where one of the continent's longest climate records began. [22]

The 548 Foundation, a nonprofit in Chicago, trains people from poor neighbourhoods to install solar panels. [32] It has run 51 three-month courses with state money from a 2021 Illinois law. [32]

Its founder says it has 700 graduates, a 70% graduation rate and a 500-person waiting list. [32] Graduates find jobs within 33 days and average $68,000 a year, he said. [32]

The US solar workforce is mostly white, and most of these graduates are Black. [32] Some trainees have just come home from prison. [32]

Prinoth, which makes machines that smooth ski slopes, is building two battery-powered snow groomers with Scania, the Swedish truck maker. [35] They use Scania batteries of up to 624 kilowatt-hours. [35]

The machines must work in deep cold and on steep ground. [35]

Scania's battery system has its own liquid cooling. [35] It can be sized from 21 to 624 kilowatt-hours. [35]

Sgiath, a black Labrador from the Scottish Highlands, was named animal of the year on Thursday by IFAW, an animal welfare charity. [33]

She is trained to smell the carpet sea squirt, an invasive sea creature nicknamed 'sea vomit' that smothers native species. [33] She has found hundreds of colonies at low tide. [33]

Her owner, the marine ecologist Texa Sim, trained her first for mountain rescue. [33]

The sea squirt is hard to spot among seaweed. [33] It harms coastal wildlife and the businesses along the coast, and grows on pontoons and oyster cages. [33]

Jelle Verstaen, a Belgian rider, travelled 436.5km on one charge of a Zero DS electric motorcycle, a new Guinness world record. [34] The old record was 310.7km. [34]

He rode from the French Alps towards the Mediterranean at about 52km an hour. [34] The bike was a normal production model with an extra battery, 19.2 kilowatt-hours in all. [34]

The record is now more than 125km longer. [34] Two other riders on Zeros also beat the old one. [34]