Bloomberg covers new data from National Grid showing that “Britain’s wind farms produced nearly 74 terawatt hours (TWh) so far this year, enough to power more than 19m British homes…That exceeded the previous record of 68 TWh set in 2020”. The outlet continues: “Britain’s wind farms generated a record amount of electricity this year as gusty weather and a growing fleet of turbines softened the impact of soaring natural gas prices. Wind power will be a critical factor in how well Europe manages an energy crisis that’s already cost more than $1tn. Higher wind speeds will ease the need to burn gas that’s been in scarce supply since Russia cut flows to Europe following its invasion of Ukraine. Building more wind farms will allow the UK to cut gas use and reach its climate goals…Even with more capacity, there will be periods when the wind doesn’t blow. That happened last week during a period of freezing temperatures, forcing plants that burn natural gas to plug the gap. But over a longer time frame, wind power will cut fossil fuel demand and conserve inventories.”

Separately, BusinessGreen covers new analyses which together “highlight role of low carbon power in dampening demand for expensive fossil gas”. The article says: “Low carbon power has met more than half Britain’s electricity needs over the past two months, helping save billpayers an estimated £5.7bn over the period by displacing further fossil gas imports. That is the conclusion of a new analysis from the UK’s renewable energy and nuclear trade associations, which again underscores how the transition to clean energy is curbing energy bills, as well as driving down emissions and enhancing energy security…The research from RenewableUK and the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA) shows how between the end of October and Sunday 18 December, renewable energy sources including wind and solar provided 40% of Britain’s electricity, while nuclear power plants accounted for 14% of demand. Wind power alone, from both offshore and onshore turbines, has generated more than half of Britain’s low carbon power output over the period, they said, while nuclear has provided 27%. The trade bodies pointed out that Britain’s high output from domestic low carbon power sources has helped cushion the country from the impact of high global fossil fuel prices.” It adds: “The report comes on the same day as a similar analysis of Britain’s energy sources this winter from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) which further underscores the benefits of low carbon and renewable electricity generation for boosting energy security and curbing exposure to expensive fossil fuels. The thinktank estimates that between the start of October and Christmas Day 2022, the amount of electricity generated by wind, hydro and solar is likely to reach 25TWh, displacing the equivalent of around a fifth – 17% – of annual UK gas demand, and 12% of UK net gas imports.”

Meanwhile, another BusinessGreen article says “households taking part in an energy-saving trial operated by energy giant OVO over the past month have already collectively saved more than £22,000”.

The Financial Times reports that “insurers are resisting efforts by the US government to probe whether hurricanes and wildfires are making insurance unaffordable for American homeowners, as financial regulators sharpen their scrutiny of climate-related risks”. The newspaper adds: “The US Treasury has proposed requiring insurers to hand over underwriting data, broken down by zip code and covering the last five years, in an attempt to assess the potential for ‘major disruptions’ in insurance coverage in some parts of the country. But business groups have argued the plans would push up costs for insurers, and accused the Treasury of failing to co-ordinate with state-level regulators, in comments submitted before a deadline this week. The US Chamber of Commerce said the data request presented an ‘unreasonable burden to insurers’, while the Insurance Information Institute, an industry association representing more than 60 insurance companies, said the request for data would ‘drive increases in policyholder premium rates’.” (A 2021 academic report found that the US Chamber of Commerce, a trade lobbying organisation, had been “a powerful force in obstructing climate action” over the past three decades.)

In other US news, the Guardian reports that “US college-level biology textbooks miss the mark on offering solutions to the climate crisis, according to a new analysis of books over the last 50 years”. It continues: “Fewer than three pages in a typical 1,000-page biology textbook from recent decades address climate change, according to the new study, despite experts warning it is humankind’s biggest problem.” Nature also covers the story.

Meanwhile, CNBC says that “Republicans hoping that red-state campaigns against green investing might go national as their party takes over Congress next month may be in for a disappointment”. It continues: “Incoming House Financial Services chairman Patrick McHenry, a North Carolina Republican, gave no indications he plans to push a federal version of new state laws designed to isolate firms that focus on so-called ESG investing, which emphasises the environmental, social or corporate governance records of companies they invest in, when he spoke at the recent CNBC CFO Council Summit in Washington DC to an audience of top chief financial officers from companies across the market. He also pushed back against being characterised as a ‘vocal opponent’ of ESG.” For context, CNBC explains that “states including Texas are using public fund money as a way to gain leverage against investments managers including BlackRock that prod companies on ESG issues like oil production and climate change”. (See Comment below.)

The European Union’s greenhouse gas emissions fell last year by 22% from a peak hit in 2008, according to the bloc’s statistic office Eurostat, reports Reuters. The newswire adds: “Its latest annual analysis, which excludes an expected rebound in emissions this year, found the top five emitters of the 27 EU member states – Germany, France, Italy, Poland and Spain – accounted for roughly 60% of emissions of carbon dioxide, the dominant GHG…Overall GHG emissions – including methane and nitrous oxide as well as carbon dioxide – stood at 3.6bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2eq) in 2021, 1.01bn tonnes of CO2eq lower than a peak so far hit in 2008 when the EU data set began. Mining and quarrying recorded the largest drop, down 42% between 2008 and 2021, followed by utilities, steam and air conditioning supply (-39%), manufacturing, transportation and storage (-23%) and households (-13%), Eurostat said. This year’s rebound in economic activity as lockdowns were eased, nuclear and hydropower energy underperformed, increasing demand for fossil fuel power, and summer heatwaves led to increased air-conditioning use, has driven emissions higher in 2022.”

In other Europe news, Reuters reports separately that the European Commission has approved the German government’s 28bn euro (£25bn) support scheme for renewable energy, which is “aimed at rapidly expanding use of wind and solar power”. The newswire continues: “The policy, which replaces an existing renewables support scheme, runs until 2026 and is designed to deliver Germany’s target to produce 80% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. The European Commission said the scheme was ‘necessary and appropriate’ to promote renewable energy and cut planet-heating emissions, and that its positive environmental impact outweighed possible distortions of competition.”

Meanwhile, Politico says that Germany’s “electric car dreams are in trouble”, adding: “A year ago, Berlin pledged to have 15m battery-installed vehicles by 2030, but it’s likely to fall well short of that, according to experts warning that slashed subsidies and production bottlenecks will slow sales. ‘Only with a lot of luck will the target be half reached,’ warned Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, a professor at the Center for Automotive Research in Duisburg, who’s forecasting just 7.2m registrations by the end of the decade.”

Finally, the Daily Telegraph reports that “Klimaatklever” – a term for climate activists who glue themselves to art – has been voted the “Dutch word of the year”. The newspaper adds: “The Van Dale dictionary, the authority on the Dutch language, defined klimaatklever as ‘an activist who glues himself to an object with symbolic value to raise public awareness of climate change’. Belgian voters in Flanders also picked the slang term, which pokes fun at the activists, as their word of the year. It was coined by combining the Dutch word for climate with klever, which can mean sticker or one who clings.”

BBC News is among many outlets reporting that forecasters are predicting that a major winter storm sweeping the US this week may bring the coldest Christmas in four decades to parts of the country. The broadcaster adds: “The ‘once-in-a-generation’ cold snap – which began in the Pacific north-west on Tuesday, before churning east – will become a “bomb cyclone” by Friday. More than 90 million people are under winter weather alerts across 37 states. About 80% of the nation is set to experience sub-zero temperatures, including places as far south as Texas. Named Winter Storm Elliot by the Weather Channel, the Arctic blast is expected to deliver the coldest Christmas to the Midwest since the late 1980s, according to forecasts cited by US media.”

Newsweek carries an article under the headline: “Climate change could be driving bomb cyclones and unstable polar vortex.” It quotes Judah Cohen, a climatologist at MIT and the director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research, who says: “Over the past 30 to even 40 years, winter has warmed the least of all four seasons in the mid-latitudes, especially in the centre of the major northern hemisphere continents – Asia and North America – where temperatures have actually cooled…When the polar vortex [whereby cold air in the Arctic is contained within the Arctic circle by a ring of fast-moving air that circles the North Pole] is in its normal or strong state, there is a strong ribbon or river of air that flows rapidly from west to east…that acts like a barrier that separates cold air to the north over the Arctic and milder air to the south across the mid-latitudes…When the circulation around the polar vortex becomes less and less circular in shape, the cold air normally confined to the Arctic can expand southward to the mid-latitudes, including the US, Europe and East Asia.” Newsweek also quotes Grahame Madge, a spokesperson for the UK Met Office: “The jet stream tends to follow the polar vortex and when you get the disruption to the polar vortex that translates down through the layers of the atmosphere.” The outlet adds: “It is still uncertain whether this vortex destabilisation is a direct consequence of climate change, but it has been recorded a lot more frequently over the last few decades, in correlation with rising global temperatures.” (See Carbon Brief’s Q&A: “How is Arctic warming linked to the ‘polar vortex’ and other extreme weather?”)

The World Bank has “cut its China growth projections for this year and next, citing the possibility of longer-than-expected economic disruption amid a surge in Covid cases during reopening and a prolonged downturn in the property sector”, Caixin Global writes. The outlet adds that China’s real GDP growth is expected to “slow to 2.7% in 2022, before rebounding to 4.3% in 2023”, according to a new report by the bank. It says that “while China is in the initial stages of relaxing its Covid restrictions, infections will rise sharply and people may choose to be less social, which could weigh on consumer demand and lead to a continued disruption”. It adds that “these effects are expected to be concentrated in the first quarter next year, after which consumer confidence will improve and investment growth will pick up”.

Meanwhile, Chinese government officials, during the “tone-setting” Central Economic Work Conference held in Beijing last week, said that the country’s energy security and supply capacity will be “further enhanced by the country’s energy companies that have embraced a new round of high-quality development, which will further facilitate the country’s carbon-neutrality goals and the construction of a modern industrial system”, reports the state-run newspaper China Daily. The conference has “again sent a strong signal” that China will “vigorously explore domestic energy resources to ensure a high level of energy self-sufficiency”, the article adds.  Reuters carries a column by Gavin Maguire under the headline: “Key coal import hubs in China perk up as economy reboots.”

Separately, the South China Morning Post writes that a “major policy push” by Beijing to “increase waste recycling in several energy and carbon emissions-intensive industries has helped lift materials recycling among listed Chinese firms”, according to a sustainability data provider Miotech. The outlet adds that, according to Miotech, based on disclosures by the around “7,400 Chinese companies listed in Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Shanghai, their combined recycled waste volume rose 46% to 52.5m tonnes last year from 2020”.

The Press Association covers a new study which suggests that turtles will “likely survive a warming planet if they are able to migrate to new habitats before their own become unsustainable in a race against time to beat climate change”. The newswire continues: “The research, led by scientists at the Natural History Museum and the University of Vigo, used fossils to look back into deep time and predict the distributions of turtles across an increasingly hotter planet. The findings suggest the animals are likely to survive in a climate of +1.5C to 2C…but not in the same places they exist today.”

Separately, the Times says that “freak heatwaves in the Italian Alps have triggered an assault by a deadly beetle that has killed 10m trees in four years”. It adds: “The European spruce bark beetle is laying waste to forests because heat-stressed spruces cannot produce the resin that keeps the bugs from burrowing into their bark. ‘The trend is for the heat to increase further and, if that happens, we could lose another 40m trees in the next five years,’ said Andrea Battisti, an expert at the University of Padua.”

A news feature by Reuters begins by saying that “the green hydrogen express is gathering pace, but it may have a worrying problem with leaks”. It continues: “As governments and energy companies line up big bets on the much-touted fuel of the future, some scientists say the lack of data on leaks and the potential harm they could cause is a blind spot for the nascent industry. At least four studies published this year say hydrogen loses its environmental edge when it seeps into the atmosphere. Two scientists told Reuters that if 10% leaks during its production, transportation, storage or use, the benefits of using green hydrogen over fossil fuels would be completely wiped out.”

Meanwhile, BBC News carries a news feature under the headline: “Hydrogen heating trial treats us like guinea pigs – residents.” The broadcaster interviews residents of Ellesmere Port, north-west England, where 2,000 homes have been earmarked to have their supply of gas turned off and, if approved, replaced with hydrogen.

Energy Monitor has published a feature examining how the “US Republicans’ anti-ESG movement is having a chilling effect on investors”. It says that the Republicans have been “whipped up into a frenzy, bringing the culture war to investing” by attacking ESG investors who wish to take factors such as climate risks and impacts into their investing decisions, alongside solely creating a financial profit. The article continues: “According to Thomas O’Neill, founder and director of thinktank Universal Owner, there are two key elements behind the anti-ESG movement’s motivation for these attacks – the first political, the second financial. On the political front, O’Neill points to polling from as long ago as three years, which shows that a majority of Republican voters actually support the government taking more action on climate change. O’Neill’s theory is that presenting climate denialism as a counter to ‘woke capitalism’, which encompasses a number of liberal issues that tend to poll unfavourably with Republican voters, such as gun control or trans rights, is a means by which they can mask their vested interests in preserving the fossil fuel industry. [Ben Cushing, campaign manager at non-profit Sierra Club,] echoes this sentiment, arguing that while climate denial is ‘no longer as much of a politically palatable message as it was a few years ago’, Republicans have ‘moved on to decrying ESG as a way of talking about their climate denial and expressing their interest in protecting the fossil fuel industry at all costs’.”

Elsewhere, Mihir Sharma, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, has written an analysis piece for Bloomberg which argues that “Europe’s new carbon tariff won’t help the climate”. He says: “Many within the European Union probably view its new Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism as an enormous step forward in the fight against climate change and for the EU’s own global prestige. And it is true that the EU has achieved internal consensus – always a difficult process – surprisingly quickly. In the process, it has decisively shifted the debate on trade and the environment in the 21st century. Yet countries in the global south have a clearer view of what the new tariffs will mean. They don’t look like much of a win for the climate – or for the EU’s reputation.” A separate Bloomberg article on “trade tensions” is headlined: “Climate policy has become central in the fight for global power.”

In David Wallace-Wells’ latest newsletter for the New York Times, he notes that “climate” has displaced “nature” as the “primary locus of activist concern, pushing biodiversity somewhat farther from the policy centre as well and affirming that the two causes are related but distinct”. He adds: “The problem is that warming is just one of the many ways that human civilisation is stripping the planet of its biological complexity…There are signs of progress on ‘decoupling’ growth from both carbon and resource intensity, but the gains to this point have been only relative. And while there are signs of policy progress on conservation as well, including a growing awareness among the world’s leading policymakers of the importance of protecting the world’s ecological patrimony, the predominant mood in Montreal [at COP15] was lament: that a dozen years after some less-ambitious biodiversity targets were set for 2020, none of them have been met…We may well look around at that denuded world a generation from now and blithely conclude that ‘everything is fine’. But we’ll still probably marvel in wondrous disbelief that the planet was ever as full of life as it was in 2023.”

In other comment, environmental auditor and campaigner Donnachadh McCarthy explains in the Independent that he calculated his “carbon and ecological footprint” for this year and found he “produced just one bin of recyclables and half a bin of general waste”. Fellow campaigner Rupert Read argues in the Guardian that the new film Avatar 2 “should make us completely rethink our relationship with the planet”. And, finally, the climate-sceptic pro-motoring lobbyist Howard Cox has been given the lead comment page slot in the Sun to write: “The absurdity of even raising fuel duty is clear to the majority of us. But not to those green Lycra-clad ­government special advisers, who see increased taxation and vehicle bans as the only way to save the planet…Essential vehicle users, especially white van drivers and truckers, have already been hit badly in the government’s break-neck pursuit to net-zero. The effects of a rise in fuel duty will batter critical sectors that already feel they have faced an excessive increase in the burdens on them as a result of ill- informed decision making.”

New research describes the “climate-assessment” workflow and methods used to produce the 1,202 mitigation scenarios developed for the Working Group III (WG3) element of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) sixth assessment report (AR6). The authors evaluate the global mean temperature projections and effective radiative forcing (ERF) characteristics of climate emulators FaIR and MAGICC. They discuss the “implied overshoot severity” of the mitigation pathways, look at the characteristics of scenarios compatible with “one possible interpretation of the Paris Agreement”, and compare the methods used in AR6 with those from the special report on 1.5C in 2018. The article also “introduces a “climate-assessment” Python package which allows for fully reproducing the IPCC AR6 WG3 temperature assessment”.

A new paper charts a history of weather observing sites in and around Cambridge in the UK from the 19th century to the present day. The sites include the Cambridge Observatory from 1873 and University Botanic Garden from 1904, along with others such as Trinity College, Beech House, the nearby town of Royston, the University Farm and the National Institute of Agricultural Botany. The study “shows how the locations have changed over the years, with a comparison of maximum temperatures from the middle of the 19th century”.

This paper describes a new global dataset for wet-bulb temperature – a metric that “comprehensively characterises the temperature and humidity of the thermal environment and is a relevant variable to describe the energy regulation of the human body”. Using the sub-daily station-based HadISD (Met Office Hadley Centre Integrated Surface Database) dataset along with NCEP-DOE reanalysis dataset, the researchers “homogenised and reconstructed” daily maximum wet-bulb temperature for 1,834 stations. These stations form a new dataset covering 1981 to 2020, which can “effectively support the research on global or regional extreme heat events and humid heatwaves”.