DeBriefed 13 September 2024: US presidential debate skirts climate; Global fires and floods; How a UK-backed firm fuels African gas 

Josh Gabbatiss

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

§ This week

US election extremes

HARRIS VS TRUMP: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump met for their first US presidential debate on Tuesday, with the final question asking what they would do to fight climate change, Rolling Stone reported. The article said that Trump, the Republican candidate, “completely ignored the question”. Harris, the Democratic nominee, “vowed to take action” but also “embrace[d]” domestic fossil fuels, according to E&E News. The Guardian noted that Harris’ “strident” support for fracking “raised eyebrows among some environmentalists”.

‘WHILE WILDFIRES RAGE’: The Atlantic said “climate discussion did not go far” in the debate – despite it being held “while wildfires rage in Nevada, southern California, Oregon and Idaho” and Louisiana was “bracing” for the landfall of Hurricane Francine. CNN said more than 70 active wildfires have been burning in the US. Climate change is “increasing the severity of record wildfires”, Axios noted. Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that Francine peaked as a category 2 hurricane on Wednesday, driving flash floods and “life-threatening conditions”. 

Floods and fires

STRONGER STORMS: Nearly 200 people have died and more than 125 are missing in Vietnam following Typhoon Yagi, according to Sky News. It added that such storms are “getting stronger due to climate change”. Yagi was the most powerful typhoon to hit Asia this year, and CNN noted that it struck southern China and the rest of south-east Asia as well. Elsewhere, Nigeria’s Foundation for Investigative Journalism reported on flooding in northern Borno state following heavy rainfall and the failure of a dam. Al Jazeera said more than one million have been affected.

MORE FIRE: Fires have also been raging across South America, with Bolivia declaring a national emergency after experiencing the largest number of wildfires since 2010, according to Reuters. Forest fires in Brazil have soared against a backdrop of record drought, Folha de Sao Paulo reported. The Peruvian rainforests have also been struck by fires, according to El Comercio.

§ Around the world

  • CAN’T COMPETE: Former Italian prime minister Mario Draghi has produced a report for the European Commission examining how the EU can compete with the US and China, according to Euractiv. It contains many proposals for energy and climate policies, which are captured in a Carbon Brief summary.
  • OUT OF ICE: The sea ice around Antarctica is about to reach a record winter low for the second year running, adding to the evidence that the Antarctic system has moved to a “new state”, the Guardian reported.
  • CALL TO ACTION: Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in the South Korean capital of Seoul to call for urgent action “from both the government and individuals” to tackle climate change, the Korea Times reported.
  • POPE ON TOUR: During a regional tour, the New York Times reported that Pope Francis heard about the threat of sea level rise in Papua New Guinea. He commended Singapore for its environmental efforts, the Straits Times added.
  • EXPANDED MARKET: China will expand its national carbon market to include its steel, aluminium and cement industries at the end of this year, reported Bloomberg.
  • COAL AND STEEL: A decision to approve the UK’s first new coal mine in 30 years has been ruled unlawful by the High Court, Sky News reported. Elsewhere, the UK government has agreed to give Tata Steel £500m to help move away from coal-based steelmaking, BBC News said.

§ 196

The number of people killed last year defending the environment, according to figures gathered by the NGO Global Witness and reported by the New York Times.

§ Latest climate research

  • New research published in Nature Communications found no overall decline in fossil-fuel lending by banks since the Paris Agreement, with some European banks cutting their lending while others in Japan and Canada increased theirs.
  • The world’s wetlands released, on average, around 153m tonnes of methane every year between 2001 and 2020, according to a new study in Earth’s Future.
  • A new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identified an “urban wet island” effect, meaning that urbanisation can result in increased rainfall. It said the magnitude of these urban wet islands “has nearly doubled” from 2001 to 2020.

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

§ Captured

Image - Nearly 90 China-Africa clean energy projects have been agreed since 2001 (note)

Carbon Brief covered new data exploring how China has been investing in low-carbon energy projects across Africa. This follows the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) last week, where climate cooperation was a key topic for leaders from China and African nations. At the previous FOCAC in 2021, China pledged to increase investment in African clean energy. Despite a two-year lull in lending by China’s policy banks, the data shows that China-Africa cooperation on renewable energy continued through other channels during this period, and that policy bank lending rebounded in 2023.

§ Spotlight

How a UK-backed firm has fuelled African gas power

Carbon Brief investigates how a little-known company that is majority-owned by a UK government development body and backed by UK aid money has been pouring investment into gas power across Africa.

Globeleq describes itself as “the leading independent power producer in Africa”. It runs 1,119 megawatts (MW) of gas power plants in Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Tanzania – two-thirds of its total portfolio.

The company is controlled, with a 70% stake, by British International Investment (BII) – the UK’s development finance institution. BII is an “arms length” body that is nevertheless 100% owned by the government and receives funds from the UK aid budget. 

BII has strongly emphasised its focus on renewables. Yet Carbon Brief analysis of Globeleq figures shows that its gas power generation has increased by a much larger amount in recent years, and is set to almost double as new plants come online.

Globeleq has received hundreds of millions of dollars of investment via BII. According to reporting by Bloomberg, BII’s stake in the company is valued at around $1bn.

BII’s support for gas in Africa has come under fire for conflicting with wider UK government climate goals. MPs and campaigners have called for it to divest from fossil fuels altogether.

Gas expansion

BII emphasises its efforts to drive a “pivot towards renewables” within Globeleq.

However, Carbon Brief analysis of company figures shows that the renewable share of its electricity output has barely changed since 2019.

Even as new solar and wind projects are added to its portfolio, Globeleq produces more than five times as much power from fossil fuels as from renewables.  

The amount of gas power Globeleq produces is still growing. As its large new projects start up in Mozambique and Ivory Coast, the amount of gas-fired electricity the company produces is on track to nearly double – rising to 11,013 gigawatt-hours (GWh) next year. 

Globeleq is developing more renewables, but its gas expansion would still raise the fossil fuel share of the electricity the company generates from 84% in 2023 to around 89% of the total.

BII told Carbon Brief it “did not make a single new commitment to fossil-fuel assets” over the past year. BII also said it invested “over £1bn to address the climate emergency” in the past two years.

‘Conflict’ with climate 

The involvement of the UK’s government and money in BII and Globeleq has raised questions about the nation’s commitment to stop overseas fossil-fuel investment.

Under the previous Conservative government, the UK pledged to stop funding new overseas fossil-fuel projects beyond March 2021. Globeleq’s Temane gas-fired power plant in Mozambique reached financial close in December 2021.

However, the government and BII commitments contained exemptions – dubbed “loopholes” by some observers – that allow for funding of gas power plants if they “align” with nations achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. The Temane project was deemed to fit these criteria.

The international development committee of MPs pointed out last year that the then-government had pledged to align aid with the Paris Agreement and that some BII schemes “conflict[ed]” with this. “BII holds some investments that conflict with the UK government’s policies, such as those relating to fossil fuels,” it said.

The committee said BII “lags behind other peer institutions” in divesting from fossil fuels and switching to “green energy”. 

Sandra Martinsone, policy manager at the NGO Bond, told Carbon Brief that BII has “no clear plan” for phasing out fossil fuel investments and said the government could push it to do so. The UK government had not provided Carbon Brief with a comment at the time of publication.

Moreover, with a majority share in Globeleq, Martinsone says BII could steer it in “any direction it wants”.

Gas for Africa?

BII stresses Globeleq’s role in providing electricity to millions of Africans. 

Under the scenario compatible with the Paris Agreement target of limiting warming to 1.5C, set out by the International Energy Agency (IEA), global demand for gas would drop by 55% from 2021 to 2050.

Yet BII argues that African nations often need the “baseload” power provided by gas, which can allow the integration of more renewables.

This view has been supported by many African governments. However, African civil society groups have pushed back, arguing that nations could be “locked in” to fossil fuels, leaving them vulnerable to fuel price spikes and health impacts for communities nearby to plants. 

Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, told Carbon Brief it is “absurd” to see UK aid money linked to fossil-fuel investments that leave Africans with the “dirty and polluting energy of the past”.

§ Watch, read, listen

SPILLED: Climate journalists Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt discussed what US Republicans’ much-discussed Project 2025 plan lays out for climate change in the latest episode of Spill, their “climate talk show”.

MASS DISPLACEMENT: An article in the Conversation asked if the hundreds of thousands of people who have been forced from their homes by huge floods in South Sudan could be “the first example of a mass population permanently displaced by climate change”.

YOUTH AND ANXIETY: The Los Angeles Times has published a “youth and climate anxiety special section” made up of a series of articles that “reminds us there’s still time to seize control of our collective destiny”.

Coming up

Pick of the jobs

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to [email protected].
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