UK reverses North Sea oil drilling permission

Climate Focus

By Sharon Kimathi, Energy and ESG Editor, Reuters Digital

Hello!

This week closes with some positive news from the United Kingdom. The nation is celebrating its football team qualifying for UEFA European Football Champions finals this weekend against Spain (come on you Three Lions!).

And the freshly elected Labour government ordered the immediate ban on new North Sea oil and gas licenses.

Britain reversed a decision to grant permission for an oil drilling operation and dropped its defense to a legal challenge over a disputed new coal mine, campaigners said, after a landmark ruling on fossil fuel projects.

The move comes in response to a major judgment last month from Britain’s highest court on the climate effects of fossil fuel projects, which activists said could profoundly impact new fossil fuel projects in Britain.

“The writing is on the wall for the fossil fuel industry,” said Jamie Peters, climate coordinator at Friends of the Earth.

“This announcement from the Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is testament to the breadth and strength of those who have long been calling for an end to new oil and gas exploration, from individuals and grassroots movements to climate scientists and the UN Secretary General,” he added.

The Supreme Court ruled that planning authorities must consider the impact of burning, rather than just extracting, fossil fuels when deciding whether to approve projects.

Mathilda Dennis – a campaigner with SOS Biscathorpe, which brought a legal challenge over the project – said in a statement that “it is clear that the unequivocal link between fossil fuel extraction and climate crisis can no longer be ignored”.

Speaking of the climate crisis, today’s Climate Buzz stories focus on the extreme torrential rainfall causing death and destruction in China, India, South Korea and Nepal. 

China’s weather bureau said last week the country faced more frequent and unpredictable heavy rain as a result of climate change, further testing its capability to cope with extreme weather events.

The month of July is annually the monsoon season in South Korea but it has experienced extreme weather in the summer months in recent years, which President Yoon Suk Yeol has said should be anticipated due to climate change.

China suffered a direct economic loss worth 93.16 billion yuan ($12.83 billion) in the first half of this year due to natural disasters, the government said on Friday.

This is the deepest first-half disaster-related loss since 2019, according to data available on the Emergency Management Ministry website, as the country suffered flooding, drought and extreme temperature in the first six months of the year.

This comes as torrential rain in the megacity of Chongqing in southwestern China triggered mudslides and flooding that killed at least six people and caused widespread disruption, Chinese state media reported.

A resident wades through floodwaters after heavy rainfall from the upstream Yangtze River flooded a town in Hukou county of Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, China. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang

Parts of north-west Delhi were flooded after a breach in a canal that supplies water from a nearby state, and repair work was being carried out to minimize the impact, a senior local official said in a social media post.

Residents of the capital have experienced a series of extreme weather events in the past two months, from sizzling temperatures to floods and heavy rainfall that caused a roof collapse at the city’s airport.

South Korea’s national rail company suspended some regular routes and slowed bullet trains because of heavy rain in the central region that caused flooding and landslides.

The Ministry of Interior reported four people died and also said property, roads and infrastructure had been heavily damaged. There are landslide warnings for more than 50 areas and more than 3,500 people have been displaced, it said.

At least 62 passengers were missing after landslides swept two buses into a swollen and murky river in Nepal on Friday, authorities said.

Authorities mobilized scores of military and police personnel to search for the missing persons in the Trishuli River in Chitwan district, about 86 km (53 miles) west of the capital Kathmandu.

The Philippines has been chosen to host the board of the “Loss and Damage” fund created by U.N. talks, marking another step towards providing financial help for countries to recover and rebuild from the impact of global warming.

Unhoused Chileans and people working outdoors in Santiago are grappling with the low temperatures caused by a polar wave in the South American nation. Click here for the video. 

Combined electricity generation from solar and wind farms in the United States surpassed output from nuclear plants for the first time during the opening half of 2024, cementing renewable energy assets as the primary source of clean power in the country.

Electricity generation from utility-scale solar and wind assets during the first half of 2024 was a record 401.4 terawatt hours (TWh), compared to 390.5 TWh from nuclear reactors, data from energy think tank Ember shows.

Click here for the full story by Reuters global energy transition columnist Gavin Maguire.

China is building 339 gigawatts (GW) of utility-scale wind and solar, or 64% of the global total, a report from the U.S.-based think tank Global Energy Monitor (GEM) found. That is more than eight times the project pipeline of the second-place U.S., with 40 GW.

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