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KERRY TRIP TAKEAWAYS: Chinese President Xi Jinping appeared to rebuff U.S. climate envoy John Kerry as he wrapped his three-day visit to Beijing, stressing at a national conference yesterday that the rate and intensity at which it achieves its climate goals should be determined internally, rather than by outside influences.
Xi said Beijing is “unwavering” on its dual climate goals—which seek to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030, and achieve full carbon neutrality by the year 2060. “But,” he said, “the pathway and means for reaching this goal, and the tempo and intensity, should be and must be determined by ourselves, and never under the sway of others.”
One foreign affairs adviser to Xi also told Kerry yesterday that China-U.S. climate cooperation “cannot be separated from the broader environment of Chinese-U.S. relations,” according to a readout of their talks.
Those remarks are at odds with the main message delivered by Kerry this week during the trip, which was to decouple climate policy and discussions from other tensions between the two countries, which include disputes over trade and technology and the status of Taiwan.
Kerry said that climate change is a “free-standing” challenge and “universal threat”—something that will require deliberate collaboration from the world’s two largest economies. “We have the ability to … make a difference with respect to climate,” he told Chinese Vice President Han Zheng this morning during his final meeting.
Kerry’s other asks: Kerry specifically asked the Chinese government to join the U.S. in slashing methane emissions and curbing their use of coal-fired power plants.
Kerry also suggested that President Joe Biden and Xi meet in person ahead of the COP28 summit in November, should Xi travel to San Francisco for the APEC meeting. Still, he acknowledged that Washington and Beijing have “difficult issues” to work through as they work to slash their own greenhouse gas emissions.
Kerry traveled to Beijing on the heels of two other senior U.S. officials—Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who also met with their counterparts in a month-long flurry of diplomacy.
But any overtures are likely to be met with skepticism from China, which holds “lingering suspicion” that the U.S. under a future administration could turn its back on climate commitments, as it did under then-President Donald Trump, Villanova University professor Deborah Seligsohn told the New York Times. The talks also come after diplomatic engagement was suspended for nearly a year following then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August.
“The Chinese also want to see results from the U.S. to believe it will deliver,” Seligsohn added.
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EUROPE HIT BY WILDFIRES AND INTENSE HEAT: Meanwhile, extreme heat and drought conditions in Europe have touched off wildfires and record-high temperatures across the continent, with meteorologists warning that conditions could intensify further in the days ahead.
Red alerts warning people of a “very high heat risk” due to the searing temperatures remained in place today for most of Italy, Spain, and Greece, and the Balkans. Meanwhile, wildfires burned in Greece and in Switzerland, prompting the EU to send firefighting planes to Greece to help extinguish the blaze.
The WHO regional director for Europe, Hans Henri P. Kluge, told Reuters that the world must look ahead and adapt to the “new reality” of extreme weather and intense heat waves. “There is a desperate and urgent need for regional and global action to effectively tackle the climate crisis, which poses an existential threat to the human race,” Kluge said.
…AND EXTREME TEMPS CONTINUE IN THE U.S.: Meanwhile, more than 80 million people in the U.S. remain under heat advisory, including in Phoenix, which saw its 19th day in a row yesterday of temperatures above 110 degrees. Temperatures in parts of California, New Mexico, and Nevada have reached triple digits in recent days, and large swaths of the South – including Texas and Oklahoma–remain under dangerous heat conditions. (El Paso has seen 33 straight days of temperatures at or above 100 degrees.) Heat conditions are expected to last through the week in most areas.
EU LAWMAKERS DROP CALL FOR CAP ON POWER PLANT WINDFALLS: The European Parliament energy committee agreed today to drop their proposal to cap power plant windfall profits should the bloc face another energy price crisis, delivering a win to industry officials who had strongly opposed the move and had argued it would deter investors at a time massive new cash influxes are needed to fund low-carbon energy generation projects.
The EU Parliament’s lead negotiator for the energy market reforms, Nicolas Gonzalez Casares, told Reuters today that any cap would have been “pre-planned” if energy prices spiked again and would help raise money for countries to protect consumers against painfully high energy prices, like the kind seen last summer.
“I think that’s more predictable and it would give more stability to the market,” he told the outlet. “But not all political groups saw it the same way,”
INDIA’S TATA GROUP ANNOUNCED PLANS FOR $5B GIGAFACTORY IN THE UK: India’s Tata Group announced it will develop a $5 billion gigafactory in the U.K., in what is slated to be one of the largest EV battery projects to date in Europe, expected to deliver a significant boost to the country’s efforts to develop its own EV battery supply chain.
In a statement today, the U.K. government said the EV battery project will create as many as 4,000 jobs in the country, and will provide the Jaguar Land Rover—a Tata subsidiary—with batteries as well. “This investment will be crucial to boosting the UK’s battery manufacturing capacity needed to support the electric vehicle industry in the long term,” the government said in a statement. Read more from CNBC here.
MANCHIN FILES BRIEF BACKING MOUNTAIN VALLEY PIPELINE IN SUPREME COURT: Sen. Joe Manchin filed an amicus curiae brief with the Supreme Court yesterday in support of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, seeking to join project developers in the emergency application seeking to vacate the stay that was granted this month by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.
The 4th Circuit handed down the stay without explanation earlier this month, halting construction on the natural gas pipeline and clearing the way for the decision to be appealed to the Supreme Court.
In submitting the amicus brief, Manchin reiterated his frustration with the court decision, which he described earlier this month as “‘unlawful.”
“I was proud to help ensure that the Mountain Valley Pipeline would finally be completed through ratification and approval of the project’s permits without further judicial review in the Fiscal Responsibility Act,” Manchin said in a statement. “But, yet again, this vital energy infrastructure project has been put on hold by the Fourth Circuit despite the new law clearly stating that the Fourth Circuit no longer has this authority.”
…FOR YOUR RADAR: The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is holding its permitting hearing next week, Politico’s Josh Siegel (a Daily on Energy alum) reports, as Manchin seeks to keep up momentum on one of his signature issues ahead of the coming August recess. More details to come.
MANHATTAN INSTITUTE REPORT SKEPTICAL OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A new report from the Manhattan Institute disputes the climate and cost benefits of the U.S. push for electric vehicles adoption, saying that the push comes with many unknown variables—including a potential jump in consumer costs and additional strain on grids.
The study’s author, Mark Mills, asserted that greenhouse gas reductions from higher EV penetration rates are based largely on “assumptions, guesses, and ambiguities,” and that bans on ICE-powered vehicles could risk “draconian impediments to affordable and convenient driving and a massive misallocation of capital in the world’s $4 trillion automotive industry.” Read more on the study here.
The Rundown
Washington Post This national park is so wild, it has no roads. Now some want to mine outside its gates.
Financial Times How Dubai became ‘the new Geneva’ for Russian oil trade
Bloomberg EU puts ESG laggards on notice amid investing ‘revolution’
