Energy in Demand News, July 6-7, 2025

adaptation, air pollution, carbon emissions, clean energy, climate change, climate policy, climate risk, communication, decarbonisation, emissions standards, energy efficiency, energy policy, energy transition, fossil fuels, GHG emissions, industry, international co-operation, methane, mitigation, renewable energy

The Guardian reports that Europe’s heatwaves have failed to stimulate support for climate action.  “As heatwaves engulfed large swathes of Europe and North America last week – the latest in a stream of deadly extremes made worse by fossil fuel pollution – green groups are frustrated that increasingly violent weather has not spurred the urgent support for climate action they had expected.” The Guardian goes on: “Polls taken over the second-last weekend of June show most people in the UK found the previous week of weather too hot, are worried it will get hotter, and hold the climate crisis at least partly responsible. But the nonprofit [the research group More in Common] also found the share of people concerned about climate change has fallen over the past year, dipping from 68% to 60%. Support for the UK’s target to hit net zero emissions by 2050 fell even further, plunging from 62% to 46%.”

This disturbing outcome in the public mood seems related to a right-wing political agenda. “Far-right parties across mainland Europe have been even more vocal in using the heatwave to take aim at climate policy, even as blazing wildfires force thousands to flee their homes and doctors warn of widespread excess deaths.” The Guardian goes on: “The far right has a strategy but everyone else doesn’t,” said Luisa Neubauer, a German activist from Fridays for Future, which staged its first night-time protest against climate inaction outside the German economy ministry on Wednesday… Too many people in power or with platforms ‘have not yet understood that we’re in a war of language – and a war of the truth – about the climate’, she added. ‘And too few of us are actively standing in the way of that.’ It’s the same analysis in France, where Environmental Transition Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher took to Le Monde to criticise “short-termist populism” where she said “the right and the far right have wanted to sweep away everything that has been constructed … by repeating that environmentalism is dangerous. Yesterday, they denied climate change. Today, they use it to stoke fear and divide the country. It is populism, electoral short-termism disguised as so-called ‘common sense’ that supposedly protects working-class and rural communities… In reality, this exposes the French people to the dangers of climate change and weakens France’s position with our gas and oil suppliers.”

The Financial Times wrote this week about asset managers and their role in ESG. “Asset managers made a “huge mistake” in claiming the investment industry could “save the world”, the departing chair of the UK’s Aberdeen Group [Sir Douglas Flint] said, over-egging their role in environment, social and government issues for marketing purposes. “Our industry then made a kind of huge mistake, it became a marketing thing, let’s tell everyone we’re saving the world, we’re saving the planet.” The overly general statements were “a feast” for US-based lawyers, he said. . . . The world’s largest asset managers have faced attacks on their ESG strategies since the election of President Donald Trump in the US, where attorneys-general in a series of Republican states have accused them of colluding and unfairly excluding fossil fuel companies.” A new approach is being taken: “Asset managers now framed environmental issues in a “much more rational way”, Flint said, as a choice between shorter- or longer-term investment strategies.” It should be noted that: “Aberdeen Investments is still “committed to helping tackle climate change”, for its clients, shareholders and “future generations”, it says on its website.” Let’s hope all asset managers do.

As we prepare for the upcoming climate conference in Brazil, the Financial Times reports that Brazil’s UN climate summit chief has defended oil and gas production as being compatible with international efforts to limit global warming, ahead of the South American country hosting the world’s most important climate talks. “André Corrêa do Lago, president-designate of the UN COP30 climate summit taking place in the Amazonian city of Belém, played down concerns that Brazil’s stance on oil expansion was in conflict with global efforts to reach net zero emissions. “We are thinking of a ‘net zero’ that incorporates some years continuing to use oil. The transitioning away [from fossil fuels] allows considerable flexibility,” the senior diplomat told the Financial Times.” Here we go again. What really is our net zero climate and energy transition? It’s not obvious.

In planning travel over the upcoming weeks, here are some useful ideas to help you along:

D.”avid Suzuki (b. 1936), the Canadian academic, science broadcaster and environmental activist, gives a sobering message this week: “We’re in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone’s arguing over where they’re going to sit

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