This oil-rich country has stood in the way of climate action. It’s quietly building a clean energy empire

 

By Laura Paddison

A dark geometric sprawl breaks up an expanse of ocher-hued sand in Saudi Arabia. Close up, the structure is made up of row after row of solar panels, glimmering in the intense sun as it beats down on this scrubby, arid land about 60 miles south of the city of Jeddah.

Al Shuaibah 2 is Saudi Arabia’s largest solar farm, with a capacity of more than 2 gigawatts, enough to power around 350,000 homes. But it won’t keep its crown for long. Even larger installations are already in development as mega solar farms proliferate across the country’s desert lands.

“There is a solar boom, no one can deny that,” said Nishant Kumar, renewable and power analyst at the research firm Rystad Energy. Saudi Arabia has pledged to generate 50% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and the race is on to meet it.

At first glance, it may seem an unlikely reinvention; this is oil country after all. Saudi Arabia boasts the world’s second-largest oil reserves, is the largest oil exporter and has consistently pushed back against global efforts to move away from fossil fuels. But what’s happening here shows even the planet’s ultimate petrostate is making a bet on clean energy — just as the Trump administration seeks to strangle it.

The pace of Saudi Arabia’s solar boom has been breathtaking. “No country is going faster,” said Dave Jones, co-founder of the climate think tank Ember. 

 In 2020, the country had next to no renewables. By the end of this year, it’s predicted to have 12 gigawatts of solar, Kumar told CNN. Saudi Arabia has added so much in 2025 that it’s broken into the top 10 global markets for annual new solar for the first time, according to BloombergNEF data. 

The boom shows no signs of slowing. ACWA Power, the country’s utilities giant, which jointly owns the Al Shuaibah complex, announced in July — along with companies including state-owned oil and gas firm Saudi Aramco — an investment of $8.3 billion into 15 gigawatts of renewables, dominated by solar.

By 2030 solar will be growing “at a very fast pace,” Kumar said. Rystad projects more than 70 gigawatts will be installed by the end of the decade. “On top of that, they’re installing onshore wind as well,” he added. 

 There are plans to power huge infrastructure developments with clean energy, including the $500 billion futuristic city of NEOM and a luxury Red Sea tourism project. 

Arrays of solar panels help power the Jazlah Water Desalination plant in Jubail, Saudi Arabia, in 2024.

Iman Al-Dabbagh/The New York Times/Redux

 

 

It’s a striking move for a country built on oil. “Black gold” funded Saudi Arabia’s transition from nomadic desert country to a significant global power in just decades.

But experts say its solar surge makes sense for several reasons, one of the biggest being economics. Simply put: it’s cheap.

“Solar is so cost competitive, it makes financial sense,” said Karen Young, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. This is especially true given the accelerating electricity demand in the kingdom, driven by cooling needs and water desalination. 

 

Costs of solar have plummeted thanks to a flood of cheap Chinese-made solar panels into the market. The last two years have seen “just unprecedentedly low prices,” Ember’s Jones said. Battery costs have fallen, too, with average prices dropping by 40% in 2024 alone, according to Ember. Batteries make solar, which is otherwise only available when the sun shines, more flexible and even more attractive.

And solar suits Saudi Arabia: The sun reliably shines throughout most of the year, it has cheap and plentiful land, and grid connection is inexpensive, as there is space for huge solar farms near big cities, Jones said.

The country also benefits from economies of scale. “All of their installations are vast” allowing them to negotiate down equipment and construction costs, said Abdullah Alkattan, Middle East and North Africa energy transition analyst at BloombergNEF.

Another key reason for Saudi Arabia’s renewables push, experts say, is to displace oil from electricity generation at home — and instead sell it overseas. 

 

Under its Vision 2030 strategy, aimed at diversifying its economy away from reliance on oil, Saudi Arabia pledged to source 50% of its electricity from clean energy and 50% from gas by the end of this decade.

There are big economic drivers for this. Burning oil domestically is inefficient and taking it out of the electricity mix frees it up to be sold on global markets, Alkattan said. “That’s where the profit is.” 

 

This doesn’t mean climate considerations are absent from the country’s clean energy policies, Alkattan added. “To argue that ‘50% renewables, 50% gas’ is the cheapest electricity system available to Saudi Arabia is false,” he said. “This is part of the Saudi green initiative.”

Some experts, however, urge caution about the extent of Saudi’s solar ambitions. “It is significant in the sense that they were doing absolutely nothing… and then in the last couple of years, you could really see a shift,” said Ana Missirliu, a climate policy analyst at Climate Action Tracker, which monitors governments’ climate policies. “But I would say, compared to what’s needed, it’s really still very, very insufficient,” she told CNN.

Saudi Arabia’s overall climate policies and action are rated “critically insufficient” by CAT. Renewables only made up around 2% of Saudi Arabia’s electricity mix at the end of 2024, Missirliu said. Large amounts have been added through 2025 but she believes the 2030 target is far from feasible.

Others take a more optimistic view. Rystad projections show Saudi Arabia is on track to get more than a third of its electricity from renewables by 2030 and that its 50% goal will be achievable a few years later.

 

Saudi’s solar aspirations can still send a message, regardless of whether the renewables goal is met, Missirliu said. “Even a petrostate like Saudi Arabia knows and recognizes that renewables are unavoidable.” 

 

It’s a striking contrast to what’s currently happening in the US, where the Trump administration is trying to strangle solar and wind projects in the name of “energy dominance,” a strategy that is shorthand for ramping up fossil fuels only.

Saudi Arabia’s approach is “truly an ‘all of the above’ energy strategy, which is where (it) is actually more engaged on clean tech and renewables than the US (is now),” Columbia University’s Young said. The country is also interested in developing a domestic solar manufacturing supply chain, including battery storage, and producing electric vehicles, she added.

This attraction to clean energy isn’t just a Saudi phenomenon. Other Middle East countries are building out renewables, including the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Even Iran, another major petrostate with huge oil and gas reserves, is turning to solar in an attempt to navigate power crunches linked to aging infrastructure, mismanagement and sanctions.

None of this signals the end of the fossil fuel era, however, not least in Saudi Arabia. There might be a solar surge, but the country remains a petrostate. 

 

Saudi Arabia is still planning to get 50% of its electricity from planet-heating natural gas, for example, “so we are seeing a surge in gas capacity,” Kumar said. Power consumption in the kingdom is also increasing so quickly that even with the rush of renewables, it’s not yet displacing large amounts of fossil fuels, he added.

Meanwhile, the country remains a standard-bearer for oil, both in business and at the diplomatic negotiating table. Saudi Arabia, along with the US, played an important role in helping scupper a tax on the shipping industry’s climate pollution last month. It may be solar domestically, Kumar said, but “globally, they are pushing that oil is not going to go anywhere.”

As COP30 unfolds in Brazil, experts will be watching Saudi Arabia closely. The country “has always had a very disruptive role in climate negotiations,” said Missirliu. Whether that might now shift “is still something that we are waiting to see.”

'They're just so much further ahead': How China won the world's EV battery race

China is home to six out of the 10 largest battery makers in the world (Credit: Alamy)

by Xiaoying You

 

In 2005, China only had two EV battery manufacturers. Twenty years later, it produces more than three-quarters of the world's lithium-ion cells. How did it happen?

At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, athletes, journalists and officials from all over the world were transported by a fleet of sleek buses sporting a white, blue and green design as they zipped between different venues in the Chinese capital.

Different from the diesel-powered vehicles that ruled Beijing's streets at the time, the Olympic buses, numbering around 50, ran on lithium-ion batteries to help Beijing host a "green and high-tech" Olympic Games. It also marked the country's first foray into creating a lithium-ion battery industry for electric vehicles (EVs), laying the groundwork for China's ascension to world leader of this technology two decades later.

The Olympic e-bus campaign had been set in motion as soon as Beijing won the bid in 2001, according to a 2020 documentary aired by China's state media. But developing and producing EV batteries for the global event was no easy feat.

The buses at the Beijing Olympics marked the China's first foray into creating a lithium-ion battery industry for electric vehicles (Credit: Getty Images)

In late 2003, Mo Ke and his colleagues at the Beijing New Materials Development Centre – a government-affiliated research institute – were tasked to analyse China's lithium battery industry as part of Beijing's preparatory work for the Olympics.

But back then, China's lithium battery industry was "very small" with only two EV battery producers, as Mo's team found. In 2005, they hosted China's first conference for the lithium battery industry as a part of their research.

"All companies in the industry came, but there were only around 200 people in total," Mo says.

At the time, CATL, the world's current largest EV battery maker, was a department of ATL, a Japanese-owned company that made lithium batteries for electronic gadgets. BYD, the world's current second-largest EV battery maker and a leading EV maker, had just entered the auto industry after earning its first barrel of capital by supplying batteries to phone giants. 

Twenty years later, China is the king of the industry indispensable to the world's 2050 net-zero goal. It produces more than three-quarters of all lithium-ion batteries worldwide and is home to six out of the 10 largest battery makers on the planet.

 

What led to its meteoric rise? The answer lies in a combination of factors.

Two of them are a huge domestic market "walled off and preserved" for local firms and coordinated government support across the supply chain, says Xie Yanmei, an independent analyst of Chinese political economy and industrial policy. Consumer subsidies, state-sponsored rollout of charging networks and a policy mandating automakers to make EVs also helped, she notes.

But policy is only part of the story. Chinese companies also proved adept at large-scale production and controlling cost – both key to EV battery manufacturing.

"They have strong survival instinct and will proactively explore new ideas to help them stay competitive," says Song Xin, who advises Chinese companies ranging from car to robot makers aiming to go global. "This is the foundation of the industry's continuous growth."

International roots

The story of lithium batteries began beyond China's shores about 50 years ago with three chemists: British-American Stanley Whittingham, American John Goodenough and Japanese Akira Yoshino.

 

Their separate research – which earned them a joint Nobel Prize in 2019 – rode on each other's strength and led to the invention of the first commercially viable lithium-ion battery in 1985, built by Yoshino for Tokyo-based chemical company Asahi Kasei.

In 1991, Japanese electronics company Sony worked with Asahi Kasei to bring the world's first lithium-ion batteries to the market. Five years later, Nissan teamed up with Sony to launch the world's first car powered by a lithium-battery.

In the following decade, Japan was the global number one lithium-ion battery producer, with South Korea keenly vying for supremacy. At the turn of the century, Japanese firms accounted for a staggering 93% of the global market share, with electronics company Sanyo leading the charge. It wasn't until 2011 that South-Korean Samsung SDI overtook Japanese Panasonic to top the chart.

" Chinese policy makers decided that EVs could be an opportunity for the Chinese auto industry to leapfrog the west – Xie Yanmei "

When Mo was researching China's lithium battery industry in the early 2000s, Mengguli and Wanxiang were the only two companies making EV batteries in the country.

 

"They supplied most of the batteries for the e-buses that served the Beijing Olympics and the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010," says Mo, now the founder and chief analyst of Chinese battery-research firm, RealLi Research.

But before the Olympics, China had already planned a long game. In 2006, its cabinet launched a science and technology scheme that would cover the next 15 years. It included "low-emission and new-energy vehicles [NEVs]" as one of the 62 priority areas the country should pursue, and listed "rechargeable power battery" as a key technology for this area. NEVs, a term frequently used by the Chinese government, refers to pure electric, plug-in hybrids, and fuel cell vehicles powered by alternative fuels such as hydrogen and methanol.

China's goal was clear: to upgrade its vast manufacturing industry by 2020 so that it would stop relying on cheap labour and start winning with technological advantages.

Chinese companies proved adept at large-scale production and controlling cost – both key to manufacturing EV batteries (Credit: Alamy)

In 2009, with a smooth run of the Olympics e-buses in the bag, China made a major move to "adjust and revitalise" its auto industry.

For years, Beijing had tried but failed to be a global contender in the conventional auto industry that featured internal combustion engines. But it believed it was time for a reboot.

"Chinese policy makers decided that EVs could be an opportunity for the Chinese auto industry to leapfrog the west, because it was like a blank field where everybody was starting from scratch," says Xie.

A national plan guided regional governments to build supply chains and charging networks for NEVs. It also supported domestic companies to spearhead the research and development of technologies related to EVs, including batteries.

In the same year, the country began its large-scale rollout of new-energy buses, with the "10 Cities and Thousand Vehicles" programme.

Sluggish American competition

In Mo's view, China's determination to promote EVs was vital for its battery ascension, and that vision was partly inspired by the US.

 

The US saw a wave of interest in developing and making battery-powered vehicles first during the 1970s after the breakout of the oil crisis, and then again in the 1990s after the federal government published a regulation to tackle air pollution.

As early as 1990, California launched a zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) programme to improve air quality by encouraging the adoption of EVs. The programme led to the introduction of ZEV mandate, which essentially forced car companies like General Motors to invest in EVs, says Anders Hove, senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in the UK.

Actions on the other side of the ocean led the Chinese government to realise that EVs were "a stepping stone" to what was later described as the "fourth industrial revolution" – an era characterised and driven by digital technologies – and China wanted a place in it, according to Mo.

But the EV push by California did not lead to the establishment of a US lithium-ion battery industry, partly because car and oil companies lobbied California to "water down" the ZEV mandate to give more support for fuel cells powered by hydrogen and hybrid cars, whose batteries used non-lithium chemistries, Hove says.

China produces more than three-quarters of all lithium-ion batteries worldwide (Credit: Getty Images)

In the 2000s, the George W Bush administration introduced measures to fund the research and development of EVs. US startups made major progress on both batteries and cars, Hove says, but then came the financial crisis in 2008.

"[The first wave of US startups] all ran into a lot of financial difficulty and the window kind of closed on investing in clean energy," Hove says. "All the people who had invested in that, they were burned."

In the following year, the Obama administration launched a new round of funding, but it was too late to save that first wave of  renewable companies from collapsing or selling their technologies, Hove says. Many of them were bought by Chinese firms, according to him, including battery company A123, a rising-star that boasted advanced lithium-ion battery technology developed at MIT. A123 was acquired by China's Wanxiang in 2013.

At the same time, China launched an enormous four-trillion-yuan (roughly £394bn or $649bn then) stimulus plan to counter the impact of the global financial crisis and part of it was directed towards "energy-saving and emissions-reduction" projects. The move ignited the country's interest in renewable technologies, including NEVs, according to a 2010 report published by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and China's Research Institute of Resources and Environment Policies.

China's industry snowballs

The years between 2012 and 2020 proved to be critical for China's battery makers as the government doubled down its effort in putting EVs on the road.

 

An industrial roadmap for new-energy vehicles set targets on the number of EVs the country should deploy over the period. More importantly, it also set technical requirements for EV and battery manufacturers to apply for state support – a push for them to grow. In 2013, China made EV purchase subsidies available to individual consumers, not just the public sector, opening the floodgate to private car ownership.

The scale of the state backing was enormous. In 2014, China's central and regional governments spent nearly 10bn yuan (roughly £986m or $1.6bn then) on subsidies, according to a report at the time. Over the next eight years, the country would go on to hand out 200bn yuan (£21bn or $28bn) in tax rebates in total for new-energy vehicles.

The investment yielded almost instant result. Both the number of NEVs produced and sold in the country grew more than threefold in 2014 and 2015, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade body. Their market share would snowball from 1.3% in 2015 to 41% in 2024.

 But a bigger boost for the battery industry was yet to arrive. In 2015, China introduced a key rule that – in Xie's words – "walled off" its huge domestic market for Chinese battery firms. EV makers were mandated to use batteries produced by one of the selected suppliers if their cars were to qualify for consumer subsidies. All of the 57 companies that appeared on a government "white list" turned out to be Chinese.

 

"It was very cleverly designed technical specifications that narrowly defined that only Chinese battery companies would be eligible," Xie says. At that time, some South Korean companies had already started building factories in China, "only to find out that they were completely shut out the market", she adds.

Those Chinese EV makers that had been using foreign suppliers had to make a last-minute switch to battery manufacturer CATL and few other domestic firms complied with the policy, The Economic Observer reported. That rule ended up lasting four years.

In the fast lane

A sudden influx of new customers propelled CATL – which split from ATL in 2011 – to become the world's largest EV battery producer in 2017, based in Ningde, China, beating Panasonic and its compatriot BYD, Chinese news site Caixin reported. CATL has held the title since.

The policy drive continued with the "Made in China 2025" strategy, which aimed at helping the country "grab the global vantage point for manufacturing" by the mid-2020s through technological innovation. NEVs were listed as a "key area" the country should "vigorously promote".

Riding on the momentum, China introduced a "dual-credit" system for automakers in 2017. Partly based on California's ZEV programme, the policy essentially demanded that all automakers in China produce EVs to "balance off" the conventional cars they made through a complex formula. A "one-way street" design pushed automakers to make more EVs in order to avoid unnecessary cash spending.

 

Chinese manufacturer CATL became the world's largest EV battery producer in 2017 (Credit: Getty Images)

 

"As an automaker, on the one hand, you had to produce EVs in China or face a [financial] penalty. On the other, the EVs you were forced to produce would not sell without Chinese batteries," Xie explains. "So, every automaker, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Americans, Germans, had to use Chinese batteries."

The ballooning and protected market allowed CATL to work with advanced Western car makers on joint innovation. The process "quickly brought up its skill and capability", Xie adds.

The way China's EV and battery industries grew was also fundamentally different from the West. The key was the close partnership between the government and the industry, says Song, founder of Sinnvoll Global Strategy, a think tank with offices in Beijing and Berlin.

The government's massive investment had come with a clear goal: to build a strong EV manufacturing industry. And that goal was delivered via fierce competition within the industry to decide which companies or technologies would survive and thrive, according to Song.

 

This method – like running rounds and rounds of industrial-wide "horse races" to pick the fastest – is much more effective than the conventional model in Europe, North America and Japan, where industrial growth is often driven by few major companies or consortiums, she explains. "This also means that China can bring a technology from the lab to mass production very quickly."

Secrets to success

There are other important elements that set China's battery industry apart. "It's the supply chain, know-how and manufacturing," says Taylor Ogan, chief executive of Shenzhen-based Snow Bull Capital, which invests in China's clean-tech sector.

For one, top Chinese battery makers, such as CATL and BYD, run on a "vertically integrated" business model, which means that they often own their suppliers fully or partly.

"This helps control cost and ensure the security and reliability of their supply chains," says Chen Shan, a Shanghai-based analyst on battery markets at Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy.

Their capability at managing large-scale manufacturing matters enormously, too.

 

"Modern EV battery packs string hundreds of small cells side by side or end by end. One weak cell would drag down the whole chain, cut range and raise safety risks," explains Liu Chengguang, who researches battery materials in Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in China. "Every cell must be almost identical."

Achieving the feat "demands massive, highly automated plants with strict process control and real-time testing and smart sorting," he notes.

Constant innovation and targeted education has helped Chinese battery makers stay ahead of the game (Credit: Getty Images)

This is precisely the strength of CATL, which grabbed nearly 40% of the global EV battery market in 2024, more than double second-place BYD.

"The secret to CATL's success is that it can use less money to make better batteries while maintaining a huge manufacturing capacity," according to Cheng Manqi, a journalist with Chinese business outlet Late Post, who has investigated the firm.

 

Constant innovation is another factor helping Chinese battery makers stay ahead of the game. For example, BYD's signature "blade battery", a lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery, was launched in 2020 partly because it was cheaper to make: the battery did not use cobalt, a mineral for which China had to rely on imports. But BYD significantly improved the performance of previous LFPs, making them more powerful, safer and smaller. It became so popular that it altered the prevailing type of lithium-ion battery in China.

" Chinese batteries are cheaper, they are high-performing, they are available – Francesca Ghiretti "

Behind such a rapid tech revolution is a large pool of Chinese battery engineers, who came through a targeted education and vocational training system offered by colleges, universities and battery companies. 

"Chinese companies have a generation of incredibly skilled technical researchers," says Cory Combs, head of critical mineral and supply chain research at consultancy Trivium China.

"They are not just PhDs who work upstream in the lab. They're not just floor workers in the factories," says Combs. They are "practicing engineers", who know the production processes thoroughly, understand what the market wants and can use their knowledge to improve existing technology quicky to win consumers. "That's what you need to make batteries cost effective to produce," he says.

 

CATL employs more than 20,000 technical engineers while BYD's battery arm, FinDreams Battery, has more than 10,000 of them.

Can China maintain its dominance?

Today, China dominates the production at every stage of the battery supply chain, apart from the mining and processing of some raw minerals, according to the International Energy Agency. It is home to nearly 85% of the battery production capacity globally, compared to North America's 5% and Europe's 7%, according to research by consultancy Wood Mackenzie, seen by the BBC.

A consensus among researchers is that it will be extremely difficult for other countries to challenge China's dominance over the current generation of battery technologies.

"Some aspects that led to China's leadership, such as the existence of industrial clusters and vertical integration of supply chains, will be difficult to replicate," says Kate Logan, a director at Asia Society Policy Institute who focuses on China's climate and clean energy policies.

The fact that Chinese companies have already achieved scale manufacturing batteries and are expanding its production overseas is another huge hurdle for perspective competitors.

 "Chinese batteries are cheaper, they are high-performing, they are available," says Francesca Ghiretti, a researcher on China and economic security at RAND Europe, a non-profit research organisation. China's production scale "makes it really difficult for others to catch up – not to catch up with the technology, but the commercial success of that technology," she says.

It will be difficult for other countries to challenge China's dominance over EV battery technologies, experts say (Credit: Getty Images)

But in Mo's view, the door isn't completely shut for other countries. What China is really good at is taking existing technologies and making them better and cheaper, but the country's weakness is in cutting-edge research, he says.

If other countries can get ahead with next-generation battery technologies, such as solid-state batteries, "there may still be chances" for them to compete, Mo says. Traditional lithium-ion batteries use a liquid electrolyte to transfer ions between the electrodes, but solid-state batteries use a solid electrolyte. What is unique about them is that it may not need the existing supply chain meant for liquid-based cells, potentially opening space for non-Chinese contenders, Mo says.

Companies such as China's CATL and BYD, South Korea's Samsung SDI and the US's QuantumScape are developing solid-state batteries. But for the US – which heavily relies on China for lithium-ion batteries at present – scaling up manufacturing to a competitive level is expected to challenging, according to an analysis published by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Obstacles include lagging know-how, uncertain demand and high energy costs, the analysis said.

 

"It is only possible in the near term by working with Chinese companies because they are at the forefront of the technology," says Hove of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. "If you don't have that manufacturing expertise, you won't be able to scale up any breakthrough technology." Instead, it is the expansion of the know-how that will enable the catch up, he says.

But this is no easy feat, given China's 20-year lead in building a battery-manufacturing ecosystem. For some, such as Ogan of Snow Bull Capital, the past two decades may have sealed China's long-lasting lead in the global battery supply chain.

"There will not be a time that I can ever envision another country catching up with the Chinese in terms of battery manufacturing," he says. "They're just so much further ahead."

Leaders at the Global Climate Summit Highlight the Rising Toll of Warming “All we have to do is look outside,” one delegate said. “The sea rises, the coral dies.”

 

World leaders posed for a photo on Friday at COP30, the United Nations climate conference in Belém, Brazil.Credit...Wagner Meier/Getty Images

By David Gelles and Brad Plumer

Reporting from Belém, Brazil

In Spain, intense heat waves and floods have claimed thousands of lives in recent years. In Namibia, higher temperatures have resulted in drought and widespread hunger. And in Haiti, Hurricane Melissa, which was made more violent by global warming, last week killed more than 40 people.

World leaders shared vivid stories about the increasingly severe effects of a warming planet on Friday, the second day of the United Nations climate summit in Belém, Brazil.

“Forests are vanishing, water levels are rising and, in turn, peoples’ livelihoods are being disrupted,” Salah Jama, the deputy prime Minister of Somalia, said. “In a nutshell, we are living on a planet in crisis.”

Politicians, diplomats, scientists and business executives are gathering for the event, known as COP30, during another year of record heat and extreme weather that scientists say is being worsened by human-caused climate change.

 This week, the United Nations announced that the world was far off-track from keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, compared with preindustrial levels. That was a goal that virtually every country agreed to 10 years ago as part of the Paris climate agreement.

 

Instead, with heat-trapping emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation continuing to rise, the world is on track to warm by roughly 2.8 degrees Celsius. Scientists have said that every additional fraction of a degree of warming brings greater risks from heat waves, wildfires, drought, storms and species extinction.

The United States is one of the few countries in the world not attending the summit. President Trump routinely dismisses the threats posed by climate change and is promoting fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, while penalizing the renewable energy industry.

The environment minister of the small island nation of Tuvalu, Maina Vakafua Talia, referred to Mr. Trump directly. “Tragically, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases has withdrawn from the Paris agreement,” he said. “Mr. President, this is a shameful disregard for the rest of the world.”

 Over more than a dozen hours of speeches, other leaders of countries around the globe focused on the very real consequences of rising temperatures.

 

“All we have to do is look outside our front doors to witness the impacts of climate change,” Kalani Kaneko, foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, said. “The sea rises, the coral dies and the fish stock leaves our shores for cooler waters.”

In Kenya, millions have been affected in recent years by cycles of extreme drought and devastating floods. “As I traveled here, we’re still searching for scores of people who went missing after a landslide affected one part of our country,” Kithure Kindiki, the Kenyan vice president, said at the summit. “Such incidents have become common.”

A street in Petit-Goâve, Haiti, last month after Hurricane Melissa. An early analysis found that climate change had made the storm worse than it otherwise would have been.Credit...Clarens Siffroy/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

A watering hole in the Kunene region of Namibia last month. A drought has contributed to widespread hunger in the country.Credit...Noah Tjijenda/Reuters

 

 Hallo Mustafa Al Askari, the Iraqi environment minister, spoke of the challenges facing a country where temperatures routinely approach 50 degrees Celsius, or 122 Fahrenheit.

 

 

“Water scarcity has become an existential challenge in Iraq along side waves of drought, desertification and sand and dust storms,” he said. “The crisis threatens biodiversity, agriculture and undermines the livelihoods of local communities.”

And Bernadette Arakwiye, the Rwandan environment minister, spoke of floods in 2023 that killed 130 people and inflicted $200 million in damages in 24 hours. “This was not an isolated tragedy, but another example of how much damage can be done in one single climatic event,” she said.

 At a time when international cooperation is flagging and many countries are more focused on issues like trade and energy security, officials are hoping to use the U.N. summit to direct global attention to the dangers of climate change and the benefits of switching to cleaner forms of energy.

 

“There’s a real focus in these first few days on going back to basics, that climate change is real and it matters,” said Kaysie Brown, the associate director for climate diplomacy and geopolitics at E3G, a European research and advocacy group. “That basic message can’t be taken for granted.”

In between the warnings were calls to overhaul the modern economy

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain said his country was working with other nations to place additional taxes on premium-class air travel and the use of private jets. “This is only fair,” he said. “Everyone needs to pay their due.” He added that he hoped to stop using public funds to finance new fossil fuel projects.

Many leaders also called for rich nations to make more money available to developing countries.

“We must reform the current global financial architecture to make capital more accessible and affordable for climate action in the developing world,” Mr. Kindiki, the Kenyan vice president, said.

The pleas for more money come at a time when aid is tough to come by. The amount of financial assistance that rich nations give to poor ones to adapt to storms, heat waves and other perils of climate change dropped 7 percent in 2023, according to the United Nations Environment Program.

A charitable fund for helping poor countries recover from extreme disasters, announced years ago, has not yet raised $1 billion and is not yet operational. But on Thursday, a new fund for protecting forests that promises financial returns to countries that contribute money raised more than $5 billion.

The debate over financing also comes as the Trump administration has sought to undermine global climate policies.

Mr. Kaneko of the Marshall Islands condemned the Trump administration’s efforts to scuttle a treaty that would have limited emissions from the shipping industry.

“The behavior last month around the International Maritime Organization was shocking,” he said. “It cannot happen again.”

World leaders also used their time to talk about issues beyond climate change. As often happens in international forums, geopolitical rivalries and grievances loom over every discussion, making it more difficult for countries to reach consensus.

Shina Ansari, the Iranian vice president, assailed the attacks on her country this year by the United States and Israel.

“This act not only violates international law and constitutes war crimes, but has also caused extensive and lasting environmental destruction,” she said.

Surangel Whipps Jr., the president of Palau, and Mr. Talia of Tuvalu called on Taiwan to be more fully integrated into the United Nations process.

President Xiomara Castro of Honduras took aim at Israel on Thursday, the first day of the summit. “Genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip cannot go unpunished,” she said.

Edgars Rinkevics, the president of Latvia, spoke out against President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Thursday. “Russia’s aggression against Ukraine seeks to reshape the global order through conflict,” he said. “It takes human lives and inflicts harm on nature for no good reason.”

And Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s president, on Thursday criticized the Trump administration’s military buildup in the Caribbean. “We have the threat of invasion,” he said. “Invading Venezuela, or maybe threats to invade Colombia, invade Cuba.”

Amazon lakes hit ‘unbearable’ hot-tub temperatures amid mass die-offs of pink river dolphins – study

An Amazon river dolphin in the Rio Negro, in Brazil’s Amazonas state, where more than 150 dolphins died in a heatwave in 2023. Photograph: Gabrielle Therin-Weise/Getty Images

 

Droughts and heatwaves causing water in some areas to reach 41C, killing fish and endangered dolphins, say researchers

Amazonian lakes are being transformed into simmering basins hotter than spa baths as severe heatwaves and drought grip the region, research shows.

The temperature of one lake exceeded 40C (104F) as water levels plummeted under intense sunlight and cloudless skies. The extreme heat triggered mass die-offs among endangered Amazon river dolphins and fish, which cannot survive in such high temperatures.

The shallow waters of Lake Tefé, which were only two metres deep, reached 41C – warmer than an average spa bath. “We couldn’t even put our fingers in the water. It was really hot, not just in the top bit, but right down to the bottom,” said the lead researcher, Ayan Fleischmann, from the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development. “You put your finger in and remove it instantaneously, it’s unbearable.”

Floating carcasses of up to 200 river dolphins washed up over a six-week period around September 2023. No one in the region had seen this happen over the past century, said Fleischmann. “It was completely surreal and really scary.”

This incident led them to look at other water bodies across the Amazon region. Half of the 10 lakes investigated experienced exceptionally high daytime water temperatures above 37C, according to the study, published in the journal Science.

A satellite image from August 2024 of Lake Tefé in Brazil’s Amazonas state, showing sandbanks exposed because of severe droughts. Photograph: European Union/Copernicus Sentinel-2/Reuters

Researchers analysed water temperatures from central Amazonian lakes during the drought of 2023, which was followed by another extreme drought late last year, with new record-breaking low-water levels and severe heating of the lakes. On average Lake Tefé reaches 30C in the hottest months, but in 2024, it hit 40C.

Amazon lakes have been warming by 0.3 to 0.8C each decade over the past 30 or so years – rates higher than the global average, researchers found. At the same time, they are shrinking. During the 2024 drought Lake Tefé lost about 75% of its surface area and Lake Badajós shrank by 90%.

 

Adrian Barnett, senior lecturer in behavioural ecology at the University of Greenwich, who was not involved in the research, said: “The paper shows the extraordinary impacts climate change is having, even on such huge ecosystems as the Amazon, and that these are not restricted to the forests, but the aquatic realm as well.”

“A 10C increase in water temperature is unparalleled,” he said. “The volume of energy needed to achieve this in such huge volumes of water is jaw-dropping.”

Most fish, and the dolphins and manatees, normally breed in the low-water season, said Barnett said, adding that it was likely that 2023 would have been a disastrous year reproductively for most species. “If this happens repeatedly, then their populations and those of the species that are connected to them ecologically, will decline severely.”

There are few local solutions to this problem, according to Barnett. “Something that’s happening at such a huge scale really requires a systems approach and that means attacking the root cause of the problem, which is fossil fuel emissions and the causes of global warming itself,” he said.