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Chris Graham and Yang Tian, BBC News
There is widespread continuing coverage around the world of the wildfires devastating multiple areas across France and Spain. BBC News says French president Emmanuel Macron will hold a “crisis cabinet meeting” today as “wildfires close in on the south-western city of Bordeaux”. The outlet adds: “Another heatwave is set to complicate efforts to tackle the expanding blaze, which is about 15km (9 miles) from Bordeaux, mayor Thomas Cazenave said. Earlier he said there were no plans to evacuate the population of about 850,000. Wildfires have raged across Europe over the past week, primarily in France and Spain, where more than 330,000 people have been evacuated across both countries. Macron said on Saturday that France would ‘rebuild’ and his government would ‘be there for as long as is needed’.” The Guardian reports that volunteers are trying to “save fish from French rivers drying up in heatwaves”: “Without us, they are doomed.”
In Spain, Reuters reports that “more than 75,000 people have been evacuated and a further 30,000 ordered to shelter in place”. El País says the “Ávila wildfire [near Madrid] is now the largest in Spanish history, having affected 50,000 hectares.” In a separate El País article, Teresa Ribera, the Spanish vice-president of the European Commission, tells the newspaper: “Europe is not prepared for the consequences of climate change”, adding that Brussels is preparing a plan to protect adaptation policies against “criminal denialism”. A third El País article says: “Extreme heat is scorching our health: increased irritability, poorer sleep and more cardiovascular problems.” The Guardian notes that Spanish prime minister Pédro Sánchez has warned that the Iberian peninsula is “suffering the effects of the climate emergency”. The Financial Times quotes Fernando Grande-Marlaska, Spain’s interior minister, saying that the blazes raging to the west of Madrid were “the most important and aggressive fires in Spanish history”.
The New York Times says the “wildfires torching Spain and France are a culmination of western Europe’s extreme summer, in which record-setting heatwaves and dry conditions set the stage for vast areas that could easily ignite”. The Guardian has an explainer: “What is a ‘fire cloud’, and how have they worsened wildfires in Europe?” The Financial Times runs an article under the headline: “Europe’s flash drought comes as heat causes ‘atmospheric thirst’, scientists say.” The Times reports the fires via the prism of disruption to British holidaymakers. Politico claims that the fires have “reignited political tensions in Spain” and “reopened a familiar feud between the left and the right”.
MORE ON EXTREME WEATHER
Le Monde: “Morocco faces repeated heatwaves and fears water shortages.” Japan Times: “Extreme heat grips Japan for a record fifth straight day.” The Guardian: “Evacuated villagers in Cairngorms allowed home after wildfire threat lifts.” Mother Jones: “The year climate change came for the Tour de France.”
The Associated Press
US media is focused on the extreme heat stretching across large areas of North America. The Associated Press reports: “At least 40 million people were under extreme heat warnings across central and southern parts of the US on Sunday as high temperatures and severe humidity gripped large swaths of the country for a second straight day.” The newswire adds: “Heat indexes well above 100F (38C) stretched from Minnesota down to Mississippi, extending west into southern California and Nevada. Parts of the south-west were expected to see highs of 120F (49C), according to the National Weather Service.” Bloomberg focuses on the heat’s impact on power demand: “High temperatures lead to rising energy demand, and both the Southwest Power Pool and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, which together cover at least parts of 20 states, have said that loads may rise. In addition, stagnant air under the large high-pressure system may crimp wind-generated power at peak times.” NPR says “climate change is now threatening a pillar of childhood: summer break”.
Meanwhile, in other US news, the Los Angeles Times reports that the “Trump administration has acknowledged in court documents that it canceled $7.6bn in grants for hundreds of clean-energy projects ‘based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state’, including California and 15 other states that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election”.
MORE ON US
Agence France-Presse: “Meta quits clean energy pledge amid gas-powered data centre push.” The New York Times: “Trump Is pushing nuclear energy, including Saudi deal. His family and supporters could benefit.”
Edward White, Financial Times
In a frontpage news feature, the Financial Times reports that Chinese president Xi Jinping’s “flagship overseas infrastructure programme the Belt and Road Initiative boosted its green energy financing to a record $20.1bn in the first half of 2026 as the US war in Iran fuels demand for cheaper renewable power”. It adds: “The value of China’s BRI green energy deals in the first six months of this year topped its total for the whole of 2025, according to research by Australia’s University of Queensland and the Green Finance & Development Center in Shanghai.” It quotes report author Christoph Nedopil Wang saying: “The lower cost of green energy has consistently driven Chinese investment despite the trade war and now countries that have been working with China on green energy might see benefits from less energy price volatility caused by the Iran war.”
Meanwhile, China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) has released the price index of the green electricity certificate (GEC) for the first time, reports state news agency Xinhua. It says the index will be published on a regular monthly basis going forward, according to the NEA. The GEC index closed at 181 points with January 2025 as the base period at 100 points, down 0.2% from the previous month but up 23.2% year on year, says the NEA, according to industry news outlet BJX News. NEA officials said that China’s GEC market previously lacked a “unified pricing benchmark” and that the regular publication of the index would send “transparent” market price signals, stabilise expectations for green electricity consumption and expand the application of green electricity, according to an explanation note from the NEA carried by BJX News.
MORE ON CHINA
China's main grid operator, State Grid, completed 310bn yuan ($45.9bn) of fixed-asset investment in the first half, up 12.6% year-on-year, reports Xinhua. China will inspect 3,874 enterprises nationwide for their industrial energy efficiency, covering key industrial chains such as solar, wind turbines and energy storage, reports BJX News. Experts said China’s new five-year plan for renewables development takes “expanding scale” and “achieving reliable substitution” as its “main theme”, according to China Electric Power News. New Energy Nexus’s Sun Wenxuan told Jiemian that the impact of new national standards on energy consumption per unit of solar products will “accelerate the phase-out of inefficient production capacity”. A comment by Xinhua says China’s energy sector withstood “external shocks” while improving the quality of its energy transition in the first half of the year. Caixin says China’s fourth straight monthly decline in oil imports reflects its “rapid transition” to EVs and “greater control over international energy pricing”.
Fiona Harvey, The Guardian
The Guardian reports in an “exclusive” that the UK’s new foreign secretary Ed Miliband is “to indicate he will put the climate crisis and overseas development at the heart of UK international relations by taking up the country’s seat on the board at the World Bank”. The newspaper adds: “The position, which is usually delegated to a junior minister, means Miliband will play an active role in shaping the changes to the World Bank that developing countries have called for, and ensuring the climate remains a core focus for overseas aid. Miliband, who was energy and net-zero secretary under Keir Starmer, will say: ‘International development is not an add-on to British foreign policy – it is central to it. By taking on the role of UK governor to the World Bank, I want to send an unambiguous signal that this government is serious about its global leadership on development and climate.’”
Meanwhile, the UK’s right-leaning newspapers continue to focus on “whistleblower” claims about the power grid’s alleged vulnerability during recent heatwaves. An article on the frontpage of Saturday’s Times – above a stark image of wildfires in France – begins: “Britain’s race to net-zero will leave the country at greater risk of blackouts and higher electricity bills, a confidential report commissioned by the national grid system has warned. The report, disclosed to the Times by a whistleblower, revealed the National Energy System Operator (NESO) cannot accurately model the modern power system as the government pursues a drive towards renewable energy sources. The whistleblower claimed NESO, which is government-owned, was ‘flying blind’ in its ability to correctly forecast supply and demand.” One of the authors of the article – the climate-sceptic columnist Juliet Samuel – has also written |
