David Stanway

Only seven countries met World Health Organization (WHO) air quality standards last year, data showed on Tuesday, as researchers warned that the war on smog would only get harder after the United States shut down its global monitoring efforts.

China started construction on 94.5 gigawatts of coal-fired power in 2024, the highest volume of new builds since 2015, hampering the country's transition away from fossil fuels, researchers said in a report published on Thursday.

Google will buy carbon credits from an Indian initiative that turns large amounts of agricultural waste into biochar - a form of charcoal that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and returns it to the soil, it said on Thursday.

China emitted 13 billion metric tons of climate-warming greenhouse gases in 2021, up 4.3% from a year earlier, it said in its latest official submission to the United Nations, published by state media on Friday.

China will impose tougher curbs on the amount of methane released during coal extraction in an effort to reduce emissions of the powerful climate-warming gas, the environment ministry said on Thursday.

China has finished a 46-year campaign to encircle its largest desert with trees, part of national efforts to end desertification and curb the sandstorms that plague parts of the country during the spring, state media reported on Friday.

The world's biggest steelmakers are falling behind in the shift towards low-carbon production, with some still entirely dependent on fossil fuels for their energy, a survey of 18 leading firms showed on Friday.

China's emissions of carbon dioxide are on course to rise slightly this year, despite rapid progress on renewables and electric vehicles, putting a key 2025 climate target further out of reach, researchers said on Wednesday.

An unusual cluster of typhoons in the West Pacific and a series of powerful hurricanes in the Atlantic are raising questions about the impact that climate change is having on tropical storms across the globe.

On Thailand's eastern coast, plans are underway to build an electric arc furnace that will deliver green steel to Europe and benefit from contentious new rules that will force buyers to pay tariffs on high-carbon imports.