DeBriefed 26 June 2026: Heat records broken across Europe | London climate action week | Introducing ‘Project Cosmos’
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Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed. An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change. This week Record Europe heat HOTTEST EVER: The UK broke its temperature record for June twice this week, while France recorded its hottest day ever two days in a row, reported the Guardian. The Times reported that temperatures reached […]
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Q&A: What change of power in Colombia could mean for world’s fossil-fuel transition
Over the last four years, Colombia has emerged as one of the most vocal advocates for the world to transition away from fossil fuels. Under the leadership of leftist politician and economist Gustavo Petro, it became the first major oil-and-gas producer to commit to halting all new fossil-fuel expansion. In April, the nation hosted a […]
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LLMs help robots understand vague instructions and focus on key details
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Imagine working at a warehouse or office sometime in the near future, and you’re asked to help a new trainee learn the basics of their job. The catch: It’s a robot. To teach them, you might want to play a game of “show and tell” — that is, physically showing how to do something a […]
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Media reaction: How climate change intensified Europe’s record-breaking June heat
For the second time in two months, western and central Europe has been hit by a record-breaking heatwave. Temperature records have toppled in multiple countries, with France seeing its “hottest day ever” for two days running and the UK, Spain and Switzerland breaking records for June. A rapid-response attribution study has concluded that “climate change […]
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MIT in the media: Exploring how curiosity-driven science is an essential ingredient in America’s success
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Over the past 80 years, America’s bold, sustained investment in scientific research, and the discoveries, ideas and innovations that flowed from it made America a world leader. The nation’s scientific leadership has been essential to our shared prosperity and national security, and delivered real benefits for all Americans. On June 16, Scientific American released a special […]
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Agentic Workflow vs. Autonomous Agent: What’s the Difference?
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In this article, you will learn how to distinguish agentic workflows from autonomous agents by focusing on who owns control flow — a human writing…
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China Briefing 25 June 2026: Five-year plans passed | Critical-mineral tensions | Industrial decarbonisation plan
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing. China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here. Key developments New five-year plans GENERATION TARGET: China today released its 15th five-year plan for building a “new-type energy system”, according to finance news outlet Cailianshe. It said […]
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Livestock heat deaths in transit doubled in UK record-hot summer of 2025
Twice as many animals died due to heat stress en route to slaughterhouses during the UK’s record-hot summer in 2025 compared to 2024, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Government figures showed that nearly 6,600 animals – mostly chickens – died in transport as a result of the sweltering summer heat in England and Wales […]
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Analysis: UK sales of electric vehicles just overtook petrol cars for the first time
For the first time in the UK, more new electric vehicles (EVs) have been sold over a 12-month period than petrol cars, according to Carbon Brief analysis. The news comes amid a battle over the future of the UK’s “zero-emissions vehicle” (ZEV) mandate, which the car industry and some unions are pushing to water down. […]
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Guest post: How US renewable-energy growth persists despite federal policy uncertainty
Despite recent shifts in federal energy policies, our analysis shows that the US transition to renewable energy is continuing. The current administration has enacted a range of changes to prioritise fossil-fuel energy and environmental deregulation in the US, while withdrawing support for renewables. Yet solar, wind and battery storage accounted for over 90% of new […]
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Improving the speed and energy-efficiency of AI agents
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Agentic workflows are artificial intelligence-powered software systems that chain together multiple models and external tools to tackle complicated tasks, like analyzing a video and answering questions about it. But the way these highly fragmented systems are designed and deployed often causes inefficiencies that can lead to wasted computation, energy, and cost. To improve efficiency, researchers […]
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Building Browser-Using AI Agents in Python
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Most AI agent tutorials start with an API.
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Clustering Unstructured Text with LLM Embeddings and HDBSCAN
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The current era of Generative AI seems to primarily focus on chat interfaces and prompts, but the range of applications of large language models , or LLMs for short, is not limited to just that.
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Context Windows Are Not Memory: What AI Agent Developers Need to Understand
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In this article, you will learn why a large context window is not the same thing as agent memory, and how techniques like retrieval, compression,…
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Mombasa: Key outcomes from the Our Ocean Conference in Kenya
A major ocean conference has ended in Mombasa, Kenya, with just a handful of countries committing to high-level political declarations on banning deep-sea mining, protecting climate-resilient coral reefs and combatting illegal fishing. The Our Ocean Conference (OOC) brought together more than 5,000 delegates to discuss marine issues and make voluntary commitments to advance ocean sustainability. […]
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The end of ‘one-and-done’ sustainability: lessons from B corp standards and Meridiam’s infrastructure
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A structural realignment is quietly redefining global infrastructure, forcing a permanent shift from legacy, short-term profit models to a mandate of long-term accountability. Driven by rigid certification standards and escalating climate volatility, developers are no longer treating sustainability as a secondary risk-mitigation strategy, but as the core metric of operational and financial survival. (Words: Meridiam). […]
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CCC: Faster electrification of UK will ‘put money back into people’s pockets’
Faster electrification is the best way to secure lower energy bills and stronger energy security, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC). The government’s official climate advisers have stressed the importance of electrification, noting that electric cars and heat pumps can “put money back into people’s pockets”. Moreover, the UK’s net-zero targets face “significant risks” […]
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Exploring the societal impacts of AI
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At the recent AI and Society Forum at MIT, experts from across the Institute discussed the potential benefits and dangers of technological innovation on labor, the nature of work, civil discourse, election administration, and other topics. The event featured individual research presentations and panel discussions, as well as a musical performance exploring the use of generative artificial […]