Today: Delegates gathering in New York this week expect a more focused but muted mood at annual event; the U.S. is forfeiting the clean-energy race to China; farmers in India are tracking monsoon season with the help of AI.

Welcome back: Many heading to New York this week—nine months into President Trump’s presidency—acknowledge that expectations for the city’s annual climate summit are for a more muted, tightly focused event, WSJ Pro Sustainable Business's Yusuf Khan writes. 

“It’s going to be different because in the U.S. it’s hard to talk about these things,” said Maria Mendiluce, CEO of the We Mean Business Coalition, a collective of nonprofits that aim to help businesses move to net zero.

For some attendees, making sustainability core to how a business functions and demonstrating a return on investment will reinvigorate the debate.

“Behind closed doors, this environment has created a helpful reframing of ... the business value associated with what we’re doing in sustainability,” said David Linich, sustainability principal at PwC. Boardroom conversations have shifted to improving margins, protecting against risks and avoiding the costly impacts of the energy transition, he said, as companies increasingly see sustainability as within the remit of the chief financial officer.

And despite recent rollbacks stateside, global investment in renewable energy remains strong, setting another record in the first half of 2025 to reach $386 billion, according to BloombergNEF data. That was up 10% from the same period a year prior, the data shows.

“To borrow from a famous American, rumors of the demise of climate action are not just greatly exaggerated, they are flatly contradicted by the plain facts,” said Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. 

• The EU has failed to agree a binding climate plan to cut greenhouse gases over the next decade in time for the UN general assembly this week. (FT)
• Australia pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions within a range of 62% to 70% by 2035. (Bloomberg)

America has given up its effort to challenge China in the renewable-energy industries that increasingly power the global economy, the WSJ's David Uberti, Ed Ballard and Brian Spegele report.

As President Trump doubles down on fossil fuels, the U.S. and China are offering competing visions for the future of energy, representing the next dimension in the showdown between two superpowers vying for global influence and artificial intelligence supremacy.

Trump is browbeating trading partners to buy U.S. oil and gas to stave off higher tariffs. But Chinese technology poses a long-term threat.

The rapid pace of EV adoption in China and elsewhere casts a long shadow over oil demand. Natural gas will be burned for decades, but increasingly competitive solar might sap how much of it the world will need.

China installed 277 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity in the first seven months of the year, quadruple the utility-scale additions federal analysts in the U.S. project across all power sources for 2025. That could also give China a big advantage in the power-hungry AI race.

• The U.S. risks ceding control of the global energy market to China if it continues to turn its back on renewable energy, said John Kerry. (WSJ)
• China’s installations of wind and solar in May are enough to generate as much electricity as Poland. (Guardian)

India’s monsoon season was unusual this year, but many farmers there were able to use new AI weather-forecasting tools to help them ride out the storms, WSJ Pro Sustainable Business's Clara Hudson reports.

Google’s open-source artificial intelligence model NeuralGCM and the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts’s AI systems are making sophisticated and granular forecasting data available to even the smallest farms in poor areas. 

The initiative to help farmers adapt is the latest example of how companies are expanding their weather-tracking capabilities amid mounting concerns about extreme weather and climate change.

The effort is part of a growing “democratization of weather forecasting,” said Pedram Hassanzadeh, a researcher at the University of Chicago who focuses on machine learning and extreme weather. Researchers from the university partnered with the Indian government to gather and send out the forecasts.

• India’s efforts to combat pollution have been ineffective and at times downright silly, according to experts. (WSJ)
• India's federal renewable energy ministry is in talks with state governments to buy more clean energy. (Reuters)

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• Porsche warned on profit for the fourth time this year after making a screeching U-turn on electric vehicles. (WSJ)
   
• Schneider Electric signs long-term carbon removal agreement with Climeworks. (ESG Today)
   
• How much trouble is the world’s biggest offshore-wind developer in? (Economist)
   
• Brazil’s bold climate finance plan could end tropical deforestation. (Forbes)
   
• Bezos-backed renewables alliance targets $7.5 billion for developing countries. (Reuters)
   
• Climate tech leaders form new coalition to map out the future of decarbonization. (Heatmap)
   
• Will electric tractors gain traction? At a pilot event for farmers, researchers see possibilities. (AP)

WSJ Pro Sustainable Business gives you an inside look at how companies are tackling sustainability. Send comments to bureau chief Perry Cleveland-Peck at perry.cleveland-peck@wsj.com and reporters Clara Hudson at clara.hudson@wsj.com and Yusuf Khan at yusuf.khan@wsj.com. Follow us on LinkedIn at wsjperry, clara-hudson and yusuf_khan.