“UK business secretary Grant Shapps has signalled that the government will reverse its ban on onshore wind farms in an attempt to head off a growing mutiny among Tory MPs, including former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss,” reports the Financial Times. The Guardian says: “The government all but confirmed on Monday that restrictions on onshore wind would be changed in the face of the rebellion, but the row has left Sunak squeezed between two wings of the party.” It adds: “The Guardian understands that the former chief whip Wendy Morton has signed the amendment, bringing the total number of potential rebels to 34 – which would evaporate Sunak’s majority.” The Independent says: “Downing Street appeared to reject suggestions of a U-turn, stressing there is no ‘imminent change’ to the prime minister’s opposition to relaxing planning rules around onshore wind.” Separately, the paper says that “insiders believe Mr Sunak is considering changes to make it easier to obtain local consent for a proposed farm, rather than dropping the requirement for consultation with residents altogether”. BBC News reports that Shapps “denied there is a split in the Tory Party over onshore wind farms”, because “everyone agreed there should be local consent for new wind turbines”. Reuters and BusinessGreen also report that Shapps has played down the rift in the government. “If Sunak does back down on the Levelling-Up and Regeneration Bill, it would be the second reversal in less than a week on the same legislation,” Bloomberg says. The i newspaper and Yorkshire Post carry the story on their frontpages. The Sun, MailOnline and the Times also cover the story.

In other UK news, the Guardian reports that the shadow environment minister and leading wildlife groups have said the UK government “will not be able to achieve its nature targets by 2030, even though they are ‘embarrassingly poor’”. This comes as the Independent reports that WWF is urging Sunak to attend COP15 – the biodiversity COP that starts in Montreal next week – to “drive forward negotiations and show the UK’s support for restoring the natural world”. Elsewhere, BBC News covers analysis from environmental thinktank Green Alliance, which finds that “oil and gas companies are wasting enough methane to power more than 700,000 UK homes”. And the Independent reports that Just Stop Oil activists have warned police that they are planning two further weeks of disruption.

The National Infrastructure Commission has warned that “investments totalling around £12bn are needed to upgrade drains in England to cut the risk posed by surface water flooding”, the Independent reports. The report says that extreme weather caused by climate change, alongside “increasing pressure on drainage systems caused by new developments” could drive rising flood risk over the coming decades. Separately, the paper says “the number of homes and properties in England that are at risk of surface water flooding could rise from 325,000 today to 600,000 in the next 30 years”. The Times adds that “gardens being paved over, new buildings and climate change” are behind the expected rise in flood risk. And the Daily Telegraph says houses with paved driveways could face higher water bills.

The National Grid has decided not to activate a scheme offering households discounts on their electricity bills if they cut peak-time use, BBC News reports. The National Grid “had been ready to trigger the scheme following a warning that Britain’s energy supplies were looking tighter than usual this week”, but “decided that the measure was not required”, the outlet says. It adds: “National Grid said it was ‘confident’ it would be able to manage margins and ‘demand is not at risk’.” The Press Association reports that “the service has been tested twice in recent weeks, and some households earned more than £4 for taking part over the course of an hour”. Separately, it says: “The National Grid Electricity System Operator issued and then rapidly cancelled a notice that the difference between the amount of electricity available and the supply of electricity would be smaller than hoped for on Monday evening… The alerts are sent out automatically when expected margins drop below a certain level. They do not mean that blackouts are likely.” The Financial Times says if it had gone ahead, the scheme “would have marked the first big test of Britain’s ability to meet electricity demand this winter”. The Guardian says that “energy specialists had been concerned that Britain’s power systems could be threatened by lower temperatures”, but that “industry sources said a UK gas-fired power station stepped in on Monday to cover the need for extra supplies”. The decision not to implement the scheme caused hourly power prices to surge, according to Bloomberg.

Elsewhere, Bloomberg reports that, according to the latest three-month outlook by the UK Met Office, the country could face a “milder” winter, which may “soften [the] blow from [the] gas crisis”. The Times reports that the UK’s biggest gas storage site has been refilled to its maximum potential capacity for winter. Meanwhile, the Evening Standard reports that campaigners have called for an immediate ban on pre-payment meter installations, over concerns that firms use them “as a method of revenue protection”.

In other UK news, the Times reports that “Jeremy Hunt has been told that the government will miss its new target to cut energy use by 15% by 2030 without billions more money”. Bloomberg reports that the Sizewell C nuclear plant “took another step forward when the government approved its eligibility for a state-backed financing mechanism”. And the Financial Times reports that “Shell has agreed to buy Europe’s largest biogas producer for €1.9bn in the UK oil major’s latest effort to diversify its energy portfolio and reduce its dependence on fossil fuels”. The Times and BusinessGreen also cover the story.

China’s petrochemical sector “may reach peak carbon emissions only by 2035 – five years later than the national target”, the South China Morning Post writes, according to a Peking University report. The report added that a low-emissions “push” could help the sector achieve peak carbon “as early as 2025, and produce only half of the carbon emissions compared to the baseline scenario by 2060”, the article notes. Yang Fuqiang, a senior adviser at Peking University, is quoted saying that “the low-carbon transformation of the petrochemical industry will provide strong support for China’s ‘dual carbon’ targets”.

Meanwhile, oil prices have risen after OPEC+ members said at a meeting that “deeper production cuts could be an option”, reports Bloomberg. It adds that, before the meeting, oil prices “slumped below $74 to the lowest [level] since December” as “protests over harsh anti-Covid measures erupted across China triggered a broad selloff in commodities and equity markets”. CNBC covers the same news.

Separately, China’s ministry of ecology and environment (MEE) said yesterday that China has made “important contributions to the positive progress achieved at the COP27 in dealing with the global climate change, and defended the interests of developing countries”, reports Global Times. Liu Youbin, spokesman of the MEE is quoted in the state-supporting newspaper saying: “China will, as always, maintain multilateralism, continue to actively participate in the global governance of climate change, and continue to deepen south-south cooperation on climate change with other developing countries within its capacity, based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.”

Meanwhile, Hugo Dixon, Reuters Breakingviews columnist, has an article on the newswire, titled: “How to design a formula to pay for climate loss.” He writes: “One way of accounting for this would be to say countries should pay into the fund to the extent that they have polluted more than the global average on a per capita basis. Call this a country’s ‘above average emissions’…China would pay 4% because its emissions per head have so far been only slightly above the global average.”

Elsewhere, China Energy News reports that 14 government bodies, including the MEE and the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), have jointly issued an action plan to improve air quality nationally. The state-run industry newspaper also cites an editorial from People’s Daily, a newspaper owned by the Chinese Communist Party, on being “fully committed to ensuring energy supply this winter”.

“EU countries resumed last-ditch talks on Monday to secure agreement on a price cap for Russian oil, with deep splits among them on where such a level should be set to inflict maximum pain on Russia while causing minimum harm to member countries,” Politico reports. According to the outlet, the measure will be implemented on 5 December to coincide with an EU ban on seaborne imports of Russian crude oil and a UK ban on Russian crude oil. It continues: “Poland and the Baltic states are pushing for a more severe, lower cap, while Greece, Malta and Cyprus are holding out for either a higher price or compensation to protect their shipping industries, according to several EU diplomats.” Bloomberg says: “The EU originally proposed capping the price of Russian oil at $65 a barrel. But with Russia already selling its crude at a discount, the cap levels being debated are all higher than current market rates of around $52.” But Reuters reports that the EU countries “failed” to agree on a price cap. This comes as the Financial Times reports that “Europe is importing a record amount of seaborne Russian gas”. A Financial Times interactive says that “sharing electricity will be crucial in the coldest months” for Europe to keep the lights on.

In other European news, the Financial Times carries a warning from “climate change experts” that “EU plans to certify removals of carbon from the atmosphere are at risk of allowing greenwashing and fall short of what is needed to curb emissions to limit global warming”.

“A United Nations-backed mission is recommending that the Great Barrier Reef be added to the list of endangered World Heritage sites, sounding the alarm that without ‘ambitious, rapid and sustained’ climate action the world’s largest coral reef is in peril,” reports the Independent. According to Reuters: “Frequent bleaching events are threatening the reef, including four over the last seven years and the first during a La Nina phenomenon, which typically brings cooler temperatures, this year.” The Guardian adds: “Experts from Unesco and IUCN [International Union for Conservation of Nature] find climate change threatens reef’s values and work to improve water quality is too slow.” However, the Independent also reports that Australia’s environment minister says her government will “lobby against” the decision, saying the report was “a reflection on Australia’s previous conservative government, which was voted out of office in May elections after nine years in power.” Al Jazeera writes: “Australia has lobbied for years to keep the reef – which contributes 6.4bn Australian dollars ($4.3bn) to the economy – off the endangered list for fear it could bring an end to the ecosystem’s World Heritage status and reduce its attractiveness to tourists.” The Guardian also carries an explainer navigating “what did [the] report say, how might the government respond and what happens next?”

Rolls-Royce and easyJet confirmed that they successfully completed the “first ground test of a modern aero engine running on hydrogen”, BusinessGreen reports, describing it as “a new aviation milestone”. “EasyJet and Rolls-Royce formed a partnership in July with the aim of demonstrating that hydrogen could be used in a range of aircraft from the mid-2030s onwards,” reports the Independent. “The only waste product from using hydrogen as a fuel is water. But green experts warn the hydrogen must be generated sustainably,” writes Sky News. “The hydrogen in the test engine was produced using tidal and wind energy from the Orkney Islands,” the outlet continues. The Guardian reports: “Grant Shapps, the UK business secretary, said in a statement: ‘The UK is leading the global shift to guilt-free flying, and today’s test by Rolls-Royce and easyJet is an exciting demonstration of how business innovation can transform the way we live our lives.’” MailOnline writes: “The Rolls-Royce hydrogen engine is still in the early testing stages, with the wiring and channels of its current demonstrator all exposed. The British company has also been looking into battery technology for its all-electric plane, which could fly for 30 minutes on a single charge.” The FT also has the story.

In reaction to the Tory rebellion over onshore wind, a Guardian editorial says that Rishi Sunak “is less concerned about having a proper climate policy than being outflanked by Nigel Farage’s referendum on net-zero”. The editorial notes polls which suggest that onshore wind is popular with the general public, and says the onshore wind ban is “about telling the mostly elderly, southern, male Tory party members what they wanted to hear”. It continues: “With Mr Sunak in charge, Britain ends up in hock to his party’s worst instincts. Labour’s Ed Miliband is right to call for the scrapping of the onshore wind ban completely. The country has suffered because successive Conservative governments have ‘cut the green crap’ over the past decade. An analysis by Carbon Brief shows that almost all of the energy requirement from the UK’s net import of Russian gas in 2021 could have been met if the country had continued to add land-based wind turbines at historical rates.”

In other UK comment, a Daily Express editorial under the headline “back to blackout blues” says it is “bitter news that we’re once again facing blackouts”. [National Grid have said blackouts are possible in extreme circumstances, but not “likely”.] This is a “stark reminder of the ongoing energy crisis, caused by surging demand and Russia’s war in Ukraine”, the editorial says. It concludes: “All the more reason to keep aiming for energy security, so we never have to rely on unsavoury partners to keep our homes warm and cosy.” In the Daily Mail, climate-sceptic columnist Richard writes: “It feels like I’ve gone to sleep and woken up in 1973…I thought we’d left the last of energy insecurity behind us”. He says: “Our modern political geniuses have managed to produce a home-grown shortage of both gas and oil, purely out of short-sighted political vanity. They reject cheap, cheerful fracking out of hand, in favour of useless, bird-shredding, landscape-destroying, foreign-manufactured windmills.”

Elsewhere, Sarah Connor – employment columnist at the Financial Times – writes: “When it comes to energy, the UK is really two different countries. There is the country in which people pay smoothed out bills, usually by direct debit, and there is the country in which people have to pay for what they use in advance.” She concludes: “The poorest fifth of households in Britain are more than 20% poorer than their French and German equivalents. The country’s problems with a threadbare safety net have been laid bare by the crisis, but they weren’t created by it. It was always going to be a hard winter. It didn’t need to be this hard.” Meanwhile, the FT‘s business writer, Cat Rutter Pooley, says: “A £9.1bn bill for failed regulation of the UK energy sector, at £2.6bn for supplier exits and £6.5bn for the Bulb bailout, should be enough to prove that Britain’s energy policy is broken. But a year on and Ofgem does not seem much closer to working out how to fix it for the long term.”

And a Sun editorial says “police should haul doomsday cult Just Stop Oil idiots away in handcuffs, not join them”. It says: “The crusties claim to be ‘ensuring a future for humanity’ and stopping ‘mass starvation and slaughter’. Those are weird, warped fantasies … pitiably deranged and utterly unscientific.”

Previous research suggesting “unapparent or even negative responses” of river flooding to increases in extreme precipitation are “largely caused by mixing the signals of floods with different generating mechanisms”, a new study says. Separating out floods by type, the researchers find “a positive response of rainstorm-induced floods to extreme precipitation increases” in a global dataset covering 1950-2017. However, this is “almost entirely offset” by decreases in snow-related flooding, they find, leading to “an overall unapparent change in total global floods in both historical observations and future climate projections”. As the climate warms, the trends found by the study “will become increasingly relevant as higher temperatures cause a further decrease in snowmelt related flooding, while rainfall-driven flooding becomes even more important”, notes an accompanying News & Views article.