BP is set to report soaring annual profits of nearly $13bn (£9.6bn) amid high oil and gas prices this week, renewing calls for a windfall tax on energy firms to ease the cost-of-living crisis, the Times reports. The oil major, which reports its profits tomorrow, is projected to have made $3.9bn in underlying net profit in the fourth quarter, 34 times higher than a year earlier, the Times says. Company chief executive Bernard Looney said in November that BP was “a cash machine at these types of prices”. The Observer reports that, together, BP and Shell are on course to make a profit of £40bn. “MPs and unions said a large proportion of the industry’s profits were an unjustified windfall and the government should move quickly to impose a tax before the companies distribute them to shareholders,” the Observer reports. The Financial Times reports that North Sea operators are currently resisting calls for a windfall tax.

Meanwhile, the Independent speaks to MPs and experts who say that the UK must shift to renewables faster to protect against future energy crises. Ed Miliband, the shadow climate change and net zero secretary, tells the Independent a “failure to transition to zero carbon” has made the UK “more vulnerable as a country”. Similarly, the Big Issue reports on four reasons net-zero is a “solution” rather than a driver for the energy crisis. Elsewhere, the Press Association reports that the head of Scottish energy giant SSE has hit out at the “misconstrued” notion that an expansion in renewable power is causing the UK’s energy crisis. Alistair Phillips-Davies said his latest wind farm could have knocked nearly £70 off bills if it had opened in time for this winter, according to PA. A second PA story reports on analysis by the Lib Dems showing “grossly unfair” regional differences in energy bills. (Lib Dems leader Sir Ed Davey has a comment piece in today’s Times Red Box where he says “the Conservatives ‘go slow’ on climate action has also exposed Britain more to Russian gas price blackmail”.) Meanwhile, the Mail on Sunday reports on a “sinister bid” from climate “fanatics” to blockade the UK’s oil refineries, fuel trucks and petrol stations next month.

In addition, the Daily Telegraph reports on its frontpage that UK homes “risk an energy rating downgrade if they install a heat pump”. It says: “The government has held meetings with the industry about a possible rule change to rectify the issue, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.” It quotes Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay, chairman of the climate-sceptic “net-zero scrutiny” group of Tory MPs, who claims “heat pumps can actually increase energy use”. (On Twitter, energy efficiency research Dr Jan Rosenow describes this claim as “demonstrably false” in a factcheck.) Separately, the Times reports that households are going to have to spend upwards of £100bn improving their homes if they are to meet the government’s energy-efficiency regulations, according to new analysis. And the Sun reports that the government is being urged by the Social Market Foundation to launch a “plumber’s army” to speed up the switch to heat pumps.

Some of the world’s largest companies, such as Amazon, Ikea, Nestlé and Unilever, are failing to live up to promises they will reach net-zero emissions, according to an analysis reported on by many outlets. The Guardian reports that the analysis, by the research group NewClimate Institute and NGO Carbon Market Watch, finds the 25 firms studied are currently on track to cut their CO2 emissions by only 40% rather than the 100% cuts claimed to reach net-zero. The Financial Times adds that out of the 25 companies, which together account for 5% of all greenhouse gas emissions, half were found “to have no absolute emissions-reduction goal for their ‘net-zero’ target year”. “There is not sufficient regulation or accountability for these companies, they have a free pass essentially,” Thomas Day, lead author and founding partner at the NewClimate Institute, tells the FT. BBC News adds that a number of the companies studied say “they disagreed with some of the methods used in the report and said they were committed to taking action to curb climate change”. The Washington Post and Climate Home News also cover the Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2022 report.

Several US publications report that US president Joe Biden has renewed for four years Trump-era tariffs on imported solar panels. The move comes as “his administration tries to boost US manufacturing of clean energy infrastructure”, the FT reports. Biden’s decision includes a “key exemption” for imported two-sided, or bifacial, panels that are “widely used in utility-scale solar projects”, Bloomberg reports. According to Reuters, an official from China said the tariffs “distort international trade and hinders the development of clean, low-emission energy”.

Elsewhere, InsideClimate News reports that the Biden administration will give the public a new opportunity to weigh in on a major oil project proposed in the Alaskan Arctic, “handing a victory to environmental groups”.

Cyclone Batsirai, the second cyclone to hit Madagascar in two weeks, has triggered floods, with landslides bringing down buildings and claiming the lives of at least 10 people, Reuters reports. The cyclone that “swept inland” on Saturday evening brought heavy rain and wind speeds of 165 kph and could displace “as many as 150,000 people”. However, in the island’s southeast, schools and churches that hoped to house the displaced “had their roofs torn off” by gale-force winds. In Nosy Varika on the east coast, the newswire says that almost 95% of buildings were destroyed “as if we had just been bombed” and floods cut access, quoting a local official. The damage compounds the wave of destruction wrought by Cyclone Ana that struck the island nation on 22 January that left at least 55 dead, displacing 130,000, Reuters adds.

Madagascar’s environment minister Vahinala Raharinirina has told BBC News that many villages “were nearly completely gone”, some being swept away by the storm. She said the country had submitted a plan at COP26, “which showed it needed $1bn (£740m) a year to adapt to the effects of climate change”. Officials have called for international assistance: the World Food Programme has begun preparing food stocks for those in need, pointing out that the “recent pattern of destructive storms caused by global warming and climate change has caused failed harvests, high food prices and increased food insecurity in the region”.

China’s president Xi Jinping met with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Friday in Beijing ahead of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics 2022, the South China Morning Post reports. The Hong Kong-based newspaper says that the two leaders confirmed “a series of agreements”, including a deal for Russia to supply China with 10bn cubic metres of gas per year via a new pipeline. Reuters reports that Russia has agreed to a 30-year contract to supply gas to China via the deal, which will see sales settled in euros. The news agency describes Russia’s move as “bolstering an energy alliance with Beijing amid Moscow’s strained ties with the West over Ukraine and other issues”. In another report, Reuters says that the deal with see Russian boosting its gas exports to China “by a quarter”.

Meanwhile, RT – a state-controlled Russian TV network – reports that the Russia-China gas deal was signed between Russia’s Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). It says that the agreement was “a second long-term contract” between the two companies. Russian news agency Tass reports that Russia and China “oppose setting up new barriers in international trade under the pretext of fighting climate change”. It cites “a joint statement adopted by the two countries on Friday”.

Separately, China’s state news agency Xinhua reports that Xi stated in his meeting with Putin that both sides “should step up coordination and cooperation in international affairs, and shoulder major-country responsibilities in global issues of pressing concern”, such as fighting climate change. China’s state broadcaster CCTV airs a six-minute news clip of Xi and Putin’s talks.

Elsewhere, S&P Global Platts notes that Russia inked the deal with China as “tension with the West over Ukraine underlines the strategic importance of further supply diversification to the East”. And, according to Argus Media, the gas “is likely to be shipped to China from far east Russia’s Sakhalin through Gazprom’s Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok pipeline, although no timeframe has been given”. The Guardian and AP also feature the energy deal.

S&P Global Platts reports that China plans to set up a uniform power market by 2030 and launch a national power exchange “when the time is ripe”. The outlet says that the moves “are key to the large-scale adoption of renewables and the decarbonisation of the world’s largest power sector”. It cites a document jointly published by China’s state economic and energy planners. (Carbon Brief has analysed the same document in last week’s China Briefing.) Another article from S&P Global Platts looks at how the increasing demand for clean energy worldwide could “fuel [the] growth” of the production, exports and pricing of China’s rare earth elements in 2022.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that Audi is “considering” investments in clean energy in China. The outlet says that German carmaker is “struggling to source enough power from renewable sources to churn out hundreds of thousands of vehicles each year”. Separately, a Reuters report says that China “is striving to run a ‘green’ Olympics to showcase its leadership in climate-friendly tech and counter concerns about the lack of natural snow at its venues”.

Also focusing on the Winter Olympics 2022, AP reports that the ice rinks of the games have put a “spotlight” on “potent” greenhouse gases. It explains: “Four newly built rinks at the games will use alternative carbon dioxide cooling systems with far less of an impact on global warming than the artificial refrigerants used in such appliances, though other rinks will still use such refrigerants.“ The Global Times – a Chinese state-run newspaper – feature the “new technologies” that “power” the Winter Olympics. It writes: “The use of advanced technologies will also ensure a green Olympics with a 100% green power supply, the first time in Olympic history.” Elsewhere, Nature runs an article looking at how Beijing plans to make its Winter Olympics “carbon neutral”.

In the Independent, Green Party MP Caroline Lucas backs calls for a windfall tax on oil and gas companies to ease the current cost-of-living crisis, alongside “measures that treat energy as an essential public good”. She adds: “Some members of the Tory party put forward the ‘solution’ of a return to fracking and dropping the environmental levy on energy bills – moves that would simply help fuel the climate emergency, while having zero impact on gas prices.”

Her words come as Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay, chairman of the climate-sceptic “net-zero scrutiny group” of Tory MPs, writes for the Daily Telegraph saying the “self-inflicted pain caused by the rush to net zero is disastrous”. (Mackinlay is also a trustee of the climate-sceptic lobby group GWPF, which the article does not declare. The GWPF has long refused to reveal who its funders are.) “The baffling decision to impose a moratorium on extracting our own shale gas resources and a broad refusal, with limited exceptions, to unlock North Sea reserves are cases in point,” he says. Meanwhile, also in the Daily Telegraph, former Downing Street chief of staff Nick Timothy says the UK “should have approved new nuclear power stations”. He adds: “Theresa May began her premiership promising ‘an energy policy that emphasises the reliability of supply and lower costs for users’. This should have meant new nuclear and a dash for gas, but instead we got a net zero target with no idea of how to achieve it or what it would cost. Now the Johnson government, even more religious about net-zero, opposes fracking and chooses not to exploit North Sea gas fields.”

Meanwhile, an editorial in the Sun asks: “Why isn’t this Tory government, with its huge majority, ‘getting fracking done’? There is no good answer.” A second Sun editorial backs a call to train more plumbers to install heat pumps in UK homes. And an editorial in the Sun on Sunday calls on Boris Johnson to “ax Ed Miliband’s green levies” in response to the energy crisis. Meanwhile, an editorial in the Daily Telegraph urges Johnson to listen to backbenchers on the energy crisis, adding “the expectation that everyone will run out and buy an electric car or heat pump, especially when the infrastructure and market are not ready, is absurd”.

Finally, climate-sceptic commentator Bjorn Lomborg writes in the Daily Mail, citing environment secretary George Eustice on a claim that electric cars “create polluting particles”. Forbes publishes a factcheck in response to the claims.

Nighttime minimum temperatures are increasing faster than daytime maximum temperatures across southeast Asia, according to new research. The authors use an observational dataset and two reanalysis datasets – that combine of observational and modelling data – to analyse the heatwave trends during in southeast Asia over 1983-2016. They find that the proportion of land area in southeast Asia affected by heatwaves is rising. The study “highlights the importance of high-quality data…for better understanding [heatwaves] in southeast Asia”, the authors say.

New research finds that sub-Arctic seas are “outstanding global warming spots”, and that – below 100m – the Arctic ocean is subject to “much stronger” warming than the average global ocean. The authors simulate the temperature and salinity in the Arctic Ocean deep basin in 23 of the climate models participating in the sixth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). The study also finds “no obvious improvement in the representation of the Arctic hydrography in CMIP6 compared to CMIP5”, and concludes that “the identified biases and projection uncertainties call for a concerted effort for major improvements of coupled climate models”.