Energy giant BP has reported record annual profits, BBC News reports. “The company’s profits more than doubled to $27.7bn (£23bn) in 2022, compared with $12.8bn the year before”, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused oil and gas prices to surge, the outlet says. It adds that “other energy firms have seen similar rises, with Shell reporting record earnings of nearly $40bn last week”. It continues: “The price of Brent crude oil reached nearly $128 a barrel following the invasion, but has since fallen back to about $80. Gas prices also spiked, but have come down from their highs.” The Guardian says that BP’s “huge” profit is “adding fuel to calls for a toughened windfall tax”. It adds that “the Labour party last week asked for Britain’s energy profits levy to be revamped to capture more of the exceptional earnings made by oil and gas firms”. According to the Financial Times, BP has announced plans to boost spending and increase returns to shareholders off the back of the record profits. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that the company “said it would slow its transition to lower-carbon energy”. The Independent notes that Exxon Mobil posted record earnings of $55.7bn last week in its coverage of the story. Le Monde also covers the announcement.

There is widespread UK media speculation that the prime minister Rishi Sunak is planning a reshuffle of his cabinet. BBC News reports that a new party chairman will be appointed, following the sacking of Nadhim Zahawi. “One well-placed source told the BBC they expected Mr Zahawi’s successor to be the trade minister Greg Hands,” the outlet adds. Bloomberg reports that Sunak could deliver on a promise made last year, by splitting up the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). It says three separate departments could be created – one for energy, another for business and trade, and a third for science and technology. The Financial Times says that one person briefed on Sunak’s thinking said “BEIS is struggling”. It adds: “Sunak said when he was running for the Conservative leadership in July last year that he wanted to re-establish an energy department with a remit to make the UK ‘energy independent’. He also promised to create an ‘energy security committee’ charged with keeping the lights on and reforming energy markets to reduce future bills.” The Sun and Politico also report on the possibility that BEIS could be split into three separate departments. Relatedly, the Daily Telegraph writes that business leaders will deliver a letter to Sunak today demanding a UK plan to “counter” the US Inflation Reduction Act in a letter. According to the newspaper, the letter will warn that the UK must shift to economic “war footing” to avoid being left behind by the US. The letter “advocates a merger between the Business Department and the Department for International Trade, as well as carving out a new Department for Energy to focus its efforts on the current crisis in gas and electricity prices,” the newspaper adds. 

In other UK news, the Guardian covers new analysis, which warns that “a sharp rise in wood burning in urban areas could be bringing harmful pollution to greater numbers of people, and shifting the pattern of pollution from poorer to more affluent areas”. According to the Independent, an estimated 1.5m UK homes use traditional log burning stoves. The paper says that “under the government’s new Environmental Improvement Plan 2023, announced by environment secretary Therese Coffey on 31 January, burners in designated ‘smoke control areas’ – most towns and cities – will now only be allowed to emit 3 grams (g) of smoke per hour, down from 5g, as part of a bid to reduce air pollution”. Elsewhere, the Daily Telegraph covers new research, commissioned by electricity storage business Highview Power, which finds that “enough wind power to supply 1.2m homes a day was wasted over winter because there is no capacity to store extra energy generated on gusty days”.

Meanwhile, the Times reports that the North Sea Chapter of the International Association of Drilling Contractors – a trade body representing companies drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea – has called for politicians to take a long-term view of the transition to renewable energy to ensure jobs are protected in the transition to net-zero. And the Guardian reports that an Insulate Britain protester is facing a prison sentence after he “was convicted for contempt of court for telling a jury his actions were motivated by the climate crisis”.

China’s weather agency has “warned” regional authorities to prepare for more extreme weather this year after “record-breaking temperatures and a lengthy drought played havoc with the country’s power supplies and disrupted harvests last summer”, writes Climate Home News. Song Shanyun, spokesman at the China Meteorological Administration, is quoted saying: “At present, global warming is accelerating…and under the impact of climate change, the climate system is becoming increasingly unstable.” The state-run newspaper China Daily covers the same news, quoting Song saying that “in southern parts of China, persistent high temperatures this summer will lead to energy supply shortages when demand peaks”.

Meanwhile, in a “breaking views” column for Reuters, Yawen Chen says that Beijing’s energy policy will “indirectly support Europe”. She adds that a post-Covid “economic rebound will increase the country’s appetite for liquefied natural gas, which Europeans covet after shunning supplies from Moscow following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”. She continues: “Yet, Beijing’s push to hike pipeline imports, use more coal and boost domestic gas production should contain the rise in Chinese demand for the liquid fuel in 2023. That could ease the pain for gas-hungry Europe.” China Dialogue has an article focusing on the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM)’s impact on China’s carbon market. Wu Bixuan, a senior partner at Beijing-based Hiways Law Firm, is quoted saying that “the ‘psychological impact’ of CBAM on Chinese policymakers is ‘far greater’ than its actual impact as it puts an ‘exterior monetary incentive’ on cutting emissions”. Axios carries a news feature titled: “The congressional China-EV showdown.”

Separately, Bloomberg writes that a “sparsely” populated part of China’s Inner Mongolia region is planning a “$25bn push into clean energy”. Citing a report by state news agency Xinhua, Bloomberg says that officials from the area, known as “Alxa League”, held a signing ceremony on Sunday for 32 projects with a total investment of around 169bn yuan ($25bn). OffshoreWind.biz has a “breaking news” story under the headline: “World’s first offshore wind farm using 16MW turbines enters construction in China.”

Finally, Caixin Global has a cover story, titled: “China’s economy appears headed for uneven rebound.” And Reuters reports the views of the International Energy Agency which says it “expects half of this year’s global oil demand growth to come from China…adding that jet fuel demand was surging”.

The Financial Times reports that “heat pump installations in Britain are lagging behind ambitions”. The paper notes that UK ministers set a target of installing 600,000 a year by 2028, but says official figures show that the UK government’s boiler upgrade scheme — which offers homeowners £5,000-£6,000 off the cost of a heat pump — had issued fewer than 9,000 vouchers. Meanwhile, BusinessGreen reports on the newly launched Heat Network Efficiency Scheme – a £32m cash injection to upgrade old and inefficient heat networks across England and Wales, aimed at cutting down household bills and emissions. Separately, BusinessGreen reports that “the UK government has today teamed up with industry to jointly back a raft of zero carbon flight technologies such as hydrogen-powered planes and flying taxis with £113m of new funding”. BusinessGreen also reports that the department for transport has announced a £77m funding boost for clean maritime tech.

In other UK news, magistrates in England and Wales can no longer approve warrants allowing energy companies to forcibly fit prepayment metres, following an intervention from a senior judge, reports the Press Association. Meanwhile, the Guardian covers a new report by the National Audit Office, which finds that a “significant number” of Britons received financial support to help pay energy bills that they did not need. According to the newspaper, the report says “the blanket nature of the financial support meant it helped a ‘deadweight’ of households and businesses that could have afforded to absorb the price rises”. It estimates that the support package will cost £69bn – lower than the £139bn first forecast – largely because of a reduction in the cost of the energy price guarantee. The Press Association adds that “civil servants warned ministers that they did not have enough time to properly assess some of the energy support packages”, and as a result, programmes were “rushed through”. Elsewhere, the Times reports that two leading economic analysts have estimated consumers will start to see their energy bills fall by £2,200 and £2,360 this summer. This means that the average household will pay £2,400 – down from the £3,000 that was forecast – according to MailOnline. It adds that the energy price cap is still expected to rise to £3,000 in April.

More than one-third of plants and animals in the US are “at risk of extinction” – while some 41% of its ecosystems are facing collapse – according to a Reuters “exclusive”. The newswire says: “NatureServe, which analyses data from its network of over 1,000 scientists across the US and Canada, said the report was its most comprehensive yet, synthesising five decades’ worth of its own information on the health of animals, plants and ecosystems”. The analysis finds that half of all cacti species are at risk of extinction, 200 species of trees are at risk of disappearing and over half of 78 grassland types are at risk of “a range-wide collapse.”. The Independent notes that about 1,250 plants were categorised as “critically imperilled” – the last category before “extinction”. It adds: “Areas of where complex biodiversity butt up against booming human population growth and urbanisation see the highest percentage of species at risk: California, Texas and the US southeast.” The Hill notes that the most at-risk animal species are those in freshwater habitats. MailOnline also covers the study.

Tony Abbott, a climate-sceptic former Australian prime minister, has joined the board of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) – “the UK’s main climate denial group” – according to Desmog UK. The paper quotes a GWPF press release, in which Abbott says: “All of us want to save the only planet we have, but this should not be by means which impoverish poorer people in richer countries and hold poorer countries back…We need more genuine science and less groupthink in this debate.” The outlet adds: “As prime minister of Australia from 2013 to 2015, Abbott’s centre-right Liberal Party was widely seen as hostile to climate policy.” The Sydney Morning Herald calls the GWPF a “climate-sceptic thinktank”, adding that, although it is classed as a charity, there are “claims it is, in fact, a lobbying organisation”. And the Guardian says: “Since its launch in 2009, the GWPF has become known for its consistent attacks on climate science, the risks of global heating and – more recently – policies to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.” GWPF has consistently refused to reveal who its funders are.

Paul Waugh, the chief political commentator for the i newspaper, writes that “Johnson is a much bigger threat to Sunak than Truss ever will be”. He says that many Tory MPs see Liz Truss as “so toxic to the party’s brand that she undermines the very causes she espouses, including the good ones”, while Boris Johnson “has in the past shown he has a talent for tapping into the mainstream”. He continues: “Add in that Johnson can sell ‘green jobs’ in the Red Wall better than anyone in his party and that Starmer’s big selling point a cleaner, fairer Britain, and one can see why some in Labour are worried. It’s not impossible that Johnson could audaciously copy Labour’s plan for £28bn in annual borrowing to fund clean energy jobs.”

In other UK comment, Ben Marlow – chief city commentator at the Daily Telegraph – writes that “Britain will never create a homegrown electric car industry”. [This comes as BBC News reports that “an Australian firm has been named as the preferred bidder for Britishvolt, the UK battery start-up which collapsed last month.”] Marlow writes that “Britishvolt always looked like a long shot” and that “it would make far more sense to scrap the entire Britishvolt project”. He continues: “That a business valued at £700m only 12 months ago is expected to be sold for less than £10m when some of the biggest carmakers in the world are pumping tens of billions of pounds into new electric car technology sums up Britain’s efforts…We should admit defeat, give up on our efforts to nurture a plucky national underdog and instead focus on luring established global players to do the work for us. The obvious candidate is Musk.” Meanwhile, Alistair Osborne – the Times chief business commentator – says: “The preferred bidder for the conked-out Britishvolt is another start-up: Australian battery group Recharge Industries. Why should it prove any better at building a gigafactory on the Northumbrian coast?” And the climate-sceptic columnist Charles Moore writes for the Daily Telegraph that “net-zero is the NHS’s latest excuse to skip work”. He says he finds it “depressing” that the NHS became the first health system to embed net-zero into legislation, through the Health and Care Act 2022, adding: “the truth is that becoming a greener NHS involves doing less and seeing fewer patients”.

Elsewhere, Bloomberg opinion columnist Ben Fickling writes that “we’re not even close to running out of green minerals”. He notes the 2021 warning from the International Monetary Fund that the metals demand from the energy transition “may top current global supply,” but goes on to cite new data from the US Geological Survey which “shows why some of those fears are likely to be overblown”. The figures “show a boom in supplies of many of the most important minerals for the energy transition,” Fickling says.

An increase in atmospheric rivers (ARs) – ”intense corridors of moisture transport” – is contributing to “reduced recovery of sea ice” in the Arctic during winter, a new study says. Using observations and climate model simulations, the researchers find a “robust frequency increase in ARs in early winter over the Barents–Kara Seas and the central Arctic for 1979–2021”. The knock-on impacts of this increase causes “stronger melting of thin, fragile ice cover and slowed the seasonal recovery of sea ice, accounting for 34% of the sea-ice cover decline in the Barents–Kara Seas and central Arctic”, the authors say. They add that the increase in ARs is partly in response to human-caused warming and partly due to natural variability in the tropical Pacific.

In emissions pathways consistent with meeting the 1.5C warming limit, countries heavily dependent on coal – including China, India and South Africa – will need to see a reduction in coal use “twice as rapid as that achieved historically for any power technology in any country”, a new study suggests. The researchers constrain an integrated assessment model (IAM) to “the Powering Past Coal Alliance’s differentiated phase-out timelines of 2030 in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/European Union and 2050 elsewhere which, for large coal consumers, lies within the range of historical transitions”. The authors find that “limiting warming to 1.5C then requires CO2 emissions reductions in the global north to be 50% more rapid than if this socio-political reality is ignored”. An accompanying News & Views article says the findings “could be interpreted as a severe blow” for the feasibility of 1.5C pathways, but “it can also be taken as a call-to-arms for governments across the world to have much greater political ambition on phasing out coal, while also tackling oil and gas”.