Several publications cover the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) annual methane tracker report, which says that global methane emissions from fossil fuels reached a near record high last year despite new international pledges to reduce them, according to Bloomberg. It explains: “While the analysis highlighted progress in some places, on the whole it suggests global oil, gas and coal producers and governments are falling short of promises to cut methane emissions, directly jeopardising global efforts to limit climate change. The fossil fuel industry must cut methane emissions 75% by 2030, the IEA said, in order to be on pace for net-zero emissions in 2050, which aligns with the goals of the Paris Agreement.” The Guardian says that the report warns that it will be impossible to meet climate goals unless fossil-fuel companies plug methane leaks from their production methods. It explains: “About 170bn cubic metres of methane was emitted from fossil fuel operations around the world last year, which is more than the entire natural gas production of Qatar. Yet many of these leaks could easily be plugged if the best practices developed in some countries – such as Norway, which has low methane leaks from its oil and gas drilling operations – were adopted around the world.” It adds that, according to the report, the least efficient operations are currently about 100 times worse than the most efficient, with Turkmenistan and Venezuela having the most polluting practices. Fixing methane leaks would come at “virtually no cost”, the IEA says, according to Agence France-Press (AFP). “There is no reason for emissions to remain as high as they are,” IEA chief energy economist Tim Gould tells reporters, according to AFP. However, the IEA added it was optimistic new satellites could help improve monitoring and transparency around leaks of methane, Reuters reports.

UK energy secretary Claire Coutinho has announced the details of plans to support new gas fired power plants, much trailed yesterday, the Press Association reports. During a speech at Chatham House, Coutinho said the government will “stand with” companies investing in gas and claimed that “without gas backing up renewables, we face the genuine prospect of blackouts”. PA says: “Reaction to the statement was mixed, with experts acknowledging the need for some unabated gas in the coming years, but warning that building new gas plants should not delay efforts to move electricity generation away from fossil fuels.” Coutinho said new gas plants “would also need to be net-zero ready, meaning they could switch to cleaner hydrogen fuel or add technology to capture carbon emissions when they become commercially viable”, Reuters adds. The Times also covers the news. Business Green reproduces Coutinho’s speech in full. Carbon Brief’s Dr Simon Evans has created a spreadsheet tracking the 12 documents that were released alongside Coutinho’s announcement. The Guardian explains what the plans mean for climate targets. The Daily Telegraph reports on snap analysis from consultancy Aurora finding the new boost to gas will cost the average UK household £178 over the next decade. It also publishes an article titled: “The charts that show why Sunak has been forced to build a new gas plant.”

Elsewhere, the Guardian covers a new report from the UK’s climate advisers, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), which finds that the UK’s plans for adapting to the effects of the climate crisis “fall far short” of what is required. The CCC repeated previous warnings that the UK has “no credible plan” for adaptation, despite the government publishing its third national adaptation programme last summer, the Guardian says. The Press Association and Bloomberg also cover the warning. 

The Times reports that the government is putting forward new plans to change the way renewable power companies are paid for power “in an effort to reduce the millions of pounds handed to generators to switch off”. The Financial Times has a feature on how UK heat pump manufacturers are looking to the UK government for certainty. A second FT story, carried on its frontpage, says MPs have launched a probe into the health impacts of abandoned Welsh mines following an investigation by the newspaper. DeSmog reports that the Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey accepted a £2,500 gala ticket from a North Sea oil and gas firm. The Guardian reports that the UK is one of five big North Sea oil and gas producers that has failed to make a plan to stop drilling soon enough to meet the 1.5C climate goal, according to campaigners.

Politico speaks to EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra, who says Brussels must “focus just as much and probably more” on climate action following Europe’s elections this year. Politico reports: “The bloc must become more resilient to climate change, he stressed, a massive undertaking that includes building dikes to protect coasts from sea-level rise and ensuring hospitals can cope with an uptick in tropical diseases. Even if the EU ‘gets everything right’ on its path to eradicate its global warming contributions in the coming decades, Hoekstra said, ‘unfortunately, we will see more adverse effects, more droughts, more flooding’.” It adds that the warning comes “at a politically perilous moment, with rising anti-green sentiment pushing Brussels to relax some environmental rules and anxious politicians scaling back climate ambitions ahead of June’s EU elections”. Elsewhere, a second Politico story reports on Ukraine’s plans to create a relaxed investment environment for clean energy to help it rebuild from war.

Sales of battery-powered electric vehicles (BEVs) in China increased 18.2% in January to February, “compared to 20.8% for all of 2023”, according to the China Passenger Car Association, industry news outlet Oil Price reports. At the same time, BYD “exported 19% of its vehicles in February”, contributing to an “18% increase” in car exports overall during the month, according to the outlet. State-run newspaper China Daily reports that China’s auto exports have “maintained fast growth momentum, with a year-on-year increase of more than 30%” for January and February. It adds that exports will likely “grow about 20% this year”, according to one estimate. The Wall Street Journal publishes an “exclusive”, saying that Chinese carmaker BYD is facing “challenges in its overseas expansion”, discovering that its success at home “doesn’t necessarily translate into quick success in big foreign markets such as Europe”. Economic outlet Caixin quotes Li Yunze, head of the National Administration of Financial Regulation (NAFR), saying China is planning to “improv[e] the insurance policies for NEVs [new energy vehicles, mainly EVs] to encourage more households to buy cars”. State-run newspaper China Energy News reports that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has published catalogues of NEV models which can take advantage of “purchase tax reductions and exemptions”. 

Meanwhile, Reuters quotes Ma Jun, director of the thinktank Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, saying that “energy intensity might matter less in the future…[while] carbon intensity is going to matter more” in response to the 2.5% energy intensity target set for 2024. He argues that “the change in how [energy intensity] is calculated ‘reflects a new reality’ for China, in which economic growth is increasingly driven by the renewables sector, and fossil-fuel dependent industries will come under more pressure to boost efficiency”. State news agency Xinhua profiles president Xi Jinping, calling him “the reformer” and stating that he believes “protecting the environment and ecology is vital to sustaining the Chinese nation’s development and is also crucial for protecting the Earth”, and that since 2014, Xi has been “a big fan of electric cars”. China Daily publishes a commentary saying that “environmental conservation and the transition to a green economy were…central themes of the two sessions”.

Xinhua interviews Costantinos Bt. Costantinos, professor at Addis Ababa University, who says that “Chinese enterprises and startups are currently making great steps in delivering clean energy technologies to the world”. Economic outlet Jiemian publishes an interview with Jiang Xinyu, CEO of Zhiguang Energy Storage, who says “the value of energy storage does not lie in the percentage of electricity it stores or releases…but in the value it contributes when supply and demand are not balanced”. The Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily publishes a commentary by Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), who writes that: “developing countries with leading clean energy technologies, such as China, can…play a greater role in leading the world’s green transition by providing affordable, green and appropriate equipment and technologies to a number of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America”.

In Cusco, Peru, more than 20 square kilometres of glacier area have disappeared in the last four years, El Comercio reports. It cites the 2023 national inventory of glaciers and lagoons of glacial origin, which indicates that the country is home to 68% of the world’s tropical glaciers and that Cusco holds 765 glaciers. The outlet cites Óscar Vilca López, a specialist at the National Institute for Research in Glaciers and Mountain Ecosystems, and Ricardo Vila Gárrafa, a specialist in risk management and geotechnics, who say that glacial retreat could lead to risks such as floods or landslides.

Meanwhile, Excélsior reports that members of Mexico’s parliament approved a reform to amend the General Law on Climate Change and gradually replace combustion vehicles with hybrid and electric ones. The reform is now under further review in the upper chamber, it says. In a separate piece, journalist Lorena Rivera writes in her column for Excélsior that civil society organisations have launched a manifesto for addressing the country’s water scarcity issues. Rivera adds that the manifesto is intended to be adopted by candidates in the Mexican general election on 2 June. 

Elsewhere, Colombia’s ministry of mines and energy announced a committee, alongside Germany, to promote research and development of “green” hydrogen projects in the country, El Espectador reports. In another piece, the newspaper notes that the ministry also announced a new solar park in western Colombia with a capacity of 102 megawatts, which could supply electricity to about 300,000 people.

Finally, Brazil’s Congress is set to discuss a package of proposals on energy transition that did not pass last year, Folha de São Paulo reports. The outlet highlights that, according to members of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government and representatives of parliament and the energy sector, the package aims to introduce projects related to carbon offsets, green hydrogen, biofuels, offshore wind energy, and the “transition acceleration program”.

An editorial in the Times focuses on new Carbon Brief analysis showing UK emissions fell to their lowest levels since 1879 last year. It says: “Climate policy is an area in which bad news is ­liable to crowd out the good. All too often, for fear of engendering a premature sense of complacency, positive developments in tackling climate change are marginalised or downplayed. An analysis of official government data published this week by the website Carbon Brief provides an ­important corrective to that gloomy tendency.” The Times also publishes a piece examining the policies of the Reform party led by property millionaire Richard Tice. It says that “energy and net-zero is a major area of focus” for the party, adding: “Tice has referred to net-zero as ‘net-stupid’ and wants to accelerate the granting of oil and gas licences in the North Sea. Reform has said all existing carbon emissions targets should be abandoned, due to what it says is an unfair burden being placed on taxpayers and consumers.” The profile adds: “In 2023 Reform recorded £255,000 in donations. Some £200,000 came from First Corporate Consultants Ltd, a company owned by the climate change sceptic Terence Mordaunt, who previously donated to the Tories.”

Elsewhere, the Daily Mail publishes an editorial praising the government’s plan to boost gas power, saying: “This country is a world leader in the transition to renewables, which provide some 50% of our energy. But pretending they can serve all our needs in the foreseeable future is a fantasy.” [This is incorrect – renewables currently provide nearly half of the UK’s electricity, but not half of all energy. In addition, plans to reach net-zero emissions do not rely on renewables “serving all our needs”.] A Lex comment in the FT says avoiding a UK gas comeback requires more energy storage. Business Green editor James Murray says the “government’s fixation on gas” risks undermining energy security. Meanwhile, a Daily Telegraph column by retired academic Gordon Hughes, who has previously written reports for the UK’s largest climate sceptic group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, says that the new gas plans show “net-zero is dead”. The Daily Telegraph also publishes a column by notorious climate sceptic writer Ross Clark titled: “The great electric car scandal is only just beginning.” As well, the Daily Telegraph publishes a comment piece by world economy editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchards on the prospects of nuclear fusion coming sooner than thought. 

A new study provides the first estimate of the growth and carbon sequestration potential of giant sequoias in the UK. Despite only being introduced in the mid-19th century, giant sequoias make up some of the UK’s largest trees, the study says. However, “little is known about their growth and carbon uptake under UK conditions”. Using “three-dimensional terrestrial laser scanning”, the researchers perform detailed structural measurements of 97 trees at three sites covering a range of different UK conditions. The findings suggest that UK-grown giant sequoias can sequester carbon at a rate of 85kg per year, varying with climate, management and age.

Earlier annual “greening” of vegetation because of warmer spring temperatures increased the summer ecosystem carbon sink in the northern hemisphere between 1982 and 2015, new research says. Combining satellite vegetation data, model simulations and “an explainable machine-learning approach”, the researchers estimate the impact of earlier spring greening on the terrestrial carbon sink of the following season. For forests, the researchers find a “consistent and positive relationship” with earlier spring greening, while “grassland in arid and semi-arid regions is weakly stimulated, as indicative of increasing risks of declining carbon sink in summer”.

The impact of climatic change on groundwater recharge and the sustainability of groundwater use by humans and ecosystems “probably exceed previous predictions”, a new study suggests. The researchers use the relationship between climatic aridity and long-term recharge measurements at more than 5,000 locations globally to “identify regions where recharge is most sensitive to changes in climatic aridity”. The findings suggest that recharge “is most sensitive to climate changes in regions where potential evapotranspiration slightly exceeds precipitation, meaning even modest aridification can substantially decrease groundwater recharge”. The researchers note that “recharge is more sensitive to changes in aridity than global hydrological models suggest”. The authors have written an accompanying research briefing about their study.