The US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has “warned China not to flood the world with cheap clean-energy exports, saying they would distort global markets and harm workers”, reports the FT. She said that China’s “export strategy threatens to destabilise global supply chains that are developing around industries such as solar, electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries”, adds the New York Times.

Separately, the Financial Times reports that a quarter of “new energy” vehicles (NEVs) sold in the EU this year are expected to be manufactured in China, rising from about 19% last year to 25% in 2024, according to analysis from the European Federation for Transport & Environment. The outlet says that some EU auto manufacturers warn that “a wave of cheaper models from China will undercut those produced by local companies”. Bloomberg reports that China Energy Engineering, a leading engineering firm for energy projects, has said it is now ready to “pitch the concept of desert mega-bases” to “Belt and Road countries” and other foreign markets. China Daily, a state-run newspaper, questions “when will US consumers be free to choose EVs?” in an opinion piece, arguing that instead of finding a “real and sensible” solution to the problem, the US is trying to block the import of Chinese NEVs. 

 Meanwhile, Chinese finance outlet Securities Times reports that, according to the research institute of China Hydrogen Alliance, China’s hydrogen production in 2022 reached approximately 35m tonnes, accounting for more than a third of the global hydrogen production, adding that “China firmly ranks as the world’s largest hydrogen producer”. China Electricity Council (CEC) has revealed on its WeChat channel that, by the end of 2023, 1,375 electrochemical energy storage power stations had been established in China and 486 have been put into operation. The total capacity is nearly 10 times the capacity in 2020, says the outlet. China Daily reports that the State Council’s recent administrative regulations of “carbon trading market” ensures that the market “plays a significant role” in helping China achieve its “ambitious climate goals”.

In other China news, China Daily reports that Beijing will “strive to ramp up the development of green technology” with an effort to transform the centre into a “national demonstration zone”. Jiemian, an economic news outlet, reports that China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment states that the next five years are an important period for the construction of “Beautiful China” and that it will conduct strategic research in relevant policy documents while introducing “a batch of major scientific and technological projects” to facilitate the transformation of ecological achievements. The New York Times publishes a feature on Elon Musk’s historical and current connection with China regarding the development of Tesla, arguing that Musk and Tesla acted as a “catfish”, which has helped the Chinese NEV and battery industry grow faster and stronger.

Seven lignite coal power plants are being permanently closed this weekend, reports Frankfurter Rundschau, as a part of Germany’s coal phase-out plan. Table.Media explains that the extension of their runtime, which the federal government allowed in 2022 in response to the halted gas deliveries from Russia, ends on 31 March. The outlet adds that the installed maximum capacity of brown coal power plants “was hardly ever fully utilised” during the past two winters. EurActiv says, together, they had a “combined generating capacity of 3.1 gigawatts”. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ​​notes that the German Federal Network Agency stated that “the shutdowns are planned and accounted for in all supply forecasts” and that “the supply security is still guaranteed” due to increased power generation from renewable energy sources. However, Der Spiegel reports that the end of a state-supported “price brake” on gas and heating, implemented in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is expected to result in higher gas prices for consumers in Germany starting in April. 

Meanwhile, “exclusive satellite images” reveal German companies’ involvement in Bangladesh’s coal-power expansion, according to Wirtschaftswoche. The Stuttgart-based engineering firm Fichtner Group “planned and organised” the construction of the “controversial” Rampal power plant, while the Lübeck-based container shipping company Oldendorff transports coal from Indonesia to the Payra power plant, says the article. Finally, Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that the first tanker has arrived at the new German terminal for liquefied “natural” gas (LNG) on the island of Rügen, carrying Norwegian LNG for testing delivery and loading procedures. While critics argue that the terminal is creating excess capacity and environmental concerns, the German government says it is necessary for energy security, notes the newspaper.

Two of the world’s largest aid agencies, IFRC and USAid, are hosting an inaugural global summit on extreme heat, “as directors warn that the climate crisis is dramatically increasing the probability of a mass-fatality heat disaster”, reports the Guardian. The conference will highlight work being done to tackle high temperatures including tree-planting projects and the development of reflective roof coverings that reduce indoor temperatures, it continues. The agencies will use the conference to urge national governments, local authorities, humanitarian groups, companies, school and hospitals to develop heat action plans, it continues. IFRC and USAid will “float the idea of naming heatwaves in the same way that typhoons or hurricanes are labelled to make them more prominent”, the article notes. The conference follows record-breaking temperatures in 2023, with 3.8 billion people – half the world’s population – “sweltered in extreme heat for at least one day”, the Guardian notes. While 2023’s record-temperatures follows decades of scientist’s “sounding the alarm about rapidly rising temperatures” the sudden spike “blew far beyond what statistical climate models had predicted”, states the Los Angeles Times. “It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate scientists’ predictive capabilities more than 2023 has,” wrote Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in a recent article in the journal Nature, the article quotes. Heat-related deaths have been reported in Sudan, where a “blistering heatwave” has forced schools to lockdown, reports the Daily Telegraph. Officials have warned temperatures could rise to 45C and Médecins Sans Frontières has reported hospital equipment starting to break down due to overheating, the article notes.

The UK’s regulator Ofgem has given the go ahead for a £3.4bn funding package for a high-voltage power cable to connect Scotland and England, reports the Press Association. The “electricity superhighway” – will connect Peterhead in Aberdeenshire to Drax in North Yorkshire when it is completed in 2029, it adds. The Economist examines the future of the Drax power plant, which has transitioned from coal to biomass and is now looking to develop carbon capture and storage. The UK is being left “playing catch-up” to the US, as “generous subsidies lure carbon capture start-ups across the Pond”, says the Times. There are fears that the UK has moved too slowly in responding to the US’s Inflation Reduction Act, it explains.

Oil and gas companies will have to reduce their methane emissions under a new rule finalised by the Bureau of Land Management, an arm of the US Interior Department, reports the Washington Post. The rule builds on the Biden Administrations wider plans to cut methane, as the potent greenhouse gas accounts for nearly a third of global warming, the article states. Oil and gas drillers on public land will now have to certify that they will capture all methane from their sites, or come up with a plan to reduce wasted gas, reports the Hill. This rule is expected to generate $51m per year in government revenues and $17.9m in climate-related benefits to society, it adds. The rule follows the release of the more comprehensive methane-reduction plan announced by the Environmental Protection Agency in December, reports the Associated Press. This plan targeted existing oil and gas wells in the US, rather than just new wells as previous regulations had done, as well as regulating smaller wells find and plug methane leaks, it adds. 

In other US news, a number of US cities on the east coast are sinking, increasing the risk of flooding due to sea level rise, reports the Guardian. New York, Baltimore and Norfolk in Virginia sank between 1mm and 2mm a year between 2007 and 2020, while other places sank at double or triple that rate over the period, it states. Some places are subsiding due to groundwater having been pumped out for water supplies or for natural gas, but “New York and other cities are sinking under the sheer weight of their buildings pressing into soft ground”, the article explains.

Elsewhere, the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on Tuesday has cut off access to much of the cities port disrupting the supply of “cars, coal and tofu”, reports the Washington Post. It quotes Alexis Ellender, lead analyst at global trade intelligence company Kpler, saying: “The port ranked second in the country for exporting coal last year, according to the state of Maryland. But it’s not a huge global supplier of thermal coal, and the disruption can likely be made up by replacements from Australia or Indonesia if needed, said.”

An estimated 19% of food produced globally was wasted in 2022, according to a new UN report, states the Associated Press. About 1.05bn metric tonnes of food went to waste, even as chronic hunger increases the UN Environment Programme’s Food Waste Index Report found, it continues. Food waste is a concern partly because of the environment toll of production, including the land water required to raise crops and animals, as well as the greenhouse gas emissions it produces including methane, the article notes. Households were responsible for about 60% of the waste, food services for 28% and retail for about 12% in 2022, reports the Guardian. Waste is “a big contributor to the climate and biodiversity crises, accounting for close to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions and displacing wildlife from intensive farming, as more than a quarter of the world’s agricultural land is given over to the production of food that is subsequently wasted”, the article notes.

Climate change “may be affecting global timekeeping” as melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica slow the Earth’s rotation, reports the Financial Times. The Earth’s rotation speed is not constant and has moved out of line with clocks since coordinated universal time was adopted in the 1960s, with an extra second added periodically, the article explains. Recently fluctuations in the Earth’s core had made the planet rotate faster, prompting suggestions it would be necessary to take away some time by 2026 instead, it continues. However, melting polar ice may have counteracted this trend and could result in a delay to the adjustment to 2029, the FT states. Meltwater from Greenland and Antarctica has been moving towards the equator, increasing the equatorial bulge of the planet, while ice rises at the poles have pressed down the land, together making the Earth more spherical, reports the Washington Post. A new paper in Nature suggests that while the Earth’s core is making it rotate faster, this changing shape caused by climate change is slowing it down, it continues.

Elsewhere, a “massive vortex of ocean water encircling Antarctica, a swirling volume 100-times larger than all the world’s rivers combined, is getting faster due to climate change”, reports the Daily Mail. The Antarctic circumpolar current is speeding sea level rise by moving the ice in Antarctic waters, “like a straw stirring ice into a cold drink”, it adds. Antarctica is often “neglected in the climate narrative”, in part because of its remoteness and in part because of an “early scientific miscalculation” which suggested it was relatively stable, suggests the Economist. (See Comment below.) However, early models were wrong and “a build-up of jaw-dropping events and extremes in recent years has shown that Antarctica is undergoing massive changes on land, sea and in the atmosphere above”, it continues.

Green steel start-up Electra has hit a milestone, saying it can now make emissions-free iron without melting ore as part of a commercial-sized prototype, reports Bloomberg. This is a “major milestone for a technology that’s only a few years old and promised a step-change in the race to produce steel without a massive carbon footprint”, the article notes. Electra, which is backed by Bill Gates, is now looking for a factory to allow it to continue to scale up, it continues. Steel accounts for 7% of global CO2 emissions each year, more than the impact of shipping and aviation combined, notes Bloomberg. There is increasing demand for “green steel”, driven by automakers, electrical-appliance brands and equipment manufacturers, who are “willing to pay a premium price for emissions-free steel in a bid to meet their climate commitments”, adds the article. It quotes Sandeep Nijhawan, chief executive officer of Electra, who says: “The opportunity and the size of the problem is so big that there are going to be multiple paths to solve it. I’m not being pressed by a competitive threat. Rather I’m being pulled by demand.” Steel, the biggest industrial emitter, has traditionally been considered a “hard-to-abate”, notes Hannah Ritchie in her Sustainability by Numbers Substack. As populations continue to grow and urbanise, “we’ll need [steel] for new cities, bridges, infrastructure, and low-carbon technologies. So we better find a way of decarbonising it”, the article notes.

Compared to the changes in the Arctic, those in Antarctica are going “greatly underappreciated”, says an editorial in the Economist. This is in part because of its remoteness and in part because it was viewed as relatively stable, the article adds: “Earth’s largest refrigerator is…showing alarming signs of a big thaw, one which will have consequences for the rest of the planet.” Ice sheets are slipping into the ocean, sea levels are rising and atmospheric circulation is shifting, the article notes. The 56 countries that have signed the Antarctic treaty may not be able to protect its environment, but they can “at least increase their efforts to learn what the changes being forced on the empty continent in their charge mean for the rest of the world”, it concludes. 

In other comment, assistant editor Jeremy Warner in the Daily Telegraph argues that the UK is being “frogmarched into smart-meter oblivion” following a proposal to introduce dynamic pricing by regulator Ofgem. On the Times’ letters page, Jess Ralston from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit responds to an editorial in the publication yesterday calling to push back the net-zero timeline. She says: “The cost of the status quo is huge and yet the government fumbled its renewables auction last year and secured no new offshore wind farms.”

New forests around cities – known as peri-urban forests – could improve air quality, bring down temperatures, reduce the heat-island effect and remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, according to a new study. The research constructed a 500m resolution global map of peri-urban areas suitable for tree-planting, finding that these areas could host 241-106bn trees (or 101-34bn, excluding current croplands) and that 80% of these trees could be hosted in just 20 countries. The authors suggest that although forest restoration cannot replace emissions reductions, peri-urban forests can play a “crucial role” in decisions about where to focus tree-planting efforts.

A new study projects an “impending massive shift in urban wildlife” as temperatures rise in Canadian and US cities. The authors modelled more than 2,000 animal species to examine how climate change will impact wildlife, finding evidence that thousands of species could disappear and be replaced by new species or not replaced at all. The projected shifts are consistent across emissions scenarios, with amphibians and canines among the most affected. This shift could affect the cultural experiences of humans, the delivery of ecosystem services and humans’ relationship with nature, say the authors, adding that “the severity of change will be defined by our action or inaction to mitigate climate change”.