The world’s largest insurance marketplace, Lloyd’s of London, was forced to shut its headquarters yesterday after a group of climate activists from Extinction Rebellion barricaded “one of the City’s best-known buildings”, according to the Financial Times. The protest group has previously targeted banks and the Bank of England, raising the issue of fossil fuel industry financing, but said this was the first time it had driven a financial institution to close its doors, the newspaper adds. The piece notes that Lloyd’s “specialises in insuring big, complex risks including in the energy sector” and has already experienced a number of protests by climate campaigners. The company said it had advised its employees and market participants not to come to the headquarters and that it was trading remotely while the activists blocked the building’s doors, according to Reuters. The piece continues by quoting Extinction Rebellion, which said that more than 60 people had gathered at the flagship building to demand Lloyds “stop insuring fossil fuels including coal, tar sands, oil and gas”. MailOnline reports that the protesters were moved on by police eight hours after blocking all 25 entrances and scaling the outside of the building. The Guardian notes that Extinction Rebellion activists have also been staging blockades at fuel distribution terminals – leading to reports of petrol shortages – as part of their Just Stop Oil campaign. A separate story in the Guardian reports that as the group approaches 1,000 arrests for their actions so far, the Just Stop Oil activists have vowed to continue blockading oil terminals until they are all jailed. According to the Independent, the group say they will continue the disruption until the government makes a statement that it will “end all new fossil fuel licences and consents in the UK”.

The Guardian reports that Conservative MPs have criticised Ben Goldsmith and called for his resignation as chair of the Conservative Environment Network (CEN) and a director at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), after he voiced his support for Extinction Rebellion. Goldsmith also criticised the Labour party’s strong stance against the Just Stop Oil protests, stating in a later deleted tweet that “the protesters are right to be doing whatever it takes to wake people up. The fossil fuel industry is grubby and dangerous…I’m with Extinction Rebellion”. MailOnline has published one of its now-customary articles profiling the “eco zealots causing havoc at petrol pumps”, accusing one protester of being a “rollerskater who turned her back on watchmaking”.

Meanwhile, the Independent reports that as 12 Insulate Britain protesters were fined over an action that blockaded the M25, they were praised by the sentencing judge who said he was “inspired” to “do what I can to reduce my own impact on the planet”.

A number of outlets, including Associated Press, report on a new study that shows climate change made the “record-smashing” 2020 Atlantic hurricane season considerably wetter, “and it will likely make this season rainier, too”. The newswire notes that while past studies have predicted climate change would make storms wetter and found individual storms such as Hurricane Harvey were wetter due to climate change, this is the first study to look at an entire season. The New York Times notes that the 2020 season was the most active on record with 30 named storms, 14 of which reached hurricane strength, with some causing severe flooding. The Washington Post adds that the season chalked up more than $40bn in damage across the US, and also saw two category 4 storms hit the same region in Central America within weeks of one another. For more on the paper and its findings, see Carbon Brief’s write-up of the research.

In the central Philippines, Agence France-Presse reports that a search for survivors of landslides that smashed into villages is underway. The pieces notes that more than 17,000 people have fled their homes during tropical storm Megi, which has already killed at least 42 people, adding that “scientists have long warned typhoons are strengthening more rapidly as the world becomes warmer due to climate change”.

In Uganda, Reuters reports that the government is attempting to control an outbreak of African armyworm in cereal crops, following delayed rains in many parts of the east African country which pushed back crop planting, meaning crops are younger and more vulnerable to armyworm attack. The agriculture ministry said in a statement that climate change had probably caused the infestation as the pests migrated from countries that were hotter because of global warming.

Finally, Climate Home News reports that a group of leading climate scientists is pitching for UN climate science body the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to publish annual updates on the state of climate and climate action “to keep it in the headlines and on the political agenda”.

US president Joe Biden has announced on a trip to Iowa that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will temporarily lift regulations prohibiting the use of an ethanol-gasoline blend known as E15 in the summer, despite its contribution to smog during the warmer months. The president said this regulation would be waived to lower the price of gasoline at the pump for many Americans, the newspaper adds. The policy is the “latest move by Mr Biden’s White House that runs counter to promises he made as a presidential candidate to pivot the US away from fossil fuels”, it continues, including encouraging oil companies to drill on unused land. According to the Hill, Biden framed the waiver as a “made in America” solution to the energy crisis, “citing its potential to both support agricultural economies and reduce reliance on foreign oil”. Bloomberg notes that a senior administration official estimated that the use of E15 could save drivers 10 cents a gallon, on average. Separately, while in Iowa Biden also made a renewed push for new tax credits for sustainable aviation fuel, an important component in plans to reduce emissions from air travel, according to Reuters.

Another Reuters article quotes US climate envoy John Kerry, who spoke at a conference on the pacific island of Palau and said the war in in Ukraine shows now is the time to shift to renewables. “President Putin cannot control the power of the wind or the sun,” Kerry stated.

Elsewhere, DeSmog reports that a group of more than 50 activists have convened on a coal power plant in West Virginia, where Democrat Senator Joe Manchin “makes nearly $500,000 per year selling a dirty coal waste”.

The chairmen of three parliamentarian committees in Germany have called for the EU to impose an embargo on Russian oil as soon as possible, following a visit to Ukraine, Reuters reports. German foreign affairs committee chairman Michael Roth said that cutting Russian oil would hit Russia’s main source of income, while Anton Hofreiter, the head of the Bundestag’s Europe’s Committee, noted that “it can be done within a few weeks because there are other suppliers”. The newswire notes that the EU is drafting proposals for a Russian oil embargo, although there was no agreement to ban Russian crude and EU diplomats said Germany is not actively supporting an immediate embargo. It adds that Germany, which relies heavily on Russian oil, expects to be able to phase it out by the end of the year.

Another Reuters piece reports that Italian prime minister Mario Draghi plans to visit the Republic of the Congo and Angola this month, with plans to sign new energy supply deals to cut Italy’s reliance on Russian gas. A further article in Reuters reports on comments by the Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who says Greece will aim for its first test drilling for gas in more than two decades by the end of 2023, again aiming to cut its reliance on Russian energy. In related news, Bloomberg reports that higher global demand for fossil fuels amid the war in Ukraine will give oil producing nations greater “clout” at COP27 climate talks this year. It quotes United Arab Emirates energy minister Suhail Al-Mazrouei speaking at a conference in Dubai last month, where he said “oil producers felt unwanted in COP26…Now, we’re like superheroes”.

Meanwhile, BBC News reports that the Ukrainian government has announced that it narrowly averted a serious cyber-attack on the country’s power grid. The attack was made with malicious software that is similar to that used by Russian hackers who previous caused power cuts in Kyiv, the article notes.

In the UK, the Daily Telegraph reports that household energy bills are expected to rise to fund the development of “unproven” hydrogen gas in heating, “which may only be used in a fraction of homes”. Finally, the Times reports that oil giant Shell has teamed up with German utilities company Uniper to develop a new facility to make “blue hydrogen” from natural gas on Humberside in the north of England.

Some of the world’s largest companies have announced that they will spend $925m buying offsets from startups that remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air, Bloomberg reports. It explains that financial services firm Stripe owns the Frontier fund, a public-benefit corporation which has also received funds from Google parent company Alphabet, e-commerce company Shopify, management consulting firm McKinsey and Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The funding injection “will help fledgling carbon-removal companies scale up and reduce the cost of withdrawing each ton of CO₂ from the air, which would benefit all companies in the world looking to buy high-quality offsets”, according to Bloomberg. BusinessGreen notes that, under the plans, fledgling carbon removal firms will be invited to pitch to Frontier, which will then “evaluate their negative emissions offering, taking a range of factors into consideration”. Experts at the fund will negotiate a price per tonne captured, and make a commitment to spend millions of dollars for the delivery of those tonnes as offsets, it continues.

In the UK, the Times reports on a new report by the Scottish Land Commission that finds Scotland’s land market has been “transformed as corporate buyers swoop in on farmland to offset carbon emissions”.

Germany’s Die Welt reports that, according to plans prepared by the German ministers of economy and finance, “companies struggling with electricity and gas cost increases of more than 100% from February to September 2022 can receive grants”. The news quotes Veronika Grimm, a member of the German government’s advisory council: “It is very unfortunate to subsidise the use of fossil energy by directly subsidising energy consumption when there are large increases in costs.” This reduces the incentive to save energy, she continues. “Ultimately, this keeps the gas price high on the exchanges. That increases the subsidies and at the same time fills Putin’s war chest”, Grimm says.

Meanwhile, Tagesspiegel reports that “fuelled by high energy prices, inflation in Germany rose above the 7% mark in March for the first time since reunification in 1990”, according to the Federal Statistical Office. The news continues: “Consumer prices were 7.3% above the level of the same month last year”.

Die Welt also reports that “the Climate Foundation in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which was established with a controversial goal: to help complete the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, and which is largely financed by funds from Russian gas businesses, is resisting the verdict on the release of further information to support the German-Russian gas pipeline Nord Stream 2”.

China’s state news agency Xinhua reports that the oil and gas “output” of Daqing Oilfield in north-eastern China amounted to 10.61m tonnes of “oil equivalent” in the first quarter of 2022. Last year, Daqing – described as “one of the country’s largest oil production bases – produced 43.22m tonnes of “oil equivalent” of oil and gas, Xinhua adds. [The news comes as China’s 14th five-year plan for energy sets quantitative targets on energy production, especially for oil and gas, amid efforts to ensure energy security. Carbon Brief’s China Briefing has analysed the plan.] Meanwhile, according to the Times, China has seen “a spike in food and energy costs” as it “battles its worst outbreak of Covid-19 cases for two years”.

Separately, China’s total electricity consumption is projected to reach 9,500 terawatt hours (TWh) by 2025, according to ce.cn, the website of the state-run newspaper Economic Daily. The outlet says that non-fossil fuels are expected to account for 38% of the total power generation by 2025. [China’s 14th five-year plan for energy requires the ratio of non-fossil power generation to reach “about” 39% of the total power generation by 2025.] Ce.cn cites a new book, called the “Blue Book of Energy”, as the source of those figures. China.com.cn – a state-run news website – also covers the book. It says the book “systematically” reviews the “achievements and existing problems of China’s energy” during the 13th five-year plan (FYP) period (2016-2020) and proposes the “key tasks” of the country’s energy development during the 14FYP period (2021-2025).

Elsewhere, the International Energy Net – an independent Chinese website focused on energy-related news and analyses – reports that China added 29 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity of “distributed” photovoltaic solar energy (PV solar energy) in 2021. It says that the figure surpassed that of “centralised” PV solar energy for the “first time” and that “distributed” PV solar energy has become the “new main growth point” of photovoltaics. In other news, a China Dialogue article examines the role of finance in helping heavy industries decarbonise. Finally, the state-run newspaper China Daily reports that China’s plan to set up a “unified” national market “will further improve the energy sector’s efficiency and expand its scale”, according to analysts.

The “big read” in the Financial Times explores how Joe Biden, who was elected president of the US with “bold plans for the green transition”, now faces an energy crisis that has seen him seemingly backtrack on many of these ambitions. With Biden’s election, “history was about to leave US oil and gas behind” as the new leader pledged to “transition from oil”, curb shale drilling and enact sweeping new climate legislation. “But that has all changed. Just over a year into Biden’s presidency, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine deepens fears of global oil and gas shortages and western governments scramble for new supplies, the outlook for American fossil fuels and how the White House views them are undergoing their own transition,” the piece states. According to one expert cited in the piece, as the mid-term elections approach and the nation faces spiralling fuel costs, actions such as emergency oil releases are efforts to be seen to be doing something. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal is sceptical about Biden’s latest plan to lift regulations preventing the use of an ethanol-gasoline blend in fuels in a bid to cut costs. “President Biden could reduce prices at the pump by unleashing the US oil and gas industry. Instead he’s borrowing a trick from Donald Trump: boosting Big Ethanol,” it says.

In the New York Times, an article by James Henderson, chair of the gas programme and director of the energy transition research initiative at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, imagines “what it will mean as Europe frees itself from Russian energy”. “Morally, Europe will defend its values and demonstrate its strength in the face of Russian aggression. And the emphasis on reducing demand for natural gas and speeding up the development of green energy will help Europe reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, an ever more urgent imperative as the world continues to warm,” he writes.

In light of the various climate protests sweeping the UK, writer and moral philosopher Elizabeth Cripps considers whether those breaking the law are still “morally right in the face of future disaster”. While in “so-called liberal democracies” people have a “moral duty” to obey the law as part of their “implicit contract with the government we elected”, Cripps asks “what happens when that government doesn’t keep its side of the bargain?”. She considers the arguments around this, concluding: “When future generations look back on this period, as we look back on earlier epoch-defining campaigns, they’ll ask who showed more respect for justice and democracy: the activists so many of us find disruptive, or the governments they are trying to reform. I think we know what their answer will be”.

Meanwhile, an editorial in City AM states that Extinction Rebellion protesters targeting financial institutions in London are “missing the point” as “the City is at the heart of climate fight”. It states that “for the absolutists on the loony left, all that matters is that firms exit fossil fuel investments and stop dealing with polluters”, ideas it dismisses due to the need for a gradual transition away from fossil fuels.

Science editor at the news magazine Der Spiegel, Philip Bethge, writes that “Bavaria’s prime minister [Markus] Söder proposes that local natural gas could be extracted using the fracking method. So far, the technology has been largely banned here – for good reasons”. In contrast to Söder, the author quotes Bavaria’s environment minister Thorsten Glaube, who says “fracking is the wrong way” and that “the technology causes emissions that are harmful to the climate and poses a threat to the groundwater supply”. Bethge also describes the position of economy minister Habeck, who “also continues to reject fracking in Germany”.

Separately, energy and climate editor in Tagesspiegel Background, Susanne Ehlerding, analyses new research from thinktank Agora Energiewende, which calculates the costs that carbon contracts for difference would bring and comes to conclusion that “CO2 separation and storage are favourable in the cement industry because of the low avoidance costs”. The article continues: “In order to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045, the first cement production plants must be equipped with carbon capture, storage or utilisation (CCUS) technologies before 2030.” Ehlerding quotes study author Philipp Hauser, who reports that “by 2030 around a third of all systems will have to be renewed”.

“The positive carbon-climate feedback from deforestation-driven climate change is higher than the feedback originating from fossil fuel emissions,” new research suggests. The study uses model simulations and satellite data to determine how tropical deforestation drives the loss of further vegetation carbon across different continents. It finds that deforestation-driven warming and drying in the Amazon rainforest could result in a further 5.1% loss of above-ground biomass. Meanwhile, in the Congo, deforestation could amplify above-ground carbon loss by 3.8%, it finds.