There is continuing widespread US media coverage of the various extreme weather events affecting the country. The Texas Tribune focuses on the huge wildfire affecting areas of the state’s northernmost panhandle region, adding that “meteorologists at the National Weather Service office in Amarillo saw signs of possible danger in the Panhandle days before the first fire sparked”. The outlet quotes Texas state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon saying: “If climate change had a role, it was in the fire weather itself, having record-setting temperatures on Monday combined with low humidity and then strong winds on Tuesday and low humidity.” The Smokehouse Creek fire, as it had been dubbed, has killed more than 50 people already, according to CNN. The New York Times notes that it is “the largest on record in Texas [and] is still largely uncontrolled across the state’s Panhandle”. The newspaper also carries a comment piece by John Vaillant, author of “Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World”, in which he argues that such fires are a “terrifying warning”. A separate CNN article is headlined: “How a warming climate is setting the stage for fast-spreading, destructive wildfires.” The Financial Times notes how the legendary US investor Warren Buffet has “sounded the alarm” about how “utilities [are] confronting emerging risks from climate change including hotter, drier weather that make wildfires more likely”.

Meanwhile, Axios’s Andrew Freedman explains how “February’s extreme weather events left distinct patterns across the country – and shifted Americans’ ideas of what winters now look like”. NBC News reports how part of California “has been experiencing relentless blizzard conditions since Thursday”, including wind speeds above 100mph.

Chris Packham, the naturalist and TV presenter, has been granted permission for a judicial review of the UK government’s decision to reverse some of its net-zero policies, reports the Press Association. The newswire adds: “[Packham] sent a challenge to prime minister Rishi Sunak in October after the government watered down policies aimed at helping to cut UK climate-warming emissions to zero overall by 2050, known as net-zero…Law firm Leigh Day, which is representing Packham, said Justice Eyre had granted permission for the legal challenge to be heard in court. The legal team said a judge will decide whether it was lawful for ministers to decide to water down the policies, with a hearing to take place later this year…The Leigh Day team will argue that after the decision, Sunak did not confirm whether the government would still be able to meet its sixth carbon budget and how it would do so, as required by the 2008 Climate Change Act. Leigh Day said Packham has been given the go-ahead to argue three grounds in court.”

Separately, the Guardian reports that “previously unseen documents have emerged that appear to contradict the government’s case for a new coalmine in Cumbria”. The newspaper continues: “When Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, approved plans to build the Woodhouse Colliery near Whitehaven in December 2022, he said the UK would need the coal in order to carry on making steel. But the newly revealed documents, drafted around the same time at the then Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), say the opposite. According to these papers, officials predict with “high certainty” that technology such as electric arc furnaces will lead to the successful decarbonisation of UK steel production by 2035. ‘This new information blows a gaping hole in the government’s case for supporting the proposed Cumbria coalmine,’ said Tony Bosworth of Friends of the Earth. ‘When Michael Gove approved the mine 14 months ago, he claimed it was needed because there was huge uncertainty over UK steel’s ability to decarbonise over the next 15 years. Now we discover that at the same time, government officials had ‘high certainty’ about the industry’s move away from coal.’ The documents were disclosed to Friends of the Earth by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the successor to BEIS, as part of legal action the environmental campaign group is taking against the government’s climate plan.”

In another legal development, the Press Association reports that “Princess Diana’s divorce lawyers are investigating a group shareholder action against Drax, claiming its ‘false’ environmental claims have damaged the share price of the Selby-based energy supplier”. The newswire adds: “The law firm Mishcon de Reya, who represented the late Lady Diana Spencer against the then Prince Charles in the 1990s, alleges Drax gave a ‘misleading’ portrayal of its sustainability practices and the environmental benefits of its use of biomass energy. Drax has claimed that woody biomass (pellets made from residue wood including sawdust, forestry or agricultural residues and roundwood) energy is unequivocally low carbon or carbon neutral and capable of enabling Drax to produce negative emissions by 2030. Drax also states that the wood used in its biomass pellets is derived from wholly sustainable sources. This business model has enabled Drax to receive £6.5bn of renewable energy subsidies from the UK government.” A separate Press Association article says that “campaigners in Mississippi have called on the British public for support amid claims that community members are suffering health issues after a nearby Drax-owned wood pellet plant breached pollution rules”. Relatedly, the Times reports that “the Scottish National Party has been accused of spending hundreds of millions on tree-planting schemes based on data that overplays the benefit to the environment”. It continues: “Minutes from a meeting of top officials at the Scottish government’s forestry agency said that the climate benefits of planting forests are lower than was once thought. Campaigners said the admission ‘undermined’ the Scottish government’s net-zero focus on planting forests.” Finally, Politico has an interview with Clare Coutinho, the energy and net-zero secretary. The article quotes “a government official with knowledge of the department’s thinking” saying: “It seemed like she was put there as – no offense to her – a patsy for Rishi [Sunak] to drive through a net-zero vision of his own and water down whatever he wanted to water down.”

Leading carmakers, energy companies and environmental campaigners are demanding the UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt uses this week’s spring budget to end a tax “anomaly” which is said to be damaging the sales of electric cars, reports the Times. The newspaper adds: “Motorists with driveways who charge their cars at home pay a quarter of the rate of VAT for electricity paid by those who have to rely on public charging…A letter to Jeremy Hunt, seen by the Times, states that nearly two-fifths of electric car owners are being unfairly disadvantaged by the Treasury’s taxation on public recharging points at the full 20% rate of VAT. Those owners who are able to charge at home not only pay a significantly cheaper rate for their electricity but are charged at a VAT rate of only 5%.” Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph reports that “a £400m scheme set up to encourage the rollout of electric buses is effectively subsidising Chinese companies to the detriment of British ones, a group of transport businesses have claimed”.

Separately, the Sunday Telegraph reports that “the government is preparing to ditch the so-called boiler tax in an announcement which could come as soon as this week”. However, the newspaper goes on to undermine its own headline by clarifying that, rather than “ditching” the whole “clean heat market mechanism” policy (which is not a tax), it “will not be going ahead with the fines for at least the first year of the scheme”. The Press Association notes the views of Darren Davidson, the boss of the British arm of Siemens Energy, who says that the UK is not moving fast enough on the energy transition, adding that the country is not on track to meet its targets for offshore wind.

In other UK news, BBC News reports that the Met Office says that England and Wales had their warmest February on record this year: “The provisional statistics are in line with long-term projections of warmer, wetter winters due to climate change.” Similarly, the Guardian covers findings by the National Trust which reveal that “magnolia trees in gardens in the south of England and parts of Wales are blooming four weeks earlier than usual because of a largely mild winter and a particularly balmy, if wet, February”. Finally, the Guardian covers polling results by YouGov for the children’s charity Barnardo’s which show that “money, jobs and the climate crisis were named among the concerns of 1,001 teenagers aged 14 to 17”.

Chinese president Xi Jinping has highlighted at a “group study session” of China’s politburo that China should “vigorously promot[e] the high-quality development of new energy” to “make greater contributions to building a clean and beautiful world”, reports the state-run newspaper China Daily. It says Xi stressed that China must make “efforts to handle the relationship between new and traditional energy” and to “further build the new energy infrastructure network, and promote the intelligent transformation of power grid infrastructure and the construction of smart microgrids”. State news agency Xinhua also covers Xi’s speech, adding that he said that China should “coordinate the work between new energy development and energy security”.

Elsewhere, the economics publication Jiemian reports that the Chinese government’s national development and reform commission (NDRC) and the national energy administration (NEA) have outlined guidelines on the “development of the power distribution network” for the first time since China’s “dual-carbon” targets were announced. The guidelines aim to connect “500 gigawatts (GW) of distributed new energy” and approximately “12m charging piles” [charging points for electric vehicles], the outlet says. In biodiversity news, China Daily quotes Huang Runqiu, minister of ecology and environment, saying that the government has mobilised 50m yuan ($7m) in “startup capital of the Kunming Fund [agreed at COP15], so the first batch of projects may be implemented before COP16 [to be held in October in Colombia]”. 

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post says that China is “taking measures to defend its sales of electric vehicles (EVs) and batteries in Europe and the US” against increasing challenges to its expansion, while a minor Chinese political party plans to “approach the Chinese people’s political consultative conference advisory body about the EV issue” ahead of this week’s major political event, known as the “two sessions”. Reuters reports that “Chinese outbound foreign direct investment along the EV value chain” likely reached “a new record in 2023”, according to a report by the US-based consulting firm Rhodium Group. China Energy Net reports that China has issued its first “provincial-level” regulation specifically for the new energy vehicle industry in Anhui. Xinhua quotes an independent car designer Andrew McGee saying that “Chinese cars with price advantages and good performance offer European consumers more cost-effective choices…rational industry insiders generally oppose excluding Chinese EVs [from other markets]”. An editorial in China Daily, in response to reports that the UK may open an investigation into subsidies for Chinese EVs, says that “instead of seeking further protection for their uncompetitiveness, EU and UK [EV] companies should sharpen their own technologies and enhance their own efficiency”.

Meanwhile, China Energy News reports that Zhang Chunsheng, party secretary of oil company Sinopec and delegate to the national people’s congress, has prepared policy proposals for the “two sessions” meeting suggesting that policymakers should further clarify the criteria for categorising “dual-high” projects (those with high energy use and emissions). China Energy News has also published a commentary by Gu Shuzhong, a member of China’s top government advisory body and a researcher at the state council, who writes that the concept of a “beautiful China” is a “manifestation of the achievements of constructing an ecological civilisation”. Beijing News reports that HSBC executive Wang Dongsheng has submitted a policy proposal that government departments in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area should “promote the commercial operation of demonstration areas for distributed solar power generation”.

The German federal network agency has presented new plans for the expansion of the nation’s power transmission network, including approximately 4,800km of new lines and around 2,500km of reinforcement for existing connections, reports Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The newspaper quotes agency president Klaus Müller saying: “This [plan] shows for the first time what power grid we need to complete the energy transition…For a climate-neutral electricity system, we need a significant amount of additional power lines by 2045.” Der Spiegel adds that, according to the plan, five new direct current connections with a capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW) each are planned with an overall cost for network expansion estimated at around €320bn. New lines are also planned to connect offshore wind farms, bringing “climate-neutral electricity” to where it is needed – especially from the north to the south, adds the newspaper.

Meanwhile, Die Zeit reports that, “due to the ongoing uncertainty in gas supply, the German coalition government (referring to the traffic-light coalition made up of the SPD, FDP and Greens) does not want to deviate from the construction of the liquified natural gas [LNG] terminals”, noting that the gas supply situation “remains tense”. However, the outlet adds that the government’s assessment “contradicts” the view of experts from the German institute for economic research (DIW), who note that “there has never been a gas shortage situation justifying the accelerated expansion of LNG infrastructure”. 

Rain Newton-Smith, the director general of the Confederation of British Industry, argues in City AM that “the government must double down on green investments now – or else the consequences will catch up with us”. She continues: “With an election looming…it seems net-zero is now becoming a political dividing line. And with both parties appearing to row back on green commitments in recent weeks, firms desperate to invest in the UK’s green economy could be forgiven for asking: what message are we sending internationally about our ambition for the UK economy?…To me, it’s a no-brainer. If the choice is doubling down on investment now, or higher costs and lost opportunities in future, I know which path I’d choose. One with better outcomes for our planet, our society and our quality of life. So, let’s fix the cracks starting to show in our consensus on sustainability, hold our political leaders to account on their net-zero commitments and encourage them to think of this as an opportunity to show lasting leadership.” In the Sunday Times, the climate-sceptic columnist Dominic Lawson focuses on the importing of cheap EVs from China: “I was never in favour of the plan pursued by Brussels and Westminster to phase out even hybrid vehicles (I write as the owner of a still excellent 2008 Lexus hybrid). But it is preposterous to demand consumers switch to EVs and then to attempt to block the supply of the ones that are most affordable – and whose appearance in showrooms would put downward pressure on the prices of all such ‘virtuous’ vehicles. Haven’t our governments noticed that anything that reduces the cost of living might actually make them less unpopular?”

Elsewhere, George Monbiot writes in his weekly Guardian column that “we need to talk about water – and the fact that the world is running out of it”.

Disruptions to the delivery of infrastructure services caused by floods, cyclones and erosion hazards “disproportionately” threaten Bangladesh’s poorest households in 69% of coastal subdistricts in the country, a new paper finds. The authors use a dataset of 8.2m households in Bangladesh’s coastal zone to assess the “extent to which infrastructure service disruptions induced by flood, cyclone and erosion hazards can thwart progress towards the sustainable development goals (SDGs)”. They find that “targeting adaptation to these climatic threats in one-third of the most vulnerable areas could help to safeguard 50-85% of achieved progress towards SDG 3, 4, 7, 8 and 13”.

A new review paper finds that under an additional 1C of warming, around 800 million people in the tropics will live in areas where “heavy work should be limited for over half of the hours in the year” due to the heat. The authors synthesised literature on the impacts of heat on workers, and actions that can be taken to strengthen worker resilience. The study “provides primary, secondary and tertiary solutions that will inform policies and practices as well as research that is needed to bolster worker resilience and well-being”, the authors say.