The EU has warned European buyers of Russian gas that they will be in breach of sanctions against Moscow if they accept Kremlin demands for payment to be completed in roubles, reports the Financial Times. The warning is “clearer than previous guidance by Brussels”, the newspaper says and comes after several European companies in Germany, Austria, Hungary and Slovakia had been planning to comply with a 31 March decree by Russia’s Vladimir Putin to introduce a two-tiered system for gas payments. This would involve “opening rouble and euro accounts at Gazprombank in Russia”, the paper explains. In a briefing yesterday, European Commission chief spokesperson Eric Mamer said that “complying with the decree is a breach of sanctions” the FT reports. Bloomberg notes that “four European buyers have already paid in rubles and 10 have opened the accounts at Gazprombank needed to meet the new rules”, adding: “Hungary’s cabinet minister Gergely Gulyas confirmed they were one of the 10.”

However, Reuters reports the comments of a “senior EU official”, who said that if EU buyers declare their payments for gas are completed once the payment has been made in euros and before it is converted into roubles, sanctions would have been respected. The newswire explains: “The difficulty for European buyers is that the decree requires buyers to also open a rouble account at Gazprombank into which their euro or dollar payments would be deposited after conversion into the Russian currency. Russia’s decree would only consider the payment to be complete after the gas-to-roubles conversion is done – a transaction that would involve Russia’s central bank, which is subject to EU sanctions.” European Union energy ministers will meet on Monday to discuss the situation, the outlet adds. Politico quotes “top Bulgarian officials”, who say that the EU’s suggested workarounds are “probably not really an option”. Asen Vasilev – Bulgaria’s deputy prime minister and finance minister – tells the outlet that “putting the money in that account doesn’t complete the purchase”. Politico notes that “after seeking clarifications from Gazprom but not receiving any, Bulgaria decided to pay $50,000 into its usual account – Gazprom returned the money and cut off the gas”. And BBC News reports that Uniper – one of Germany’s biggest energy firms – has said it is preparing to pay in euros, which will be converted into roubles. The company says it “consider[s] a payment conversion compliant with sanctions law and the Russian decree to be possible”. German business magazine Manager Magazin also has the Uniper story.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that “Gazprom expects a moderate decline in its 2022 gas production despite Europe, its single largest market, seeking to reduce its dependence on the Russian fuel this year”. Energy Monitor looks at whether heat pumps can “free Europe from Russian gas dependency”. And Bloomberg reports that Chinese solar-panel manufacturer JinkoSolar – the world’s third-largest supplier – has said that Europe’s efforts to reduce reliance on imports of Russian fossil fuels will boost demand for solar energy as soon as this year.

Gazprombank has rejected a payment from a trading firm that Germany seized from Moscow’s control, reports Bloomberg, which it says is “the first sign of friction following the take-over amid a broader regional energy dispute”. The outlet continues: “Gazprombank declined payment for some April and May gas deliveries to Germany and Austria under contract with Gazprom Marketing & Trading Ltd, even as the company sought to pay for the fuel using a rubles account as Russia has demanded, according to people familiar with the matter. GM&T was previously under the direction of Russian-state gas producer Gazprom PJSC’s German subsidiary. Germany took over the unit earlier this month to secure the country’s gas supplies, and it now risks being shunned under its new ownership.” Der Spiegel says that the German ministry of economics and climate protection confirmed that Russia has rejected payments for gas. In a press release, the ministry said that there are “ambiguities in the processing of the payments”. These relate to “marginal gas volumes of around 0.2% of Russian import volumes to Europe”, the press release says. This amount could be replaced by purchases on the market, the outlet adds.

Meanwhile, German chancellor Olaf Scholz is warning that Germany must prepare for a similar cut of gas as it was in Poland and Bulgaria, Der Spiegel reports. During his visit to Japan, Scholz noted that Germany was already prepared for this before the start of war and now “we [Germany] know what we have to do”. And Bloomberg reports that Scholz’s government is “backtracking from its G7 agenda to push globally for a speedier exit from coal”. It adds: “Steffen Hebestreit, the chancellor’s chief spokesman, said Russia’s war in Ukraine cast doubt over the practicality of asking the world’s richest countries to end the use of coal. Germany is the current holder of the rotating presidency of the G7 nations, which have taken the lead in pursuing sanctions against Russia.”

In more energy news, EurActiv reports that the German government plans to build the new LNG import facilities at “Tesla speeds”. The outlet quotes economy and climate protection minister Robert Habeck: “If I had told you during the election campaign that I would build an LNG [liquified natural gas] terminal in 10 months’ time, you would have said: here are these politicians with their weird election campaign promises, they never keep them”. Climate Home News also has the story, while Politico looks at why “Germany won’t give up on giving up nuclear”.

And, finally, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports that Scholz is working on a hydrogen alliance with Tokyo. The outlet says that Scholz will visit a company “that has something to do with hydrogen” during his short visit to Japan on Friday. The country has just had “brown” hydrogen from Australia, frozen to minus 253C, shipped to Japan on a ship to demonstrate this transport technology as a global premiere. Green hydrogen could later also be transported in this way. Kawasaki Heavy Industries, one of the leading companies in the project, wants to build on the pilots to develop a hydrogen supply chain after 2030.

International coverage of the severe heatwave in south Asia continues, with the New York Times warning that the extreme heat “is expected to intensify over the weekend”. It continues: “Heat-related watches were in effect on Thursday afternoon for all but a few of India’s 28 states, encompassing hundreds of millions of people and most of the country’s major cities…[And] in a diagonal band stretching from Rajasthan in the northwest to Andhra Pradesh in the south-east, the watches were expected to persist or be elevated into heat alerts through Monday.” Clare Nullis, an official at the UN’s World Meteorological Organization, tells the paper that “extreme heat is obviously one of the hallmarks of our changing climate”. The Washington Post notes that temperatures topped 43.3C (110F) in the Indian capital of Delhi yesterday, while the city of Nawabshah in Pakistan hit 47.5C (117.5F) – the hottest temperature in the northern hemisphere this year so far.

Reuters says that “India is facing its worst electricity shortage in more than six years just as scorching temperatures force early closures of schools and send people indoors”. The newswire continues: “Power cuts are expected to worsen in the coming days as the heatwaves and a pickup in economic activity are seen increasing electricity demand at the fastest pace in nearly four decades. The unprecedented heat puts millions of blue-collar workers, including construction and farm labourers and those working on factory shop floors, at great risk. Sunstrokes have claimed thousands of Indian lives over the years.” Bloomberg reports that “India has cancelled some passenger trains to allow for faster movement of coal carriages as the nation scrambles to replenish depleting inventories at power plants in a bid to avoid a full-blown power crisis”. The Independent also covers the heatwave and has updates on a live blog.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson “will attempt to head off political outrage over soaring profits at energy giants next week by demanding that they pour billions of pounds more into British gas and renewable projects”, reports the Times. The paper continues: “Shell and BP are preparing to announce their highest profits for a decade and will today be told to invest more in the North Sea and offshore wind projects if they want to escape a windfall tax. Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, will tell the two companies today that he expects more commitments to invest in Britain as the ‘quid pro quo’ for government support for renewable energy and North Sea drilling.” Johnson is due to meet energy companies next week “in the hope of confirming further commitments on UK energy after Shell announced plans for £25bn in projects over the next decade”, the paper says, adding: “Downing Street yesterday acknowledged that ministers do not want to impose a windfall tax, while backing [chancellor] Rishi Sunak’s threat to consider one if companies failed to invest in helping the country produce more of its own energy.” In an analysis section within the article, Times political editor Steven Swinford says that the suggestions of a windfall tax are “as much about political theatre as economic reality”. A government source tells him: “It won’t happen…But we’re between budgets so we’re in all-options-on-the-table mode. The fact is that Rishi and Boris both think a windfall tax would do more harm than good – that it would deter investment.” The Guardian has an analysis piece looking at how a windfall tax on oil-and-gas profits could work.

New deforestation data for 2021 shows that the tropics lost 11.1m hectares of tree cover last year, including 3.75m ha of primary forest, reports the Guardian. The paper continues: “Of the primary rainforest that was lost in 2021 – releasing the equivalent of India’s annual fossil fuel emissions – 40% disappeared in Brazil, with the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bolivia, Indonesia and Peru making up the rest of the top five.” The losses are equivalent to “deforesting 30 of New York’s Central Park every day”, notes the Independent. The report was “put together by Global Forest Watch and the University of Maryland” and published by the World Resources Institute (WRI), says Axios. The New York Times adds that “halting deforestation was one of the major commitments to come out of the international climate talks last year in Glasgow, but there was scant evidence of progress in 2021”. Frances Seymour, a senior fellow at WRI, tells the paper: “The numbers we’re sharing today perhaps could be considered a baseline for assessing the effectiveness of the actions that they take to follow through.“ There was “some good news in the report, especially from Asia”, the paper adds: “In Indonesia, forest loss declined by one-fourth from 2020, the fifth year in a row of falling totals. Malaysia also had a fifth straight year of declines, although forest loss in 2021 was only slightly less than in 2020.” New Scientist and Reuters also have the story.

New research warns that rising temperatures, ocean acidification and declining oxygen is causing such a drastic change to the world’s oceans that it risks a mass extinction event of marine species that rivals anything that’s happened in the Earth’s history, the Guardian reports. The study, published in Science, says that climate change is causing a “profound” impact upon ocean ecosystems that is “driving extinction risk higher and marine biological richness lower than has been seen in Earth’s history for the past tens of millions of years”, the paper reports. The New York Times says: “Under the high emissions scenario that the scientists modelled, in which pollution from the burning of fossil fuels continues to climb, warming would trigger ocean species loss by 2300 that was on par with the five mass extinctions in Earth’s past…On the other hand, reining in emissions to keep within the upper limit of the Paris climate agreement would reduce ocean extinction risks by more than 70%, the scientists found. In that scenario, climate change would claim about 4% of species by the end of this century, at which point warming would stop.” MailOnline carries quotes from the lead author, who says: “The silver lining is that the future isn’t written in stone…There’s still enough time to change the trajectory of CO2 emissions and prevent the magnitude of warming that would cause this mass extinction.” The Washington Post leads with the line that “not since an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs – along with at least half of all other beings on Earth – has life in the ocean been so at risk”.

China’s Ministry of Finance said yesterday that China will cut import tariffs for “all types of coal” from 3-6% to zero from 1 May 2022 until 31 March 2023, Reuters reports. The move comes as Beijing “strives to ensure energy security amid soaring global prices and supply disruption concerns”, the newswire says. The outlet notes that the removal of coal import tariffs “is seen having little impact on China’s coal purchases in 2022”. It adds that, according to “some traders”, the decision “could benefit” coal imports from Russia, which currently faces a 6% tariff rate for thermal coal. Analysts from Morgan Stanley – a US investment bank – said the tariff cuts could be a response “to domestic coal logistics disruptions” in the “key” coal port city of Qinhuangdao, according to Bloomberg. The Global Times – a Chinese state-run newspaper – notes that the move “will help maintain or even increase coal import levels despite surging costs, so as to ensure stable domestic supply and prices”, according to Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University.

Reporting on the latest situation of Qinhuangdao, Bloomberg says that China has locked down part of the city – described by the outlet as a “northern hub for coal shipping” – due to Covid-19. Qinhuangdao handled “nearly” 50m tonnes of goods, mostly coal from “the interior” and metal ore imports, Bloomberg says. It adds that the coal price set at the port of Qinhuangdao is an “important benchmark for China’s coal market”, which is “the largest in the world”.

Elsewhere, a third Bloomberg report says that China “may only achieve one-third of its coal capacity expansion target” in 2022 due to “safety and environmental regulations”, according to a “government-backed” industrial association. The outlet notes that China can add “about 100m tonnes of [coal production] capacity this year, including mines still being tested”, citing Zhang Yupeng, an analyst at the China Coal Transportation and Distribution Association. The association earlier “warned” that China’s domestic coal production “could have been stretched to its limits” as the nation intended to curb imports “amid a surge in international prices”, Bloomberg notes.

There is widespread coverage of a new study, published in the journal Nature, which warns that “climate change will force wild mammals to relocate to new habitats, which could increase the spread of viruses between animal species, creating fertile ground for future pandemics”, says the Financial Times. The research uses models to estimate how warming and land-use change could alter the geographic range of 3,139 mammals, and the knock-on effect that would have on viral transmission, the paper explains. Even in an optimistic climate change scenario, the shifting habitat of mammals could create thousands of new opportunities for viruses to find new hosts, it continues. This could threaten not just animal health, but also “most likely have ramifications for our health too”, a study author tells the FT. Roughly 40,000 pathogens are estimated to be lurking in mammals, “including some 10,000 which could infect humans”, notes the Daily Telegraph. Much of the disease risk is set to centre upon high-elevation areas in Africa and Asia, although a lack of monitoring will make it difficult to track the progress of certain viruses, says the Guardian. It adds that “bats will account for the majority of this disease spread because of their ability to travel large distances”. The study warns that much of this process may already be underway in today’s warmer world, the Independent reports, and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions may not stop these events from unfolding. The New York Times, Associated Press, MailOnline, New Scientist, Hill and Atlantic also have the story. Read Carbon Brief‘s coverage for all the details.

Responding the reports of the billions of euros that Europe has spent on Russian oil and gas since it invaded Ukraine, an editorial in the Economist says Europe should “levy a high tariff on Russian energy, rather than ban it altogether”. The outlet continues: “To keep selling, Russia would probably need to cut prices so that its oil remained competitive with other countries’. (Redirecting all its oil elsewhere would be an enormous logistical challenge.) A high tariff could in effect seize some of Russia’s oil profits without disrupting supply. The consequences for gas prices are harder to predict. But because Russia cannot move gas pipelines any more easily than Europe can find alternative suppliers, it would probably absorb at least part of a tariff.” In either case, the outlet says, “taking action may provoke Mr Putin to cut supplies further”. It adds: “If a tariff morphs into an embargo, so be it. Russia’s war would become harder to sustain – and in the decades to come Europe would be more secure.”

Writing in the Financial Times, European economics commentator Martin Sandbu looks “at the mechanics of a tax on Russian oil or gas imports”. He concludes that “a tariff and a ban look fairly similar”, adding: “So they should best be thought of as steps in the same process. The best case for a tariff is that it can be introduced immediately and turned up over time. And crucially, if a steeply rising path of the tariff is agreed and announced today, companies will be given the best possible conditions to adapt. An immediate tariff, to be stepped up to reach prohibitive levels soon, and accompanied by further financial and shipping sanctions, is what the EU should now adopt.”

Also in the Financial Times, economics editor Chris Giles writes that “Vladimir Putin’s decision to suspend natural gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria is a wake-up call to western nations. Europe faces a cold and dark winter ahead unless all those who stand with Ukraine use less gas, allowing European nations to escape Russia’s tight grip on their energy use”. In addition to sourcing gas from elsewhere, increasing storage, investing in home insulation and accelerating wind and solar renewable electricity projects, the “quickest and cheapest way to reduce dependence on Russia is simply to use less gas”, says Giles: “If ever there was a win-win outcome for the energy troubles of our time, this is it. Lowering the temperature of our buildings in winter would reduce market prices, deprive Russia of hard currency, increase supplies of gas in friendly countries available for Europe and help a little with climate change.”

An editorial in the Daily Telegraph criticises UK chancellor Rishi Sunak for considering a windfall tax on oil and gas profits, warning that “a Tory chancellor should know better than to castigate the industry and threaten to blackmail it via tax policies stolen from the Labour Party. It would be preferable if the government just got out of the way”. It continues: “The trouble is that the government only seems to be interested in oil and gas for reasons of short-term political expediency. In the longer-term, it remains wedded to the net-zero ideology and progressively shifting the country away from hydrocarbons. Yet that hardly creates a stable environment for investment in the fossil fuels we will require in the meantime. Energy companies will want certainty that the money they spend now will deliver returns to their investors over a timescale sufficient to justify the upfront cost. The whole industry is also wrapped up in increasing amounts of bureaucracy, much of it unjustified.” It concludes: “If the energy sector operated as a free market, higher prices ought to be incentive enough for companies to expand their activities to cater to demand. But it does not.”

The Daily Telegraph also publishes an opinion piece by the climate-sceptic commentator Ross Clark, who argues that “a windfall tax on oil and gas is just left-wing populism”.

Elsewhere, an editorial in the Sun rages at the “eco maniacs” that make up the climate activist group Just Stop Oil. The paper says judges should “throw the book at them, regardless of how middle-class and ‘well-meaning’ they appear”. Their cause is “rooted solely in naive politics and blinkered ignorance”, the paper says. In a full-page article in the Daily Mail, climate-sceptic columnist Richard Littlejohn writes that “these ego-centric exhibitionists – in their designer hair-shirt, hi-viz vests – care more about the bloody polar bears than other human beings”.

New research finds that vegetation resilience – the ability of ecosystems to resist and recover from external shocks such as droughts and fires – is “increasing in the tropics and decreasing at higher latitudes”. The authors use satellite records to quantify vegetation resilience over 1992-2007. Shorter term trends “reveal a marked shift towards a global decline in vegetation resilience since the early 2000s, particularly in the equatorial rainforest belt”, the study adds.

Two-thirds of the 54 most common forest-dwelling bird species in eastern Canada saw a loss of their breeding habitat due to large-scale deforestation over 1985-2020, a new study finds. Using a long-term dataset, the researchers find that “habitat amount predicted population size for 94% of bird species, and habitat loss was associated with population declines for old-forest species”. They conclude that “forest degradation may therefore be a primary cause of biodiversity decline in managed forest landscapes”.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions “would diminish extinction risks by more than 70%, preserving marine biodiversity accumulated over the past ~50m years of evolutionary history”, new research finds. The authors combine the fossil record with the ecophysiological limits of diverse animal species to quantify global and local extinction risks in the ocean across a range of climate futures. They find that “polar species are at highest risk of extinction, but local biological richness declines more in the tropics”.