A frontpage story in the Financial Times reports that Elon Musk’s Tesla and Chinese rival BYD have both reported sharp falls in electric vehicle (EV) sales, fuelling “concerns of the slowing shift towards electric vehicles”. The companies, the world’s top two EV sellers, have repeatedly cut prices since the start of the year in a bid to stimulate demand, the FT says. It reports: “BYD has slashed the cost of almost every model in its line-up since the start of the year under the slogan ‘electricity is cheaper than oil’, amid an escalating price war in the world’s largest EV market.” The Times reports that Tesla’s dip in car sales in the first quarter of the year is the company’s first decline in four years. Tesla delivered 386,810 of its EVs between January and March, almost 9% below the 423,000 it sold in the same period a year ago and far short of forecasts of 457,000, the Times says. It adds: “The world’s most valuable carmaker blamed the decline in part on the phasing-in of an updated version of the Model 3 saloon at its factory in Fremont, California, as well as plant shutdowns caused by shipping diversions away from the Red Sea and an arson attack that knocked out power at its German factory.” Reuters reports on a market intelligence survey that finds that would-be Tesla buyers are shrinking “in part [due] to Musk’s polarising persona”. Bloomberg describes Tesla’s sales dip as the “most brutal blow ever for EVs”.

The FT carries several comment pieces in reaction to the story, including a Lex column on why Musk is still “intrinsic” to Tesla’s future, a separate Lex column on how Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi can “accelerate” its EV launch and a comment piece by motor correspondent Peter Campbell on whether the sales dip could be more than a “blip”. The Daily Telegraph also has a piece on why Tesla’s EV bubble is “threatening to burst”. Elsewhere, the Times reports on how racetrack innovations are shaping the builds of the next generation of EVs. The Times also reports that Rolls Royce is testing its most powerful and “green” jet engine.

Economic news outlet Caixin reports that several wind-turbine makers in China have reported drops in net profits in 2023 as the average bid prices for wind turbines in China also decreased. Energy news outlet BJX News publishes an article by Qin Haiyan, the general secretary of the China Wind Energy Association (CWEA), about a new policy to boost wind power development in rural areas, which he said could provide villages with 100,000-200,000 yuan ($13,800-27,700) of fixed income each year. Another BJX News article reports that China’s national utilisation rate of solar power generation fell below 95% for the first time in February, dropping 4.7 percentage points from January to 93.4%. Industry outlet IN-EN.com reports that the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has released measures to govern “incremental power distribution grids”, encouraging companies to meet renewable energy consumption goals and not rely on coal-fired power. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post covers comments by a Chinese industry body warning solar manufacturers to avoid “disorderly and vicious” internal competition in the face of overseas trade barriers and the US’s pressure to target overcapacity in the sector.

A new study announced in MIT News finds that emissions of sulfur hexafluoride, “one of the most potent greenhouse gases on Earth”, almost doubled from 2011 to 2021 in China, highlighting the “importance of lowering SF6 emissions from China in the future”. Reuters covers research from Boston University showing that China could drive an “energy revolution” in Africa, if it can reverse its “neglect of green power investments” on the continent. It adds that “only 2% of Chinese loans [were] allocated to renewable energy” on the continent. 

State news agency Xinhua publishes a commentary on the “hidden agenda” behind western concerns around overcapacity, arguing that this “new variant of ‘China threat’ theory” aims to “poison the environment” for China and “[establish] more protectionist measures for their own industries”. The Wall Street Journal’s Allysia Finley has written an opinion article arguing that “pervasive data sharing…raises significant concerns about how the [Chinese] government might exploit the growing presence” of Chinese-made vehicles in foreign markets.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast “hotter-than-usual” temperatures for April to June, “raising the risk of water shortages, crop damages and higher coal use to avoid power blackouts in the planet’s most populous nation”, Bloomberg reports. According to IMD chief Mrutyunjaya Mohapatra, quoted in the article, “heatwaves are expected for 10 to 20 days in different areas…against a normal of four to eight days”, during a period “when the world’s biggest democracy is preparing to hold general elections, [posing a] greater threat to human lives”. While “the weather outlook will put more pressure on energy companies”, the impact on India’s wheat crop “is likely to be limited” this year, it adds, unlike previous summers. “People have to take part in [the] electoral process and face extreme heat at the same time…We have to be extremely careful,” said India’s minister for Earth sciences, Kiran Rijiju, quoted in the Hindustan Times. Disaster and health authorities have written to India’s election commission with heat stress and emergency advisories, HT adds. Still, parts of peninsular India are already experiencing extreme temperatures just as “political rallies have begun to build up and are expected to reach a crescendo in peak summer weeks”, it says. Meanwhile, Down to Earth reports that the IMD’s definition of a heatwave does not account for relative humidity, meaning “there may be humid heatwaves close to the human survivability threshold of heat stress already occurring in India and are not being monitored”.

Meanwhile, the Press Trust of India reports that the country will “rely heavily” on coal this summer, the power ministry predicting that peak demand could cross 260 gigawatts (GW), “higher than the record 243GW in September last year.” The ministry also directed gas-based power plants to be available to meet a “sudden surge in electricity demand”, the newswire adds. According to Business Standard, Adani Power is expected to add “close to 6GW” of new coal power capacity in the next five years, a move “clearly meant to ride on India’s burgeoning power demand.”

In other news, a Bloomberg story states that, starting this week, India will “reimpose limits on imported solar energy modules”. The curbs, it clarifies, are part of prime minister “Modi’s effort to gain self-dependence in energy by encouraging local solar panel output”, despite a “year-long hiatus” when “the government realised domestic capacity couldn’t meet demand”. Reuters analysis finds that “India’s hydroelectricity output fell at the steepest pace in at least 38 years”, coinciding with the first time renewables’ share in India’s power generation slid since “Modi made commitments to boost solar and wind capacity” at the Paris climate summit in 2015. PTI reports that Modi has promised to turn “every sugarcane belt of the country into an energy belt” at a poll rally. Finally, in his Bloomberg column, David Fickling observes that “the increased cane production required by the government’s ethanol-blending policy could consume an additional 348bn cubic metres of water…around twice what is used by every city in the country”.

Sky News reports on an ongoing extreme drought in southern Africa which threatens millions of people with lethal hunger. It reports that Zimbabwe is on the brink of declaring a national disaster as 2.7 million people face hunger. It comes after a national disaster was declared by Malawi, where nine million people face hunger, and Zambia, where six million people face hunger, Sky News reports. Parts of southern Africa endured their driest February on record, as well as a delay to the start of seasonal rains, the broadcaster says. It reports: “There are different types of droughts and causes are complex and varied. But scientists who specialise in assessing the causes of extreme weather are confident climate change is making drought worse in southern Africa.” The article features several maps showing the extent of the drought. All Africa speaks to families affected by devastating hunger.

US officials are open to ending president Joe Biden’s pause on approvals of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports in order to get a Ukraine aid package passed in Congress, “but want to wait to see the entire proposal before making any decisions”, two White House sources tell Reuters. Republican US House of Representatives speaker Mike Johnson suggested on Fox News on Sunday that reversing Biden’s pause on LNG export approvals could increase the chances of his party supporting a new aid package for Ukraine, Reuters says. According to Reuters, Johnson said: “We want to have natural gas exports that will help unfund (Russian president) Vladimir Putin’s war effort there.” A White House spokesperson tells Reuters that the claim is “not true” and that Biden still “supports the pause” on LNG export terminals “to evaluate the economic and climate impacts on consumers and communities”. Elsewhere, the Guardian reports that the US is aiming to “crack the code” on deploying geothermal energy at scale.

UK taxpayers will pay “hundreds of millions” of pounds to pay for Shell to clear up toxic sludge from three of Shell’s oil and gas drilling platforms in the North Sea, the Daily Telegraph reports in a story trailed on its frontpage. The company was ordered to clean up the sludge by the Ospar Convention, an agreement between 15 European governments, including the UK, which is aimed at protecting the environment in the north-east Atlantic, the Daily Telegraph says. Shell can claim the money for the clear-up from the Treasury, which “treats the cost of decommissioning offshore assets as a genuine business expense which can be offset against profits made in previous years”, the newspaper reports. Elsewhere, BusinessGreen reports that UK energy company Octopus has today launched what it claims is the UK’s first heat pump and solar referral scheme, whereby customers who have had these low-carbon technologies installed can refer friends and family, with both receiving £100.

For BusinessGreen, Green party politician Caroline Lucas writes that the UK faces its “one of the most important elections of our lifetimes” later this year as the need to act on climate change grows. She says: “Yet as a record number of people head to the polls around the world this year, the climate emergency is set to become one of the most weaponised and politicised electoral battlegrounds worldwide – but most strikingly of all in the advanced economies and democracies of the west, which have contributed most to causing the climate crisis and should be showing the greatest leadership now in addressing it.” She adds that the UK Conservative government is trying to “stoke its own divisive climate culture war”, saying: “It wasn’t long ago that there was sufficient mainstream consensus across political parties that the UK parliament was able to declare a climate emergency. That consensus has now been eroded with conservative ministers today more likely to defend and enable pumping yet more planet-heating fossils, attack net-zero ‘zealotry’ and row back on the UK’s commitments together.”

Elsewhere, the i newspaper has an analysis on how shadow climate secretary Ed Miliband and “his green caucus” will try to retain Labour’s climate agenda. An editorial in the Sun says that water firms should “fear the public’s wrath” if they introduce a hosepipe ban. The Daily Telegraph carries several comment pieces attacking efforts to tackle climate change. This includes a comment piece by Sir John Redwood, a Conservative politician with links to climate sceptic groups, titled “nobody is buying into the net-zero madness” and a comment piece by Conservative heredity peer and climate sceptic Matt Ridley titled “solar farms are taking us back to the dark ages”. [The article quotes John Constable without mentioning he is energy editor of the campaign arm of the climate-sceptic lobby group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).] The Daily Telegraph also has a comment piece attacking smart meters by columnist Andrew Orlowski and a feature on the “net-zero row plaguing the Welsh countryside” by energy correspondent Jonathan Leake.

Guardian environment writer Arthur Neslen has an analysis on EU green rollbacks ahead of this year’s European elections. He writes: “The EU’s great green deal cave-in has been nothing less than spectacular. As aggressive lobbying and violent farmers protests ramped up in the last year, Brussels has killed plans to cut pesticide use by half, to green farming practices, to ban toxic ‘forever’ chemicals, to rein in livestock emissions and, last week, to restore nature to 20% of Europe’s land and seas. The aim may have been to create breathing space. Predictably, that hasn’t worked. The bloc’s anti-deforestation regulation seems likely to be the next green reform for the chop, with 20 agriculture ministers reportedly calling for it to be pared back and suspended on Monday, citing ‘administrative burdens’. Neslen says “it is clear that centre-right parties fear an expected far-right insurgency in June’s parliamentary elections” but notes that European policymakers are switching to a “brown agenda” before the results of the election have been announced. [For more on the EU nature restoration law and farmer protests, see Carbon Brief’s coverage.] Elsewhere, Politico reporter Zia Weise examines why European socialists are not championing the net-zero cause.

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal says that US president Joe Biden is planning to build a “climate army”. It says: “The political model is Franklin D Roosvelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, which paid Americans to work when nearly one in four were jobless. The US now has a labour shortage, but the Biden Administration wants to mobilise more than 20,000 initially for the Climate Corps and some 50,000 by 2031. [Congresswoman] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey want the Climate Corps to employ 1.5m over five years.” Elsewhere, the Los Angeles Times has an editorial on the “relief” that California is likely to have enough snowpack meltwater to last through spring and summer this year. 

A new study investigates the “policy blind spots” around the contribution of women to rangeland cultivation in Tunisia and the effects of climate change on their livelihoods. Conducting focus groups and interviews with almost 300 people, the researchers find that “men and women are negatively affected by rangeland degradation and water scarcity, but women are additionally disadvantaged by their inability to own land and access credit and by drought mitigation and rangeland rehabilitation training that only target men”. Women have a “growing involvement” in livestock rearing and agricultural production – to a greater extent than is assumed in policy circles, the authors say, and so they “must be supported with commensurate social and economic policy interventions”.

New research aims to narrow down the wide range of estimates for how many times a year the contiguous US is struck by lightning. Using data from the National Lightning Detection Network, the researchers calculate that the mainland US receives an average of 23.4m “cloud-to-ground” lightning strikes per year, with 36.8m contact points (lightning can contact the ground in more than one place). Knowledge of these two parameters is “critical to lightning protection standards”, the authors say, as well as “better understanding of the effects of lightning on forest fire initiation, geophysical interactions [and] human safety”.