Speaking from the annual Abu Dhabi international petroleum exhibition and conference, COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber announced that “more than 20 firms across the oil and gas sector and heavy industry have agreed to commit to curb emissions at the UN’s COP28 climate summit, with more expected to join the group before the conference”, Reuters reports. The newswire continues: “Jaber did not disclose further details of the measures that had been agreed or identify the executives, but said those who had signed up would be named upon completion of the commitment, which he said would be transparent and measurable.” Separately, the Press Association reports that Al Jaber called on members of the conference to be “central to the solution” to fighting climate change, telling them that “a phase-down of fossil fuels is inevitable and essential”. According to the outlet, the oil conference is described as focusing on “decarbonising faster together,” but in reality it is mainly about drilling, processing and selling fossil fuels. It continues: “The conference highlights the challenge the United Arab Emirates has faced in trying to convince already-critical climate scientists, activists and others that it can host the UN conference of the parties – where COP gets its name. Though all smiles at Monday’s conference, Al Jaber has acknowledged the withering criticism he’s faced.” BusinessGreen adds that Al Jaber called the green energy transition a “historic opportunity for growth and innovation”. Meanwhile, the Independent reports on the oil conference under a headline saying “Big Oil is unapologetic”. The paper continues: “The oil and gas executives were buoyant, even defiant, about the industry which earned a record $4tn last year while countries face worsening climate disasters.” The Wall Street Journal adds: “Many companies used their exhibits to champion their progress toward their ‘net-zero goals’ with little mention of their engineering prowess. There was no official acknowledgment that, with oil prices near $100 a barrel, the energy producers were experiencing boom times.” The Energy Mix reports that Shell’s chief executive told conference attendees that the company has no plans to change direction – despite the open letter that two employees wrote him last week expressing “deep concern” about his strategy and urging him not to scale back on renewables investments.

Finally, Climate Home News reports that Al Jaber’s request for governments to raise their climate targets by September has gone “totally unanswered”. Not a single country has updated its nationally determined contribution since Al Jaber made his request in July, the outlet says.

Speaking at the Conservative party conference, former prime minister Theresa May said the UK’s net-zero target should be seen as “the growth opportunity of the century” and not an “act of economic harm”, BBC News reports. According to the outlet, May told attendees that she committed the UK to net-zero by 2050 when she was prime minister because “climate change is the greatest threat to civilisation”. It continues: “She echoed [current prime minister Rishi] Sunak’s view that ‘we must take people with us’ on the journey to net-zero, rather than ‘finger-wagging’ and telling people they cannot fly or eat meat. But in a warning to her party, May said ‘we must understand that the worst thing that can happen is to give Labour the lead on net-zero’.” The Press Association adds that May “warned her party not to overinterpret last summer’s Uxbridge by-election as an ‘anti-environment’ vote”. It adds: “She also warned of the dangers of following Sir Keir Starmer’s net-zero plans, which she said would mean ‘bossy bureaucrats’ telling the public what to do.” 

Elsewhere, BusinessGreen reports that in her first speech at the Conservative Party conference since being appointed to the cabinet, energy security and net-zero secretary Claire Coutinho “promised to steer an ‘ambitious, innovative, and pragmatic’ approach to meeting the UK’s climate goals”. It adds: “She described Labour’s plans for net-zero – which include ramping up public investment in low carbon infrastructure to £28bn a year – as a ‘toxic’ strategy that would trigger a ‘collapse [in] popular support for net-zero’, while leaving the UK more dependent on foreign imports for its energy. In contrast, she argued the government’s recent spate of controversial green policy rollbacks, such as the move to delay the phase-out of new internal combustion cars to 2035, were crucial to avoid placing additional costs on households and maintaining support for the net zero transition.” [Delaying the shift to electric cars will raise UK oil demand and imports.] According to the Press Association, Coutinho announced an additional £80m to fund insulation for social homes and said businesses will be able to use more of their rooftops to generate solar power. The Daily Telegraph adds that Coutinho “said it would be ‘immoral’ to ‘impoverish’ people in the UK because of the net-zero by 2050 target when emissions were rising in other countries”. [An earlier ban on combustion engine cars would have saved the economy an estimated £6bn, according to the Climate Change Committee.] The Daily Mail also quotes Coutinho: “Net-zero can’t be something that is done to people by a privileged elite.” Separately, DeSmog reports that at the conference, Alexander Stafford – a former Shell employee and chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Hydrogen – “defended the body’s receipt of £70,000 in funding from fossil fuel giants including Shell and Equinor”. Bloomberg reports that the CEO of Scottish power said at the conference that the UK “has created a policy vacuum and hasn’t got a proper plan for achieving net zero by 2050”. And BusinessGreen says that “net-zero wars [are] set to dominate [the] Tory conference”.

Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that “business leaders who warned against Ed Miliband in 2015 have now turned on Rishi Sunak, criticising the prime minister’s plans to roll back net-zero policies”. Some of Britain’s “top entrepreneurs” told the Guardian that Sunak’s U-turn on net-zero plans has “caused uncertainty for business, reduced the country’s international standing and punished investors who made early decisions on net zero based on the original timeline”, the paper says.

The nominee for EU climate chief, Wopke Hoekstra, told a confirmation hearing with EU lawmakers on Monday that he will try to unlock funds for developing countries by taxing fossil fuels globally, including those used by the airline and shipping industries, the Financial Times reports. The newspaper continues: “Bas Eickhout, a Dutch Green MEP, questioned Hoekstra’s ‘credibility’ on fuel taxes because such decisions require unanimity among EU countries. Jutta Paulus, a German Green MEP, said after the hearing: ‘Hoekstra knows very well that an agreement on any global tax would be either insubstantial or delayed or both.’” The paper adds that Hoekstra has been criticised by some MEPs for his time working for oil company Shell. Bloomberg notes that commission president Ursula von der Leyen proposed Hoekstra as the new commissioner for climate after Frans Timmermans resigned last month to lead the Netherlands’ left alliance in national elections. “If approved by the [European] parliament and member states, Hoekstra will oversee climate regulation to turn the Green Deal…into reality,” it adds. The outlet also reports: “The commissioner-designate said he would act ‘in line’ with advice by the EU scientific board to reduce greenhouse gases by at least 90% by 2040. While Europe is planning to propose a law on its emissions-reduction target for the next decade only after the elections, the commission is going to publish an outline of options on the new goal in the first quarter of next year.” Reuters reports that the parliament’s decision on whether or not to accept Hoekstra as the head of climate change policy has been delayed until 2pm today.

In other European news, Reuters reports that Dutch climate minister Rob Jetten “said on Monday he would work in coming weeks to set up a strong international coalition to phase out subsidies and tax breaks tied to the use of fossil fuels blamed for global warming”. Separately, Reuters says that Spain’s energy minister and the head of the International Energy Agency backed the Netherlands’ call to tackle fossil fuel subsidies.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that the EU is considering scrapping a central part of reforms to the bloc’s electricity market amid a deadlock between France and Germany. The newswire continues: “At issue is whether governments will be able to offer state-backed, fixed-price power contracts to existing power plants – then collect excess revenues generated by these contracts and spend it on subsidising industries. France is keen to apply these subsidies to its nuclear power fleet, and the proposed rules have backing from central and eastern countries. But Germany and others are firmly against – warning this could give French industries an advantage over their own.”

The government has announced a shortlist of the six designs for Britain’s first “mini” nuclear plants that will compete for up to £20bn in taxpayer funding, the Times reports. Rolls-Royce, France’s EDF and four groups from the US are on the shortlist, the paper says. It adds that “none of the proposed reactors have been built anywhere in the world”. The Daily Telegraph adds of the competition for small modular reactors (SMRs): “The winning bidders, with an unconfirmed number of contracts available, will be announced in the spring…They would be expected to deploy the first so-called mini-nukes in the 2030s.” CityAM notes that Terrapower, the nuclear developer backed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, was “snubbed”.

In other UK news, the Financial Times reports that Canadian investment firm Brookfield is buying Banks Renewables, one of the UK’s largest renewable developers, for almost £1bn. The outlet calls the move “a boost for the country’s onshore wind industry after recent setbacks”. Elsewhere, Reuters says: “Britain’s Crown Estate said on Monday it has amended plans for an offshore wind licensing round which aims to create floating wind technology off the coast of Wales and south-west England to make more capacity available to bidders. The licensing round next year will be the first phase of development in the Celtic Sea.”

Separately, Reuters reports on provisional statistics from the UK Met Office, which show that last month was the UK’s joint warmest September in a record stretching back to 1884. According to the outlet, September’s average temperature of 15.2C matches the record from 2006. It adds that according to the Met Office, these temperatures would have been “practically impossible” without human-caused climate change. The Daily Telegraph notes that temperatures reached 33.2C in Kew Garden in early September. Finally, BBC News reports that the Isle of Man saw its warmest September on record.

A report by “rightwing thinktank” Civitas, which was published last week and “hugely overestimated the cost to the UK of reaching net-zero emissions” has been withdrawn, the Guardian reports. The report claimed that it will cost £4.5tn for the UK to reach net-zero emissions, but “factual errors were quickly pointed out after publication”, the newspaper says. It continues: “Analysis of the Civitas report by Carbon Brief’s Simon Evans in the Guardian on Friday found statements unsupported by evidence and cherrypicked statistics.” The paper notes that the report author confused megawatts with megawatt hours and mixed up billions and trillions. It adds that the following statement was published on the Civitas website: “This report has been taken down from the website because it was found to contain factual errors, it is undergoing revision and a fresh process of peer review.” (The Times has taken down its comment article on the report and published a correction in its print edition. The Daily Mail and the Daily Express have taken down their online news articles on the Civitas report, with the Mail also issuing a print correction. The Sun and the Spectator have so far failed to take down their coverage.)

Chinese state-owned utility giant State Grid believes the country’s investments in its power sector may surpass 100tn yuan ($13.7tn) from 2020 to 2060, reports Reuters, citing the state news agency Xinhua. State Grid adds that, to achieve its “dual carbon” targets, China’s energy transition needs to accelerate, according to the outlet. 

Xinhua carries the view of an official from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) on the recently-released measures for demand-side management. The official says that the approach could “fully tap into demand-side resources” and support the construction of a more efficient power system and ‘new energy’ system. The Communist Party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily writes that from January to August the newly-added solar capacity “accounted for about 57% of the total newly added power generation capacity”. By the end of August, installed solar power capacity reached approximately 510 gigawatts (GW), with additions in the year to date rising 44%, it adds. 

Meanwhile, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a $300m loan to a city in the coal-producing Shanxi province to deliver a “green transformation” project, which includes efforts such as promoting electric vehicles, reports the Singapore-based financial outlet DealStreetAsia. Separately, the Communist Party-affiliated Qiushi Theory has published a comment piece by the Communist party committee at the NDRC, which argues that energy supply should be stable and China should promote the establishment of an energy supply security system “encompassing coal, oil, gas, nuclear, and renewable energy sources”.

The Chinese energy website BJX News has published a commentary by Chinese officials and academics, who write that the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) is as significant as the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement as it has established a new system of transferring emission reduction obligations to other countries. It adds that it will impact the Chinese steel industry by “increasing costs, reducing international competitiveness, and promoting the steel industry’s low-carbon transition”. Finally, the Financial Times carries an opinion article by Asia Society Policy Institute vice president Wendy Cutler, who argues that the US government has “trade tools” to tackle Chinese “unfair practices” in the automotive and battery sectors. 

The new chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Prof Jim Skea, has warned that “too much ‘apocalyptic language’ on climate change risks undermining the fact humanity can still do plenty of things about it”, Sky News reports. Skea told journalists that the IPCC must walk a “delicate tightrope” of communicating both the “urgency” of climate change and human “agency” to tackle it, the outlet says. The Guardian reports that Skea also “said that approving new oil and gas fields only increased the already large amount of reserves that will have to be kept in the ground if global heating limits are to be reached”. It adds: “[The IPCC] does not comment on the climate policies of individual nations, but Skea’s comments on Monday clearly indicate that the recent actions of the UK government has slowed climate action.” The Times also quotes Skea.

“The world has lost faith in the UK’s green ambitions,” says the Financial Times’ Lex column. The piece points to the country’s carbon price, which has dropped to £36 per tonne – less than half the level in the EU. It continues: “Sectors covered by the UK carbon trading system are expected to emit about 100m tonnes of carbon dioxide this year, according to consultancy ICIS. That is some 10m tonnes less than last year. Low power demand is taking a chunk of fossil fuel generation offline. Meanwhile, the supply of credit will be 118m tonnes, meaning lots going spare. The situation should persist into 2024. Emissions are expected to decline further. Yet the government in July announced it would be making additional carbon credits available. That is a recipe for continuing oversupply.” Meanwhile, Michelle Wiese Bockmann, a senior analyst at Lloyd’s List Intelligence, writes in the Financial Times that “more Russian oil than ever before is being transported on sanctions-circumventing tankers that exploit loopholes in international maritime regulations”. She says that governments “need to identify the owners behind the so-called dark fleet of elderly tankers used by Russia and an opaque network of oil traders to ship oil, and determine where these profits are directed”. Bockmann notes that nearly 40% of some 535 “dark fleet” tankers have registered ownership via “shelf companies” incorporated in the Marshall Islands. She adds: “Insurance syndicates in London that provide hull and cargo cover to the global fleet aren’t doing enough to identify whether any of the vessels they cover are involved in Russian trades.”

Elsewhere, Prof Gisa Weszkalnys and Prof Gavin Bridge, assistant professor at London School of Economics and Political Science and professor at Durham University respectively, write in the Conversation that the new Rosebank oil field shows the UK’s offshore oil regulator “no longer serves the public good”. The piece continues: “The decision is out of step with demands for rapid action on climate change coming from a range of quarters. This includes shareholder activists demanding corporations accelerate decarbonisation, direct action groups such as Just Stop Oil, and financiers concerned about the risks of ‘asset stranding’ as renewables become cheaper than fossil fuels.” The authors note that the core objective of the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) is to “maximise the economic recovery of UK petroleum”. However, it adds: “A revised strategy in 2021 paired MER with an obligation to support the UK’s net-zero commitments. And the former Oil and Gas Authority changed its name to include an explicit reference to the ‘transition’ in 2022, underpinned by ambitions for emissions reduction and decarbonisation.” It continues: “A decade ago, a decision by [the regulator] would not have raised much attention. Now it highlights a significant problem in need of reform.”

In other UK comment, the Daily Mail has published an editorial that opens: “A cadre of strong and articulate Tory women took the fight to Labour yesterday, challenging left-wing orthodoxy on everything from net-zero to gender self-identification.” The editorial praises energy and net-zero secretary Claire Coutinho for her “blast at green zealots and their Labour supporters, who regard the rush to net-zero as ‘a religion’”. Columnist Suzanne Moore writes in the Daily Telegraph, meanwhile, that “the Tories are clueless if they think they can ignore young voters”. She says: “Reneging on net-zero commitments, doing nothing on crumbling infrastructure, letting childcare costs soar – do Tories think that the under-40s don’t notice?” And climate sceptic Ross Clark writes in the Daily Telegraph under a headline that compares government policies designed to save lives with a battle in which more than one million people died: “The war on motorists has reached its Stalingrad.”

Finally, Dr Matthew Wolfe and Dr Malcolm Araos, national fellow at New America and a postdoctoral fellow at the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy at the University of Utah, respectively, have penned a piece in the New York Times under the headline: “Climate change is forcing families into a new kind of indefinite hell.” The piece discusses the “disasters” exacerbated by climate change and says that “climate change is also leading to disappearances through migration and conflict”. It says: “We need more resources for the climate missing, but we also need better data…A big part of the problem is that the people who are most exposed to the ravages of climate change are also the people who are already most likely to slip through the cracks if they disappear.”

The number of people in “climate-change-attributable extreme poverty” could grow to 40 million by 2050, if global emissions continue at a medium rate (a scenario called “RCP4.5”). The research uses climate models to examine changes to climate-attributable extreme poverty under a wide range of different social and emissions scenarios. Under a scenario where climate tipping points are passed, the number of people in extreme poverty attributable to climate change could reach 78 million by 2050, it adds. The study also notes that overall levels of global extreme poverty are expected to decline in future because of social changes.

A new analysis across multiple European countries finds that meat taxes can be designed in such a way to avoid “overburdening” the poorest in society. The authors explain: “We find that across all selected tax designs, uncompensated meat taxes are slightly regressive. However, the effect on inequality is mild and can be reversed through revenue recycling via uniform lump-sum transfers in most cases.” The research adds that using meat-tax revenues to lower the price of fruits and vegetables can “dampen but not fully offset” the impact of such levies on low-income households.

Arctic storms have become more intense and longer over the last seven decades, a new study finds. The research uses climate models with an “improved” ability to track and measure cyclones to cast new light on changes to Arctic storms, which scientists have had difficulty studying in the past. The authors say: “There has been a long-term shift of the maximum cyclone counts from weaker to stronger cyclones and a pronounced lengthening of the duration of strong cyclones.”