The UK government’s offshore petroleum licensing bill passed its second reading last night, with 293 votes for the bill and 211 against, the Guardian reports. “The legislation would place the North Sea Transition Authority under a duty to run annual applications for new offshore oil and gas licences,” the newspaper says. The paper notes that no Conservative MPs voted against the bill, but COP26 president Alok Sharma abstained. It adds: “Alok Sharma has said the government’s oil and gas bill going through the Commons will not cut household energy costs or create jobs and instead will break the UK’s promise to phase out fossil fuels…He added that skills in the oil and gas industry were fully transferable to green energy and said the government should instead focus on ‘more wind power, more solar, more nuclear’.” The Press Association reports that Sharma said ministers should “heed the ‘wake-up calls’ of freak flooding and storms, and put aside the distraction of new oil and gas licences to tackle climate change”. 

In other UK news, the Times reports that the UK government has committed an extra £1.3bn in funding for the proposed Sizewell C new nuclear power plant. It continues: “A total £2.5bn has now been committed by the government to develop the Sizewell C plant in Suffolk, which could generate enough energy to power six million homes.” The Financial Times adds that the British government and French state-owned utility firm EDF, which is developing the scheme, are trying to raise an estimated £20bn from outside investors for the plant. Reuters adds: “The government said the funding, the largest to date, would allow early construction work to continue at the plant being built by French energy giant EDF before a final investment decision expected later this year.”

Separately, the i newspaper carries a story on its front page under the headline “UK’s worst storms in a decade ‘will become the new norm’”. The paper notes that the UK is set to be hit by its 10th named storm in just five months, adding: “Weather experts have warned storms are likely to become more frequent in the UK in the future, with rising sea levels, amid climate change, set to increase the impact of high waves in coastal areas.” The newspaper quotes Liz Bentley, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, who said of the storms that “unfortunately there is more to come over the next 10 years and this will eventually become the norm”. The Guardian also quotes Bentley, who said that “while the jet stream remains active, we are going to see this unsettled period”. The newspaper adds: “Climate change is also playing a role, but the precise effects on this year’s surfeit of storms are trickier to pin down. Experts agree it is important that we gain a greater understanding of this.”

Finally, there is continued coverage from the Press Association of new analysis that it says finds “the UK government should increase public investment in tackling climate change and biodiversity loss by £26bn a year – or 1% of gross domestic product (GDP) – to boost growth and productivity”.

China’s voluntary carbon market, known as China certified emission reduction (CCER), which officially resumed trading yesterday, may in future allow individuals “to sell carbon emissions generated from green behaviours under the CCER scheme…as the trading mechanism matures”, reports the South China Morning Post (SCMP). Beijing News reports that Ding Xuexiang, a member of the politburo standing committee and vice premier, attended the launch ceremony of the national voluntary carbon market in Beijing. The outlet adds that CCER is an “institutional innovation to mobilise the power of the whole society to participate in greenhouse gas emission reduction actions”. Economic outlet Jiemian reports that “preparation on the policy end” for restarting issuance of CCERs is “almost complete”, pending the “state administration for market regulation (SAMR)…releas[ing] the list of recognised validation and verification institutions”. The scale of new CCER issuance is predicted to be between tens of millions to 100m tonnes per year, according to one analyst, the newspaper adds. Chinese website Eastmoney.com quotes Yang Pingjian, from the Chinese Academy of Environmental Sciences, as saying that the current greenhouse gas trading under the scheme is primarily open to enterprises or institutions in four major sectors, including “afforestation carbon sinks, grid-connected solar-thermal power generation, grid-connected offshore wind power generation and mangrove plantation”. 

Meanwhile, Chinese energy outlet IN-EN.com reports that the national energy administration (NEA), China’s top energy regulator, has issued key priorities for energy regulation in 2024, including “[using] market mechanisms to ensure [energy] supply and stabilise prices; actively promote cross-provincial and cross-regional power market trading, clean energy trading and green power trading;…promoting user-side energy storage” among other policies. Another article by IN-EN.com reports that the ministry of ecology and environment (MEE) has issued policy documents to promote the implementation of ultra-low emissions in cement and coking industries. 

Separately, the Financial Times reports that Chinese investments in Latin American countries are increasingly in “strategic sectors such as critical minerals, technology and renewable energy”. Bloomberg says that a new study finds that China is “outpacing” the EU in research related to clean-energy technologies, having “led the number of peer-reviewed publications in areas including solar and wind power, as well as lithium battery, heat pump and carbon-capture technology, in 2021”. SCMP says that China’s new ban on the export of rare-earth processing technologies aims to “solidify China’s dominance in rare earth magnet production”, which is also a bid to “catch up with Japan”. Another article by the outlet reports that analysts say that Chinese exports of gallium and germanium “plunged last year” following Beijing’s export controls, which “could just be the start” of escalating retaliatory measures. Reuters reports that China’s ministry of state security (MSS) used a comic strip posted on social media to warn of threats from “covetous ‘overseas organisations’” secretly extracting rare earths from China.

Elsewhere, Communist Party-affiliated newspaper Guangming Daily carries a commentary by Liu Ru of the China Academy of Science and Technology Development Strategy Research Institute, who writes that, under a coal-dominated energy system, China should take new energy technology innovation as a “breakthrough”, and “build a new type of energy system in a gradual and orderly manner”. Chinese industry outlet BJX News explains that a new programme allows market players to scan a QR code on “green” power consumption certificates and “clearly trace the data of each kilowatt-hour of green power in production, trading, consumption and settlement”. 

There is continuing media coverage of the news that oil company ExxonMobil has filed a lawsuit to try to stop a shareholder climate resolution from going to a vote at its annual investor meeting. The Financial Times says: “Exxon is suing Follow This, an Amsterdam-based investor activist group, and Arjuna Capital, a registered investment adviser, in an attempt to block a motion they have put forward calling on the company to accelerate the pace of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Companies rarely go to court to block shareholder motions, and Exxon’s case marks the first time it has done so…The lawsuit is likely to be closely watched by corporate America, and if Exxon wins it may have a chilling effect on shareholder petitions.” The Guardian says ExxonMobil has argued that the shareholder proposal violates rules under the Securities and Exchange Commission, and asked a US district county in Texas to make its decision by 29 March. The Wall Street Journal reports that in the lawsuit, ExxonMolbil says that the defendants are trying to “force ExxonMobil to change the nature of its ordinary business or to go out of business entirely”. The paper also quotes Mark van Baal, founder of Follow This: “With this remarkable step, ExxonMobil clearly wants to prevent shareholders using their rights…Apparently, the board fears shareholders will vote in favour of emissions reductions targets.” The Hill also covers the story. Separately, in a Reuters Breakingviews comment, columnist Robert Cyran writes that “choosing to instead fight against a vote is counterproductive for a company that has struggled against investor concerns in the past”.

David Frost, the Conservative peer and trustee of the climate-sceptic lobby group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, will be appointed to the House of Lords select committee on environment and climate change at the end of the month, the Guardian reports. It notes that Frost claimed in a debate at the House of Lords last year that rising global temperatures were “likely to be beneficial” in the UK because they would mean fewer people dying from cold temperatures. (His claims were factchecked in the Guardian at the time, by Carbon Brief’s Dr Simon Evans.) The paper continues: “Ed Miliband, the shadow secretary of state of climate change and net-zero, said Frost’s appointment showed that [prime minister Rishi] Sunak was trying to keep those seeking to oust him onside. ‘Rishi Sunak is so weak that he has allowed this key position to go to someone who thinks the climate crisis is a good thing,’ [Miliban] said. ‘The truth is that wacky, fringe views on climate are no longer resigned to the extreme wing of the Conservative party – they are now the official position of Rishi Sunak’s flailing government. By trying to keep happy those in his own party who want to oust him, Sunak is putting party above country. The result is a disastrous energy policy that will leave Britain with high energy bills, energy insecurity, and Britain left lagging behind other countries.’”

An editorial in the Guardian argues that regulators need to limit the size of cars, noting that since 2001, new cars in the UK and Europe have grown 1cm wider every two years. The paper says that bigger cars produce more air pollution and give children a worse chance of survival after a collision. It adds: “The trend towards bigger cars is responsible for higher greenhouse gas emissions. According to the International Energy Agency, the world’s 330m SUVs between them emitted 1bn tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2022. Even the growing market for electric SUVs risks becoming part of the problem, since calculations of environmental impact include materials and energy used in manufacture, as well as minerals for batteries. While electric vehicles will always be preferable to exact equivalents powered by petrol or diesel, the size of some is cancelling out the benefits of what is meant to be a transition to a greener lifestyle.” The editorial says that Labour should “pre-emptively announce that it will impose stricter limits if elected”.

Elsewhere, the Financial Times opinion Lex column says: “Miners once told investors that electric vehicles would produce a steady stream of battery metals demand that would put an end to the industry’s cyclical nature. That promise of another supercycle remains an IOU.” In other UK comment, David Edgerton, a professor at King’s College London, writes in the Guardian that “of all Rishi Sunak’s blunders and policy decisions in 2023, perhaps the most consequential was his move to delay key milestones on the way to net-zero”. Edgerton says: “The reality is that this delay is not about realistic decarbonisation, but about the further Faragisation of the Conservative party, which is now a hard-right party of a sort familiar from the US.” He calls last night’s vote on new North Sea oil and gas production “a performative bill throwing a bone to the Faragists and forcing Labour to tack and twist some more”, adding that “again the Tories set the agenda for their own purposes, quite deliberately undermining what consensus there has been on climate policy – to the despair of Tories who have been concerned with the issue, notably Alok Sharma and Chris Skidmore”. Edgerton argues that “a whole new way of thinking about the economy is needed to decarbonise successfully, something that Labour has not yet embraced”. He says we will need to restrict  subsidies to air travel, airport expansion, new oil and coal production – something that will require “a creative and competent state, and popular consent and engagement”.

Separately, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal says that Biden is considering a ban on permitting new liquified natural gas(LNG) export terminals. The paper calls the move an “election-year gift to Russia and Iran”. It adds: “Our sources say Biden adviser John Podesta is pushing the idea in the White House as a sop to the climate lobby, which is still furious over the administration’s approval of ConocoPhillips’ Willow oil project in Alaska…If new US LNG projects are blocked, Europe and Asia will have to import gas from elsewhere to meet their growing demand. Most won’t come from America’s friends. Yet the climate lobby says new LNG projects will lock in higher CO2 emissions for decades. They’re apparently less worried by the 305 coal-fired power plants that China has announced or has in the works.” Separately, attacks on climate policy continue on the Daily Telegraph comment pages, with a piece by climate-sceptic columnist Matthew Lynn under the headline: “America’s energy boom lays bare the madness of net-zero.” He writes: “Britain has fallen prey to a net-zero dogma and fixation with renewables. America, on the other hand, is producing 13.1m barrels of oil a day”. He concludes: “We should stop the net-zero virtue signalling, and start drilling.”

Meanwhile, Prof Dominick Spracklen from the University of Leeds writes in a comment for the Conversation that “Scotland is burning as much carbon-rich peatland as it did in the 1980s”. Prof Michael Bradshaw from the University of Warwick writes in the Conversation about the path to net-zero. He says we are entering “the messy stage in which the world endeavours to phase out fossil fuels while building an energy system powered by solar, wind and other renewable sources in a fair and orderly way – but at a sufficient pace to rapidly decarbonise society”. 

Spiders may adjust the size of their webs in response to how warming temperatures could affect the size of their prey, new research suggests. For the research, the scientists conducted an experiment where two species of spider were exposed to temperature increases of 0.6C in an alpine meadow field environment. Exposing spiders to these temperatures resulted in the larger spider species reducing its web size by 43%, while the smaller spider increased its web size by 80%. Modelling suggested that these changes in web size were “primarily the result of warming-induced changes in prey size…which in turn were impacted by warming-induced changes in soil moisture and plant community”. The results suggest that spiders could have a degree of “plasticity” – ability to change their behaviour – in response to climate change, the authors say.

A “brief communication” in Nature Climate Change suggests Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could “hamper the ability to adequately describe conditions across the Arctic, thus biassing the view on Arctic change”. The authors use modelling to examine how well Arctic research stations, with or without Russian stations included, represent ecosystem conditions at the pan-Arctic scale. The analysis finds that excluding Russian stations resulted in a “marked loss of representativeness across almost all ecosystem variables, compared to modelled variables for the pan-Arctic region as a whole”.