The UK government has announced plans to introduce a temporary “cost-plus revenue limit” to break the link between high gas prices and the amount made by all electricity producers, the Press Association reports. It adds that energy leaders have “expressed concern” that the proposed cap on revenues from renewable power generators and nuclear power plants “could put off investors”. The Independent frames it as “a temporary windfall tax on the sector’s profits” and, therefore, describes it as a “U-turn” for prime minister Liz Truss, “after months of resisting…calls for further levies on the extraordinary profits being made by the energy companies”. It adds that reports suggest that the cap could limit prices to as little as £50-£70 per megawatt hour (MWh), “compared to current prices of around £500”. This is lower than the €180 (£159) per MWh cap being implemented by the EU. The Guardian quotes a spokesperson for energy company SSE who says “any revenue cap must be set at a level that doesn’t discourage essential investment in the UK’s renewable energy sector and therefore should be comparable to other countries”. The Daily Mail refers to the move as a £15bn “raid” on renewable energy profits by business and energy secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg. According to the Times, energy companies “fear it could be even more punitive” than the windfall tax imposed on North Sea oil-and-gas producers by former chancellor Rishi Sunak in May. However, when discussing how much money the cap on electricity generators could bring in for the government, it cites estimates of between £4bn and £14bn. The newspaper notes that the move is intended to tackle profits being made by some older facilities, which are benefiting from the inflated wholesale electricity prices driven by spiralling gas costs. The story appears on the frontpage of the i newspaper.

In more energy crisis news, the Financial Times reports that ministers have “expanded the energy price subsidy scheme for British businesses to contracts that were agreed last year before the war broke out in Ukraine”. It will now apply to any company that signed a contract since 1 December 2021, an extension from the 1 April 2022 date previously announced. The newspaper describes this as a decision “that is likely to add to the cost of what was already expected to become one of the largest state interventions in modern history”. The Guardian reports that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has criticised UK chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, stating that his tax cuts and energy support package have made the Bank of England’s battle against inflation harder. Specifically, the Washington-based institution says the energy package “has scope for better targeting the vulnerable, which would lower the cost of the package and better preserve incentives to save energy”.

Finally, BBC News reports that “some” Conservative MPs are in talks with opposition parties, including Labour, to try to block the government’s plans to restart fracking in England. As it stands, MPs are not set to get a vote on the issue, but Labour wants to force a vote and some Conservative MPs have told the news outlet that they would also like this. The piece adds that “some Conservatives said they believe dozens of their colleagues have raised concerns with No 10 and the prime minister about her plans to bring back fracking where there is ‘local consent’”.

The UK will not achieve its target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 unless there are widespread changes to how people eat, travel and live, according to a “sweeping” report by the House of Lords environment and climate change committee, covered by the Financial Times. The “influential parliamentary group” notes that, as it stands, the government’s net-zero strategy places “too great a reliance on as yet undeveloped technologies” and plans for enabling behavioural change are “seriously inadequate”, the newspaper continues. The report calculates that roughly one-third of emissions reductions up to 2035 would rely on decisions by individuals and households, the article adds. It also notes comments by ministers rejecting measures to cut meat consumption or curb energy use, and says they have consistently argued that such interventions would amount to “nanny-statism”. The Independent notes that the committee is urging No 10 to use the lessons of the Covid pandemic to enable people to make the necessary decisions, including regulations, cash incentives and financial support for low-income households to enable low-carbon living. The Daily Telegraph promotes the sole dissenting voice of Lord Lilley, a former Tory minister with deep links to the dark-money climate sceptic lobby group known as the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Lilley attacks the “net-zero puritans” in a comment piece for the paper.

Meanwhile, Just Stop Oil protests continue in London and the Independent reports that the Metropolitan Police arrested 28 protesters on Tuesday for “wilful obstruction of the highway”. With videos online showing a fire engine and an ambulance on blue lights unable to get through the traffic, the Press Association reports that home secretary Suella Braverman has said she expects police to use the “full powers” given to them by the government against the fossil fuel protestors. The Daily Telegraph has a profile of “what the protesters hope to achieve”, including their call for the UK government to “immediately halt all future licensing and consents for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels in the UK”. A Sun editorial takes aim at the “climate loons” involved in the protest.

Separately, the Guardian reports that various high-profile figures have criticised oil giant BP’s sponsorship of an exhibition of Egyptian artefacts at the British Museum, opening shortly before the COP27 climate summit taking place in Egypt.

Finally, BBC News reports that the National Trust, RSPB and Wildlife Trusts have said they could urge their millions of members to take to the streets in demonstrations against “what they describe as a government U-turn on protecting nature”.

“Major industry players” have told the Financial Times that European wind turbine manufacturers are financially struggling and cutting jobs, “putting them at risk of losing market share to Chinese competitors”. Many European leaders are attempting to boost their supply of domestically produced renewable energy amid the global energy crisis, but the newspaper says companies are struggling with inflation and the rising cost of key materials, as well as supply chain delays. Separately, Reuters reports that “under a worst case scenario”, spiralling costs driven by Europe’s energy crisis could cut the continent’s car production by close to 40%, or more than 1m vehicles, according to analysis by S&P Global Mobility.

In more positive news, BusinessGreen reports on a new assessment by RenewableUK that finds a “phenomenal rate” of growth in the total global pipeline of floating offshore wind projects. It says the global pipeline for the sector has more than doubled in the past 12 months from 91 gigawatts (GW) to 185GW.

Trading in China’s national carbon emissions allowance (CEA) market ended September with a monthly total volume of 10,810 tonnes, reports Caixin Global, adding that this “falls to a record low” for the second consecutive month. Market prices “continued to hold up well”, with open market transactions closing September at “57.50 yuan ($8.08) per tonne, roughly down 0.9% from August”, the outlet adds. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that oil prices “fell about 2%” on Tuesday, “extending the previous session’s almost 2% decline”, as “recession fears” and a “flare-up” in Covid-19 cases in China “raised concerns over global demand”.

Separately, German chancellor Olaf Scholz is “planning to travel to China” on 3-4 November, “making him the first G7 leader to visit the People’s Republic since the start of the coronavirus pandemic”, reports Politico, citing “two officials with knowledge of the travel plans”. Scholz also “sees particular importance in cooperating with China in the fight against climate change”, the outlet says, adding that “he hopes to win Beijing as a partner for a climate club” – an idea that he “initiated” last year to “promote climate protection among the world’s biggest economies”. Additionally, Andreas Kuhlmann, chief executive of the German Energy Agency, has published a comment piece in the state-run newspaper China Daily. He writes: “One of the areas in which Sino-German cooperation is indispensable is climate change.”

Bloomberg writes that at the once-every-five-year Communist Party congress this month, where President Xi Jinping is “set to secure rule until at least 2027”, policies on the table will “help determine how quickly China surpasses the US economy”, or whether it ever will. According to the Bloomberg Economics model, a growth rate “above 5%” over the decades ahead – as predicted pre-pandemic – is now “out of reach”, due to the “lasting impact of Covid zero policies”, a “faster decline in fertility than previously expected” and “lower investment due to a gradually shrinking real estate sector”. The Shanghai-based financial outlet Yicai says that amid “general easing” of real estate market policies, “many” cities in China have “reduced the lower limit of home purchase commercial loan rates and housing provident fund loan rates”, with the minimum interest rate for first-home loans in “some” cities dropping “below 4%”.

Elsewhere, Bloomberg has published a comment piece by columnist David Fikcling, titled: “Xi Jinping is no Liz Truss when it comes to climate policy.” He writes: “A commitment to energy transition is now deeply bound with Xi’s public identity. As long as he remains as leader, a UK-style reversal seems inconceivable.” Finally, Caixin has a comment piece by Wang Jing, Fan Ruohong and Denise Jia, titled: “Does China really need that much more coal-fired Electricity?”

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has warned that climate change could spark an energy crisis as serious as the one currently resulting largely from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to New Scientist. The organisation has, therefore, issued an “urgent” call for nations to prepare their power grids for extreme weather, in a year when hurricanes, heatwaves and flooding have already led to blackouts around the world, the news outlet adds. Covering the same report from WMO, Reuters references suggestions made by the organisation including retrofitting hydropower dams to match new rainfall patterns and shoring up plants against storm surge.

The Hill reports that Hurricane Ian, which made landfall in Florida late last month, is the 15th billion-dollar climate and weather disaster to hit the US this year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Separately, the Washington Post reports on a new study that offers “confirmation of what atmospheric scientists have been warning of for years”, specifically showing that “climate change is bringing more intense rains to US”.

Extreme heat events could make parts of Asia and Africa uninhabitable for up to 600 million people by the year 2100, according to a new report by the UN and the Red Cross covered by the Washington Post. (This outcome arises in what the newspaper describes as “stark scenario” which would result if “little is done to curb carbon emissions”. The report covers a range of potential future emissions scenarios, including the high-emissions RCP8.5 scenario, about which Carbon Brief has published an explainer.) The newspaper notes that the report describes the future projected death rates from heatwaves as “staggeringly high”, comparable to all cancers or all infectious diseases. It also adds that “countries that are the least responsible for climate change will also bear more of the burden than richer nations that emit more greenhouse gases”. The Guardian has a piece about the continuing impacts of the major floods that recently struck Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports on another UN report – this time from the UN Development Programme (UNDP) – which concludes that “a serious debt crisis is now taking hold in the poorest parts of the world”. It says that 54 nations, accounting for more than half of the world’s poorest people, need immediate debt relief “to avoid even more extreme poverty and give them a chance of dealing with climate change”.

And Reuters also says World Bank president David Malpass has defended the institution’s commitment to tackling climate change to NGOs in a meeting, despite his recent comments that were interpreted as climate scepticism.

Ibrahim Buriro, an organiser for the Awami Workers Party in Pakistan, and a master’s student in development studies, has written an essay for the New York Times about the recent flooding in his nation. He says that his immediate family is among the millions of Pakistanis displaced by floods, which he notes were primarily caused by record monsoon rains and “made worse by global warming”. He writes: “But the magnitude of this disaster was made larger by Pakistan’s exploitation of nature in the name of ‘progress’. My country needs to abandon its excessively industrial approach to water infrastructure, lest our ecological and economic situation becomes even more tenuous.“ He says Pakistan’s “dam-building frenzy” has increased the nation’s vulnerability to climate change, because of their impact on the Indus River delta – causing it to recede – and their tendency to overflow when the monsoon is heavy, worsening floods. While he emphasises that “Pakistanis cannot let our own government off the hook”, he also says there is a need for international assistance. “When global leaders gather in Egypt in November for the UN international climate conference, our lands will still be underwater,” he writes.

In his weekly Guardian column, George Monbiot cites new Carbon Brief analysis demonstrating the impact on gas imports of Conservative governments abandoning past green measures. He adds that “Truss’s refusal to launch an energy-saving campaign has a similar effect”.

New research finds that ice loss at the ice-ocean interface of glaciers – defined as “frontal ablation” – was responsible for 52bn tonnes of ice loss from around 1,500 marine-terminating glaciers in the northern hemisphere over 2010-20. The authors combine measurements of ice thickness, surface velocity and changes in the end position of glaciers to estimate the decadal rate of frontal ablation. ​​Ice discharge over 2000-20 was equivalent to 2.1mm of sea level rise and “comprised approximately 79% of frontal ablation, with the remainder from terminus retreat”, they find. The study adds that “near-coastal areas most impacted include Austfonna, Svalbard, and central Severnaya Zemlya, the Russian Arctic, and a few Alaskan fjords”.

Including natural variability in climate impact projections increases the uncertainty of near-term changes in mortality, per capita GDP and corn yield in the US by 38% on average, a new study finds. The authors examine sources of uncertainty in climate impact projections based on hundreds of model runs. They find that natural variability represents more than half of total climate uncertainty in some projections. The study concludes that “omitting uncertainty due to internal variability could lead to an underestimation of worst-case impacts and/or a misallocation of resources in climate mitigation and adaptation efforts”.