Many UK newspaper frontpages this morning report that UK Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has announced that he is cutting back the party’s flagship policy to reach £28bn of spending a year on green investment should he win the next election. A frontpage story in the Times says Starmer has also “abandoned” a scheme to insulate 19m homes in a decade and said that Labour will now retrofit only 5m homes by 2030. The changes were opposed by shadow net-zero secretary Ed Miliband, the Times reports: “Sources have said [Miliband] argued against the changes at a meeting on Tuesday, but accepted Starmer’s decision and was publicly supporting it despite his reservations. ‘He’s a team player,’ a source said.” A frontpage story in the Guardian says that Starmer and Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, jointly announced that they would slash the “green prosperity plan” from £28bn a year to under £15bn – only a third of which would be new money. [A statement from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, covered by the Evening Standard, says that, after Starmer’s announcement, Labour’s total green spending has “effectively been cut in half” from £50bn to £24bn. It adds that “the sums involved are now not terribly large in the context of the broader public finances”.] The Guardian adds: “While intended to shield against repeated Conservative attacks on the scale of borrowing required, the climbdown infuriated environmental campaigners, who said it would push up costs in the long term and make it harder for Labour to reach ambitious green targets.” A frontpage story in the Financial Times reports that Starmer “sought to pin the blame for his U-turn on constrained public finances resulting from Liz Truss’s disastrous premiership” in 2022. “As conditions change, you adjust your position,” Starmer said on Thursday, the newspaper notes. Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak on Thursday said the move showed that Starmer lacked a consistent plan, the FT adds. Starmer tells BBC News that he had “no choice” but to abandon the pledge after the Conservatives’ handling of the economy. The outlet says: “He told the BBC Labour would still spend more than the Tories on green projects if it wins the election, and was committed to ‘clean power by 2030’.” A frontpage story in the Daily Mail has the headline: “Can you believe a word Sir U-turn says?” Separately, the Daily Mail reports on how business groups have been critical of the decision. The Daily Telegraph reports that former Labour home secretary Lord David Blunkett said the move “couldn’t have been worse handled”. Politico, BusinessGreen and Bloomberg are among others with coverage of the news. There is extensive comment and reaction in today’s newspapers (see below).

US climate scientist Prof Michael Mann has won his defamation lawsuit against two right-wing bloggers for libel and slander over comments about his work, the New York Times reports. The six-member jury announced a unanimous verdict after a four-week trial in the District of Columbia Superior Court and one day of deliberation, the newspaper says. Mann’s opponents, Rand Simberg, a former adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Mark Steyn, a contributor to National Review, were found guilty of defaming him, the New York Times adds. The Financial Times explains that Simberg and Steyn had accused Mann of “academic fraud” and had compared him “to a notorious child molester”. The Washington Post reports that the jury “awarded Mann $1,000 from Simberg and $1m from Steyn in punitive damages, meant to punish wrongdoing”. According to the newspaper, Mann said in a statement: “I hope this verdict sends a message that falsely attacking climate scientists is not protected speech.” The newspaper adds: “The verdict is a dozen years in the making for the climatologist, who for decades has been a target of right-wing critics over his famous ‘hockey stick’ graph.” In an exclusive interview with DeSmog, Mann said: “This is about the defence of science against scurrilous attacks, and dishonest efforts to undermine scientists who are just trying to do our job.” The Canadian Associated Press also covers the story.

The China meteorological administration (CMA) has released the China climate bulletin 2023, reports the Communist party-affiliated newspaper Guangming Daily. The bulletin says that in 2023, China saw “prominent flood and drought disasters”. The national average temperature reached its “highest in history, while precipitation levels were at the second lowest since 2012”. The national average number of hot days and extreme heat events ranked “second and fourth highest in history respectively, while the national average number of rainy days was the second lowest in history”. China Energy Net reports that the bulletin provides a “detailed analysis of the national wind and solar energy resources” in 2023, helping to “implement national strategies for addressing climate change” and “providing meteorological support for the green and low-carbon transformation of energy”. Another article from China Energy Net quotes an official from the ministry of industry and information technology (MIIT) saying that China must focus on the “high-quality development of the solar industry, strengthen top-level design and policy supply, and guide and support enterprise technological innovation”. Chinese financial outlet Yicai reports that the profits of “leading Chinese wind power equipment suppliers” are expected to have “shrunk” in 2023, mainly due to “an intense price war in the industry” that “won’t ease in the short term”, according to one industry insider. 

Meanwhile, the state-run industry newspaper China Energy News reports that the national development and reform commission (NDRC) and the national energy administration (NEA) have issued a policy document on “establishing and improving the price mechanism for the electricity ancillary services market”, which aims to establish “a sound trading and pricing mechanism”. Chinese energy outlet BJX News says that the policy is important for “deepening of the power system reform”, as well as for “promoting a better combination of active government and effective market following the establishment of the coal capacity tariff mechanism” and “promoting clean energy consumption and the green energy transformation”. IN-EN.com adds that the policy calls for regions to “reasonably set the upper limit for peak shaving service prices according to the principle that the cost of new energy projects is not higher than their generation value”. 

Elsewhere, China Energy News reports that the NDRC has pledged for “23 types of products, equipment or services, including industrial boilers, data centres, servers, charging piles, communication base stations and solar components” to “further support energy conservation, emissions reduction and carbon reduction in key areas”. Finally, China Electric Power News reports that the NEA has issued the “basic rules for information disclosure in the electric market”, which aims to improve the quality and standardisation of information disclosed by industry players following the “accelerated construction of the new power system [and] new energy storage”, among other factors.

The German subsidiary of the Russian Rosneft group, oil company Rosneft Germany, which holds the majority stake in the PCK oil refinery in Brandenburg, could soon be nationalised, reports Die Zeit. This was initially reported by Handelsblatt, citing government sources. The outlet explains that in September 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the German economy ministry placed Rosneft Deutschland under the trustee administration of the Federal Network Agency. According to information from Manager Magazin, the “top priority” of the federal government remains to ensure the security of supply and to reliably secure the long-term business operations of Rosneft Germany. However, Reuters reports that “Moscow criticised the potential nationalisation and said it would defend its interests”.

Meanwhile, the energy economist Claudia Kemfert warns that Germany’s plan to spend €16bn on 10 gigawatts (GW) of new gas-fired power plants could make electricity more expensive, reports Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR). She also expresses doubts about whether the power plants “could be easily converted to hydrogen”, which, she argued, “is not technically proven”. In addition, Reuters reports that Germany will receive its first supplies of pipeline “natural” gas from Algeria under a medium-term contract signed between a subsidiary of trader VNG AG and state-owned oil and gas firm Sonatrach, the companies said on Thursday.

Finally, the German climate protection movement Last Generation announced its intention to run for the EU elections “to finally bring the resistance into [European] Parliament”, reports EurActiv. After calling an end to the “glueing chapter” at the end of January, the group planned to continue to protest in a different form, notes the news.

For the Guardian, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves explain their decision to cut back a flagship policy to spend £28bn a year on a “green prosperity plan”. They say: “We cannot properly fund our public services and put more money in people’s pockets without economic growth, and we cannot grow our economy without investing in Britain’s future. That is why our green prosperity plan remains central in our mission to grow the economy and deliver clean power by 2030, and will be a central plank of our manifesto. It will lead to tens of billions of pounds of private sector investment in green hydrogen, carbon capture, clean steel, renewable-ready ports and gigafactories unlocked through a new national wealth fund that will create half a million good, well-paid jobs…None of us could have predicted the damage the Conservatives would do when they crashed the economy…It is not the inheritance we would have chosen, but it is the inheritance we will face if we are elected. It means we will not be able to announce additional investments under the green prosperity plan.” In the Daily Telegraph, Conservative MP Robert Jenrick responds to the news by claiming that the “public is sick of politicians’ dishonesty about what net-zero entails”.

Many UK newspapers publish editorials in response to the story. The Guardian says the “retreat” is “wrong, wrong, wrong”. It says: “The danger is that, in Thursday’s order to retreat from a commitment that could have inspired a generation, millions of less committed and less engaged voters will have heard another message – one that tells them politics does not provide them with the hope of a better life.” The Daily Mirror says Labour had to “dilute” its budget because “Tories crashed the economy”. The Daily Mail calls Starmer “Sir Flip flop”. The Daily Telegraph says “Labour’s flip flopping has made it impossible to know where the party stands on many issues”. The Sun says Starmer is “spineless” and describes the original plan as a “bloated fantasy”. The Independent says Starmer “may be right” to scale back the green pledge, but adds that the “hard bit” is that tackling climate change “will also be a hit with the electorate”. The Times says that Starmer’s move “has squandered political capital at a time when clarity is more important than ever”. The Evening Standard says the “timing leaves little to be desired” given it was announced on the same day EU scientists said that the world had just hit 1.5C of warming for a continuous year for the first time. The Economist says that the decision is “understandable” but that “the policy that results remains a mess”. In the US, the Wall Street Journal suggests that Starmer moved away from the pledge “as the costs of net-zero policies become unpopular”. [Public polls consistently show the UK public backs ambitious action on climate change.]

Elsewhere, the Times has a piece from “inside Labour’s green investment saga”. It says: “Labour sources said the team around Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, began reviewing the entirety of the party’s green commitments as far back as last autumn, amid concerns that they were no longer viable and risked being weaponised by the Tories before the election.” Separately, Times columnist Patrick Maguire writes on the “bad blood” behind the policy move. Financial Times deputy political editor Jim Pickard also has an analysis on how Labour came to drop the policy. Sky News deputy political editor Sam Coates says Labour has got itself in a “needless tangle” over the pledge. Bloomberg columnist Lara Williams says the move “isn’t a good look”. In CapX, Conservative Environment Network director Sam Hall says the U-turn is an “opportunity for the Tories”. For UnHerd, political strategist John Mcternan says it is a “gift” to the Tories. On Substack, Joss Garman – executive director of the European Climate Foundation [which funds Carbon Brief] – says: “Labour’s Green New Deal is dead, but Reeves may still become Britain’s greenest chancellor.” Andrew Pierce, Daily Mail consultant editor and GB News presenter, says the move has “humiliated” Miliband and shown Reeves is “in charge”. This is also the sentiment of a piece in the Daily Telegraph by deputy political editor Daniel Martin and an analysis in the i newspaper by policy editor Jane Merrick. A separate Daily Telegraph column by Fraser Nelson – who is also the editor of the Spectator – says this is “just the start” of a “collapse” of Labour’s policies. Also for the Daily Telegraph, notorious climate sceptic writer Ross Clark accuses the BBC Radio 4 Today programme of being biased in its coverage of the news. Finally, in the Sun, political editor Harry Cole describes the rollback by saying: “In 15 years of reporting, I’ve never been to a weirder event.”

A new study finds that the amount of carbon sequestered by mangroves may be higher than previously thought, due to lower-than-expected methane emissions. Researchers use seawater and sediment data from six mangrove sites around Australia to calculate carbon storage in different mangrove ecosystems. They find that salinity impacts the mangroves’ methane emissions, with methane offsetting just 7% of carbon uptake in highly saline mangrove ecosystems but more than one-quarter of carbon uptake in freshwater-dominated ones. The authors write that their findings “enhance the perceived climate benefits of mangrove ecosystem restoration” but add: “A crucial reduction in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions remains as the top priority to minimise climate change.”