In her first speech as UK prime minister, Liz Truss has said Britain can “ride out the storm” of the energy crisis, identifying energy bills as one of her “three early priorities” alongside growing the economy and “getting the UK working”, the Scotsman reports. Speaking outside Downing Street, the newspaper reports that Truss said: “We will get spades in the ground to make sure people are not facing unaffordable energy bills ”. According to the Daily Telegraph, she will unveil a “package of measures to help with spiralling energy costs as early as Thursday”. The Press Association notes that Truss attributed the “severe global headwinds” the country faces to Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. The Times reports that Truss is expected to announce plans today to freeze household energy bills at about £2,500 a year as part of “a huge support package to shield people from soaring prices”. It notes that energy experts have warned that the package, which could cost more than £150bn, “gives the taxpayer potentially unlimited liability if gas prices remain higher for longer than expected”. Bloomberg says that Truss is also finalising plans for a £40bn support package to lower energy bills for UK businesses.

In an “exclusive” story, the Guardian reports 29 MPs and peers from the all-party parliamentary group on the environment have written to the new prime minister stating that she must hold to the legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. The piece notes that while Truss has outwardly supported the goal, campaign pledges to support North Sea oil-and-gas production and fracking, and opposition to onshore wind and solar farms “have led to fears that she could renege on actions needed to meet the target”. Analysis by the Guardian’s environment correspondent Fiona Harvey of Truss’s attitude to climate change and other issues concludes that she shows “little sign she is ready to meet big environmental challenges”.

Meanwhile, the Guardian also reports that the government’s independent climate and infrastructure advisers have “delivered an unprecedented rebuke” to Truss for focusing on increasing the UK’s gas production to bring down energy prices instead of policies to cut demand. It says that the chairs the Committee on Climate Change and the National Infrastructure Commission warn that “the UK cannot address this crisis solely by increasing its production of natural gas…Our gas reserves – offshore or from shale – are too small to impact meaningfully the prices faced by UK consumers”. Instead, Edie reports that the groups called for new policy interventions that promote renewable energy, building efficiency upgrades and low-carbon heat. The Guardian cites Jan Rosenow of the Regulatory Assistance Project, “one of the UK’s leading heating experts”, who says that heat pumps should be at the heart of Truss’s new energy strategy. Another Times story quotes oil-and-gas industry lobby group Offshore Energies UK, which agrees that while maximising North Sea fossil-fuel production is crucial for security of supply, it will have only a “limited” impact on prices. Nevertheless, Bloomberg notes that the group has urged the new prime minister to “speed the approval of more exploration licenses”.

The Press Association reports that, according to polling for industry body RenewableUK, more than three-quarters of people think the UK government should use new wind and solar farms to reduce energy bills. It notes that this includes more than four-fifths of those planning to vote Conservative in the next election “despite opposition to solar farms from the new prime minister Liz Truss”. The Guardian reports on polling that shows globally climate change is ranked as the top priority issue facing the world, with 36% of respondents ranking it as one of the three most significant issues.

Finally, the Independent notes that the departing prime minister Boris Johnson and Truss flew separately on their trips to meet the Queen at her house in Balmoral, “doubling the carbon emissions of their journeys”.

The Independent reports that Truss has named Jacob Rees-Mogg, who once blamed high energy prices on “climate change alarmism”, as energy secretary. It notes that this move comes “to the widespread dismay of environmental campaigners”, as he will be in charge of the department that is responsible for the country’s strategy to reach net-zero emission by 2050. The Guardian reports that two Conservative MPs “are understood to have turned down the role of climate change minister earlier in the day”, adding that late on Tuesday night No 10 announced that Graham Stuart would take on the role and would be attending cabinet. According to the newspaper, this prompted speculation that “Downing Street had succumbed to concerns of green Tories about giving the role to Rees-Mogg as originally planned”. Nevertheless, analysis by the Guardian’s environment correspondent Fiona Harvey notes that Rees-Mogg’s voting record “shows little inclination to champion green policies such as net-zero, and a zeal for post-Brexit deregulation”. It notes that the new minister is an investor in oil and coal mining through his Somerset Capital Management fund and “has many times voiced climate denialism”.

Politico states that Downing Street has also confirmed that Alok Sharma has been reappointed as COP26 president for international climate talks.

The EU is pushing for national windfall taxes on energy companies’ inflated earnings to counter what European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has described as “astronomic” electricity bills, according to the Financial Times. The newspaper says the proposed levies, which will be up for debate when EU energy ministers meet on Friday, “would target fossil fuel producers and low-carbon power generators that have reaped extra profits thanks to artificially inflated electricity prices”. According to another Financial Times story, the chief executive of gas company Equinor has stated that higher taxation of energy companies is justified if it allows governments to ease costs for consumers and other businesses. In his column for the same newspaper, Martin Wolf spells out the impact of cutting off ties with Putin’s Russia, stating that “it will be costly to win this battle. Yet Europe can and must free itself from Russia’s chokehold.”

Politico has a piece titled, “What are Europe’s energy emergency options?”, in which it lays out six key questions that EU energy ministers will have to contend with when they meet on Friday to discuss energy prices. The Financial Times reports that the Norwegian prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre has announced he is open to discussing long-term gas agreements and price caps with other European countries to help alleviate the energy crisis.

The Washington Post reports that in “coal-loving Poland”, the war in Ukraine is “doing what years of pushing from climate advocates could not”, namely encouraging Poles to embrace green measures to help the country shift away from Russian fossil fuels. It points to the country leading Europe in installation of heat pumps per capita this year.

According to Climate Home News, African leaders have criticised their European counterparts for missing a summit in Rotterdam, Netherland, on how Africa can adapt to climate change. It notes that while the presidents of Senegal, Democratic Republic of Congo and Ghana travelled to the event, only Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte was there to meet with them. Finally, Reuters says that the EU and China are “questioning each other’s commitment to fighting climate change, following the failure of climate talks by the Group of 20 (G20) last week”.

The San Francisco Chronicle states that the heatwave “blasting the west” with record-setting temperatures could go down as the worst hot spell in Northern California for the month of September – “and perhaps all time”. It says that never before seen temperatures were recorded in the East Bay, with one area hitting 117F (47C) and Sacramento breaking several monthly temperature records, including the downtown area reaching 113F (45C). The Guardian reports that California’s power grid is facing a “major stress test, with officials asking residents to “prepare for possible rolling blackouts as the heatwave reaches a boiling point”.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz supports the proposal by economy minister Robert Habeck to keep two of the three remaining nuclear power plants available as an emergency reserve beyond the turn of the year, reports Die Zeit. “Basically, the phase-out of nuclear energy remains the same”, the Social Democrat Scholz said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, adding that “for this winter, however, we are making it possible for the two nuclear power plants in southern Germany, Neckarwestheim 2 and Isar 2, to be able to run for a few more months into next year, so that we have sufficient electricity available in any case”. Regarding the position of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), which calls for all three nuclear power plants to continue operating for a longer period, Scholz is quoted as saying: “As is well known, the FDP has a different view on nuclear power, which is completely legitimate. Now it’s about the energy supply next winter, and the government will act very consensually”. However, Joachim Bühler, managing director of Germany’s technical inspection association, explains in Bild: “The nuclear power plants in the emergency reserve could not perform this time-critical function in practice” due to technical issues.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports that German environment minister Steffi Lemke referred to the situation at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which is now captured by Russians, saying that the call to extend the life of nuclear power plants is “irresponsible”. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal carries an editorial explaining that the third reactor Habeck says he’ll close on schedule is located in the northern state of Lower Saxony, where the Green Party is “competing for a spot” in the state government in elections next month. According to the article, Habeck’s “nuclear half-step” may help his party in that state vote, but opinion polls suggest it could be “a loser” nationally. There is a “less risky alternative” for the north German nuclear power plant in Lingen, reports Die Welt. For example, “additional oil power plants in the form of power plant ships, so-called power barges, could be used here in the short term”, Habeck’s spokeswoman is quoted as saying.In other energy news, the German economy ministry wants to expand the options for generating electricity, for example, from solar systems and biogas, reports Die Zeit. The outlet explains that several laws should be changed for this purpose. According to the article, there should be a special crisis tender for solar systems with a volume of 1,500 megawatts (MW) to advance the expansion scheduled for winter. In addition, special regulations for promoting biogas plants are to be created for the period up to and including 2024, notes the outlet.

Finally, Manager Magazin quotes the chief of Germany’s largest and state-supported gas importer Uniper, Klaus-Dieter Maubach, who says that “the worst is yet to come”. Maubach believes the recent drop in prices, which analysts say may be a reaction to leaked EU plans to cap gas prices, is likely to be short-lived, notes the outlet. Politico adds that the EU efforts to set a price cap on Russian gas imports “are running into a German roadblock”.

The China Building Material Council, an industry association, has released the “opinions” of the building materials sector’s development during the 14th five-year period,  reports CENews.com, a newspaper affiliated with the Chinese ministry of ecology and environment (MEE). The sector, it says, will fully achieve carbon peaking by 2025, with cement and other industries taking the “lead in reaching carbon peaking before 2023”. Xinhua, a state news agency, also covers the news, highlighting that the opinion will provide “specific guidance” to the sector to “accelerate green and low-carbon development”.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that US climate envoy John Kerry has “urged China to resume bilateral talks to avert a global warming crisis” and “called on world leaders to speed up their energy transition away from fossil fuels”. Kerry is quoted saying: “My hope is that President Xi will get back to the table with us so that we can work together to deal with this international threat.” Separately, China’s “biggest” energy groups – including Cnooc, Sinopec, and PetroChina –  are “diverting more liquefied natural gas away from their languishing home market”, Bloomberg writes, adding that this move “offers some relief to desperate buyers suffering supply shortages in other parts of the world”.

A separate Bloomberg article says that China has the “capacity to build more nuclear reactors than planned through to 2025”, citing the China Nuclear Energy Association, the nation’s “top” industry body in its annual report. The agency is also “advocating bringing more nuclear power inland, including as a backup to China’s massive buildout of wind and solar farms in the west, which can generate power only intermittently”, the article adds. Additionally, an article by the Reuters columnist Robyn Mak, titled “China’s nuclear outlook is sunny and windy”, says that Sichuan’s hydropower crisis has “some officials calling for accelerated nuclear reactor construction”. She writes: “A more realistic way to boost clean energy without slipping back into fossil fuels is to expand wind and solar capacity now, while pushing harder to roll out safer and less water-intensive nuclear technologies.”

Finally, Nikkei Asia writes that, according to Russia’s Gazprom, the state-run energy corporation “signed an agreement to start switching payments for gas supplies to China to yuan and rubles instead of dollars”. Russia has been “forging closer economic ties with China and other non-Western countries”, in particular as “new markets for its vital hydrocarbon exports”, the outlet adds.

An editorial in the Times says the absence of measures to encourage people in the UK to save energy, in a bid to address the current energy crisis, is “reprehensible”. It says that the new energy secretary will have many complex issues to deal with but “must also focus on reducing energy demand”. The piece states: “These are not normal times. The country has been through the plague; it is now, in effect, fighting a war, in which energy is the principal weapon. Cutting energy demand is essential to checking future price rises, to mitigating the costs to households and to limiting the effect on the public finances. A well-designed, full-throated public information campaign can help do that”. The piece is supported by another Times article by columnist Alice Thomson, pointing to energy-saving measures in France and Germany and suggesting, among other things, that Cabinet meetings “could be conducted in fleeces”. She writes: “No one likes being lectured by nannying politicians and the 56th prime minister won’t want to sound too hectoring in her first weeks…But companies and individuals, the rich as well as those struggling, will need to cut back their energy consumption drastically and maybe permanently until this country becomes self sufficient. Even then it makes sense environmentally to be prudent.”

Other comment pieces reflect on the new prime minister Liz Truss and her plans for the UK’s energy. An editorial in the Scotsman describes Truss’s proposal to freeze energy bills as “on the face of it, positive”, adding that “it is effectively enacting bits of policy touted by the opposition and the energy companies”. A Guardian editorial states that “the government also has ambitions that are likely to be expensive – a world-class health service, levelling up and net-zero cannot be done on the cheap”. In the Conversation, climate scientist Prof Myles Allen proposes that if the UK is to increase oil-and-gas drilling while strengthening its net-zero target, it should “package these initiatives into an even bolder climate policy: make the UK the first country in the world to commit to geological net-zero, linking future fossil fuel extraction and imports to permanent disposal of the CO2 they generate”.

The UK’s right-leaning newspapers are enthusiastic about Truss’s plans to boost fossil fuel production. Writing in the Daily Express, political commentator and climate sceptic Tim Newark expresses support for fracking, stating that to release its potential government must change the planning laws that currently “shackle any progress in drilling”. In the MailOnline, columnist and GB News presenter Dan Wootton says that “on energy, short-term intervention is only acceptable if there’s a medium- and long-term plan to ensure the UK is never reliant on outside forces for our electricity and gas again”. Rather than proposing renewable energy as a way of weaning the nation of gas, Wootton says this means “slowing the deranged march to net-zero to ensure a combination of fracking, North Sea oil extraction and nuclear power allows us to be self-sufficient”. For the Daily Telegraph, Allison Pearson lays out a series of proposals that Truss should abide by, including the following: “You have promised to lift green levies on energy bills. Fantastic! Now, go further and press pause on the UK’s net-zero timetable. It’s simply not realistic for us to be carbon neutral by 2050.”

Changes in seasonal precipitation in the Tibetan Plateau have contributed to high glacial mass loss in the region in recent decades, new research finds. The authors reconstruct mass changes and catchment runoff from Parlung No 4 – a “benchmark glacier” – since 1975. They find that since the year 2000, most mass loss from the glacier has occurred during monsoon months – driven by a decrease in the ratio of snow to rainfall, and a drop in overall precipitation. Meanwhile, an increase in the ratio of snow to rainfall in spring over the past two decades has been “increasingly important in mitigating glacier mass loss by providing mass to the glacier and protecting it from melting in the early monsoon”, the authors find.