The supreme court yesterday blocked President Obama’s clean power plan, raising fears that the centrepiece of his climate change plan could be overturned. The vote puts a temporary freeze on Environmental Protection Agency rules cutting carbon emissions from power plants. An initial attempt to halt the plan until legal challenges were heard was thrown out by a US appeals court in Washington in January, notes the BBC, but Supreme Court voted 5-4 to suspend the plan pending the outcome of the litigation. The White House released a statement registering its disapproval of the decision, and spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters “We remain confident that we will prevail on the merits,” says the Financial Times. Though The Hill says the stay means Obama will likely leave office with the fate of his premier climate policy undecided. Carbon Pulse, Reuters,Scientific American, Ars Technica, Think Progress and Bloomberg all cover the decision.

The scrapping of government support for carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology has put the UK’s commitments on tackling climate change at risk, a group of MPs has said. In a report from the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change (ECC) Committee, MPs suggest that without CCS it would be much more expensive to meet targets to reduce greenhouse gases. The extra cost could run to billions, outstripping the £1bn of public funds that had been promised for CCS. Committee Chair, Angus MacNeil MP, said: “[The government] cannot afford to sit back and simply wait and see if CCS will be deployed when it is needed,” reports BusinessGreen. Reuters and Energy Live News also have the story, as does Carbon Brief.

A recent rise in oil prices is a “false dawn” and the oversupply of crude is set to worsen, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). In January, Brent crude hit a 13-year low of $27.67 and now sits at $30.50 – a long way from the $112 level reached in June 2014. The IEA forecasts that global oil stocks will continue to build throughout 2016, while demand for oil is expected to weaken. The view of the IEA differs from some oil producers, including BP and Royal Dutch Shell, which have told shareholders they expect prices will recover this year, says the Financial Times. Meanwhile, Dieter Helm, professor of energy policy at the University of Oxford, told delegates at the International Petroleum Week conference in London that $50 was likely to be viewed as a “very high price for oil” and could be set for further steep falls, reports the Times. Italy’s Eni – one of Europe’s largest oil players – said that firms should focus on reducing costs rather than cutting investment altogether, or risk “compromising the fabric of the industry,” reports the Telegraph. Reuters also has the story.

Eastbound flights across the pond could take longer because of human-caused climate change, a new study suggests. The research shows faster jet stream winds will delay transatlantic flights, adding 2,000 extra flight hours year, $22m in extra fuel and 70m extra kilogrammes of CO2 emitted. The faster jet stream will slow eastbound transatlantic flights more than it speeded up westbound flight, the researchers say. The BBC, Mail Online and Reuters have similar coverage.

Yesterday was the first day of Cuadrilla’s appeal against Lancashire County Council’s decision to reject their applications to frack. Last year, the council refused permission at sites in Little Plumpton and Roseacre Wood on the grounds of noise and traffic impact. Lawyers representing Cuadrilla told the public inquiry that night-time noise would be short and affect only a handful of homes, and that “this is not an inquiry into the rights or wrongs of shale gas extraction.” In reply, the barrister for the council argued the rejection was “local democracy in action”, says the Guardian. To coincide with the appeal, Greenpeace staged a mock fracking rig and drill in Parliament Square, reports Climate Home and BusinessGreen. The public inquiry is scheduled to last five weeks. Elsewhere, experts say the UK’s shale industry is threatened less by planning protests and environmental campaigns and more by the tumbling price of gas, reports the Financial Times. “There could not be a worse time to be embarking on challenging gas projects,” said Howard Rogers, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

The White House has published the details of the final budget of Barack Obama’s presidency. The budget aims to create a “climate-smart economy” through doubling the government’s investment in clean energy research, $2bn over 10 years towards coastal protection and $1.3 billion into international climate change programs. Its centrepiece is a “clean transportation plan”, The Hill says, which includes $32 billion per year to fund public transport, an urban planning initiative and clean vehicle research. The budget also increases funding for the Environmental Protection Agency by $200m to $8.3bn, adds another Hill article. The extra funding would be paid for by a $10.25-per-barrel tax on crude oil, raising $319bn over the next decade, reports Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Climate Home has more details of the climate aspects of the budget, which are likely to be stymied by Republicans in Congress.

It will be decades before big cargo ships can take a shortcut through the Arctic Ocean, a report predicts. The retreat of Arctic sea ice has led some governments and industries to expect a major ice-free shipping lane to open above Russia within a few years. But, in a new paper, the Arctic Institute says low fuel prices, a short sailing season and difficult ice conditions in the Arctic even in summer means it could be 2040 at the earliest before the route is commercially viable for ordinary ships. Until then it will remain cheaper to send trade between Europe and the east via the Suez canal, it says.

Writing in the FT, BP chief economist Spencer Dale says three themes look set to characterise the evolving energy landscape over the next 20 years: fast rising demand, natural gas and falling emissions. “[T]he global demand for energy is likely to increase markedly.,” he writes, as the world economy expands, driven by the fast growing economies of Asia. At the same time, climate commitments in Paris “support a golden age for natural gas” and a fall in coal use will mean a “significant slowing in the growth of carbon emissions relative to the previous 20 years”.

A strengthening of the jet stream across the Atlantic Ocean caused by climate change could increase the round-trip journey times of transatlantic flights, a new study suggests. The researchers fed simulated future wind patterns from climate models into a routing algorithm used by flight planners. The results suggest flights between London and the New York in future will be twice as likely to exceed 7 hrs, while the return leg will be more likely to take under 5 hrs 20 mins. Overall, shorter eastbound flights would not compensate for longer westbound flights, the study says.