The EU’s carbon price has climbed above €100 a tonne for the first time, in what the Financial Times calls “a landmark moment for one of the bloc’s key tools to fight pollution”. It says allowances traded under the EU emissions trading system (EU ETS) rose by 2% on Tuesday to hit €101 a tonne, “a price at which companies may start looking more seriously at investing in expensive emerging technologies, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS)”. The newspaper says the price of carbon credits “has risen fivefold in the past three years and gains have accelerated in recent weeks as the EU has tightened rules to make the system more onerous for polluters”. According to Bloomberg, the increase in carbon prices comes as policymakers “work to tighten” the EU’s cap-and-trade system to help member states deliver on a goal to cut emissions 55% by 2030 from 1990 levels. The article cites an analyst who says the upward price trajectory will only continue, with carbon potentially hitting a price of €150 by next winter. Reuters analysis notes that rising prices could make investment in CCS and hydrogen more economic, adding that “industry’s ability to make significant low-carbon investments has been squeezed by an energy crisis since Russia cut gas flows to Europe following its invasion of Ukraine last year”. Another Reuters story reports that Indonesia has launched the first phase of its own mandatory carbon trading scheme for coal power plants.

Separately, Climate Home News reports that country officials and campaigners have warned that a World Bank plan “to loosen its spending rules and lend more money to climate projects in developing countries does not go far enough”. In the Economist, Sudanese-British billionaire Mo Ibrahim says “significant reform is necessary” at international financial institutions to help Africa deal with climate change, noting that “voting at the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and the World Bank is skewed towards rich countries.

According to Climate Home News, the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) environment minister Mariam bint Mohammed Almheiri has told the Munich Security Conference: “We need the oil and gas sector to be with us. We need to shift the way they are doing business and we need to decarbonise what they are doing. We need to then phase out oil and gas in a just way.” This is a notable statement from someone the website describes as a “key minister” from the country hosting the COP28 climate summit this year. Over the past two years of COPs, there has been much debate over language to either “phase down” or “phase out” coal and other fossil fuels, with fossil fuel producers such as UAE generally pushing back against the language, the article points out.

Meanwhile, the Guardian has a story based on a new analysis conducted for the newspaper by Global Energy Monitor about “an unprecedented ramp-up of oil export infrastructure off the Texas coast”. It finds that if four projects in the area proceed and then operate at full capacity for their expected 30-year lifespan, “it will result in an incredible 24bn metric tonnes of greenhouse gases once the transported oil is burned”. These “carbon bombs” would, therefore, be equivalent to three years of the US’s entire emissions output, it states. In the UK, comedian Frankie Boyle and climate campaigner Vanessa Nakate are among those urging the prime minister to throw out plans to develop the new Rosebank oil and gas field in the North Sea, the Independent reports.

Separately, Energy Monitor has an article titled: “Are the oil majors destined for extinction?” It reflects on how much more oil-and-gas companies are spending on shareholder payouts and new fossil fuels rather than renewable investment, plus asks how sustainable this business plan is.

Gas use in the EU dropped by 19% from August to January compared with the five-year average for the same period, according to data published by EU statistics office Eurostat and reported by Reuters. This came as “unusually warm weather curbed household heating, soaring prices curtailed industrial output and governments launched emergency measures to contain the energy crisis”, the news wire says. The cuts came as Russia, previously the bloc’s main gas supplier, cut off most exports to the 27 member countries of the EU, it adds. Analysis in Bloomberg finds that Europe deployed a record amount of renewables, electric vehicles and battery storage last year. “The EU has long been a leader in going green. When the fallout from the war sent natural gas and power prices soaring, that transition kicked into overdrive,” it states. At the same time, much of the gap has been filled with liquified “natural” gas from the US and Qatar, with imports nearly doubling since 2021, it adds. Reflecting on the surge in low-carbon technology uptake, Bloomberg’s Green Daily newsletter says “Europe supported Ukraine with not just tanks, but heat pumps too”. The Associated Press quotes EU climate chief Frans Timmermans saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin accelerated the EU’s green transition by starting the war with Ukraine.

The Daily Telegraph reports that “China is importing record amounts of oil from Russia as the world’s second largest economy soaks up supplies shunned by the West”.

The UK government’s flagship “boiler upgrade scheme” for driving low-carbon heating has been described as “seriously failing” by a House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee inquiry, BBC News reports. The scheme grants households £5,000 to help switch from a gas boiler to a low-carbon heat pump and was intended to kick-start the heat pump industry in England and Wales. However, a Lords committee has criticised ministers for not doing more to raise awareness of the scheme, “which is on track to issue just half of the allocated grants”. Bloomberg notes that the committee has also concluded that “hydrogen isn’t a serious option to decarbonise home heating in the short term, adding that misleading messages from government are slowing the shift to more efficient electric options”. The Guardian states that “if the boiler upgrade scheme fails to succeed, it would represent the latest roadblock on Britain’s stop-start transition to net-zero”.

The UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt has stated that the UK will have a response soon to the Inflation Reduction Act, a major US climate and tax law, “amid concerns it creates unfair competition”, according to the Press Association. Speaking at a Treasury event for green industries in east London, Hunt promised a response in the “next few months” as ministers stressed that the UK remains an attractive market for low-carbon businesses. According to the newswire, the chancellor stressed to reporters that the “political consensus” on climate change in the UK remained a major advantage over the US. Reuters reports that Hunt said the US was “coming from behind” due to the climate scepticism of Donald Trump. At a separate event, UK trade and business secretary Kemi Badenoch said the UK, which Politico notes has been “lobbying against the plan but is not prepping its own subsidies” is “working very well with a group of like-minded countries who are worried about the Inflation Reduction Act”.

Meanwhile, speaking at the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) conference, farming minister Mark Spencer has stated that important EU environment laws will not automatically expire at the end of year, the Independent reports. This is in reference to the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, which seeks to allow EU laws to expire by 31 December 2023 unless they are specifically approved to be kept by ministers. Environmental groups and opposition politicians say the law “threatens the abandonment of key regulations that are in place to protect nature”, according to the article. Labour leader Keir Starmer gave a speech at the same event, which BusinessGreen has printed in full and which focuses on food production and security rather than climate or environmental objectives in farming. The Guardian says Starmer has “some way to go to persuade environmental experts”. Meanwhile, another BusinessGreen story reports that the government has announced more than £168m in grants for farmers in England, in part to deliver low-emissions technologies on farms. Carbon Brief has an in-depth analysis of the government’s plans for encouraging farmers to take climate and environmental actions.

Several UK newspapers feature on their frontpages the news that some supermarkets in the UK are experiencing shortages of imported fruit and vegetables. The Times says the shortages have “forced supermarkets to ration sales as farmers and retailers warn that the situation may worsen as British production plummets”. The newspaper adds: “Severe weather across north Africa and southern Europe has damaged crops that would normally feed the UK through the winter. Transport routes have also been disrupted, and high gas prices have led to less being grown in heated greenhouses in Britain and the Netherlands. Faced with bare shelves, Asda has asked each customer to buy no more than three packs of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, lettuce, salad bags, broccoli, cauliflower and raspberries. Morrisons has put a two-per-customer limit on products including lettuce, tomatoes and peppers.” BBC News says: “The shortages – which are affecting Ireland too – are largely the result of extreme weather in Spain and north Africa, where floods, snow and hail have affected harvests. During this time of year, a significant proportion of what the UK consumes usually comes from those regions. The shortages are expected to last ‘a few weeks’ until the UK growing season begins and retailers find alternative sources of supply, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said.”

China will “further accelerate the construction of solar and wind power generation facilities in the Gobi desert and other arid regions, as growth of renewable energies in the country has been gaining momentum in recent years”, reports the state-run newspaper China Daily, citing the National Energy Administration (NEA), the country’s top energy regulator. “Despite rapid expansion, the country’s large-scale development of renewable energy still faces some challenges, including limited consumption capacity and the lack of a power transmission grid in some regions”, the article adds, citing a NEA national renewable energy development and construction “situation analysis” meeting held this month.

Meanwhile, Yicai, a financial website affiliated with state-run Shanghai Media Group, writes that China’s “retail sales of passenger vehicles are expected to rebound in February, as the spring festival holiday ended and local subsidies and new energy vehicle price adjustments gradually took hold”, citing the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA). Sales of passenger cars will “likely reach 1.35m units this month, up 7.2% from a year earlier and 4.3% from January”.

Separately, experts at a seminar held by the National Climate Center in Beijing on Monday said “reducing emissions is an urgent task in mitigating climate change”, reports China Daily. Luo Yong, professor from the department of Earth system science at Tsinghua University, is quoted saying that “adaptation to climate change cannot replace reducing emissions as a way to deal with the fact the world will face more changes due to global warming”. He added, “Climate change caused by human greenhouse gas emissions is causing threats to life, disruption of food production, destruction of nature and reduced economic growth.” The newspaper also reports that Xie Zhenhua, China’s special envoy for climate change, has “received an award from the Nobel Sustainability Trust Foundation for his contribution to tackling the global problem and promoting sustainable development”, according to the ministry of ecology and environment (MEE).

Finally, Foreign Policy has a comment piece by Scott Moore, the director of the Penn Global China Program at the University of Pennsylvania, and Eyck Freymann, the director of Indo-Pacific at Greenmantle. They write: “For three decades, geopolitical wrangling between the two largest carbon emitters, China and the US, has stymied every major global climate accord.” They highlight that “even China, which has boldly set a target of becoming a ‘climate-resilient society’ by 2035, knows that it cannot totally insulate itself from the global impacts of rapid warming, which could include food price shocks and mounting instability in the developing world.” They conclude: “The good news is that the US and China have clear, demonstrated interests in the responsible global governance of geoengineering.”

The Australian environment minister Tanya Plibersek has approved a project by the oil-and-gas company Santos to open 116 new coal seam gas wells in Queensland’s Surat Basin, the Guardian reports. In response, the nation’s Green party has accused the Labor government of being more interested in opening new coal and gas facilities than working on climate policy after the government approved a new coal seam gas expansion in Queensland, the newspaper continues. It notes that the move comes as the two parties negotiate over the details of the “safeguard mechanism”, which is meant to cut emissions from industry. Meanwhile, an “exclusive” story in the same newspaper reports that New South Wales premier Dominic Perrottet has said his regional  government was open to investing in coal mines if companies couldn’t raise adequate capital themselves. 

Meanwhile, another Guardian story centres on a new report by the Climate Council and Emergency Leaders for Climate Action that concludes Australia should prepare for  “supercharged” grass fires on a scale not experienced before over  spring and summer 2023-24, driven by climate change. An “exclusive” story in the Age says that the opposition Coalition and the Greens have teamed up to launch a wide-ranging parliamentary inquiry into the October floods that struck parts of Victoria. 

Finally, in Bangladesh, Scroll.in reports that “climate migrants escaping to Dhaka find that their new home is also sinking”.

Guardian columnist George Monbiot focuses on the recent decision by a judge to tell defendants not to mention their reasons for taking part in climate protests with Insulate Britain. When one protester disregarded this instruction, he was handed an eight-week jail sentence for contempt of court. “As the defendants were unable to speak freely, these cases were assessed as if there were no moral difference between a selfless attempt to prevent the greatest catastrophe humanity has ever faced, and an inebriated ruck after closing time,” write Monbiot. He concludes: “The protesters condemned as criminals today will be the heroes of tomorrow. One of the greatest fears of those who wield power is that judges and juries will come to see them this way.” Meanwhile, DeSmog carries an interview with feminist and environmental writer Rebecca Solnit, in which she discusses climate activism. “If you don’t know how much the world has been changed, to some extent for the better, how much the climate movement has achieved, then you don’t really have a picture of how change works either,” she says.

Oliver Letwin, former chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, have written a piece for the Daily Telegraph about the need to make the UK “a more resilient country”. They write: “From pandemics to climate change, we have our own, much greater threats to face. We need to figure out how we become less vulnerable to them”. The article states that the government has been focused on “efficient crisis-handling” rather than long-term planning, but says the government has come up with plans for a new National Resilience Framework to address these issues. “If the government vigorously implements the new framework and the opposition applies the right kind of pressure, then we can dramatically improve our resilience,” they write.

Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph has published its latest editorial taking aim at the government’s net-zero targets. This time it focuses on a new House of Lords report (see above) that notes the slow rollout of heat pumps in the UK. While the Lord committee focused on the need for the government to publicise its grant schemes better, the newspaper suggests the problem is, in fact, the target for heat-pump installation itself: “Ministers argue that target dates focus public attention on the need to change. But if making the transition is prohibitively expensive, why would anyone do it?”

Finally, in a comment piece for the Guardian, chief executive of the Wildlife Trusts Craig Bennett voices his concerns about Labour leader Keir Starmer’s attitudes to nature, compared to his vocal support for climate action. “As we saw today in Keir Starmer’s speech to the National Farmers’ Union, the party is less vocal about its plans to solve the nature crisis. There is no green or fair future without nature, and there is no solution to the climate crisis unless we put nature into recovery at pace and scale,” he writes.

A new paper describes how the theme of “energy needs” has “facilitated narratives encouraging increasing oil production in California, a state otherwise known for its climate leadership ambitions”. The author notes that, despite California’s reputation as an environmental leader, “its progress in restricting oil production has been hard-fought and slow in coming due to opposition from the oil and manufacturing industries, labour unions and conservative politicians, among others”. Through an examination of testimony at hearings related to fossil fuel policymaking, the paper finds that narratives “touting California’s ‘clean’, highly-regulated, and otherwise exceptional oil, were among the most pervasive narratives told by people pushing against regulation”. The author concludes that, taking dependence on fossil fuels for granted, industry supporters use California’s tough regulations and “clean” oil to “depict the state as a potential hero defending the climate and other moral values through drilling for oil”.