There is widespread media coverage of Joe Biden’s decision to approve the ConocoPhillips Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. The Guardian reports that the £6bn project “will be one of the largest of its kind on US soil, involving drilling for oil and gas at three sites for multiple decades on the 23m-acre National Petroleum Reserve which is owned by the federal government and is the largest tract of undisturbed public land in the US”. According to the newspaper, the project will produce 576m barrels of oil over 30 years, with a peak of 180,000 barrels per day. This would account for around 1.5% of current US oil production, according to the Financial Times. Meanwhile, BBC News reports that the project will generate 278m tonnes of CO2e over its 30-year lifetime – equivalent to adding 2m cars to US roads every year. The Washington Post reports that Biden has permitted three of the five proposed drilling sites – which will allow up to 199 total wells. Quartz says the plan is expected to generate $17m for the government.

Politico says “Conoco will relinquish its rights to approximately 68,000 acres of its existing leases in the NPR-A, including approximately 60,000 acres in the Teshekpuk Lake special area”. The Guardian adds that Biden also announced plans that will bar drilling in nearly 3m acres of the Beaufort Sea and limit drilling in Alaska’s 13m acre “National Petroleum Reserve”. The Guardian reports separately that“Alaska lawmakers, unions and Indigenous communities have pressured Biden to approve the project, saying it would bring much-needed jobs and billions of dollars in taxes and mitigation funds”. However, Independent notes one Indigenous group that opposes the project, fearing that it will impact their subsistence lifestyle. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that “environmental groups are combing through the Biden Interior Department’s approval for flaws that could provide them grounds for new lawsuits”. The newswire notes that Trump’s administration approved the project in 2020, but the court blocked it, arguing its environmental impact analysis was flawed. Politico says “lawsuits are likely”.

According to the Washington Post, “the administration signalled it had few legal options but to approve Willow, given that the oil giant ConocoPhillips has lease rights for the region that date back to the late 1990s”. The New York Times says Biden was “acutely aware” of his campaign pledge to stop drilling on federal lands, but that the administration had “limited options” other than to approve the Conoco project. Politico reports that the move has “angered both the environmental base he needs for a possible reelection run — and an oil and gas industry that the administration has implored to increase production to prevent another damaging surge in energy prices”. The story is also covered in the Hill, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, NBC news and Axios.

In other US news, the Hill reports that an atmospheric river is expected to bring heavy rain and flooding to California today. Axios draws a link between climate change and more intense atmospheric rivers in its coverage. This comes as the Hill reports that “Californian officials have announced the cancellation of the remaining days of the salmon season due to lingering drought issues”. Meanwhile, Axios reports that “Senate Democrats are preparing to rehash a fight over solar panel tariffs they thought they had won last summer”. 

Politico continues to cover the disagreement between France and Germany over the EU’s proposed new green transport legislation. According to the outlet, French economy minister Bruno Le Maire said France is “ready to ‘fight’ Germany to save EU green transport legislation, which effectively bans the sale of combustion engine-installed cars and vans from 2035”. The outlet says that Germany has allies including Italy, Poland, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. Separately, the outlet says “the future of the internal combustion engine is turning into a Franco-German war”, as France has Spain on its side. Reuters also covers the disagreement. 

Elsewhere, Reuters reports that the EU will propose a revamp of Europe’s electricity market rules today, “aimed at expanding the use of fixed-price power contracts to shield consumers from severe price spikes like those experienced last year”. The measures will protect vulnerable consumers from being cut off by electricity suppliers if they cannot pay their bills, Reuters reports separately. The proposal is “not the revolution advocated by some countries like France and Spain, but also more than market conservatives like Germany and the Netherlands wanted,” Politico says. Bloomberg adds that the plans will include “virtual regional electricity hubs”. Elsewhere, Bloomberg reports that the EU “isn’t planning to stockpile battery metals and other critical commodities as part of new measures to ensure supplies — rowing back a previous suggestion — after some major manufacturers opposed the move”.

Cyclone Freddy – one of the strongest cyclones ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere – has hit southern Africa for the second time, Al Jazeera reports. According to the outlet, the cyclone has killed more than 60 people in Malawi and Mozambique. BBC News reports that, according to the World Meteorological Organization, Freddy is the strongest tropical cyclone on record and could also be the long-lasting one. It adds: “Experts say climate change is making tropical storms around the world wetter, windier and more intense.” The Washington Post reports that the cyclone originally struck Madagascar on 19 February and Mozambique on 24 February. “Having crossed the Mozambique Channel three separate times, Freddy is now in the midst of its second Mozambique landfall,” it adds. Reuters says: “Communications and electricity supply in the storm area have been cut so the extent of the damage and number of casualties were not clear…State TV reported that hundreds were displaced across the storm’s path. More than 650 houses were destroyed in Marromeu district, it said, while in Sofala province more than 3,000 people were affected by flooding.” Separately, the Washington Post says: “Countries like low-lying Mozambique are among the most vulnerable to climate change and least equipped to grapple with its effects.” Le Monde also reports on the cyclone.

Rishi Sunak has promised that an updated UK energy security strategy will be released “shortly”, with a focus on “ramping up carbon capture and small modular reactors to develop homegrown energy and meet net-zero commitments”, the Guardian reports. According to the paper, ministers were forced to redo the plans after a ruling by the high court in July 2022, which found that the government’s net-zero strategy breached the 2008 Climate Change Act. The Times notes that small modular nuclear reactors are yet to be built anywhere in the world, but the Treasury said last week that it would begin a competition to select designs to be built here. MailOnline says Sunak is “set to fire the starting gun on the race to deliver the world’s first ‘mini’ nuclear power plant”. Politico reports that “chancellor Jeremy Hunt will pledge a ‘clean-energy reset’ [this] week, earmarking billions of pounds of investment for carbon capture technologies in his spring budget statement”. This comes as the Independent covers findings from the Institute for Public Policy Research, which say the UK government “is being left behind in the race to develop and deploy green technologies because of an unwillingness to invest in its industrial strategy”. The body says the UK needs policies akin to the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the paper says. Meanwhile, CityAM says that Sunak will talk to Joe Biden about his concerns with the IRA.

In other UK news, the Guardian reports that “a judge has jailed an Insulate Britain protester for five weeks after he vowed to return to the streets to carry out more disruptive protests if he was not sent to prison”. BBC News reports that the protesters glued himself to a road in west London, affecting around 10,000 drivers. MailOnline reports that the protestor’s three “comrades” were not given prison sentences. Sky News also covers the prison sentence. This comes as the Daily Telegraph reports that the National Highway is redesigning motorway gantries to make it harder for protesters to climb them. 

Elsewhere, the Guardian reports that river levels across the UK have been at record lows and are likely to be “devastated” by dry weather until at least May. Meanwhile, BusinessGreen reports that the Welsh government has approved plans for a 100MW floating wind farm. The Daily Telegraph covers a warning from Bosch that “heat pumps will not work for older UK homes which lack the necessary space and insulation”. And the Daily Mail says that more than £2bn in UK aid to India has “failed to achieve value for money in supporting inclusive growth and poverty reduction”. However, the paper quotes Dr Tamsyn Barton, chief commissioner of ICAI, who says that “there were some positives – particularly on climate change”.

China Electric Power News focuses on Sunday’s press conference by premier Li Qiang which took place after the closing of the first session of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC), a major political gathering in Beijing. The premier said: “People care more about specific things around them such as housing, employment, income, education, access to medical care and the ecological environment. It is necessary to promote the green transition of the way of development…All these contents are closely related to the energy sector.” Li also said that “several” areas of work by the government require “the energy sector to do a good job”, the state-run industry newspaper highlights. China Energy News reports that the first session of the 14th NPC “voted on Friday to approve the decision on the State Council’s institutional reform program”. Pan Fusheng, a deputy to the NPC, is quoted saying that the requirement of a “sound and new type of state system” in the process of “restructuring” the Ministry of Science and Technology is “believed to be of great benefit in achieving major technological breakthroughs in the field of renewable energy”. China’s Securities Regulatory Commission, the state-run industry newspaper adds, has been “upgraded to an agency directly” under the State Council, which could “improve the convenience of financing for energy companies”.

Meanwhile, Caixin reports that several “major” automakers in China are “racing to slash prices on both new-energy [electric] or conventionally powered vehicles, hoping to survive an escalating price war as consumer demand weakens amid policy changes”. The Shanghai-based outlet has another article, which explains “why China set its 2023 GDP growth target at ‘around 5%’”. Citing experts at a recent forum hosted by the China Photovoltaic Industry Association, S&P Global Commodity Insights says that China needs to “revamp its power grid to continue to absorb 100GW and above of solar generation capacity every year”, including “upgrading the technology and introducing commercial business models that enable higher solar power consumption”.

Elsewhere, the pace at which “China and India are building infrastructure across the Himalayan region” can “significantly increase hazards and risks of natural disasters”, reports BBC News. Climate change is “further destabilising the ecologically fragile region” as rising temperatures “continue to melt glaciers and permafrost ”, the article adds. China and India have “always worked together during international climate talks to protect their interest, often countering the west”, it adds, citing experts saying such partnership is not as “effective when it comes to dealing with the challenges of climate change or other environmental degradation in the Himalayas”.

Finally, China Daily has an editorial focused on Japanese foreign minister Yoshimasa Hayashi’s visit to the Solomon Islands, Kiribati and the Cook Islands in late March. The article says: “What the Pacific island countries most urgently need are funds, technology and expertise to help them build better infrastructure and deal with the climate change crisis, not geopolitical competition between major powers. Hopefully, Hayashi will bear that in mind during his upcoming trip to the three countries.”

The climate-sceptic editorial page of the Wall Street Journal applauds Joe Biden’s decision to move ahead with the $8bn Willow oil project in Alaska – the largest oil and gas project currently proposed on US public lands. “Whatever the political calculation, the Willow decision is a great relief to Alaskans and an economic boon to America,” the editorial writes. In contrast, the Guardian’s Alaskan writer, Kim Heacox, calls the project “a critical turning point in the US commitment to addressing climate change”. Heacox says that, “amid all the clutter and noise, Biden must focus on the objective truth of climate change”. She adds: “Last fall nearly every Alaskan got a handsome check from the Alaska Permanent Fund, an oil account worth more than $70bn. It’s been this way every year for decades. At first it felt like a gift, then an entitlement. Now it feels like a bribe.” She concludes: “If Biden does the right thing, he will send a signal around the world and inspire other leaders to stand up to big oil and say no – not here, not now, not ever. No compromise, no scaling down.”

For the Financial Times, Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, compliments Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act for its “strategic thinking”.” He writes: “The IRA should act as a wake-up call that a rebooted economic strategy for the UK needs to include, but also look beyond net-zero. Accelerated decarbonisation is the central challenge our economy faces in the decades ahead and will grow industries we must be part of.”

Meanwhile, for Bloomberg, columnist David Fickling writes that China’s emissions peak is in sight, “even though coal remains the backbone of the nation’s power generation”. Finally, for the Guardian, freelance journalist Henry Cooke, accuses New Zealand’s new prime minister, Chris Hipkins, of “back-pedalling” on climate change ahead of upcoming elections.

New research uses satellite data to characterise more than 1,000 extreme weather events during 2002-21. The total intensity of these extremes was “strongly correlated with global mean temperature, more so than with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation or other climate indicators”, the researchers find. This suggests that “continued warming of the planet will cause more frequent, more severe, longer and/or larger droughts and pluvials”, they write. The ratio of wet to dry extreme events “decreased substantially over the study period” in three regions, the study also finds, “including a vast swathe extending from southern Europe to south-western China”. The opposite was true in two regions, including parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the authors add.

Thousands of cities in more than 100 countries could be “self-sufficient” in electricity using floating solar power systems on reservoirs, a new study says. Using multiple reservoir databases and a “realistic climate-driven photovoltaic system simulation”, the researchers estimate that the practical potential electricity generation for floating photovoltaic (FPV) systems with a 30% coverage on 114,555 global reservoirs is almost 9,500 terawatt-hours per year. Considering the proximity of most reservoirs to population centres, the researchers conclude that “6,256 communities and/or cities in 124 countries, including 154 metropolises, could be self-sufficient with local FPV plants”.