The Biden administration has formally suspended oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that were issued towards the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, the New York Times reports. It adds that the Interior Department will undertake an environmental analysis and a legal review of the Trump administration’s decision to grant the leases. The piece notes that while the move was widely expected and comes after an executive order to halt new Arctic drilling, it also “serves as a high-profile way for the president to solidify his environmental credentials after coming under fire from activists upset by his recent quiet support for some fossil fuel projects”. Politico, which first reported the story on Tuesday, states that the prior opening of the refuge to drilling “marked the culmination of a nearly four-decade-long battle by the oil industry to gain access to the refuge”. According to the Hill, an order signed by interior secretary Deb Haaland said that a review has unearthed “multiple legal deficiencies” in the record supporting the leases. It notes that while proponents of drilling at the refuge had argued it would create jobs and generate revenue, opponents have raised concerns about wildlife including polar bears, as well as climate change and the concerns of Indigenous groups in the area. Bloomberg notes that the Biden administration has also defended a separate Trump-era decision to proceed with another major oil development in the nearby national petroleum reserve by ConocoPhillips. The story is also covered by Reuters and BBC News.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that president Biden will host Republican senator Shelley Moore Capito on Wednesday, “in hopes of hammering out a bipartisan infrastructure deal” which Democrats hope will address climate change in a significant way. The Hill reports that the progressive, youth-led Sunrise Movement intends to support the current administration’s plan to create conservation and reforestation jobs through a “civilian climate corps”, although with $100bn (£71bn) over five years rather than the $10bn (£7bn) proposed by the president.

Australian Labor MPs have split over their support for the nation’s natural gas industry in “a new sign of disunity on climate change and whether Australia should phase out fossil fuel”, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. In a debate on the topic, several members of Labor, the nation’s opposition party, supported a motion put to federal parliament to halt funding for new gas developments in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin, the newspaper notes. However, it adds that the party’s policy platform “accepts the need for gas and does not seek to block new projects including fracking”, despite an official ambition of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The debate saw “significant interventions” from former Labor leader Bill Shorten and former resources spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon to back new gas projects, the newspaper states. Separately, the Guardian reports on a planned speech by Labor leader Anthony Albanese to the Minerals Council of Australia in which he intends to reassure mining companies that his party supports the continuing export of fossil fuels. At the same time, Albanese intends to emphasise Australia’s “bright future” exporting other resources including aluminium, lithium, copper, cobalt, nickel and rare earths minerals to support the renewable energy sector.

Meanwhile, another Guardian article reports on the impact of Australia exporting fossil fuels overseas. It states that new data, compiled by the UK-based climate thinktank Ember, finds that emissions from coal mined in Australia but burned overseas were almost double the nation’s domestic greenhouse gas footprint in 2020. The article states that, in Australia, state governments were still promoting fossil fuel extraction despite an International Energy Agency (IEA) report warning that “new projects need to halt if the world is to have a chance to keep global heating to 1.5C”. In more coal news, Bloomberg reports that Coal India, the world’s biggest coal mining company, is about to enter negotiations with trade unions over pay hikes which could increase its prices at a time when the “global push for clean energy is putting the industry’s future into doubt”.

Finally, the Guardian reports that Australian prime minister Scott Morrison is set to have his first one-on-one meeting with US president Joe Biden at the G7 meeting in the UK, “with China and climate change among the issues to be discussed”. Another Guardian piece covers a new report from various development organisations which finds that the nations of the G7 have “pumped billions of dollars more into fossil fuels than they have into clean energy since the Covid-19 pandemic, despite their promises of a green recovery”. In the UK, BusinessGreen reports on a letter from 50 campaign groups urging the government to heed the IEA’s advice and end all new oil and gas exploration and extraction licenses in the North Sea.

The Bank of England governor has “doubled down” on promises to carry out policies to help the UK shift to a net-zero economy, while also warning that it is not the financial regulators’ role to force that change, City AM reports. Speaking at the Reuters Responsible Business 2021 conference, Andrew Bailey said financial institutions should take better account of climate risks, but added that it was too soon to link capital requirements explicitly to environmental criteria. According to Sky News, the governor said that risks, such as property damage, could lead to displacement and conflict, which could in turn cut company profits, damage public finances and make settling underwriting losses for insurers more expensive. The piece adds that the world’s central banks are “beginning to focus on climate change as various countries make commitments to reach a state of net-zero carbon emissions”. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports on comments to the paper by the governor of France’s central bank, François Villeroy de Galhau, who said that a global agreement that would require all listed companies to disclose climate risks in a standardised way is within reach. The governor told the newspaper that discussions around such an international framework had progressed fast and could be agreed at the UN COP26 climate conference in November.

Separately, Bloomberg reports on a new carbon-offset market being developed by former Bank of England governor Mark Carney and Bill Winters, the chief executive of Standard Chartered Plc. It states that, according to Carney, a unified market for carbon offsets – in which a tonne of removed carbon is turned into a commodity – could be worth $100bn by the end of the decade, up from about $300m in 2018. The piece notes that while there is hope of a pilot scheme before COP26, “closed-door deliberations have dragged on for months” and “there’s sharp debate on fundamental questions”. Another Bloomberg piece states that in order for the market for carbon removal to mature it will need a “benchmark” like Brent crude is for the world’s oil supply.

Finally, Our World in Data has a comment piece titled, “The argument for a carbon price”, which is authored by its founder Max Roser.

BP is investing $220m (£156m) in US solar projects across 12 US states “as it seeks to expand its renewables portfolio”, the Hill reports. The projects will amount to 9 gigawatts (GW) worth of energy, which the oil company says will be enough to power about 1.7m homes, according to the news website. BP, which is one of the largest oil and gas producers operating in the US, has previously announced it intends to increase its renewables capacity to 20GW by 2025 and 50GW by 2030, it adds. According to the Guardian, the move to “snap up a string of development projects” from the US solar developer 7X Energy is the latest part of “some of the most ambitious” plans put forward by a big oil company. Bloomberg quotes a spokesman who says the new assets would be BP’s first wholly-owned projects since the company re-entered the solar market in 2017.

China’s Jiangsu province has launched a “precise carbon emission measurement system” to track the electricity industry’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, reports Xinhua. The state news agency says that the system, set to cover all of the province’s thermal power enterprises by the end of 2022, can conduct “real-time, continuous and accurate” monitoring of the emissions. Shanghai’s Pudong New Area also launched a “smart” platform to “accurately” track carbon emission data on Monday, reports the official news outlet SHINE. The software will monitor 6,500 companies and share their data with the government, the website says.

Meanwhile, South China Morning Post reports that some provinces in southern China had to ration electricity to factories and businesses to deal with “record-breaking” power consumption triggered by a heatwave and economic rebound. As of Saturday, the Southern Grid’s total power distribution had reached 502.9 terawatt hours (TWh), a 23.7% year-on-year increase, reports Caixin, an independent Chinese financial publication. Elsewhere, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) urged all regional environmental regulators to “resolutely contain” the development of energy-intensive and high-emission projects in a notice on Monday, state-affiliated China Chemical Industry News says.

Separately, the main construction of China’s second-largest hydropower station is set to finish this week, reports the Global Times, a state-run newspaper. The Baihetan hydropower station is scheduled to start operations on 1 July, it adds. Science and Technology Daily reports that the Inner Mongolia autonomous region had shut down 35 cryptocurrency mines by the end of April as part of an ongoing clampdown on the activity. Carbon Brief’s China Briefing newsletter recently explained why China is cracking down on crypto operators.

Finally, the Financial Times reports that the Chinese central government’s carbon emissions targets have made local governments “reluctant to expand their reliance on coal-fired power, forcing officials to ration electricity instead”.

An array of species including bluebells, coffee plants, snow leopards and emperor penguins is under threat from climate change, according to a new report compiled by the charity WWF which is covered by New Scientist with input from the Press Association. The report focuses on the 1.5C target warming target of the Paris Agreement and calls on world leaders meeting at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow later this year to restrict temperature rises to below this level, the science publication notes. According to the i newspaper, the report titled “Feeling the heat: The fate of nature beyond 1.5C of global warming”, highlights 12 species from around the world that are already experiencing the effects of climate change. The Daily Mirror notes some of the species at risk in the UK include bumblebees at risk from overheating and mountain hares in the Scottish Highlands keeping their white coat camouflage too long as winter snow cover reduce. It states that, according to the report, climate change is increasing the frequency of heatwaves, floods, droughts and wildfires, “creating conditions that many species cannot cope with”. The Guardian notes that while many countries, including the UK, the US and the EU, have promised steep cuts in emissions by 2030, “taken together, these would still lead to a rise of 2.4C”.

The coverage of Shell’s defeat in court last week and the placement of two activist investors on Exxon’s board of directors continues, with journalists reflecting on what the two events mean for the fossil fuel industry. Robinson Meyer writes for the Atlantic about how, despite controlling just 0.02% of Exxon, activist hedge fund Engine No. 1 succeeded in placing two investors on the oil company’s board of directors. He notes that to achieve this they won the support of large state-pension funds “that try to act in the best interest of the entire market” and newer financial firms, such as State Street and BlackRock. “Working together, these funds brought Exxon to heel,” Meyer concludes: “Last week, Exxon’s shareholders – that is, the owners of capital – acted to rein in Exxon’s managers and insiders. Capital has apparently been recruited into the fight against climate change; Wall Street is, à la Mothra versus Godzilla, battling Big Oil. If that’s surprising, it shows how tangled the politics of decarbonisation has become”.

A piece by columnist Thomas Friedman in the New York Times also considers events at Exxon, writing that the “petroleum age will end because we invent superior technology that coexists harmoniously with nature”, while leaving plenty of oil still in the ground. “Alas, though, not every oil company got the memo,” he writes. In light of the shareholder revolt during what Friedman describes as “one of the most consequential weeks in the history of the oil and gas industry and shareholder capitalism”, he notes that Engine No. 1 “are out to strengthen Exxon, not destroy it. They view it as one of the world’s greatest collections of scientific and engineering talent.” He says that while the activists appreciate Exxon’s plans for a carbon-capture facility, they also think it needs to invest in a more diversified energy sources “while it still has an income stream from oil and gas”. By contrast, Wall Street Journal editorial board member and climate sceptic Holman W Jenkins, Jr describes what happened at Exxon as a “pseudo-event” that has been overhyped as a climate victory. Jenkins argues that asking oil companies to “voluntarily refrain from producing a legal product for which there is huge and inelastic demand” is “absurd”, as is proposing Exxon switch to wind and solar, “in which it has no expertise or advantage”.

In the Conversation, Prof Arthur Petersen, a professor of science, technology and public policy at University College London, writes that the order by Dutch judges that Shell must implement stringent carbon dioxide emissions cuts within the next few years “could have far reaching consequences”. He continues: “The question arises as to whether any company anywhere in the world can be ordered by Dutch judges to reduce their emissions”. Petersen notes that “legally there is nothing fundamentally new happening here” and adds that “more of these cases may follow, in the Netherlands and elsewhere, and the strength of the legal logic will definitely put additional pressures on politicians and businesses to organise for a more rapid low-carbon transition”. In the Guardian, Tessa Khan, an international human rights lawyer working on climate change litigation, writes that Shell’s loss is a “turning point in the fight against big oil”. “The door to real corporate accountability for the climate crisis is finally wide open,” she writes.

A new study finds that increasing temperatures will raise the risk of wildfires across much of the continental US by 2100. Using 20 global climate models under two different climate forcing scenarios, researchers analysed both changes in the probability of wildfires and the drivers of those changes. While predictions of precipitation patterns vary across the continent, uniformly increasing temperatures over the next century will increase wildfire risk nearly everywhere – including in regions that are not currently prone to fires. The authors write: “The ensemble modelling approach presents a useful planning tool for mitigation and adaptation strategies in regions of increasing wildfire risk.”

Fire activity across the southern hemisphere was higher in the early 20th century than it is today, according to a new study. Researchers reconstructed a new wildfire record by analysing black carbon in 15 ice cores from Antarctica and the central Andes; then, using a global fire model, they examined how these changes in fires would affect the Earth’s radiative balance. The authors attribute the decline in wildfire emissions – a 30% reduction over the 20th century – to expanding agricultural land use and development in the southern hemisphere. The decrease in black carbon from wildfires “largely compensates for the cooling effect of increasing aerosols from fossil fuel and biofuel sources” in the radiative balance, the authors write.