Dr Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, said that the world is facing the “biggest energy security threat in history” due to the Iran war, reports CNBC. In an interview with the broadcaster, Birol said he expected nuclear power to “get a boost”, renewables to “grow very strongly” and electric cars to “benefit”. The comments come several weeks after Birol warned the crisis would result in “the largest energy crisis we have ever faced”, the outlet notes. Reuters reports that Brent crude oil prices rose to $106 (£79) a barrel in the early hours of this morning due to fears of “renewed military escalation” in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reports that the UN has warned that the crisis will push 30 million people “back into poverty”. Alexander De Croo, the UN development chief, said yesterday that disruption to fuel and fertiliser supplies had “already lowered agricultural productivity and will hit crop yields later this year”, it says. 

MORE ON THE ENERGY CRISIS

• Donald Trump said US citizens should expect to pay higher gas prices “for a little while”, according to CNBC.
• Reuters: “US drivers turn to EV rentals as gasoline prices surge”.
• Japan’s trade minister said citizens may begin to see the impact of the war in Iran on electricity and gas bills from June, reports Bloomberg.
• Sweden’s prime minister said it may need to restrict how much energy citizens can use if supplies remain disrupted, says Bloomberg.
• The Economist: “Renewables are shining. The Iran war amplifies their appeal.”
• Brazil’s government unveiled a bill under which additional revenue from higher oil ​prices would offset cuts to federal taxes ‌on fuels, reports Reuters.

Governments from “around 50 countries” will gather today in Santa Marta, Colombia for a summit aimed at accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels, reports the Associated Press. Co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, the conference will bring together ministers, subnational governments, academics and civil society groups to discuss how to move beyond oil, gas and coal while ensuring the transition is “just, orderly and equitable”, according to the newswire. Climate Home News reports that 60 countries will gather and notes that the guest list includes COP31 hosts Australia and Turkey, as well as “some large fossil-fuel producers are on the list, including Canada, Norway, Brazil and Nigeria”. However, the US, China, India and Russia will not attend, it says. [For more on the meeting, read Carbon Brief’s coverage of a “synthesis report” published by scientists to inform the talks.]

The Santa Marta summit comes after “several climate ministers” at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue – including Turkey’s COP31 president Murat Kurum – urged countries to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels, Climate Home News says. Bloomberg describes the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, held in Berlin, as the “opening salvo in a seven-month roadshow of events” leading up to COP31 in Antalya, which will travel to Santa Marta next. It reports there were “nascent signs” at the meeting – held earlier this week and attended by climate ministers and delegates from almost 40 countries – that the “Middle East crisis is reinvigorating the clean energy shift”. The outlet reports that Brazil told delegates in Berlin that it aimed to produce a plan by September for how it would transition away from fossil fuels.

The European Commission’s plan to “confront” the energy crisis has been criticised by some member states, reports Euractiv. The outlet notes that Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni said it was a “step forward, but not enough”. This, the outlet says, was a “rare rebuke” on Ursula van der Leyen by Italy’s far-right leader. It says that Meloni’s remarks were “echoed” by Belgian prime minister Bart De Wever, who warned that they were not “very concrete”. The outlet adds: “De Wever expressed his dismay that the proposals should have included more sweeping revisions of the emissions trading system, the bloc’s flagship carbon tax scheme. He also said that the European Commission should have proposed an EU-wide tax on windfall profits.” [For more, read Carbon Brief’s explainer on the proposals.]

MORE ON EUROPE

• Electric car sales in the EU soared by 49% in the EU, reports Agence France-Presse.
• A regulator has warned that member states are set to fall short of the bloc’s requirement to fill gas storage to 90% of capacity before ​next winter, reports Reuters.
• Reuters: “Italy says energy crisis puts its plans for defence spending in doubt.”
• The Greens/EFA group in the European parliament has called for a ban on the non-essential use of private jets amid fuel shortages, reports Euractiv.
• EU envoys are set to endorse a global net-zero shipping accord ahead of next week’s shipping talks at the International Maritime Organization, in a move that puts the bloc on a “collision course” with the US, says Euractiv.
• The EU has set out an “aim to agree” by early next year on a planned reform of its emissions trading scheme, reports Bloomberg.

BP was “handed a heavy defeat” by shareholders yesterday over an attempt to reduce reporting requirements on climate issues, reports the Financial Times. The newspaper says that two special resolutions put forward at the oil major’s annual meeting only gained the support of 47% of voting investors. This included a plan to revoke two previous shareholder resolutions from 2015 and 2019 that required BP to release climate-related data, according to the article. The other resolution that was blocked, reports the Guardian, was a proposal to “replace in-person annual shareholder meetings – a lightning rod for climate protest in recent years – with online-only events”. The newspaper says that “almost 18%” of shareholders voted against the reelection of BP’s chair, Albert Manifol, who was “heavily criticised” for the resolution to “dilute BP’s climate disclosures” and for blocking another resolution from activist investor group Follow This. The blocked resolution, CNBC says, would have required the company to “share plans on creating value for shareholders under future scenarios of falling oil and gas demand”. The Times and Daily Telegraph also have the story.

MORE ON BUSINESS

• The Guardian reports on bills introduced by Republicans lawmakers in the US that “would give oil and gas companies broad legal immunity from policies and lawsuits” aimed at holding the industry accountable for damages caused by its emissions. Heated also covers the “extreme bill to ban lawsuits against big oil forever”.
• The Wall Street Journal reports that the Science Based Targets initiative – the climate target-setting group for businesses – is considering breaking “from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the leading climate accounting standard”.
• More than 60 companies – including US tech giants Amazon and Apple – are pushing back on the stricter emissions reporting rules set out by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, according to Bloomberg. 

China has issued a new policy on “evaluation and assessment measures for carbon peaking and carbon neutrality”, reports state news agency Xinhua. The policy says that the country’s top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), will formulate a plan for achieving the goal of peaking carbon emissions before 2030 as scheduled, the outlet explains. The evaluation and assessment will be centred around achieving China’s “dual carbon” goals and nationally determined contribution (NDC) targets, the outlet adds, as well as implementing the dual control of carbon system across the country. Specifically, the document calls for reducing carbon intensity by more than 65% from 2005 levels by 2030, raising the share of non-fossil energy consumption to around 25% by 2030, peaking coal and oil consumption, controlling the scale of coal-fired power and for new clean electricity generation to cover increases in consumption, reports business news outlet Yicai.

Meanwhile, officials with the NDRC said that opinions on advancing energy conservation and carbon reduction efforts, issued on Wednesday, came as China looks to curb the “unreasonable growth of total energy consumption” and effectively reduce carbon emissions “at the source”, according to industry news outlet BJX News. Chinese news outlets carry a series of three “expert interpretation” articles of the new policy. The first one, by NDRC’s Liu Qiong, writes that the policy will “foster new drivers of green development”, according to the Shanghai-based news outlet the Paper. Sun Ying and Bai Quan, both with the NDRC, write that reducing carbon emissions from the energy and industrial sectors is the “main battleground” for implementing China’s dual carbon control system, according to Ideacarbon. The third article by China International Engineering Consulting’s Zhang Yingjian, Lun Liyong, and Huang Muke, says China should use key sectors such as industry, construction and transportation to drive overall advancement, according to Ideacarbon.

MORE ON CHINA

• BJX News reports that China’s power generation capacity rose 15.5% from January to March, with solar and wind power rising 31.3% and 22.4%, respectively.
• Bloomberg reports that China’s industrial hub, Guangdong province, saw electricity prices “almost double”, partly due to global gas supply disruptions. China will “secure sufficient fertiliser supplies and stabilise prices” amid the war in Iran, reports Bloomberg.
• A Ren Ping article by People’s Daily says China’s stable energy supply today is based on a “scientific assessment of energy transition trends”.
• Chinese battery maker Gotion says it is seeing a “renewed global focus on the green transition” amid disruptions to fossil fuel supply chains, reports Bloomberg.
• China has unveiled 10 “typical cases of ecological violations identified in the first quarter of this year”, according to China Daily.
• Xinhua interviews Yang Liqiang, with the state-run oil and gas company CNPC, on the integration of oil and gas with new energy.

The steep rise in petrol and diesel prices since the US-Israel war on Iran means electric vehicle drivers in the UK who rely on public charging pay less per mile than drivers of petrol or diesel cars for the first time in more than a year, reports the Times. The newspaper quotes Melanie Shufflebothan from EV charging app Zapmap, who says that “the cost saving [for electric drivers] compared with running a petrol or diesel car is at its highest level since May 2024”. 

Meanwhile, the Press Association reports that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has “refused to confirm whether they hold secret briefings on fuel prices”. The newswire notes that this is an “unusual” move for “such a politically sensitive cost-of-living issue”. A freedom-of-information request lodged by the newswire reveals that the department has concerns that acknowledging that briefing notes had been produced on petrol and diesel costs could prompt “mass purchasing” at the pumps and “economic damage”.

MORE ON UK

• The Daily Telegraph reports on calls from MPs whose constituencies hold the last four UK fuel refineries for the government to overhaul the country’s carbon tax scheme [described by the newspaper as a “net-zero tax”].
• The Daily Telegraph reports that Lord Walker, Labour peer and executive chairman of supermarket chain Iceland, said it would be “wrong” for the government to end the long-standing 5p cut in fuel duty this autumn.
• The Times reports on a letter from the government’s Industrial Strategy Advisory Council – and backed by Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, first chair of the UK’s Climate Change Committee – for ministers to explore the “most effective use” of North Sea assets. The letter was reportedly sent before the conflict in Iran.
• BBC News: “SNP’s Mairi McAllan supports more ‘evidence-led’ drilling in North Sea.”
• Supermarket chain Sainsbury’s has called on the government to step in to support the food sector to offset the impact of high energy costs ​caused by the Iran war, reports Reuters.
• British International Investment, the UK’s development finance ​institution, is looking to drive £15bn of investment into climate and other ‌projects over the next five years, reports Reuters. 

Em Fenton, senior director of climate diplomacy at NGO Opportunity Green, says the “stakes” at this week’s shipping talks at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) “extend well beyond shipping”. The “net-zero framework” being discussed – which aims to reduce emissions from international shipping – represents the “best, most equitable solution” to tackle the industry’s climate impact, she says. Following a “successful move by the US and Saudi Arabia” last October to delay the formal decision to adopt the framework by a year, the matter now sits in “procedural limbo”, Green says. She counts “three distinct forms of resistance” – “rejection of the need for action, procedural delay or obstruction and efforts to weaken outcomes to the point where ‘success is effectively meaningless’”. Fenton concludes: “For multilateralism to remain meaningful, it must be able to produce binding outcomes – even when powerful states object…If that process can be undermined through procedural delay and coercive pressure, it sets a precedent for other multilateral negotiations, particularly in climate governance.”

MORE COMMENT

• For Backchannel, UN climate change’s Joanna MacGregor says progress on climate change over the coming years will be shaped by “coalitions of doers”.
• In an editorial, the Washington Post advocates for the rollout of plug-in solar in the US.
• In Reuters, energy columnist Ron Bousso says energy shocks could “become the norm” as “highly interconnected oil and gas markets become more fragmented and the low-carbon transition accelerates”.
• In the Guardian, Guardian Europe columnist Nathalie Tocci and author Anu Bradford write that for Europe to thrive – amid “rising nationalism, the climate crisis and the economic slowdown” – it needs “principled and competent leaders, ambitious companies and…engaged citizens inspired to raise their voice”.
• Daily Telegraph associate editor Ben Marlow writes that the “Iran war has made Labour’s next about-turn inevitable”.
• An editorial in the Sun describes the Conservatives’ pledge to scrap a ban on petrol and diesel cars by 2030 as a “popular” policy that puts “ordinary people first”.

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Cecilia Keating, with contributions from Henry Zhang and Anika Patel. It was edited by Robert McSweeney.

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