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Daily Briefing |

TODAY'S CLIMATE AND ENERGY HEADLINES

Briefing date 11.03.2020
Budget 2020: Chancellor Rishi Sunak to freeze fuel duty for tenth year in a victory for the Sun’s ‘Keep It Down’ campaign

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News.

Budget 2020: Chancellor Rishi Sunak to freeze fuel duty for tenth year in a victory for the Sun’s 'Keep It Down' campaign
The Sun Read Article

The Sun reports in an “exclusive” story ahead of today’s budget in the UK that, “in a move that will delight hard up motorists”, chancellor Rishi Sunak intends to freeze fuel duty for the tenth year in a row. The paper notes that the move delivers on a manifesto pledge made by the Conservatives in the last election. Analysis published yesterday by Carbon Brief found that the freeze in fuel duty since 2010 means the nation’s CO2 emissions are up to 5% higher than they would have been otherwise. As it stands, transport is the largest contributor to the UK’s emissions. BBC News reports that the budget is also set to include a promise to raise spending on infrastructure, such as roads and railways, to its “highest in decades”. The Times frontpage carries the news that Sunak will pledge £2.5bn in local roads during the next five years to carry out repairs and fill up to 50 million potholes.

Elsewhere, the Independent reports that the economist Lord Turner, former chair of the Committee on Climate Change, told the treasury committee the claim cited by former chancellor Philip Hammond that it would cost the British economy £1tn to reach net-zero is a “piece of propaganda of very little value”. In the same hearing, the Independent also reports that Conservative MP Harriett Baldwin responded to Lord Turner’s comments about cutting meat consumption by emphasising the impact of vegetarians “flying in soya beans from Brazil”.

In other UK news, the Daily Mail reports on a YouGov poll that finds 46% of British people back a third runway at Heathrow compared to 30% who favoured looking elsewhere, after the plan was ruled illegal on climate grounds. BBC News looks at a new plan being presented by the European Commission which it says could “ensure products are designed and manufactured so they last”. The plans would apply in the UK even after Brexit “ because it probably won’t be worthwhile for manufacturers to make lower-grade models that can only be sold in Britain”. The Financial Times has a feature looking at “the mess of Britain’s carbon taxes”, which states the nation will “need a more uniform carbon price across industries” to meet its targets.

Oil price war will hit coronavirus fight, says energy chief
Financial Times Read Article

Fatih Birol, who heads the International Energy Agency, has warned that Russia and Saudi Arabia risk undermining efforts to stop the spread of coronavirus “if they insist on continuing an oil price war”, according to the Financial Times. The energy chief says poorer oil-exporting nations, such as Algeria, Iraq and Nigeria, may struggle to keep up as their revenues fall. Another piece reporting on Birol’s comments in the same paper notes the situation may have “profound consequences for the world’s embrace of cleaner energy”, affecting demand for electric vehicles and the appeal of energy-efficiency measures. The Times reports that Saudi Arabia “will pump more oil than ever before” as it attempts to flood the market and escalate a price war against Russia and the US. The Hill notes the move comes after Russia refused to join the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) in cutting production in response to the slowdown in demand triggered by coronavirus. The Washington Post reports that the White House is looking to pursue federal aid for shale companies hit by oil price shock. An editorial in the same paper states the “ultimate loser – and a probable intended target” of the oil price war is the US, the world’s number one crude producer. Finally, Bloomberg reports the current situation is prompting the Chinese government to consider buying more crude for state reserves.

Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that leading campaigners are calling on governments to act with the same urgency on climate as they have in response to the virus. Citing Carbon Brief’s analysis of the impact that the outbreak has had on Chinese emissions, it says evidence is mounting that the crisis is reducing emissions “more than any policy”. Meanwhile, Climate Home News reports on the potential negative impacts of coronavirus on climate action, noting that the outbreak is disrupting “climate and biodiversity meetings ahead of two critical UN summits seeking to limit warming and to halt extinctions of plants and wildlife”. According to Reuters, China intends to relax companies’ environmental regulations “to help the resumption of production disrupted by the coronavirus epidemic”.

Finally, an opinion piece in the South China Morning Post suggests “coronavirus may inadvertently be the unifying factor which forces change in lifestyles on a global scale”.

World Meteorological Organization: Climate change pushes sea levels to record high
The i newspaper Read Article

Many publications carry stories about the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) latest annual State of the Global Climate report. The i newspaper leads on the announcement that melting ice caps and expanding warmer water pushed average sea levels to record highs last year and notes the “world’s oceans are struggling to cope with the impacts of climate change”. The Guardian reports on comments by UN secretary general António Guterres at the launch of the report, in which he said the world is “way off track” in dealing with climate change. The paper notes that the report is led by the WMO, but with input from the UN’s agencies for environment, food, health, disasters, migration and refugees and scientific centres. Bloomberg notes it confirms several previously reported statistics, notably that “2019 was the second-warmest year on record; that 2015 to 2019 were the warmest five years on record; and that 2010 to 2019 was the warmest decade on record”. In January, Carbon Brief publish its own “State of the Climate” summary of 2019.

Trees on commercial UK plantations 'not helping climate crisis'
The Guardian Read Article

An “exclusive” story in the Guardian based on a new report produced for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) examines the UK’s progress on tree-planting and its capacity to address climate change. It finds that half of the harvested timber in the UK is used for less than 15 years and another quarter is burned, meaning its carbon storage is potentially minimal. The piece also notes concerns that the difficulty in identifying suitable land for tree-planting could push afforestation into areas that threaten endangered species. Ahead of today’s budget, another piece in the Guardian reports on a call from Friends of the Earth to give tree-planting a financial boost. It says just £5.2m will be spent on English new trees under the countryside stewardship scheme for the current financial year, enough for less than half of the 30,000 annual hectares pledged by the government.

Several publications, including the Independent, also report on a new paper based on modelling from more than 40 natural environments that finds large ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest “could collapse in less than 50 years once a crucial tipping point is reached”.

Molly Scott-Cato, The Times.

Climate change: the chancellor should invest in the transition
The Times Read Article

A piece in the Times by former Green MEP Molly Scott-Cato considers today’s budget, stating the key question will be “how are we going to pay for the changes in almost all areas of our lives that sustainability demands?” She lists retrofitting homes, replacing gas boilers and the electrification of transport as major projects that must be funded in part by cutting subsidies to fossil fuels and reinstating the escalation of fuel duty in line with inflation. “It is time for a step-change in our investment in the climate transition, a genuine assault on the gross inequalities across our country, and the end of damaging neoliberal economics,” she concludes.

Meanwhile, an editorial in the Sun celebrates the paper’s campaign “victory” after the chancellor Rishi Sunak apparently said he would continue the decade-long freeze on fuel duty. “For families, who faced a £43-a-year hike at the pumps. For van drivers and truckers whose bill would have been in the hundreds. And for consumers who would have ended up shouldering some of the cost. Londoners less reliant on cars underestimate the dire effects of a penny or two a litre on those who drive daily.”

Another comment piece, this time in the Guardian by Alfie Stirling from the New Economics Foundation, also emphasises the need for a “climate budget” and spending on low-carbon infrastructure. “We currently spend a little under 1% of GDP per year on such investments…but the evidence suggests this will need to rise to more like 2-3%.” Stirling says that amid talk of “levelling up” regions that have been overlooked, it is vital that the government “makes that investment green”. A comment piece by Mike Mason in the Guardian says that at the upcoming COP26 summit in Glasgow could “kickstart a green tech revolution”.

Comment.

There's no 'deadline' to save the world. Everything we do now has to pass the climate test
Damian Carrington, The Guardian Read Article

An opinion piece by the Guardian’s environment editor Damian Carrington warns against the use of deadlines when discussing climate change and humanity’s response to it. “You may have read that there are just eight, or 10, or 12 years to save the world from the climate crisis. There are not. It is already here, gaining strength every day as carbon emissions pour into the atmosphere. It is a slow-motion disaster. Action to avert the worst should have started last week, last year, last decade.” He acknowledges the role that Guardian reporting on the subject, alongside other publications, has had in driving this narrative, particularly following the 1.5C report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He says that this is “not a message of despair, though, but one of measured hope” and emphasises that there is still time to take action. “Every effort must be made to achieve success. But even if this deadline is missed, it will not be too late, because every act reduces human suffering.”

Science.

Regime shifts occur disproportionately faster in larger ecosystems
Nature Communications Read Article

Large ecosystems, such as the Amazon rainforest and Caribbean coral reefs, could collapse within just a few decades after reaching a “tipping point”, a new study finds. The research uses modelling to explore how ecosystems of different sizes and structures would take to collapse after a tipping point is reached. It finds that “regime shifts” occur disproportionately faster in larger ecosystems.

Observed emergence of the climate change signal: from the familiar to the unknown
Geophysical Research Letters Read Article

Many world regions are already experiencing weather which would have been “unknown” to those living in the same region in the 19th century, a study finds. The research explores how climate change is “translated into impacts on society not just though the amount of change, but how this change compares to the variations in climate that society is used to”. The authors find that people in the tropics have experiencing the most “obvious” uptick in temperatures. Meanwhile, people in the UK have seen less obvious increases in average temperature and rainfall, but have seen more obvious shifts in rainfall extremes.

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