There are “fresh fears for the nascent shale gas industry”, reports the Sunday Telegraph, at the very moment when “freezing weather pushed Britain to the brink of running out of gas”. It adds: “On the eve of Britain’s tightest gas supply squeeze in a decade, energy minister Claire Perry poured fresh doubts over its future. Ms Perry said that figures suggesting there may be 155 wells across the UK by around 2025 are ‘now considered to be out of date’, despite being based on ­industry data that is less than two years old…The meagre 155-well estimate itself falls well below early claims that 4,000 wells would emerge by 2032 to bring a multibillion-pound investment boom to the UK, including 64,000 new jobs.” Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that National Grid has warned that Brexit, regulation and re-nationalisation threaten investment. Separately, the FT reports that “cheap-to-build and quick to fire up plants fill in for renewables”.

The papers are full of continuing fallout from last week’s freezing spell. The Guardian says: “Gridlocked motorways, empty restaurants and idle diggers seen across Britain last week cost the economy at least £1bn a day and could halve GDP growth in the first three months of the year.” The New York Times asks whether “the Arctic and European weather patterns connected?” It adds: “This has always happened from time to time, but a growing body of research suggests that because of climate change the warming Arctic is weakening the polar vortex.” (Carbon Brief has more on these potential links in a detailed explainer.) The Irish edition of the Times says there could be “further surprises in store from ‘angry beast’ of climate”. BBC News asks: “What’s behind the UK’s freezing weather?” Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that a new study shows that Arctic spring is starting 16 days earlier than a decade ago.

The chairwoman of the parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee (EAC), Mary Creagh, has written to the top 25 pension funds in the UK to ask how they manage the risks that global warming poses to pension savings. “The climate change risks of tomorrow should be considered by pension funds today. A young person auto-enrolled on a pension today may be 45 years away from retirement, she said, adding: “Over that timescale these climate change risks will inevitably grow. We are examining whether pension funds are starting to take these risks into account in their financial decision making.” The Times reports that Guy Opperman, the pensions minister, has written to the committee saying that many pension fund trustees failed to fulfil their duty to consider environmental risks. He said: “Recent research has suggested that a lack of attention and outright misunderstanding remain widespread among trustees.” The Press Association also covers the story. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports the findings of campaigners Preventable Surprises which shows that eight out of the world’s top 10 investment consultants or asset managers offering investment advice, including Aon Hewitt and Russell Investments, have not backed a series of recent major climate change initiatives. Separately, the Financial Timesreports Cambridge University is planning to reject divesting its £6.3bn endowment fund from oil companies despite huge pressure from students and staff to shun fossil fuels, according to a document seen by the paper.

China’s state planner has pledged to cut more steel and coal production capacity this year, putting the country on track to beat its long-term targets, as Beijing reinforces its vow to beat smog and make “skies blue again”. At the opening of the annual meeting of parliament, the National Development and Reform Commission said in a work report it will reduce steel capacity by around 30m tonnes and coal output by about 150m tonnes this year.

The richest households should pay £410 a year more towards supporting energy subsidies for wind farms, solar rooftops and home insulation schemes, government-funded researchers have urged. The UK Energy Research Centre (Ukerc) said that shifting environmental and social levies off electricity bills and instead loading them on to general taxation would reduce the cost of energy for more than two thirds of households. The researchers argued the current approach to funding low-carbon power and energy efficiency was regressive. BusinessGreen also covers the research. The academics behind the research have also written a piece for the Conversation.

An editorial in the Business section of the Observer says last week’s “unnerving shortfall [of gas] was a reminder, if any were needed, of the central importance of energy efficiency…Last week’s events should kickstart a national conversation about how the UK keeps warm and tackles climate change. Successive ministers and officials have kicked the issue of how to decarbonise heating down the road. That’s partly because it has not yet become entirely clear which technological approach is best, be it electrification of heating, the use of greener gases such as hydrogen, district heating schemes, or some combination of all three. It’s also partly because, at a time when the debate about energy is fixated on the cost to consumers, no minister wants to stand up and be honest with billpayers – telling them they will need to cough up for a new hydrogen boiler in a decade’s time…Unlike many in government, the recently promoted [Claire] Perry ‘gets’ energy efficiency. She put new insulation targets for 2035 in the UK’s climate-change masterplan last year. The minister should use last week’s gas furore to cook up some serious action on efficiency now.” In the Independent, James Moore, the paper’s chief business commentator, says not to be swayed by the fracking lobbyists: “Fracking brings with it a host of very real environmental concerns, and even if they could be dealt with (debateable), at the end of the day it still results in the burning of more gas, which pumps carbon dioxide into atmosphere. This is something the UK and everyone else needs to stop doing. One way of dealing with a problem of supply is to reduce demand. The fact that Britain’s housing stock is appallingly energy inefficient has been made again and again and again. Attacking that problem would be an environmentally friendly way of addressing the gas problem.” In the Daily Telegraph, Andy Critchlow says that “energy supplies should be left to market forces”, adding: “What’s clear is that the UK cannot afford to ignore potential new sources of domestic gas supply until better battery storage technology for mass energy storage can be developed…A temporary return of coal-fired power plants is another alternative but that would require pulling back on climate change commitments.” In the Scottish edition of the Sunday Times, Michael Glackin argues for fracking: “The SNP’s focus on renewable energy has also hindered sustainable alternatives…The Scottish government needs to rethink its obsession with renewables and pursue a more balanced energy mix. We can’t wait for hell to freeze over.”

An editorial in the Irish edition of the Times looks back at recent damaging storms: “With climate change such extreme weather events will become more common, and there is no doubt that global weather patterns are already disturbed…Although the Irish government was well prepared for last week’s storms, it urgently needs to make serious long-term plans for future turbulence. Most importantly, Ireland has struggled with carbon release limits imposed by the EU over the past decade and is failing miserably…Yesterday, economists warned that climate change could cost the UK up to £1 billion a day. The cost to Ireland could be equally ruinous. The Irish government cannot change the track of storms, but it can change its woeful record on carbon emissions. That work should begin now.”

Marvel, a NASA climate scientist, writes that “I am often asked to talk about hope”. She responds: “I have no hope that these [climatic] changes can be reversed. We are inevitably sending our children to live on an unfamiliar planet. But the opposite of hope is not despair. It is grief. Even while resolving to limit the damage, we can mourn. And here, the sheer scale of the problem provides a perverse comfort: we are in this together. The swiftness of the change, its scale and inevitability, binds us into one, broken hearts trapped together under a warming atmosphere. We need courage, not hope.”

A new study assesses the skill of the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts’ (ECMWF) extended-range system for predicting sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) events, which can be the precursor to the sort of extreme weather Europe saw last week. Looking back at the 1993-2016 period, the researchers find that SSW events with significant impacts on tropospheric weather can be predicted with 30% probability around 13 days in advance. The probability then rapidly increases to 50-90% between eight and 12 days in advance, the researchers say, reaching almost 100% at day seven.

By 2026-40, yields of maize in eastern and western Kenya could decline by 11% and 7%, respectively, if warming and drying trends continue, a new study suggests. Researchers simulated how temperature and rainfall changes had affect county-level maize yields over 1989-2008, and made projections for the near future. Their results suggest that “aggressive adoption of hybrid seeds and fertiliser usage” could reverse declines and see yields increase by 14% and 6% for eastern and western Kenya, respectively.