Several outlets preview the meeting taking place in Colombia this week where, according to the Financial Times, “more than 50 countries including Germany, the UK, Brazil, Nigeria and Australia are due…for the first international meeting dedicated to phasing out fossil fuels, despite the absence of the world’s top three carbon-emitting nations”. Irene Veléz Torres, environment minister of Colombia, which is co-hosting the event with the Netherlands, tells the newspaper that the talks will be “difficult”, but the energy crisis has “made them more relevant”. Wopke Hoekstra, the European Union’s climate commissioner, tells Politico. “What unites this group is the need to find an alternative. And if anything, world events of the last six weeks have proven them right.” The Association Press says: “The meeting reflects growing frustration among some governments and advocates that decades of UN climate negotiations have failed to directly address fossil-fuel production – the main driver of global warming – prompting the Santa Marta summit to push the issue outside formal talks.”

The Guardian has an explainer on “how frustration at COP stalemates inspires first global talks on phasing out fossil fuels”. Bloomberg, BBC News, Inside Climate News and Forbes also have coverage of the talks. The Guardian and Climate Home News both focus on the new science panel launched at the summit, which will help countries develop plans to reduce dependence on oil, gas and coal. [A preliminary scientific “synthesis report” circulated to governments attending the talks, revealed by Carbon Brief earlier this month, offers 12 “action insights” for countries to consider, along with a wide range of “action recommendations”.]

MORE ON CLIMATE TALKS

• The Guardian interviews Chris Bowen, the Australian climate change minister and “president of negotiations” at the COP31 talks in Turkey in November. He says the fallout from the Iran war is driving countries to boost homegrown energy reliability and “opens an opportunity for progress on clean generation” at the meeting.
• The Financial Times: “Historic climate shipping deal faces ‘real fight’ as talks restart.”
• Euractiv: “Global net-zero shipping deal hangs in the balance as London IMO talks kick off.”

The war in the Middle East has “bolstered America’s status as an energy-exporting powerhouse, with Asia and Europe clamouring for every shipment of US crude, natural gas and jet fuel they can get”, reports the Wall Street Journal. It adds: “US exports of crude and petroleum products rose to a record last week, nearly 12.9m barrels a day, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Shipments of liquefied natural gas have also jumped, according to ship-tracking firm Kpler, with exports setting an all-time high last month.” The Financial Times has an interactive feature which begins: “A record number of tankers is instead heading for the US, tilting the global energy system further towards the world’s largest oil and gas producer.” It adds: “The US stands to benefit as war in Iran reshapes oil and gas flows, but Europe and Asia are wary of becoming too reliant on American supply.”

MORE ON US

• The Associated Press: “Trump’s rejection of wind projects scrambles GOP politics before midterms.”
• The New York Times reports that “more used electric cars are coming at more affordable prices”.
• The Financial Times reports that “shares of an Amazon-backed small modular nuclear reactor company X-energy jumped 27% on its Wall Street debut as investors flocked to the latest stock offering tied to a revival in atomic energy”.

There continues to be widespread media coverage of how the Iran war is affecting global energy supplies. Bloomberg carries an interview with S&P Global vice chair Daniel Yergin who warns that the crisis represents the “biggest energy disruption we’ve ever seen”, despite oil prices not yet reaching the inflation-adjusted equivalent of previous highs. Yergin predicts the crisis will ultimately lead to a “bigger focus on energy security” among Gulf countries and accelerate the transition to electric vehicles, noting that “20% of the cars built in the world this year will be electric vehicles, and that’s going to get a tick up from this, certainly”.

In an interview with the Guardian, Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), says: “Governments will review their energy strategies. There will be a significant boost to renewables and nuclear power and a further shift towards a more electrified future. And this will cut into the main markets for oil.” Asked about the UK’s policy towards North Sea extraction, he says: “It is up to the government, but these fields would not change much for the UK’s energy security, nor would they change the price of oil and gas. They would not make any significant difference to this crisis.”

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that Australia’s foreign minister Penny Wong has said she will visit ​Japan, China, and South Korea this week ‌for talks on energy security. Bloomberg says: “The war in the Middle East is putting pressure on the Japanese government to consider energy-saving measures, a challenge for prime minister Sanae Takaichi as she seeks to calm public anxiety over potential shortages.”

MORE ON ENERGY CRISIS

• The Guardian: “The great energy pivot: US oil and Chinese solar are the winners in Trump’s war on Iran.”
• Agence France-Presse: “Renewable energy is booming again. The Iran war has scrambled markets.”
• Financial Times: “EV ownership at ‘tipping point’ in many parts of the world, experts say.”
• Bloomberg: “This $6,000 EV should be winning the energy shock.”
• CNN: “The Iran war has the world buying more clean energy. China stands to benefit the most.”
• Bloomberg: “Solar panels and batteries are changing life in Brazil’s Amazon

India’s prime minister Narendra Modi has used his monthly “Mann ki Baat” radio address to announce that the nation has, according to the Deccan Herald, “reached a significant milestone in its renewable energy journey, with the country’s wind power generation capacity now exceeding 56GW [gigawatts]”. The newspaper quotes Modi saying: “India has recently achieved a major milestone in wind energy. Our wind energy generation capacity has now crossed 56GW. In just the past year, nearly 6GW of new capacity has been added.” The Hindu notes that Modi also used the radio address to “hail the achievement of criticality in the nuclear fast breeder reactor in Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu, as a ‘historic milestone in India’s nuclear energy journey’”.

Meanwhile, the Times of India reports that, “riding on the growing contribution of solar energy to the power generation mix, India comfortably met the peak power demand of 256GW on Saturday, the highest ever recorded on a single day, amid soaring temperatures across the country”.

MORE ON INDIA

• India Today: “Killer heatwave in April: Does India need to rethink summer vacation timing for schools?”
• BBC News: “In photos: North India braces for heatwaves as temperatures cross 40C.”

The UK government “vastly underestimated the climate impact of artificial intelligence, it has emerged, after officials raised their estimate of carbon emissions from AI by a factor of more than 100”, reports the Guardian. The adjustment – which was triggered by Carbon Brief’s Josh Gabbatiss raising questions about the estimate last month – now means that the “energy use by AI datacentres in the UK could cause the emission of up to 123m tonnes of carbon dioxide – about as much as generated by 2.7 million people – over the next 10 years”. A separate Guardian article claims that two UK departments are now “at odds over energy demands of AI datacentres” and that the “discrepancy in the forecasts raises questions over government planning for net-zero”. The story is also covered by the Financial Times, Daily Telegraph and Politico.

In other UK news, Darren Jones, chief secretary to the prime minister, has told BBC News that “people in the UK could face higher energy, food and flight ticket prices for at least eight months following the end of the US-Israel war with Iran”. Meanwhile, energy minister Michael Shanks has, reports the Guardian, used a visit to Ukraine to say that widely dispersed windfarms and solar panels were much harder to target than large-scale fossil-fuel power stations and will, therefore, boost the UK’s national security. And in an interview with the Sunday Times, UK prime minister Keir Starmer says: “The argument about whether we should be drilling every last drop [of North Sea reserves], to me, completely misses the point. All the time we’re on the international fossil-fuel market, then families up and down the country will have their bills affected. This is about taking back control. We have to have energy independence.”

MORE ON UK

• Greg Jackson, the boss of the UK’s biggest energy supplier Octopus has “urged Labour to cut spending on the electricity grid instead of bailing out consumers” according to the Daily Telegraph.
• The Guardian: “Criminalisation of climate protesters in UK is counterproductive, research finds.”
• BBC News: “Firefighters have tackled a series of weekend blazes across Scotland, with an extreme warning for wildfires in place in parts of the country.”
• The Guardian reports that “NatWest is at risk of an embarrassing showdown at its shareholder meeting this week as investors and scientists call for an urgent reversal of what they describe as ‘climate backtracking’”.
• The Daily Telegraph uses three unnamed sources to claim that UK chancellor Rachel Reeves has “been accused of not understanding how markets work after her flagship energy bill announcement caused a £2.6bn drop in UK energy stocks”.
• The Daily Telegraph claims that “fracking is back – but not as you know it”. The same journalist also claims that “North Sea gas production plunged before the outbreak of the war in Iran, new data show”.

There is ongoing coverage of a policy on “evaluation and assessment” for carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, which Bloomberg says represents the Chinese government warning “regional officials that they will be held accountable” for failing to meet climate targets. Financial news outlet Caixin publishes a comment article by Chen Lihao, a politician connected to environment minister Huang Runqiu, saying that, together, the evaluation measures and the opinions on energy conservation and carbon reduction published a day earlier establish the “institutional foundation” for China to implement its “dual control of carbon” system. [See Carbon Brief’s recent Q&A on what the two policies mean for China’s energy transition.] Experts at state thinktank the Energy Research Institute write in Economic Daily that China will face difficulty “continuously tapping the potential” for energy conservation and carbon reduction. Xinhua, South China Morning Post, Tanpaifang and BJX News also cover the story.

Meanwhile, China’s top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the National Energy Administration (NEA), have approved the revised “interprovincial power spot trading rules” submitted by the State Grid, the country’s main grid operator, reports energy news outlet International Energy Net. The NDRC and the NEA said priority will be given to “encouraging users with demand for green electricity and new energy generation enterprises to participate”, reports BJX News. Meanwhile, data from the NEA showed that China’s electricity traded in the national power market rose 25.9% in March from a year ago, with “cross-provincial and cross-regional” trading volume increased by 12.2%, reports China Electric Power News (CEPN). The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a notice to implement “energy-saving and carbon-reduction diagnostics and carbon emissions accounting services” for key enterprises from sectors such as steel, electrolytic aluminum, and cement, reports BJX News.

MORE ON CHINA

• Xinhua reports that more than two thirds of the permafrost in north-east China has “changed stability” over the past two decades in response to climate change.
• A People’s Daily comment under the byline “Huan Yuping” says a group of “middle powers” is playing an increasingly important role in clean energy and climate change.
• China’s SAIC will build an EV factory in Spain, a move that would “help the Chinese automaker reduce its exposure to EU tariffs”, reports Bloomberg. 
• C40 Cities’ Mark Watts tells the Paper in an interview that the “key strength” of China’s urban climate action lies in the “engineering mindset”.

Simultaneous exposure to toxic chemicals and climate change’s impacts “likely generates an additive or synergistic effect that increases reproductive harm and may contribute to the broad global drop in fertility”, according to a new study covered by the Guardian. The newspaper adds: “The review of scientific literature considers how endocrine-disrupting chemicals, often found in plastic, coupled with climate change’s effects, such as heat stress, are each linked to reductions in fertility and fecundity across global species – including in humans, wildlife and invertebrates…Together, the two issues likely pose a greater threat to fertility, and the additive effect is ‘alarming’, said Susanne Brander, a study lead author and courtesy faculty at Oregon State University.”

The recent trend of UK right-leaning newspapers arguing for new drilling in the North Sea continues with an editorial in the Sunday Times. It begins: “Britain is not alone in being battered by events in the Middle East but most other countries do not have the UK’s energy advantages and, in particular, North Sea oil and gas. It is all the more galling, therefore, that this advantage is being squandered, for what look like ideological reasons rather than genuine climate concerns.” It concludes: “Nobody should doubt that our long-term future lies with renewables. Few think that ‘Drill, baby, drill’ should extend to fracking in the UK, because our geology is different from America’s. But the road to net-zero is a long one. New nuclear will take years to come online, and some reliance on fossil fuels will continue. It makes no sense to rule out supplying a bigger proportion of those necessary fossil fuels from our own resources. No energy secretary should be happy when the UK’s energy strategy is widely condemned as incoherent and against the country’s interests. This latest energy shock makes it high time for a rethink.” [See Carbon Brief’s factcheck: “Nine false or misleading myths about North Sea oil and gas.”] Today’s Times also carries a column by Jenni Russell, which repeats a range of myths about solar farms. [Again, see Carbon Brief’s factcheck: “16 misleading myths about solar power.”]

MORE COMMENT

• Sharon Kimathi in her “Climate focus” newsletter for Reuters examines how the “energy shock from the Iran war has sparked a solar scramble”.
• In a letter to the Guardian, Green Alliance’s Dr Matilda Dunn explains “why biomethane is not the solution to Britain’s gas supply issues”.
• Jeremy Warner in the Daily Telegraph: “The oil shock has exposed a lethal economic weakness.”
• An editorial in the climate-sceptic Sun reveals – yet again – its obsession with Ed Miliband: “The cost of firing up deep fryers won’t come down while energy secretary Ed Miliband sticks to damaging net-zero targets.”
• Also in the Sun: “Net-zero fanatic Ed Miliband branded ‘king of hypocrisy’ for not having solar panels installed at his £1.6m London home.”

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Leo Hickman, with contributions from Henry Zhang and Anika Patel. It was edited by Simon Evans.

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