The US has “succeeded” in removing climate change from the main priorities of the International Energy Agency (IEA) during a “tense ministerial meeting” in Paris, reports Politico. It notes that climate change is not listed among the agency’s priorities in the “chair’s summary” released at the end of the two-day summit. Bloomberg says the meeting marked the first time in nine years the IEA failed to release a communique setting out a unified position on issues – opting instead for the chair’s summary. This came after US energy secretary Chris Wright gave the organisation a one-year deadline to “scrap its support of goals to reduce energy emissions to net-zero” – or risk losing the US as a member, according to Reuters. The newswire says the politician claimed that many nations were talking “in private” about plans to move away from net-zero goals and increase production of fossil fuels. Euronews reports that Wright said: “We don’t need a net-zero scenario, that’s never gonna happen, net-zero by 2050.” 

Politico says the European leaders expressed “growing defiance” toward Trump officials, with French president Emmanuel Macron saying in a video address that nuclear, renewables, storage and smart grids were the “choice of the 21st century, because fundamentally, no one wants to live on a planet at +4C”. The Financial Times reports that France, Spain and the UK were “among the countries maintaining the importance of renewable energy sources”. CNBC, Forbes, New York Times and Associated Press also have the story.

A “landmark civil climate case” that kicked off yesterday in France aims to compel oil giant TotalEnergies to curb its oil and gas production and emissions in line with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C warming limit, reports Inside Climate News. The outlet reports that judges are examining – “for the first time in the country’s history” – whether a multinational oil and gas company can be legally required to reduce its fossil fuel production in line with climate objectives. Legal experts and climate advocates say the case would set an “important precedent for corporate accountability that could have ripple effects far beyond France” if successful. Bloomberg also covers the case, which is being brought by NGOs Notre Affaire à Tous, Sherpa and France Nature Environnement.

MORE ON MAINLAND EUROPE

• Reuters reports on a warning from Germany’s cartel office that the shift away from flexible power supply sources – such as coal and nuclear – has left “remaining plants increasingly crucial” for meeting demand and thus increased the “dominance” of energy giants RWE and LEAG.
• Politico covers a “tender document” revealing the EU plans to spend up to €16m over the next four years to fly its top officials by private jet – an increase of €3m from the previous four-year period and 50% higher than the period to 2021.

Bloomberg reports that the Trump administration’s decision to revoke the “endangerment finding” comes with “costs ranging from hundreds of billions of dollars on the low end to more than 1.5tn on the high end”. These numbers, it says, come from the “administration’s own analyses” published on Wednesday in the US federal register. Bloomberg notes that the numbers run counter to the administration’s claim that “repealing climate emissions standards for all vehicles and the scientific determination underpinning them” would save Americans $1.4tn. [See Carbon Brief’s Q&A on the endangerment finding repeal.]

MORE ON US 

• The Associated Press reports that the rollback of the endangerment finding will “likely mean more illness and death for Americans”, with “minority areas hit hardest”.
• There is widespread coverage, including in Bloomberg and Reuters, of news that the US has only paid a fraction of what it owes – $160m of $2bn – to the UN.
• Trump voters “overwhelmingly support greater use of solar”, according to a poll covered by Semafor.
• Inside Climate News covers legislation proposed in Ohio that would require new power plants to be able to operate at any time of day or night – and have “a minimum capacity factor” of 50%. It notes that the “incoherent” bill – being pushed by “fossil-aligned groups” – would ban wind and solar, as well as coal.
• The Trump administration is being sued by environmentalists and Indigenous groups over its drilling expansion plans in Alaska, reports Inside Climate News.
• The Los Angeles Times covers legislation proposed in California that would require insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who make their property resistant to wildfires.

Profits at Centrica, the owner of the UK’s second-largest energy supplier, “almost halved” amid warmer weather and “volatile markets”, the Times reports. The paper quotes CEO Chris O’Shea as saying that Centrica was continuing to “morph from a gas company with diminishing assets…into a power company with a growing asset base”. The paper notes that the company did not refill its Rough gas storage site in the North Sea last year and is now selling off its remaining gas, as it awaits a decision from the government about whether it will provide funding to convert the site into an “expanded gas and ultimately hydrogen storage facility”. Rough’s losses hit $45bn last year, according to the newspaper. In a comment piece for the same newspaper, chief business commentator Alaistair Osborne notes that closing Rough altogether “matters” as it is the only “large-scale gas storage facility” in the UK. He writes that a “reserve of gas (and later for a potential fuel of the future, hydrogen) brings security against abrupt supply shocks – a sort of national insurance policy”.

Meanwhile, there is continuing coverage of an announcement that UK energy bills will fall by £117 a year in April, following the government’s decision to move levies supporting renewable energy projects into general taxation and scrapping an energy efficiency scheme. The Daily Mail says the drop is less than the £150 promised by chancellor Rachel Reeves in the autumn budget. It quotes Conservative government officials as saying this amounts to “gaslighting” the public. 

MORE ON UK

• Sky News reports on the “blockers” campaigning against onshore windfarms in Wales 
• The UK has recorded its 50th consecutive day of rain, according to the Sun.
• The Independent covers new research that finds that the chikungunya virus – a “debilitating and painful tropical disease” carried by mosquitoes – “could become established in the UK in the coming years as temperatures rise. 
• Solar energy company Hive – which four months ago secured a £60m taxpayer-funded loan – is on the “brink of administration”, reports the Daily Express.
• A cross-party group of 14 MPs and peers have called on the energy minister to halt subsidies “worth £2m a day” to biomass plant Drax, according to the Guardian.
• Press Association: “EDF pledges fresh £15bn UK investment as nuclear outages drag on output.”

“Rising battery costs and a cooling car market” may drive Chinese consumers to purchase hybrid vehicles rather than pure battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) this year, reports the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP). BEVs could be up to 20% more expensive than hybrids, in part due to higher battery costs, it adds. SCMP also publishes an article titled: “Does Trump’s retreat on electric vehicle policy risk ceding ground to China?” Current affairs outlet Phoenix News says that the average volume of charging sessions for people travelling by electric vehicles (EVs) in the first three days of the Spring Festival holiday rose 63% year-on-year. The Communist Party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily publishes an article on experiencing a “green and low-carbon Spring Festival“ where villagers “now visit relatives and friends in EVs”. State news agency Xinhua reports that Chinese EVs are “slowly taking off in Zimbabwe”, although it does not provide corresponding data.

MORE ON CHINA

• China’s finance ministry will offer VAT refunds and other “import tax incentives” for certain types of gas exploration projects and imports, says International Energy Net.
• The IMF has called for China to cut “state support” for industry amid “international concerns” about the country’s overcapacity, reports the Financial Times.
• Xinhua reports on how “steadfast coal miners” provide energy for festivities during the Spring Holiday.
• Dialogue Earth: “China’s Belt and Road must adapt to survive a hotter world.”

An editorial in the Guardian warns that the “far-right” Italian prime minister Georgia Meoloni and German chancellor Friedrich Merz are “championing a derogatory approach to delivering growth that risks hobbling Europe’s climate ambitions”. This “Berlin-Rome axis” has “already succeeded at diluting plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030”, it notes, adding: “Italo-German calls for greater flexibility in achieving decarbonising goals, and attacks on regulatory systems such as the ETS [emissions trading system], have the potential to license a full-scale pivot away from net-zero targets.” This, the newspaper argues, is “disastrously shortsighted” from an economic and environmental point of view. It explains: “When the green deal was launched, it was rightly seen as a means to encourage the changes needed to make economies competitive in a fossil-fuel-free era. Competition from China has underlined the importance of moving faster in this direction. Instead, the rising influence of rightwing populism across the continent is leading to a new go-slow consensus.”

MORE CLIMATE COMMENT

• The climate-sceptic Daily Telegraph continues its attacks on energy secretary Ed Miliband. Money writer Benedict Smith argues that the plans to deliver a “net-zero transition” for Aberdeen – in which jobs in the city’s traditional oil and gas industry are replaced by ones in clean energy – has “fallen flat”.
• In the print edition of the same newspaper, the Tony Blair Institute’s Tone Langengen argues the UK “cannot afford to treat oil and gas as a moral litmus test rather than a pragmatic bridge to net-zero”.
• For Foreign Policy, Noah Gordon from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argues the US is leveraging its power to “intimidate others into reducing their own climate ambitions”.
• In the Los Angeles Times’ Boiling Point newsletter, journalist Noah Haggety argues that conversations around fire preparedness require “both homeowners and government officials to acknowledge they both have real agency and responsibility” to shape outcomes of the “next” fire. 

In a piece playing homage to Reverend Jesse Jackson in Forbes, journalist Monica Sanders notes that the recently deceased US civil rights leader should be credited for “normalising” the “underlying argument” of environmental justice – that “power decides where harms land, and movements must build coalitions strong enough to change those decisions”. She notes: “Often overlooked in standard political obituaries is Jackson’s insistence that clean air, safe water and access to healthy communities were civil rights issues, not secondary concerns.” She concludes that Jackson’s example offers a “specific instruction” for “climate debates” today. This, she says, is that “technical solutions do not substitute for legitimacy. Public trust grows when institutions listen to the people living with the consequences of policy choices and when movements organise across differences to make accountability unavoidable.”

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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