Nearly 89% of shareholders at Shell’s annual investor meeting on Tuesday voted in favour of the oil and gas company’s strategy to achieve a net-zero emissions business by 2050, the Financial Times reports. Despite this success, the firm is also “confronted by growing support for activists’ demands to set more ambitious targets”, the newspaper adds. It notes that a separate resolution by Dutch shareholder activist group Follow This calling for Shell to set more “inspirational” targets attracted the support of 30% of shareholders, although such resolutions require 75% to pass. According to the Times, Follow This “insists that Shell’s goals are not consistent with achieving the Paris climate accord, in part because it lacks near-term targets for absolute emissions reductions”. The Guardian notes that this “significant shareholder rebellion” came on the day that the International Energy Agency (IEA) published its net-zero pathway, in which all exploration for new oil and gas fields stops this year to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. It quotes Charlie Kronick, a senior climate finance adviser for Greenpeace UK, who notes that Shell’s plans would increase gas production by 20% by 2030, “contravening the advice of the IEA”. Reuters states that, under its current plans, Shell intends to increase its investment in low-carbon energy sources in the coming years, “but at least 75% of its spending will continue to go towards oil and gas”. In Bloomberg’s coverage, it says that the oil giant also acknowledged its green strategy is complicated by its “spill-prone operations in Nigeria”.

Meanwhile, another Guardian story reports that, in Australia, politicians and companies are being urged by campaigners to abandon plans for new coal power, gas and oil investments in light of the new IEA report. In Europe, Politico reports that the landmark report is “giving Brussels new ammunition in its war on fossil fuels”, as its conclusions support the European Commission’s efforts to discontinue EU funding for oil and gas projects. According to EurActiv, environmentalists have “warned against some of the assumptions in the scenario” developed by the IEA, notably the growing shares of biomass used for energy. The piece adds that IEA modellers have explained that their scenario assumes no overall increase in cropland use for bioenergy production, or new bioenergy crops on forested land. The Guardian reports on comments from the UK climate champion, Nigel Topping, who says he is “stubbornly optimistic” that the world will arrive at an agreement to “forge a transition to a net-zero future” at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow later this year. (For more on the IEA’s latest report, see Carbon Brief‘s coverage.)

Finally, the i newspaper reports on an email sent to staff at London’s Science Museum warning them to watch out for environmental protests as they open the doors to a “controversial new climate exhibition sponsored by the oil company Shell”.

There is widespread coverage of a new paper examining the cost that climate change-driven sea level rise added onto the impact of Hurricane Sandy, which struck New York and surrounding areas in 2012. Associated Press notes that, according to the new research, the seas were “almost 4 inches (9.6cm) higher because of human-caused climate change”, and this caused 13% of Sandy’s overall $62.5bn damage, flooding 36,000 more homes. One of the authors tells the newswire that there were places – such as basement apartments in the New York City region – that would have been dry without human-caused sea level rise. Sky News reports that, according to one of the study authors, using attribution analysis for sea level rise would allow them to conclude that “essentially any economically damaging coastal flood anywhere in the world in the last half century is attributable at least in part to climate change”. Outlets including the Daily Mail and Bloomberg also cover the story, as does Carbon Brief.

Meanwhile, Climate Home News reports on Cyclone Tauktae leaving a “trail of devastation in western India”, which it says comes “as global warming fuels more intense cyclones in the Arabian Sea”.

In the UK, the Guardian reports that new data from the British Geological Survey suggests climate change will put millions of homes at increased risk of subsidence, as “hotter and drier summers being driven by global heating mean the ground under houses will shrink and crack”.

US president Joe Biden pushed his plan for $174bn of spending on electric vehicles – part of the overarching $2.3tn infrastructure package he has proposed – at an event in Michigan, according to Reuters. While visiting the Ford Motor electric vehicle plant, the president took a new zero-emission truck out for a drive and urged car manufacturers not to build zero-emission vehicles abroad for US consumers, the newswire reports. Biden framed the issue as a competition with China, stating that the Asian superpower is “leading in this race” to develop and build batteries and invest in research toward electric vehicles, according to the Washington Post. In an interview with Bloomberg, White House climate advisor Gina McCarthy discussed the administration’s plans to give consumers rebates for purchasing electric vehicles. Meanwhile, the New York Times notes that, back in Washington, two of Biden’s cabinet secretaries met with Senate Republicans “in an effort to broker a bipartisan deal on infrastructure spending”, but “conservatives continued to pump the brakes on the president’s electric-vehicle ambitions”. Reuters reports that the Republicans did not present an alternative infrastructure plan of their own at the meeting, despite a Tuesday deadline set by the White House. It adds that the Biden administration has said it is “willing to work with Republicans but will forge ahead with only Democratic support if necessary”.

Meanwhile, in the UK, the Financial Times reports that the House of Commons public accounts committee has warned in a new report that the government has “no clear published plan” to meet its target of phasing out all new petrol, diesel and hybrid vehicles in just 14 years. One key issue identified is the current lack of access to electric-vehicle chargers for people without off-street parking and access to private charging, the newspaper notes. BusinessGreen also has a piece examining the committee’s critiques.

The Australian government plans to spend AUD$600m (£330m) of public money on a new gas-fired power plant, “ignoring calls that the investment is unneeded”, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The newspaper notes that, according to an environmental impact assessment published last week, the plant would operate 2% of the time and create 10 full-time jobs once constructed at a former aluminium plant in the small New South Wales town of Kurri Kurri. Reuters states that the Australian government said last year the state-owned Snowy Hydro company would build a new gas plant if other companies failed to propose a replacement for the 1,000 megawatts (MW) of capacity left following the closure of the Liddell coal plant in 2023. However, it adds that the power industry has opposed the 660MW plant, which it says “would not be needed and would deter private investment in renewable power”. The Guardian has a piece asking why Australia is building the gas plant as “world experts” at the International Energy Agency (IEA) “warn against fossil fuels”.

In a separate story, the Guardian reports that Australian energy minister Angus Taylor has pushed through regulations expanding the mandate of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) to allow it to fund carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects and “clean” hydrogen that can be produced from fossil fuels. It notes the move has been opposed vigorously by the Green party, which stated it could breach the Arena Act.

Campaigners say the government’s proposal for a ban on the sale of peat compost to gardeners by 2024 is not ambitious enough and should be brought forward to the end of this year, the Independent reports. The call comes after environment secretary George Eustice confirmed a consultation this year on banning the sale of “peat and peat-containing products in the amateur sector by the end of this parliament”. However, the online newspaper says a group of 46 wildlife conservation charities has urged the government to commit to ending sales before the COP26 climate summit in November. An editorial in the Times concludes that such legislation is “long overdue, but gardeners must also play their part in shunning peat”. It notes that “voluntary reduction in its use, advocated by the government a decade ago, has clearly failed” so far. (The Times also has a supplement focusing on ‘green growth’ in today’s paper, which is not yet online.)

Separately, BBC News reports that older farmers will be paid to retire under a UK government scheme, noting that the government sees them as being more resistant to new “green” methods.

A comment piece by BusinessGreen editor James Murray reflects on the newly released peat and tree strategies for England, alongside other developments. He concludes: “Just as the current wave of net-zero targets was enabled by work over a decade ago to demonstrate the essential economic wisdom of deep decarbonisation, similar work is now belatedly underway to advance political, corporate, and public understanding of the essential role of nature.”

The European Parliament has given its final approval to a €17.5bn Just Transition Fund that will help most coal-dependent regions in the EU shift to climate-neutral economies, Bloomberg reports. The news website says the fund will include €7.5bn from the EU budget for 2021-27 and €10bn from the region’s economic recovery programme. It adds that the main recipients of funding will be Poland, Germany, Romania and the Czech Republic. China Dialogue has a feature examining the EU’s plans for a carbon border adjustment mechanism.

An editorial in the Financial Times considers the new International Energy Agency (IEA) report on achieving net-zero, and particularly its conclusion that achieving such a target by 2050 could require an immediate end to all oil, gas and coal exploration. It notes how the IEA was originally set up in the 1970s to “keep global oil supplies flowing smoothly and affordably”, and says that, for an agency with this history, its latest conclusion was a “jolting message”. The editorial says that reports by the likes of the UN have been warning for years of the need for urgent emissions cuts to achieve the more ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement. “The IEA’s findings are an acknowledgment that reaching these goals requires both fossil fuel supply and demand to be curbed,” it states, noting that on a positive note the IEA has describes high levels of solar and wind energy growth in the coming years as the “new normal”. However, it adds: “The more sobering reality is that the IEA road map underlines how few of those goals have been matched by the concrete policies needed to meet them”. The piece concludes that “the IEA’s road map should serve as a wake-up call for governments around the world that the fossil fuel era must be brought to an end sooner rather than later”.

A comment piece by Prof Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Center, and Dr Gail Whiteman of Lancaster University – published ahead of a vote by Shell shareholders on the oil and gas company’s net-zero plans – considers the strategy in the context of potential pathways to the Paris Agreement’s warming target of 1.5C. “As climate scientists, we watched Shell’s latest pledge to reach net-zero by 2050 with interest. Recently, we analysed the Shell Sky Scenario – its previous climate change scenario – as part of a study evaluating the hundreds of proposed pathways to mitigate climate change this century to stabilise temperature rise to 1.5C,” they write. They add that, according to their analysis, there were “serious problems with the feasibility of Shell’s pathway”, adding that “among the over 400 climate scenarios included in the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] 1.5C report, only 50 scenarios take us towards a 1.5C future, with no or limited overshoot”. The researchers say that when Shell released an updated 1.5C Sky Scenario earlier this year “we wondered what radical emission reductions it had priced in – only to find there weren’t any”. (Carbon Brief came to a similar conclusion in its analysis of Shell’s 1.5C Sky Scenario in February.) The authors link this scenario with Shell’s plans for net-zero and conclude: “Shell sees oil and gas playing a role in our global economy for many decades to come. Science says that is simply not feasible if we want to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown.”

The costs of flooding in the Greater Houston area as a result of Hurricane Harvey in 2017 were around $13bn higher because of human-caused climate change. The researchers use a hydraulic model to attribute the influence of climate change on flooding and associated damages. They find that that, in the most heavily flooded parts of Houston, “the local attributable increases in flood area and volume are substantially larger than the increase in total precipitation”. Carbon Brief has previously covered the media reaction to Hurricane Harvey and an attribution study of the record rainfall the storm produced.

New research compares the severe cold brought to the southern US by winter storm Uri in February this year – which caused the “failure of interconnected energy systems” in Texas – to previous storms. The authors use a “temperature-based proxy for heating demand” to ask the question, “what would the aggregate demand for heating have been had historic cold snaps occurred with today’s population?” They find that “local temperatures and the inferred demand for heating per capita across the region served by the Texas Interconnection were more severe during a storm in December 1989…and that cold snaps in 1951 and 1983 were nearly as severe”. The study concludes that, given anticipated population growth, “future storms may lead to even greater infrastructure failures if adaptive investments are not made”. For more on the Texas “deep freeze” event, see Carbon Brief’s media reaction piece.

A new psychology paper looks at the “profound behaviour change” needed to tackle climate change. The researchers note that “many behavioural models exist to explain and predict mitigation and adaptation behaviours”, but their “utility in establishing meaningful change is limited due to their being too reductive, individualistic, linear, deliberative and blind to environmental impact”. Instead, the study says, addressing climate change requires focusing on “high-impact behaviours and high-emitting groups; interdisciplinary interventions that address the multiple drivers, barriers and contexts of behaviour; and timing to ensure interventions are targeted to moments of change when habits are weaker”.