Investments in new North Sea oil and gas projects have hit £3bn in 2018, reports the Financial Times, saying this is the highest level since 2015. The marker was passed after two projects – led by BP and Shell and due to begin production in 2020 – received regulatory approval on Monday, it adds. The two projects represent £430m of investment, says the Scotsman. They will seek to tap reserves of 20m barrels of oil, say the Times and City AM. Meanwhile an opinion piece in the Financial Times argues that growth in US gas output, exported as liquified natural gas (LNG), will “meet Europe’s urgent need for gas”. The article follows reports in the Wall Street Journal that the German government will co-finance a $576m LNG import terminal on the country’s northern coast. The paper describes the move as a “win for Trump” that will “open Germany up to US LNG”. The paper says that the project had been stalled for years and calls the move a “key concession to President Trump as he tries to loosen Russia’s grip on Europe’s largest energy market”. The paper also quotes a German government spokesperson saying the decision was down to national economic interests rather than US pressure.

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau is to unveil his federal government’s carbon pricing scheme for provinces deemed to fall short against the national climate plan, reports CBC News. The plan was agreed with provinces two years ago and includes a backstop carbon tax on greenhouse gas emissions, it adds, noting that Trudeau has said provinces without sufficient carbon taxes or cap-and-trade schemes will face a federal scheme instead. Citing “a senior government source,” CBC News says this backstop national carbon price will be imposed on provinces home to nearly half the country’s population: Ontario, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The federal price on carbon pollution will start at a minimum of $10 per tonne from 1 January 2019, rising $10 each year to $50 in 2022, CBC News explains. It says revenue will be recycled within the province where it is collected. Separately, Carbon Pulse reports that mining giant BHP Billiton has called for a national carbon price in Australia. The call follows the government’s loss of its majority in the lower house after a by-election on Saturday, Carbon Pulse notes, with the ruling party having lost to a candidate running on a climate change platform.

Coverage continues of the UN’s Green Climate Fund (GCF), which over the weekend agreed to invest around $1bn in new projects and to launch a process to refill its coffers, reports the Thomson Reuters Foundation. It says the decisions put the fund – the world’s largest dedicated to tackling climate change in the developing world – “back on track after a difficult few months”. Progress at the meeting was “viewed as key to smooth the way for UN climate talks in December”, it adds. Climate Home News focuses on the first Chinese bid for GCF finance, which it says was deferred after being blocked by the US board member. The move is a “sign of US-China tensions spilling into the climate arena”, it adds, quoting Congolese board member Tosi Mpanu Mpanu saying US opposition was motivated by trade tensions between the superpowers.

Greenhouse gas emissions from materials use are on track to almost double by 2060, according to an OECD report covered by BusinessGreen. The report looks at the environmental impacts of the extraction and processing of biomass, fossil fuels, metals and minerals. “It concludes that while resources efficiency is improving and the recycling industry is set to become more competitive than extractive industries, huge increases in demand for resources are expected to more than outweigh any efficiency savings,” BusinessGreen adds. A second BusinessGreen article reports that the World Cement Association has launched a 2C climate action plan. Carbon Brief published an in-depth look at the cement industry’s climate impacts last month.

The UK will have to negotiate a bespoke deal on energy and climate change with the EU after Brexit, says a former government negotiator, according to DeSmog UK. Neither the Norway or the Swiss model of cooperation with the EU are fit for purpose for the UK, Peter Betts, former top climate negotiator for the UK told a meeting yesterday, DeSmog UK adds. It quotes Betts saying: “Brexit is an extremely complicated thing but I don’t think the climate and energy bit of it is the most complicated.”

“We are facing a global emergency and should organise accordingly,” says an editorial in the British Medical Journal, reflecting on the key messages from the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on 1.5C. It notes that the world has already warmed by 1C above pre-industrial temperatures and is expected to reach 1.5C within around 12 years, unless emissions are drastically reduced.

A change of government has brightened the outlook for renewable energy in Spain, reports a Financial Times feature. It notes how seven years ago, the country was “on the way to becoming a world leader in renewable energy, but after the election in late 2011 of a People’s party government seen by critics as hostile to the section, there was little or not progress”. The feature says one of the first acts of the new minority government, led by Pedro Sánchez of the centre-left PSOE, was to remove “the principle obstacle to developing solar power, the so-called sunshine tax, levied on those who generate their own electricity using photovoltaic technology”. Another boost comes in the form of an end to the EU tariff on imported solar panels from China, the Financial Times notes.

Climate change could pose a double threat to long-distance migratory birds by reducing both their summer and winter ranges, new research finds. Using range maps and species distribution models, the researchers show that neglecting the impact of climate change on bird migration could cause the overall threat to species to be underestimated. “To neglect seasonal migration in impact assessments could thus seriously misguide species’ conservation,” the researchers say.

Sea level rise is causing soils to become too salty to farm in parts of Bangladesh, research finds, which could be a driving factor behind the growing number of people undertaking within-country migrations. “Gradual increases in soil salinity correspond to increasing diversification into aquaculture and internal migration of household members,” researchers say. “Salinity is also found to have direct effects on internal and international migration even after controlling for income losses, with mobility restricted to certain locations within Bangladesh.”