A new report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) finds that “solar and wind power paired with battery storage systems are already delivering reliable, round-the-clock electricity at a lower cost than fossil fuel-dominated energy systems in a growing number of regions”, reports BusinessGreen. The outlet says “in regions with high levels of solar and wind generation, hybrid systems that combine intermittent renewable power generation with energy storage capacity are proving capable of delivering cost-effective electricity 24/7”. It adds: “The report calculates that firm levelised costs of electricity for solar plus storage projects range from around $54 to $82 per megawatt hour (MWh) in regions with high levels of solar generation potential. The costs compare favourably with levelised costs of $70 to $85/MWh for new coal-fired power generation providing round-the-clock power in China or more than $100/MWh for new gas-fired generation globally, the report states.” The New York Times and Reuters also cover the report.

Oil prices have dropped after Donald Trump posted on social media that “the war with Iran would end and the strait of Hormuz would be ‘open to all’ if Tehran struck a deal with Washington”, reports the Guardian. BBC News says that oil prices fell from $108 per barrel to $97 following Trump’s announcement before rebounding to more than $101. It adds: ”Oil prices are still much higher than the $70 a barrel they were hovering around before the start of the US-Israel war with Iran, which has caused production and transportation of oil in the region to slump.” Reuters reports that oil has risen by more than $1 today. 

A separate Reuters article says: “Oil supplies are set to tighten further in coming weeks even if the US and Iran agree on a peace deal to end their war because it will take weeks for oil shipments to resume from the Middle East Gulf and reach refiners worldwide – so ​oil companies will continue to deplete storage tanks to meet peak summer demand.” The New York Times reports that “economic pain inside Iran” is “becoming much worse”. It says: “The blockade has halted Iran’s oil exports, choking off crucial revenues and the country risks running out of places to store its oil.” The Daily Telegraph says that “Iraq has offered to cut the price of crude oil by more than a quarter for ship­ping com­pan­ies pre­pared to risk trav­el­ling through the Strait of Hor­muz to col­lect it”. The Guardian reports that “uncertainty looms” as the last oil tanker from the Middle East arrives in California.

MORE ON OIL AND GAS

• The Independent reports that the price of gasoline in the US is now 51% higher than before the war in Iran started. The New York Times says the higher prices are “hitting lower-income Americans the hardest”. 
• Bloomberg reports that Lufthansa is considering adding refuelling stops to direct flights, as a result of fuel shortages. The airline warns that “some major airports have already begun to run out of jet fuel”, adds the Daily Telegraph.
• The Financial Times: “US fuel exports have surged to a record level as Europe and Asia lean on American energy supplies to make up for the shortfalls caused by the war in Iran.”
• Reuters reports that “major US passenger airlines spent just over $5bn on jet fuel in ​March, up $1.8bn or 56% from what they spent in February”. 
• Bloomberg reports that OPEC’s crude oil production fell to a new 36-year low last month.
• The Guardian: “Shell has reported better than expected profits of $6.9bn (£5bn) after its oil traders reaped the benefits of soaring energy prices during the war in Iran, angering climate campaigners.” BBC News, the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and Reuters also report on the company’s profits.

The European Commission is “considering giving fossil-fuel companies leeway to avoid penalties under new rules governing the emissions of methane”, due to the ongoing energy crisis, reports Politico. The outlet adds: “According to draft guidelines for governments, seen by Politico, national authorities would be able to grant exemptions to companies on energy security grounds, without any clear time limit or explicit oversight from the Commission.” The Financial Times says the Commission has come under “​​intense pressure from US and the fossil-fuel industry” to dilute the rules on “monitoring, reporting and verification for methane leaks and flaring tied to fossil fuel imports”. It adds: “In the latest draft guidance to national bodies, which will enforce the rules from January 2027, the Commission says that applying penalties during a crisis could ‘worsen the security of supply situation, endangering continuity’”. Reuters adds: “The EU methane law requires that, from January 2027, imported gas must comply with monitoring and verification ‌rules ⁠equivalent to Europe’s. Penalties for breaching the law include fines up to 20% of a company’s annual turnover.”

MORE ON EUROPE

• The Guardian reports that the Norwegian government has been “heavily criticised for approving plans to reopen three North Sea gasfields nearly three decades after they were closed to help fill the gap in energy supplies created by the Middle East war”.
• The Wall Street Journal has a story under the headline: “Europe wants to stop deforestation. A new trade deal is putting that under strain.”
• Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven has told Politico that “rising energy prices show why Europe must cut reliance on fossil fuels”.
• The Financial Times: “Airlines must continue to reimburse passengers for flight cancellations caused by high energy prices, the EU’s transport chief has warned, rejecting claims of jet fuel shortages in Europe.”

China is accelerating “major oil and gas infrastructure” to secure energy supply, with nearly 40 pipelines underway across the country, according to the state broadcaster CGTN. State news agency Xinhua also covers the story, saying that China is “steadily advancing major trunk pipelines, gas storage and peak-shaving projects” as the 15th five-year plan period begins. These projects will “continue to strengthen” the national oil and gas transmission network and “lay a solid foundation” for building a “strong energy nation”, adds the newswire.

MORE ON CHINA

• Zheng Shanijie, head of the NDRC, writes in the “political theory” journal Qiushi that China should ensure that “incremental electricity demand” is met by new clean-energy generation.
• China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology calls for local authorities to provide tax incentives to enterprises that meet “green and low-carbon standards”, reports Jiemian.
• China’s highway charging for electric vehicles (EVs) during this year’s May Day holiday rose 52.8% year-on-year, reports CEPN, citing data from the NEA.
• Sales of electric trucks in China are “taking off” amid the Iran war, reports Bloomberg.
• Bloomberg says China’s copper exports, used in low-carbon technologies such as batteries, are set to get a boost due to the Middle East conflict.
• France has announced new rules to cut dependence on Chinese rare earths to “safeguard” sectors such as EVs and offshore wind, reports Bloomberg.

In the run-up to the various elections taking place across the UK today, the Guardian reports that “the UK’s soaring cost of living” will be the “defining issue”. According to the newspaper, “green campaigners” have warned that “voters should be told about the links between inflation and the effects of fossil fuels and the climate crisis – or the remedies they choose – may make the situation worse”. The newspaper says: “[Reform UK] takes an anti-climate stance and has vowed to encourage fracking, impose punitive taxes on renewable energy generation, and block solar and windfarms. The Conservatives have also embraced more drilling in the North Sea and played down the climate crisis, without explicitly denying it.” It adds that there are “about 1,800 seats where the Green party has a chance of winning, though many of these could be wins from Labour, which also has strong policies on boosting renewable energy and green solutions to ease the cost of living crisis”. 

The Independent reports that Gillian Mackay, the co-leader of the Scottish Greens, has said her party is the only one “‘prepared to tell the truth’ about the need to end new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea”. It adds: “The party co-leader said her opponents had to be ‘honest’ with voters that further fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea would ‘do nothing to lower bills’.” [See Carbon Brief’s recent factcheck: “Nine false or misleading myths about North Sea oil and gas.”]

MORE ON UK

• The Guardian: “Cut UK speed limits to reduce Iran war impact on consumers, thinktank urges.”
• Financial Times: “Fusion start-up backed by Bill Gates plans UK’s first commercial plant.”
• BusinessGreen covers a new report from Energy UK, which finds that “plans from the Conservatives and Reform to scrap the UK’s carbon pricing regime would fail to deliver promised reductions in energy bills and would result in significant new trade barriers between the UK and the EU”.
• The Times reports that “Labour’s hopes for an AI data centre revolution are threatened by Britain’s high electricity prices, according to government officials and business executives”. 
• The Independent reports that a rail company has installed “experimental wind turbines alongside the track” in a “UK first”.
• BusinessGreen: “The longest turbine blades ever to be deployed at a UK onshore wind farm are in the process of being installed at the Mill Rig Wind Farm in South Lanarkshire.”
• The Daily Telegraph says the climate-sceptic, hard-right Reform UK party has accused wind-farm owners of “scaremongering over energy plans”.

The “mega tsunami” recorded in Alaska in August 2025 was triggered by a “massive rockslide around the toe of a glacier”, serving as a “stark warning of the risks of coastal rockslides and glacier retreat fueled by the climate crisis”, according to new research covered in the Guardian. The newspaper says the event was the world’s second-tallest tsunami, reaching 481 metres in height. Reuters says: “The researchers said the landslide was driven by climate change. The glacier buttressing the mountain had retreated amid warming temperatures, eventually leaving the rock ​unsupported.” The New York Times adds: “As glaciers retreat and thawing permafrost lubricates slopes, these giant landslides may become more frequent.” Scientific American, BBC News and the Independent also cover the story. 

MORE ON EXTREMES

• The Independent says: “Scientists predict that one of the most powerful El Niño climate patterns on record could form in the coming months, potentially driving unprecedented global temperatures and dramatic weather impacts across the world.”
• The Independent reports that “climate change and conflict are driving severe food insecurity” across the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
• Yale Climate Connections outlines the links between climate change and hurricane rainfall.

The Australian government has announced that gas companies must set aside 20% of exports for domestic use, under a “reservation scheme” designed to bring down gas prices for households and businesses on the east coast, reports the Guardian. It adds: “The 20% mandate sits in the middle of the 15%-25% range that the government canvassed with industry after announcing its commitment to a gas reservation on 22 December…The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, said the legislative requirement would deliver a ‘modest oversupply’ of gas into the east coast, helping to avert forecast shortages and put ‘downward pressure’ on prices.” Reuters says “the scheme will apply from July next year and not affect existing contracts”. Agence France-Presse and Bloomberg also cover the news. 

MORE ON AUSTRALIA:

• Bloomberg reports that “Australia has approved a gas project off the coast of Victoria state”.
• Bloomberg says: “Australia recorded its first trade deficit in more than eight years as the war in Iran drove up the cost of fuel imports.”

New York Times commentator David Wallace-Wells writes about the looming “super” El Niño event. He says: “It appears stupendously intense – almost certainly stronger than the ‘super’ El Niño of 2015-16, and perhaps the most intense since the epochal El Niño of 1877.” He says the event will make 2027 the hottest year on record, arguing that a “monster El Niño will give us at least a brief preview of a hotter and more chaotic world”. He adds: “But if the super El Niño will offer a kind of brief preview of future warming, it will also offer a test of how well prepared and adapted the world is to that future.” He concludes: “I tend to think climate people overestimate the political impact of discrete disasters – and that we process even mind-bending catastrophes largely by normalising them…But coming during a Donald Trump presidency, this one even more nakedly hostile to climate concern than the last, and on the heels of a war that has illustrated unmistakably the dangers of fossil-fuel dependence and driven up the price of food and energy, I do think a pattern of unmistakable global climate disruptions could do a lot to dislodge our seeming complacency.”

MORE COMMENT

• Jason Bordoff, the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, writes in the New York Times that “we’ll miss OPEC when it’s gone”. 
• Brenda Shaffer, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center, claims in the climate-sceptic comment pages of the Wall Street Journal that the UN will make airfares more expensive by making airlines pay to offset their emissions.
• Financial journalist Jamie McGeever writes in Reuters: “Emerging market stocks are smashing record highs and bond spreads are the tightest in years – despite the biggest energy supply shock in history. The question is how long this can last.”
• Gavin Maguire, Reuters global energy transition columnist, argues that Europe’s “solar glut” is putting its energy system into a “tricky new transition phase”. 
• Climate scientists Richard Richels, Henry Jacoby and Kristie Ebi write in Climate Cafe that the Iran war “highlights the fragility of fossil energy supply chains and provides a sound reason for consumer nations to reduce their reliance on oil and natural gas”. 

Katie White, the Labour MP for Leeds north west and minister for climate in the UK’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, writes in the Guardian that “Labour is now Britain’s climate party”. White outlines other political parties’ stances on climate change, arguing that “even the Green party is letting the side down”. She says: “The Greens have abandoned [former leader] Caroline Lucas’s legacy for something far less ambitious. Green councillors oppose pylons needed to bring clean energy to homes in Suffolk (echoed by a Green MP in Westminster), block solar in Kent and push back on schemes to clean up the air in London. In fact, across 10,000 words of Green party material in 21 leaflets since Zack Polanski became leader, there has been only one mention of climate change, according to Climate Outreach.” In contrast, she claims Labour is “delivering the biggest transformation in how this country is powered in a generation”.

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

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