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TODAY'S CLIMATE AND ENERGY HEADLINES

Briefing date 18.12.2020
Treasury: Net zero transition ‘essential for long term prosperity’

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News.

Treasury: Net zero transition 'essential for long term prosperity'
BusinessGreen Read Article

The UK Treasury has published an interim net-zero review outlining its approach to estimating the costs associated with decarbonising the UK economy by 2050, BusinessGreen reports. The piece quotes the document, which says the net-zero target is “essential” for ensuring long-term prosperity in the UK owing to the jobs and other benefits it will create while addressing the “existential threat to humanity” posed by climate change. The “hotly anticipated” full review, due to be published in spring next year, is set to offer a “first-of-its kind overview of the expected costs”, the news website reports. In the meantime, it notes that the interim report provides an “early indication that it regards clear, well-designed climate policy as central to the long term success of the UK economy”.

BBC News notes that the Treasury report offers a “striking conclusion from a government department traditionally worried about harm to the economy from cleaning up the UK’s emissions”. The article highlights an acknowledgement from the government that taxes must increase or services be cut “to compensate for the loss of fuel tax income thanks to the advent of electric cars”. It notes that officials have been “long concerned about the future loss of more than £30bn in revenue from drivers” as they switch away from fossil fuels. BBC News quotes Doug Parr from Greenpeace, who says that, until this point, for years the Treasury had been “a total drag on climate policies – it used to get in the way of any good proposals”. In its coverage, Edie reports that according to the new report, net-zero is likely to deliver “slightly positive or slightly negative” levels of growth for the UK, depending on how policy is introduced to encourage internal collaboration while positioning the UK as a global low-carbon leader. It also highlights carbon pricing as a “key mechanism that the Treasury focuses on in the report”, following the announcement in this week’s energy white paper’s that the UK will shortly launch its own emissions trading scheme (ETS) after leaving the EU’s ETS at the end of this month. In a separate story, the Financial Times reports that Intercontinental Exchange has announced it will be the venue for UK carbon allowances to start trading in the new UK ETS from 2021.

The i newspaper covers a new report by accounting firm PwC that finds the UK has “greened” its electricity supply more than any other major G20 economy this century, “but will still miss its climate targets”. However, the nation is still not on track to meet its future climate targets and will need to “invest heavily” to achieve net-zero by 2050, the report finds. (Carbon Brief’s coverage of the UK’s energy white paper this week includes a section on the “policy gap” that needs to be filled to achieve the UK’s upcoming carbon budgets.) In its coverage, BusinessGreen says the report concludes that the global economy must slash its carbon intensity five times faster than current levels remain within the 1.5C temperature limit set out by the Paris Agreement. The Daily Mail also has the story, again focusing on the UK’s relative success in cutting emissions compared to other nations. It is accompanied by an editorial (not yet online) that criticises Extinction Rebellion and says “shouldn’t the eco-zealots applaud, not abuse, Britain’s leading role in the green revolution?”

With historic picks, Biden puts environmental justice front and centre
The Washington Post Read Article

In another day of coverage of Joe Biden’s picks for top climate and energy positions in his government, media outlets are trumpeting a handful of key hires. Democratic congresswoman Deb Haaland has been chosen as the first Native American to lead the Interior Department, a “historic pick that marks a turning point for the US government’s relationship with the nation’s Indigenous peoples”, according to the Washington Post. It adds that the president-elect has picked North Carolina environmental regulator Michael S Regan to become the first black man to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Obama administration veteran Brenda Mallory has also been picked as the first black chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the piece notes. The newspaper states that all three picks demonstrate “Biden’s plans to address the long-standing burdens low-income and minority communities have shouldered when it comes to dirty air and water”. It says that each nominee will play a critical role in addressing climate change, developing clean energy and tackling environmental racism. The New York Times reports that the “historic decision” to hire Haaland would see her take responsibility for an agency “most responsible for the well-being of the nation’s 1.9m Indigenous people”, as well as national parks, oil and gas drilling sites and endangered species habitat. The New Mexico politician has previously said she is “wholeheartedly against fracking and drilling on public lands” and shown support for the “green new deal”, Bloomberg reports.

The Hill has Haaland’s full statement on her nomination, in which she says: “As our country faces the impacts of climate change and environmental injustice…I will be a partner in addressing these challenges by protecting our public lands and moving our country towards a clean energy future”. Reporting on the choice of Regan to lead the “powerful” EPA, “which is central to achieving the new administration’s climate change agenda”, the New York Times says he will play a key role in reversing the Trump administration’s efforts to “[unravel] a half-century of pollution and climate regulations”. The piece notes that environmental activists have praised Regan’s performance in North Carolina, where he has been credited with reaching the nation’s largest coal-ash cleanup settlement and for ordering chemical company Chemours to clean up toxic substances from the Cape Fear river. Bloomberg notes that Regan will be taking the helm of “an agency he worked in for nearly a decade under two presidents”, and also cites his efforts to address North Carolina’s emissions, advance renewable energy and support zero-emission vehicles. Axios reports that veteran environmental lawyer Mallory will have “have Biden’s ear as an environmental policy adviser and oversee policy coordination across the federal government”. An InsideClimate News article adds that the nominees, who still require Senate confirmation, face a “Herculean rebuilding effort” after four years in which the Trump administration has rolled back over 100 environmental regulations, withdrawn from the Paris accord and promoted fossil fuels. Bloomberg carries a statement released by Biden on Thursday night, which says: “This brilliant, tested, trailblazing team will be ready on day one to confront the existential threat of climate change with a unified national response rooted in science and equity”.

Meanwhile, across the border, Reuters reports that with the arrival of the Biden administration, Canadian environment minister Jonathan Wilkinson says his country wants “deeper environmental ties” with the US including a potential North American ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered passenger cars and trucks.

Global coal demand to rise 2.6% in 2021 after record decline this year - IEA
Reuters Read Article

The International Energy Agency (IEA) says global demand for coal is set to jump 2.6% next year after a “record pandemic-led drop…as recovering economic activity will lift use for electricity and industrial output”, Reuters reports. It notes that between 2018 and 2020, global coal demand will have fallen by an “unprecedented 7%” due to the pandemic and “as countries around the world seek to shift to cleaner sources of energy”. According to Reuters, the agency says that prior to Covid-19 it was already anticipating a small rebound in coal demand in 2020. BusinessGreen says coal demand is expected to rise with “no immediate decline in sight”, according to the IEA. However, despite this “challenging picture” for world governments looking to decarbonise, the news website says rising coal demand is expected to “flatten out around 2025, when renewables are set to overtake coal as the largest sources of electricity in the world, potentially followed by gas-fired power”.

EU countries agree 2030 climate goals before battle with lawmakers
Reuters Read Article

European Union environment ministers have agreed to enshrine in law a higher climate change target for 2030 of 55% emissions cuts, following a deal on the goal between the leaders of the 27 member states at an all-night summit last week, Reuters reports. It adds that ministers in the European Council “set [their] stance” before negotiations with the European Parliament, which has plans for a more ambitious 60% reduction target for 2030 and wants a “carbon budget” and as well as an independent body to monitor policies. “The Council and parliament, together with the European Commission, will hold talks in the coming weeks, possibly months, to find a consensus,” the piece notes. An article in Politico looks back over the last year and asks how the EU’s “green deal” target “survived the plague” of Covid-19.

Fossil fuel exec bonuses still linked to oil and gas growth, report finds
DeSmog UK Read Article

A new report from thinktank Carbon Tracker finds oil and gas companies are continuing to reward their top executives for increases in fossil fuel production or reserves, “despite the climate goals of many of these companies”, DeSmog UK reports. The analysis shows European majors coming out worse than their US counterparts, with 27 of the 30 largest listed companies around the world still following such practices, the news platform adds. It notes a “mismatch” between climate policies and executive compensation, adding that “all European companies with net-zero ambitions still incentivise executives to grow oil and gas volumes to some extent”.

Separately, Climate Home News reports that campaigners have taken Royal Dutch Shell to court in the Netherlands, “in a case testing whether the Paris Agreement can be used to force oil companies to radically change their business model”. Another piece in BusinessGreen acknowledges an “important” event as UK industry watchdog the Oil & Gas Authority submits a revised strategy to Parliament that “for the first time includes obligation for sector to support pursuit of UK’s 2050 net-zero goal”.

Comment.

World leaders deserve to know about Australia's abysmal climate change policy, so I wrote to them
Bob Carr, The Guardian Read Article

Bob Carr, the former premier of New South Wales and former foreign minister of Australia, has written a comment piece for the Guardian about why he has been writing to Pacific Island states, Western Europe and the UK and advisers to the incoming Biden administration about what he sees as Australia’s disappointing climate policies. “I pointed out Australia will become the only developed country in which corporations cleaving to the international consensus on climate will be challenged to justify their actions in the national parliament,” he writes. “They deserve to know that Australia’s leaders are playing with climate policy, pitching a nationalist and populist message to their base. I concluded my letter by inviting them to mark down our effort accordingly. We deserve it. If they mark us down they might educate us.” He notes that other world leaders have been performing relatively well, highlighting the UK, China and South Korea as examples. “In my letter I quoted [prime minster Scott] Morrison saying, ‘Our policies won’t be set in the United Kingdom. They won’t be set in Brussels. They won’t be set in any part of the world other than here.’ Our partners deserve to have this contempt for the world’s opinion brought to their attention”. He writes, concluding: “In the end, it’s their pressure that might save us from our government’s most retrograde and unworthy instincts.”

The Guardian view on air pollution risks: make Ella’s experience count
Editorial, The Guardian Read Article

An editorial in the Guardian reflects on this week’s ruling that air pollution was a factor in the death of a nine-year-old Londoner, Ella Kissi-Debrah, and says that the outcome “must be a watershed” for tackling emissions from transport. The piece notes that as public awareness has risen this issue has moved up the “political and environmental agenda” and welcomes the decision to bring forward a ban on petrol and diesel cars to 2030. However, it criticises the delegation of responsibility for clean air zones “to cash-strapped councils”. Moreover, it says “while the greenhouse gases produced by air traffic have a much more diffuse environmental impact than the localised effects of road traffic, the government’s anti-pollution credentials are diminished by their refusal – so far – to rule out either a third runway at Heathrow”.

Science.

The Berkeley Earth land/ocean temperature record
Earth System Science Data Read Article

A global land–ocean temperature record has been created by combining the Berkeley Earth monthly land temperatures with an infilled version of the Met Office HadSST3 ocean dataset. This combined product spans the period from 1850 to present and covers the majority of the Earth’s surface: approximately 57% in 1850, 75% in 1880, 95% in 1960, and 99.9% by 2015. It provides a global mean temperature record quite similar to records from Hadley’s HadCRUT4, NASA’s GISTEMP, NOAA’s GlobalTemp, and Cowtan and Way and provides a spatially complete and homogeneous temperature field. The choice of how to assess the temperature of areas with sea ice coverage has a notable impact on global anomalies over past decades due to rapid warming of air temperatures in the Arctic. Accounting for rapid warming of Arctic air suggests around  0.1C global warming since the 19th century than temperature series that do not capture the changes in the Arctic.

Thermal power generation is disadvantaged in a warming world
Environmental Research Letters Read Article

Thermal power plants use fossil fuels or nuclear material to generate most of the world’s electricity. On hot days, when electricity demand peaks, the air and water used to cool these plants can become too warm, forcing operators to curtail electricity output. This study uses daily outage data to estimate the dependence of thermal plant curtailment on temperature and runoff and uses this relationship to quantify curtailments due to global warming. Climate change to date has increased average thermal power plant curtailment by around 1 percentage points; with each degree Celsius of additional warming, the study projects curtailment to increase by 0.8 – 1.2 percentage points during peak demand, requiring an additional 18 – 27 GW of capacity, or 40 – 60 additional average-sized power plants to offset this global power loss.

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