In a frontpage story, the Times reports on Carbon Brief analysis showing that “Britain is halfway to its goal of being carbon neutral by 2050”. The paper explains: “The analysis of government figures by the website Carbon Brief shows that 306m tonnes of CO2 were released in the UK last year. Apart from 1926, when emissions fell because of the general strike, it was the lowest amount since 1879 when Disraeli was prime minister and Britain was at war with the Zulus. The reduction in car traffic and industrial activity during lockdowns contributed to the fastest fall in emissions for 30 years.” The biggest factor in the long-term decline has been the closure of coal-fired power stations, the paper says, “with coal supplying 1.6% of Britain’s electricity last year compared with 67% in 1990”. Chris Stark, chief executive of the Climate Change Committee , which advises the government on its climate targets, tells the paper that cutting UK emissions in half since 1990 was “a story we should celebrate”. The same article reports that prime minister Boris Johnson will today “urge other nations to follow Britain and agree commitments to become carbon neutral by the middle of this century”. Johnson tells the paper: “We are asking every country to commit to net-zero by the middle of the century and will rally as many nations as possible behind the target of 2050…We will also ask them to make ambitious commitments to reduce emissions by 2030 to get us there, as the UK has done. The enduring threat of climate change does not need to be our inevitable fate.” Johnson will also “call on countries to eliminate all fossil fuel subsidies and establish a $100bn (£72bn) a year programme to help poorer countries decarbonise”, the paper says. In addition, the paper notes, “the British team planning for the COP26 summit in Glasgow also hopes to secure a global agreement to stop building new coal-fired power stations and phase out existing ones”. The Daily Telegraph also picks up on Carbon Brief’s analysis, while Greenpeace UK’s head of climate Kate Blagojevic tells the Press Association that “make no mistake, the scale of necessary future emission cuts are far greater than anything that has been managed during the pandemic”.

In accompanying reporting in a double-page spread in the paper, Times policy editor Oliver Wright has a news feature on new polling and focus-group data, which indicates that there is a “disconnect between the policies that Whitehall is developing to achieve net-zero and what those who will be affected by them either expect or think they can afford”. On COP26, Wright notes that “no one in the focus group had heard of the UN climate change summit”, while “among the wider public, recognition is at about 14%”. Times environment editor Ben Webster has a Q&A on COP26 and why it is “so important”. And Times science editor Tom Whipple summarises climate change and its causes, effects and solutions.

The Times lead editorial is also dedicated to climate change, warning that while “global CO2 emissions fell last year for the first time in more than a decade”, this “does not mean the problem of rising global temperatures has been resolved”. It says: “It reflects instead the economic recession due to the coronavirus. As hosts this year of the UN conference on climate change, known as COP26, Britain has the responsibility of guiding global efforts to curb emissions sustainably. An effective strategy will be tough to implement, as it will require changes in consumer behaviour, but there is no greater long-term policy priority.”

Business and energy secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has said that there are “very compelling reasons” not to open a controversial planned coal mine in Cumbria, reports the Guardian. The statement is “the clearest indication to date of opposition to the project within the government, which has been heavily criticised for allowing the mine as the UK prepares to host a vital UN climate change summit, COP26”, says the paper. Speaking to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 yesterday, Kwarteng said: “I think there were very compelling reasons to do as the CCC suggested, and not open the mine…I’m always sympathetic to the CCC…They’re a body that I speak to very regularly and our goals are largely aligned.” The Daily Mail says Kwarteng’s comments indicate that “controversial plans to dig Britain’s first new coal mine for 30 years look set to be ditched by the government”. The paper notes that, when asked if he was saying the mine should not open, Kwarteng said: ‘What I said was that we’re going through a process, it is a legal process, a local planning process, and the secretary of state for local government [Robert Jenrick] is reviewing that situation.’ His comments “came immediately after former Bank of England governor Mark Carney said the development did not fit in with the ‘overall objective’ of tackling the climate crisis by significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions”, reports the Independent. Carney said: “I can’t quite reconcile it with the overall objective, at least in my head…It’s a decision for the government, but I think the standard by which major investments should be judged, one of the standards, is whether they are concerned with the objective to get to net-zero, not just on the 2050 horizon but a nearer-term horizon.”

In other COP26 news, the Scotsman reports that the Scottish government’s lead for COP26 has confirmed that the summit will definitely go ahead, despite concerns over the Covid-19 pandemic. Speaking at a “Countdown to COP26” digital event, Gerard Howe acknowledged that it was “inevitable” virtual events would play a part in the conference, but there remained hope that key negotiations between world leaders would involve face-to-face meetings. He added that “lots of uncertainty” remained around the logistics, such as ensuring safe travel for delegates from around 200 countries, but organisers were working hard to find solutions, the outlet explains. The Guardian reports on an interview with foreign secretary Dominic Raab by Australian broadcaster ABC, in which Raab stressed he expects Australia to “stretch” climate commitments and set out a plan to meet them before COP26. Raab said: “I think the real dynamic we want to establish is a virtuous cycle of stretch ambitions for nationally determined contributions [of targets and policies] and then credible plans in order to meet them…I know Australia will step up to the plate.” And Climate Home News reports that Lebanon has increased its climate ambition for 2030 “in the middle of a political, economic and humanitarian crisis”. The outlet explains: “This week, Lebanon announced in a submission to the UN that it aims to cut carbon emissions by 20%, up from 15%, by 2030, compared to business-as-usual projections.”

Elsewhere in the UK, the Times reports that “grants for electric cars will be cut by £500 and abolished altogether for more expensive models under plans designed to stretch taxpayer support further”. The paper continues: “The government will announce that the plug-in car grant will drop from £3,000 to £2,500 from today after a surge in demand for electric vehicles put massive strain on the scheme. At the same time, the upper limit of cars eligible for the scheme will be reduced from £50,000 to £35,000.” Reuters reports that energy generator RWE “is looking at ways to cut carbon emissions from its Pembroke gas plant in Wales and investigating the feasibility of a green hydrogen unit in the region after receiving government funding”. The Times reports that a quarter of Britain’s gas transmission pipelines could be converted to carry hydrogen within a decade “under ambitious plans from National Grid”. And the Guardian reports on plans for Britain’s first “bio electric hybrid aircraft”.

Finally, the Press Association reports that National Grid has unveiled a deal to buy Britain’s largest electricity distribution business for £7.8bn and will offload the UK national gas transmission system under aims to increase its focus on electricity. The newswire explains: “The group, which manages the UK’s power infrastructure, said it will buy Western Power Distribution (WPD) from US energy giant PPL Corporation. In a separate transaction, National Grid will also sell its Rhode Island utility business – The Narragansett Electric Company – to PPL for $3.8bn (£2.7bn). National Grid – the company that helps keep Britain’s lights on – said it will launch a process later this year to sell a majority stake in National Grid Gas (NGG) as it looks to boost its electricity assets from around 60% to about 70% of its overall portfolio.” National Grid chief executive John Pettigrew says the deals would allow the company to “enhance” the role it can play in helping the UK reach its 2050 net-zero emissions target, reports the Financial Times. Reuters and Bloomberg also cover the story.

An unpublished report written for the European Commission and seen by the Financial Times warns that “the aviation industry’s flagship carbon offsetting system risks being ineffective, poorly enforced and ‘undermining’ the EU’s climate policies”. The “highly critical analysis” was commissioned ahead of key decisions this summer on aviation in the EU’s regulated carbon market, the paper continues. The report says that the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (Corsia) was “unlikely to materially alter the direct climate impact associated with air travel” and may offer little better than a scenario “in which international aviation emissions remain unregulated”, the FT says. It adds: “The report, dated September 2020, was drawn up by several aviation and climate consultancy groups chosen by the commission, and obtained by campaign group Transport & Environment under a freedom of information request. It said that a reliance on Corsia, rather than an expansion of the scope of the ETS, risked ‘weakening current EU climate policies’. There was no guarantee that the carbon credits purchased by airlines to offset their emissions under Corsia would be of a high quality, meaning their effect would be questionable, it concluded.” (Carbon Brief has previously published an explainer on Corsia.)

New research indicates that the fishing practice of bottom trawling is “responsible for 1bn tonnes of underwater [carbon] emissions every year”, reports Climate Home News. The study, published in Nature, says that trawling – dragging heavy nets across the seabed – “disturbs the carbon stored in sediment, releasing it as CO2 and acidifying the ocean”, explains CHN. The Financial Times, Guardian, Independent and Time all lead with the comparison – from the press release rather than the study itself – that the emissions estimate puts bottom trawling on a par with international aviation. However, CHN notes that “these underwater emissions cannot be translated directly to atmospheric emissions”, although a “substantial” amount do end up in the atmosphere. It adds: “The researchers aim to estimate this amount by the end of 2021. This will make it possible for bottom-trawling emissions to be included in countries’ greenhouse gas inventories.” The findings show that the nations with the highest emissions from bottom trawling are China – which is responsible for about three-quarters of the total – followed by Russia, Italy, Britain, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Croatia and Spain, reports the Thomson Reuters Foundation. It adds: “But the study said eliminating 90% of the risk of carbon disturbance due to bottom trawling would require banning industrial fishing in only 3.6% of the ocean, mostly within the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) that stretch 200 nautical miles (370 km) from countries’ shores.” The New York Times says the study “offers what is essentially a peer-reviewed, interactive road map for how nations can confront the interconnected crises of climate change and wildlife collapse at sea”. And study co-author Dr Trisha Atwood tells BBC News that the findings about the climate impacts of bottom trawling “will make the activities on the ocean’s seabed hard to ignore in climate plans going forward”.

Meanwhile, BBC News reports on how scientists have inspected an area of seafloor newly exposed by the calving of mega-iceberg A74 from the Brunt ice shelf in Antarctica and have “found it to be teeming with animals”. And in other ocean-related news, the Guardian, Times, MailOnline and BBC Science Focus magazine all report on a new study that suggests adding a small amount of seaweed to the diets of cows can reduce their methane emissions by more than 80%.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) says the world’s oil demand could exceed pre-Covid 19 levels within the next two years unless concrete government action leads to a much stronger move towards clean energy, reports the Guardian. In its monthly oil market report, the IEA says that a rebound in oil demand, particularly in developing economies across Asia, “could lead the world’s appetite for crude to break above 100m barrels of oil a day for the first time by 2023”, the paper explains. It adds: “The IEA’s predictions for the year ahead show the world’s oil demand may climb by 5.5m barrels of oil a day, one of the fastest annual climbs on record, to an average of 96.6m barrels a day.” The Covid-19 pandemic means that oil demand in the middle of this decade will be about 2.5m barrels lower than the agency projected last year, reports Bloomberg, which notes that “gasoline consumption has probably peaked already”. However, the IEA says that “in the absence of more rapid policy intervention and behavioural changes, longer-term drivers of growth will continue to push up oil demand”, reports the Times, and reaching climate goals would require “a much stronger pivot towards a cleaner energy future”. The IEA forecast also notes that oil prices rallied to more than $70 a barrel last week, the paper says. However, the talk of a “new supercycle and a looming supply shortfall” was misplaced, the IEA says, as “a hefty amount of spare production capacity has built up as a result of Opec+ supply curbs”. Another Bloomberg piece explains: “The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies held 9.3m barrels a day of spare production capacity last month as a result of cutbacks made during the pandemic, which could be quickly deployed if markets become tight.”

Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that oil majors Royal Dutch Shell and Eni, along with several of the energy groups’ current and former executives, were cleared of corruption charges yesterday in a long-running Italian case over a 2011 oil deal in Nigeria. The paper explains: “Prosecutors had accused the companies and senior managers of knowing that most of the $1.3bn they paid in 2011 for the licence to the OPL 245 block went towards bribes for businessmen, middlemen and Nigerian officials, particularly Dan Etete, the former oil minister who was convicted of money laundering in a separate case.” The verdict “ends a three-year legal saga that loomed large over the tenure of Eni Chief Executive Officer Claudio Descalzi, who was among those found not guilty”, says Bloomberg. It adds: “The verdict doesn’t end the legal woes for Shell related to its Nigerian operations. In January a court in the Netherlands ruled that the Anglo-Dutch major was liable for damages from pipeline leaks in the West African country. A few weeks later, the UK’s Supreme Court ruled that thousands of Nigerians can sue Shell in London over environmental damages.”

Finally, in oil news, the Financial Times reports that the Biden administration has warned China that it will enforce Trump-era sanctions against Iranian oil as shipments from the Islamic regime to China have soared. Bloomberg reports that gasoline prices have risen in the US as refiners “warn of scarce biofuel credits”. And Bloomberg also reports that “BP is fielding final bids from a handful of junior energy companies for its North Sea assets”.

Record wind power installations in 2020 have secured China’s position at the top of the global industry, reports the Financial Times, “despite waning subsidies from Beijing”. According to a report released yesterday by the Global Wind Energy Council, a Belgium-based international trade association, the 52 gigawatts of new wind power added last year doubled the capacity China installed in 2019, the FT explains: “China’s surge in installations was in part driven by 2020 being the final chance for companies to take advantage of central government subsidies and favourable prices for onshore wind farms.” The paper adds: “The Chinese wind market exceeded the council’s forecasts by more than 70%, elevating wind-generated power in China above the combined total for Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.”

Meanwhile, Shanghai Securities News reports that China’s goal to reach its carbon emission peak by 2030 will force energy-intensive businesses to react. Industries such as coal and steel would have no choice but to undergo energy-saving renovations and technological upgrades, the Chinese report says. It expects the country’s environmental protection departments to focus their attention on monitoring such sectors’ behaviour during the 14th five-year plan period from 2021 to 2025 (see Carbon Brief’s in-depth Q&A). Reuters says a new report from consultancy Wood Mackenzie indicates that China’s goal to become carbon neutral in 2060 will require $6.4tn of investment in new power generating capacity, leading to “a tectonic shift in manufacturing and commodity imports while boosting its energy security”.

Elsewhere, China’s state broadcaster CCTV (in Chinese) urges the public to study and “deeply understand” a new order issued by Chinese leader Xi Jinping. At a meeting of the Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs on Monday, Xi called for incorporating the peaking of carbon emissions and carbon neutrality into the overall layout of building an ecological civilisation, as state news agency Xinhua previously reported. CCTV highlights the directive in a commentary piece. It describes “the building of an ecological civilisation” as “a thousand-year grand scheme related to the sustainable development of the Chinese nation”. Separately, Pan Jiahua, a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, applauds Xi’s latest instruction. Speaking to Xinhua (in Chinese), Pan, who is also dean of the Ecological Civilisation Institute of Beijing University of Technology, says there are no shortcuts to carbon peak and carbon neutrality. He adds that the primary task is to control the consumption of fossil energies. He also supports the proposed “improved dual-control policy”, which would constrain energy intensity and overall energy consumption.

Texas is leading a number of other states in suing the US government over the decision to revoke a key permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, Reuters reports. In a statement, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton said the lawsuit states that US president Joe Biden does not have the unilateral authority to change energy policy that the Congress has set. The newswire explains: “Biden revoked a permit for the pipeline which would transport 830,000 barrels a day of carbon-intensive heavy crude from Canada’s Alberta to Nebraska. It was part of a flurry of executive orders aimed at curbing climate change.” The Hill says that there are 21 states in the coalition, and that “some of the states represented in the lawsuit have Democratic governors, including Kentucky and Kansas, though all of them have Republican attorneys general”.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that “a growing number of federal regulators are pushing corporate America to reckon with the cost of climate change, arguing that global warming poses significant peril not only to the environment but to the US economy”. Yesterday, the acting chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced that “he is establishing a Climate Risk Unit to focus on the role of complex financial derivatives in understanding and pricing climate-related hazards”, the paper explains. This “follows a request on Monday by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for public input on how to require companies to disclose ‘consistent, comparable, and reliable information on climate change’ risks to investors”, the paper adds. An analysis piece in Reuters explains why the SEC’s “climate crackdown” faces challenges. In related news, the Guardian reports on a new study warning that “sovereign debt downgrades are in prospect for Britain, the US and scores of other countries around the world unless they urgently step up their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”.

Finally, Politico reports on new projections suggesting that US solar power capacity is expected to quadruple over the next decade.

In the latest feature in the Guardian’s “America’s race to zero emissions” series, environment reporter Oliver Milman has a dispatch from Wainscott – a “wealthy New York enclave” in the Hamptons – which offers a “new obstacle in Biden’s renewable energy plans”. The hamlet “is the unlikely setting for a rancorous battle over what would be the state’s first offshore wind farm”, writes Milman: “A flurry of angry letters to the local newspaper has escalated to petitions, the hiring of high-powered lobbyists and now lawsuits, in what could presage similar quarrels elsewhere as the Biden administration seeks to support a national boom in new wind turbines at sea and on land.” He continues: “The subject of this turmoil isn’t even the wind turbines themselves, a 15-strong cluster called South Fork wind farm that would sit about 35 miles off Montauk, the extreme eastern end of New York’s Long Island. The upscale eastern tip of Long Island, a narrow landmass that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean, is fringed by beaches and is known for its wineries, upscale dining and opulent homes. Wainscott is on the southern flank of Long Island and so the turbines wouldn’t be visible from its beach, but a cable to connect the wind farm would have to burrow underneath the hamlet’s beach and several of its streets to join with a substation further inland. The prospect of this underground extension cable, which would help provide power to about 70,000 Long Island homes, has enraged a cadre of Wainscott property owners, including Ronald Lauder, of cosmetic company Estée Lauder money, who have congregated in a group named Citizens for the Preservation of Wainscott.” Milman notes that “if the US is, as Biden vows, to eliminate planet-heating emissions by 2050 it will have to not only cover huge tracts of land with wind turbines but also an area of its ocean the size of Belgium”. He adds: “Such a huge undertaking may, some proponents have argued, require the federal government to use powers such as eminent domain to push through projects with minimal delay. This prospect has been dismissed by the White House, however.”

Natural gas consumed in Arizona, Kansas and New Mexico has the highest “production-stage methane emissions intensity” across US states, a new study suggests. Using data on basin-level US production-stage methane emissions, as well as US natural gas production, consumption, trade and pipeline connections, the researchers estimate “production-stage methane emissions intensity of natural gas consumed in the US”. The findings show that emissions intensity varies from 0.9 to 3.6% by state, the paper says, adding that “these production-stage emissions add 16–65% (GWP-100) to combustion CO2 emissions”.