Up to £20bn of investment in renewable energy is “under threat” as a result of Liz Truss’s plans to “effectively ban solar farms on agricultural land in England”, the Financial Times reports. The paper says that, according to Chris Hewett, chief executive of the industry trade body Solar Energy UK, the plans “would threaten 30GW plus of projects currently being scoped for the second half of the decade”. The Times adds: “When Truss was environment secretary, her officials were unable to provide figures to confirm her claims that solar harmed food production. Hewett said while more than 6GW of solar projects would be built anyway because they had planning approval, solar developers would have to scrap billions of pounds’ worth of new projects if ‘3b land’ [moderate quality agricultural land] was reclassified.”

Meanwhile, there is continuing coverage of government plans to impose a cap on revenues from renewable and nuclear power generators. According to the Financial Times, renewable energy companies will tell UK ministers this week that the planned cap “not be more punitive than a similar EU policy — or they risk an investment exodus to Europe”. The Times warns that the move is “sparking alarm in the [renewable and nuclear] industry and a sell-off of their shares”. Bloomberg reports that “officials from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy held talks Monday afternoon with some of the country’s biggest renewable power companies”, but notes that plans have not yet been finalised.

In other UK news, DeSmog reports that “Liz Truss’s chief of staff has been providing lobbying services to a wind energy company accused of ‘greenwashing’ new North Sea oil and gas production”. The outlet continues: “Cerulean, which specialises in floating wind power infrastructure and calls increased North Sea fossil fuel production ‘vital’, received public funding in January to back its plans to power drilling rigs with offshore wind turbines. The company, which is working on a new oilfield with a Malaysian firm, says its plan will cut the amount of planet-warming emissions associated with the oil and gas extraction process…DeSmog estimates that powering the new field with wind energy for a year would save the equivalent of 0.2% of the emissions set to be produced by burning all of its oil.” Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that the Crown Estate will sell rights to areas in the Celtic Sea next year – allowing up to 4GW of new renewable power capacity by 2035. The leases will be awarded to the highest paying developer, “presenting an opportunity for fossil fuel companies to leverage this year’s record profits to expand their collection of low-carbon projects”, the paper says.

The Guardian reports that footfall dropped across all UK retail destinations at the start of October amid rising energy bills. Separately, the Guardian reports that “Downing Street has said it will not offer a ‘bespoke campaign’ to help people find ways to save energy, but will ramp up a separate Cabinet Office drive which sets out cost of living support”.

In a “world first”, New Zealand may introduce a scheme requiring farmers to pay a levy on emissions from livestock, the Guardian reports. The paper says: “The emissions created by the digestive systems of New Zealand’s 6.3m cows are among the country’s biggest environmental problems. The plan includes taxing both methane emitted by livestock and nitrous oxide emitted mostly from fertiliser-rich urine – which together contributes to around half of New Zealand’s overall emissions output.” The plan arose from the He Waka Eke Noa scheme – a partnership between farming leaders, Māori and government created in 2019 – it adds. Bloomberg reports that the government “is backing a split-gas approach where long-lived gases such as carbon dioxide have a separate price to methane”. It adds: “the government will not allow carbon sequestration from on-farm vegetation to offset a farmer’s emissions. Instead it wants the emissions trading scheme to be the sole mechanism to recognise such planting.” Reuters reports that farming groups have criticised the plans, warming that “increased costs will encourage farmers to turn beef and sheep farms into forestry”.

Elsewhere, the Guardian reports that Australian competition watchdog ACCC “has begun a crackdown on ‘greenwashing’ by Australian companies, surveying the internet for companies making false claims about environmental action after a global investigation found as many as 40% may be fraudulent”. Separately, the Guardian reports that the Australian government is facing “scrutiny” after it “released draft legislation aimed at cutting industry emissions without providing the rules on how the scheme will work and prior to completing a review of the carbon credits scheme”. And the paper covers a new report, which finds that “Australian workers with long commutes should receive tax breaks for buying electric vehicles”.

A Guardian “exclusive” reveals that chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng “held undisclosed meetings with senior executives of Saudi Arabian firms when he was the business secretary”. The paper says: “Documents released using the Freedom of Information Act (FoI) show Kwarteng held undisclosed meetings with the chief executive of Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil producer; the chief executive of Sabic, the world’s fourth largest petrochemical company; and the chair of Alfanar Group, an industrial conglomerate. However, transparency disclosures from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy did not contain any reference to meetings during the period Kwarteng was in Saudi Arabia when originally published. While meetings with foreign government figures are not required to be declared, encounters with business executives should be. A government spokesperson said there had been an ‘administrative oversight’.”

A government-appointed expert panel have proposed that the German government “should pay all private households’ gas bills in December and subsidise residential and industrial gas prices for more than a year from early 2023”, the Financial Times reports. According to the paper, the measure would cost about €91bn. The Guardian notes that “under the scheme, the one-off full reimbursement in December would be followed up next spring with a more differentiated subsidy scheme designed to cap bills but still incentivise people to save energy”. Reuters reports that the “gas price brake” will run from 1 January 2023 until 30 April 2024 – during which time 70% of annual gas consumption will be subject to a price cap. And Reuters reports that the German government “failed to approve a draft law to put on reserve two of the country’s last nuclear power plants beyond their planned phase-out due to political disagreements”.

Meanwhile, Climate Home News reports that France “unveiled its energy saving plan on Thursday which aims to reduce energy consumption by 10% by 2024”. However, it adds that “the plan has no binding measures, which runs in contradiction with a new regulation adopted by EU countries a week ago”. Meanwhile, Politico reports that “the French government is feeling the heat as strikes at oil refineries and storage facilities have led to fuel shortages across the country”.

In other European news, Reuters reports that “European Union countries will seek a November deal on more emergency measures to tackle high gas prices, officials said, although countries still disagree on what form those measures would take and whether they should cap gas prices”. And the Financial Times reports that “the challenge to an EU system labelling gas and nuclear as ‘green’ investments has gained momentum with a lawsuit filed by Austria against the European Commission”. The paper adds that the Commission is already facing two separate legal challenges from environmental groups over its classification of the fuels.

China’s National Energy Administration (NEA), the country’s top energy regulator, has stated in a new notice that, by 2025, a “relatively complete energy standard system” that can “effectively support and lead” the low-carbon transformation of energy will be “initially established”, reports the Global Times. The state-run newspaper says that the notice comes as “sweeping top-down efforts have been rolled out” in China while the country “strives to attain its CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060”. Lin Boqiang, director of the China centre for energy economics research at Xiamen University – who “applauded the latest announcement” – said that “the new standard will look at further prompting the safety and adequate[ness] of energy supplies while working to advance the energy supply chain and low-carbon levels”. Shanghai-based Jiemian covers the same story. Additionally, the state-run newspaper China Daily has published a comment piece by Alvin Lin, China climate and energy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a US-based advocacy group. He writes: “That many other parts of China [besides Beijing] have also witnessed such remarkable improvement in air quality over the past decade shows China’s sustained efforts to transition its energy structure to clean energy and pursue higher-quality growth have been bearing fruit.”

Meanwhile, John Kemp, a senior market analyst specialising in oil and energy systems, says in a comment piece for Reuters that the “growing reliance on imported gas” has “emerged as one of China’s biggest strategic vulnerabilities” as relations with the US and its allies have “deteriorated”. He adds: “Despite a high priority on indigenising the energy system and reducing reliance on imports in the 13th five-year plan (2016-2020) and 14th five-year plan (2021-2025), the government has made limited progress.” Separately, Chinese residents are “experiencing the worst job-market prospects on record amid a sharp slowdown in the economy”, Bloomberg writes, stressing that this is a “worrying sign” for officials as the Communist Party “prepares to hold a key political meeting” next week. The outlet adds that a survey also “shows weak prospects for housing market recovery” in China.

Separately, the South China Morning Post reports that Chinese authorities have “summoned major solar producers” for meetings, “ordering” them “not to engage in price gouging or hoarding” amid “10-year-high” polysilicon prices that have “sent shock waves through the supply chain”. In other news, the Shanghai-based financial outlet Yicai says that “several” Chinese new energy vehicle (NEV)) makers, including Nio and BYD, have “announced their entry into the European market”.

The UK’s 40C summer caused an extra 2,803 deaths among people aged 65 and over, the Washington Post reports. This is according to analysis by the UK Health Security Agency and the Office for National Statistics, who have found that this summer “was the highest figure among the elderly since they started tracking heat-related deaths in this way in 2004”, the paper says. BusinessGreen adds that more than 3,200 excess deaths were recorded between June and August due to the heat. And the Independent carries the results of a poll of 2,000 Britons, which finds that “77% believed the new government should do even more than their predecessors to protect the UK from global warming”.

“As the world warms and as tropical forests are thinned out, a study has found the world’s primates are more likely to leave their trees — spending more time in the relative cool of the ground,” the Times reports. The paper notes that the hotter it gets, the longer the primate species studied spent on the ground. The study is based on 150,000 hours of observations of 47 tree-dwelling primate species living across almost 70 sites in Madagascar and the Americas finds, according to the New Scientist. The paper adds that “the animals are being forced to the ground to seek shade and water to recover from rising temperatures higher in the forest canopy”. The Washington Post adds that species who can adapt to spending time on the ground “may be more likely to survive into the future”, while “primates less advantaged for such a transition will be increasingly imperilled”.

Meanwhile, New Scientist covers new research, which finds that “encouraging more intensive farming in areas of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest that have already been felled could help preserve the rest of the rainforest, by boosting crop yields without serious environmental impacts”.

“The proposal to cap renewables companies’ UK revenues looks set to be a mess”, says FT business writer Cat Rutter Poole. Pooley says that the cap on renewables will not be labelled a windfall tax, because Truss’s government is “ideologically opposed to imposing anything that is obviously a windfall tax”. She says: “The thing that has really spooked the industry is the potential level of the UK cap — originally rumoured to be £50 to £60 per megawatt hour when wholesale prices are above £400. The EU has set its cap at €180.” She adds: “Whereas a traditional windfall tax on profits might have come with carve-outs for certain types of investment — as the North Sea oil and gas levy did — capping revenues doesn’t offer that kind of nuance.”

In other UK comment, economist Stephen King writes for the Evening Standard: “It’s time to face the bitter truth that we must now cut our energy use”. In the 1970s, change happened only when “businesses, governments and households eventually came to accept that energy prices had both risen and were likely to stay high”, he writes. He adds that subsidies postpone an adjustment that “reluctantly, we may eventually have to make”. Elsewhere, William Hague – a former foreign secretary and leader of the Conservative party – has penned a comment piece for the Times, listing actions that Liz Truss should not take. He says: “Do not avoid full commitment at the top of government to COP27 next month or seem to soft-pedal on global leadership on climate change. UK leadership did well at Glasgow last year and is critical to this year’s efforts.” Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph‘s chief city commentator, Ben Marlow, writes: “The Truss government is stoking anti-renewables sentiment in the mistaken belief that it is a vote-winner…Yet, opposition to green energy doesn’t run nearly as deep as some ministers believe.” He writes that “our reluctance to embrace the green energy revolution risks a repeat of the nuclear energy farrago” – stating that the UK was “a pioneer of atomic power”, but surrendered its lead to France.

Elsewhere, a Times editorial says that Met commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, must ensure that police use their powers to prevent “eco-warriors” from “bring[ing] London to a standstill”. An editorial in the Sun predicts a “screeching U-turn” on the 2030 deadline for banning sales of new petrol or diesel vehicles, citing analysis by pro-motoring lobbyists FairFuelUK who estimate “an extra £1,000 a year per household” to meet the ultimate 2050 date of replacing all “fossil fuel cars”. And in the Daily Mail, climate-sceptic columnist Richard Littlejohn writes under the headline: “Football’s climate change hypocrisy is in a league of its own”. A new TV programme called “Football’s Toughest Opponent” delivers an “apocalyptic warning that a quarter of the grounds in England’s top four divisions were in danger of being under water by 2050”, he says. Sky, by commissioning the show, “have taken it upon themselves to force-feed us their views on global warming”, he claims.

The “rarer” the extreme rainfall event, the “more likely it is to increase in a future climate”, a new study suggests. The researchers use 25 models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6), driven by a range of emissions scenarios, to assess “common (annual) and rare (decennial or centennial) extremes”. They find that, by the end of this century, “daily land rainfall extremes could increase in magnitude between 10.5% and 28.2% for annual events, and between 13.5% and 38.3% for centennial events, for low and high emission scenarios, respectively”. The authors also note that “results are consistent across models though with regional variation, but the underlying mechanisms remain to be determined”.