President Joe Biden has banned imports of Russian oil and gas into the US, and the UK government has announced plans to phase out the import of Russian oil by the end of the year, according to the Financial Times. UK prime minister Boris Johnson is also expected to make a statement later this week on reducing British imports of Russian gas, it adds. While the move steps up economic sanctions on Moscow over the invasion of Ukraine, the newspaper notes that a ban on US and UK imports “will be far less disruptive to global markets than a full international embargo as only a small proportion of Russian shipments goes to those two markets”. It notes that the EU did not follow suit and instead released a plan of its own (see below) that stopped short of full sanctions. Announcing the new executive order, the Independent reports that Biden emphasised the need to achieve energy independence using renewables so that “tyrants like [Russian president Vladimir] Putin won’t be able to use fossil fuels as weapons against other nations”. CNN notes that pressure on Biden to impose sanctions on the Russian oil-and-gas industry had been growing from many sources, including Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and American lawmakers from both parties. It says that US imports from Russia make up “a small slice” of US energy use, roughly 8% in 2021, of which only about 3% was crude oil. According to Reuters, UK business minister Kwasi Kwarteng said he was exploring options to end British imports of gas from Russia, which currently accounts for about 4% of supply in the country. (BBC News has an explainer article titled “How reliant is the world on Russia for oil and gas?” and a piece in the Atlantic asks why the US losing Russian oil is “such a big deal”.) The Press Association reports that in a virtual speech to the UK parliament, Zelensky welcomed the new sanctions announcement coordinated between the US and UK. Meanwhile, at a fossil-fuel conference in Houston, UK energy minister Greg Hands told the audience that sanctions imposed on Russia are “really beginning to bite”, according to Reuters.

Reuters reports that oil prices increased a further 4% on Tuesday following the actions of the US and the UK, adding that these decisions are “expected to further disrupt the global energy market where Russia is the second-largest exporter of crude”. According to the Times, such high oil prices have not been seen since 2008. The Hill says that the Biden administration is seeking to blame the increase in fuel prices on the Russian president, calling it the “Putin spike”. Exploring ways to cope with rising fossil fuel prices, the Washington Post reports that the White House has considered scaling up US production of heat pumps for export to Europe, as the continent seeks to scale back Russian energy imports.

Analysis by the Times states that the actions of the US and the UK “may have huge ripples across world”. The article notes that between them they make up just over a tenth of Russia’s total oil exports, relatively small volumes that “can be replaced by redirecting supplies elsewhere in the world”. However, it adds that the move “adds to growing momentum for others to stop buying Russian oil”. A further Reuters analysis piece states that the US ban on Russian oil would further slow the global recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, with a high risk of “stagflation” – little to minimal growth coupled with high inflation. The Financial Times reports that Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said members were ready to release more oil from emergency stockpiles to address soaring energy prices, and criticised Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for refusing to pump more oil.

Finally, Reuters reports in an “exclusive” story that as Patricia Espinosa prepares to step down as executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) when her second term ends in July, she said that despite global events the climate agenda “cannot be postponed”. It notes that Espinosa also added that energy security concerns brought on by the war could hasten countries towards clean energy.

The EU has published plans, trailed earlier this week, to cut its Russian gas imports by two-thirds by the end of the year, the Financial Times reports, adding that the bloc currently gets 40% of its gas from Russia. It continues: “Frans Timmermans, European Green Deal commissioner, said the bloc could import more liquefied natural gas, rapidly boost renewable energy generation and cut demand with efficiency measures. He conceded that countries may have to burn coal for longer to avoid switching to gas.” BBC News says that the REPowerEU plan aims to make Europe independent of Russian fossil fuels by 2030, with the initial efforts focusing solely on gas. According to Reuters, the European Commission states that gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) from countries like the US and Qatar could this year replace more than a third of the gas Europe gets annually from Russia, and by 2030, increased biomethane and hydrogen use could also help. The Washington Post nots that the EU’s plan “falls short of the full-scale boycott that some have called for in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”, and that has now been implemented by the US. According to Climate Home News, the EU is urging its member states to use taxes on energy firms and polluters to fund a transition from Russian gas to clean energy sources. EurActiv has a comment piece by Radan Kanev, an MEP from the Democratic Bulgaria coalition, who writes that while it makes no sense to scrap the European Green Deal, the EU should “reconsider and adapt” it, and especially the “Fit For 55” package, to current geopolitics. “The EU’s top priority should be energy independence and security of energy supply, on the lowest prices possible,” he says, noting that coal “shouldn’t be a dirty word anymore” and the nuclear debate is “over” because “we fear Putin’s nuclear bombs more than our nuclear reactors”. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that European companies are rushing to install solar panels on their facilities to offset their exposure to rising gas prices.

The Guardian reports on analysis by the Transport & Environment (T&E) thinktank that suggests Russia’s war in Ukraine is “being bolstered” by $285m (£217m) in oil payments made every day by European countries.

Deutsche Welle reports that Germany has so far refused to sanction energy imports from Russia, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz saying they were “essential” to daily life in Europe. It notes that this stance was “reaffirmed” by German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock on Tuesday, who said that the transport sector would come to a halt if Germany followed the US example and banned imports. As Germany faces pressure from its allies, the Times reports that gas reserves in its largest storage facility have run out. Spanish deputy prime minister Nadia Calviño has urged the European Commission to “revise” its energy regulations to help Europe “decouple” from Russian gas, Politico reports.

Elsewhere, Reuters reports that Nigerian government officials have joined other emerging oil-producing nations “reluctant to embrace the global energy transition trend”. It quotes Nigeria’s oil Minister Timipre Marlin Sylva, who told the CERAWeek oil-and-gas conference: “We are still in transition from firewood to gas…Please allow us to continue with our own transition.”

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the energy sector rose to their highest levels in history in 2021, according to new analysis from the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported by the Independent. The figures show that CO2 emissions rose 6% last year, increasing by their largest ever amount in absolute terms, it adds. According to BusinessGreen, energy-related emissions increased by more than 2bn tonnes (GtCO2) in 2021 to hit a record high of 36.3GtCO2, outstripping the decline in emissions previously recorded in 2020. The news website notes that this came as soaring international gas prices and the Covid-19 recovery both drove an increase in coal-fired power generation around the world.

Separately, the Guardian covers a new report by the UK’s Energy Transitions Commission that concludes removing CO2 from the air will now be essential to achieve the world’s climate target of limiting warming to 1.5C.

The Daily Mail reports that ministers are considering using two fracking wells which were set to be sealed off within weeks for “future research” instead. It notes that the Lancashire wells have remained unused since 2019 after test drilling was suspended when it triggered earthquakes. The news comes amid pressure from some Conservatives to reverse the government moratorium on fracking, which they say could improve energy security. The Daily Telegraph, which first reported the story, under the headline “Fracking back on the agenda as Boris Johnson blocks imports of Russian oil”, quotes a “senior government source” who says that “we need alternative sources of energy that are cheaper and more reliable and less vulnerable to the whims of a dictator”. It quotes a spokesperson for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) saying the moratorium on fracking will remain in place “until compelling new evidence is provided over its safety”. The Sun says “insiders said the site could be used for further research on fracking rather than disappearing forever”. It quotes the prime minister’s spokesperson saying: “It would take years of exploration and development before any quantities of shale gas could be extracted and wouldn’t have an impact on prices affecting Europe in the near future.” The Daily Telegraph has a piece by the newspaper’s former editor Charles Moore, describing opposition to shale gas as “crazy green dogmatism”.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that Lord Adair Turner, chair of the UK’s Energy Transitions Commission, has said consumers could help governments reduce Russian oil and gas imports by taking simple steps such as limiting their speed to 55 miles per hour on motorways and turning down their heating. Meanwhile, according to the Guardian, experts told MPs on the business committee that lessons could be learned from Japan following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, when steps were taken to reduce national energy demand such as turning off neon lights and running trains slower. The Independent reports that Anthony Browne, Conservative chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Environment, said rising gas prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine showed “the need to reduce our dependence on a globally traded commodity with high volatility”.

The Guardian says that an independent commission has been launched to explore using the Severn estuary to generate power, a major project that is apparently back on the agenda due to the energy security concerns raised by the invasion of Ukraine. This is not the only renewable project being considered as a way of addressing the crisis, according to the Times, as ministers are also examining plans to relax restrictions on new onshore wind farms in England.

Finally, DeSmog reports that Steve Baker, a Conservative MP leading a backbench revolt against climate action and net-zero in the UK, recently received £5,000 from the chair of “the UK’s most prominent climate science denial group”, the Global Warming Policy Forum.

Reuters reports that in the US, energy executives and analysts say that domestic shale producers are “unlikely” to replace banned Russian oil imports due to a shortage of materials, equipment and labor and a “dwindling backlog of wells waiting to be completed”. The Hill notes that US Democrats and Republicans clashed during a hearing on the Biden administration’s push for electric vehicles, where the Republicans argued that the solution to the current crisis is increased domestic fossil fuel production, not alternative fuels. In a Financial Times interview, US state department special envoy Amos Hochstein has dismissed as “nonsense” industry claims that White House policies are holding back oil-and-gas drilling and instead blamed Wall Street investors. He added that US shale producers should be doing “whatever it takes” to increase supply. Biden administration officials will meet with representatives from ExxonMobil, Shell and some shale producers on the sidelines of the CERAWeek oil-and-gas conference this week to discuss the situation, according to Bloomberg.

In an “exclusive” story, Reuters reports that the US has demanded that Venezuela must supply it with oil as part of any agreement to ease oil trading sanctions on the nation.

Shell has said it will stop buying Russian oil and gas and has apologised for its decision to “snap up the Kremlin’s energy at a discount last week”, according to the Daily Telegraph. The article adds that the fossil fuel giant “was widely criticised last week after buying a cargo of heavily discounted Russian oil” while many others were shunning energy from the region following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. According to the Financial Times, while many oil companies and refiners are still working on products already purchased in Russia under long-term contracts, “Shell was unusual in that it made a new purchase on Friday when many traders were already avoiding new Russian cargoes”. The Times says that Shell will now begin cutting all of its involvement with oil and gas in the country, including shutting its 500 petrol stations there. Ben van Beurden, Shell’s chief executive, said there would be a “phased withdrawal” from Russian petroleum products, pipeline gas and liquified natural gas (LNG), noting that this would take much longer, the newspaper adds. BBC News states that Russian oil currently makes up about 8% of Shell’s working supplies and one of its refineries there is among the biggest in Europe.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that a group of the world’s top oil companies, including Shell as well as Saudi Aramco and ExxonMobil , has announced that it plans to cut fugitive emissions of the greenhouse gas methane to near-zero by 2030.

A story by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reveals that BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, has “backpedalled” on its chief executive Larry Fink’s “climate-conscious public statements” in a private meeting with Texas’s oil and gas regulator. It quotes the regulator’s chairman saying: “It was nice to hear that BlackRock didn’t mean – or no longer believes – many of the disagreeable things the company and its chief executive Fink have said about the oil and gas industry”. The Guardian has also covered the story. Separately, DeSmog says it has seen documents that show senior Canadian officials are working with an Alberta company to open up new gas markets in Germany, “contradicting a federal minister who says the Ukraine crisis can’t be solved by exporting more fossil fuels”.

Finally, in her Climate Forward newsletter, Somini Sengupta of the New York Times writes that “oil companies are upbeat again” as executives at the annual oil-and-gas conference CERAWeek frame themselves as “part of the solution” to climate change, amid the on-going energy crisis. Reuters says that US liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporters are emerging as “big winners of Europe’s supply crisis” as they export record volumes to the EU for the third consecutive month.

Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison has announced that he will declare a national emergency following floods across large swathes of the nation’s east coast that have claimed 22 lives, Associated Press reports. The move, which marks the first of its kind since the devastating Australian wildfires of 2020, will ensure all emergency services are available and remove “red tape”, Morrison said. Reuters reports that the prime minister has been met with climate activists when he has visited flood victims, shouting “the water is rising, no more compromising” and “fossil fuel floods”. Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that Australian energy minister Angus Taylor has criticised “activists” for opposing new oil-and-gas development in the Beetaloo Basin.

Daily Telegraph international business editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reflects on the latest round of sanctions against Russia, targeting its oil-and-gas industry. “What was almost unthinkable last week has become unstoppable this week. Ukrainian resistance and outraged moral opinion in the democracies has changed the character of this war, and changed what the West is prepared to do,” he writes Evans-Pritchard says that nations such as Venezuela and Iran are now the “lesser evils” in the effort to stop financing Russia’s war in Ukraine and “Western democracies no longer deem it morally defensible to fund Putin’s war machine with purchases of oil, gas and coal”. Separately, former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan-Smith uses a piece in the same newspaper to take aim at the UK’s climate policies in the context of the unfolding crisis. “The dangerous moments in politics happen when the opinion of the political class coalesces and all debate is ended. So it has been with this new religion of net-zero. Under this banner, whilst virtue-signalling, the UK has allowed North sea oil and gas exploration to nigh on disappear,” he says. Duncan-Smith claims that as a result the UK has gone from being a net exporter of gas to a net importer. (UK gas production peaked in 2000 and the country became a net importer in 2003, with the net-zero target only adopted in 2019.) A further Daily Telegraph article by columnist Philip Johnston also takes aim at “virtue signalling” politicians over net-zero policies. In the Times, Sunday Times economics editor David Smith discusses the need to save energy. “For homeowners, the game changer would be to properly insulate our draughty housing stock, which is among the least energy-efficient in Europe. There was once a lot of talk about a coordinated campaign to do this but, like many other things, it has gone quiet,” he writes. A piece by BBC News economics editor states that the new sanctions take the west into “uncharted waters”.

In Europe, a piece in Politico argues that The EU’s Green Deal has “a new purpose – not just to fight against climate change, but also against Vladimir Putin and Europe’s dependence on Russian gas”. In Bloomberg, opinion columnist Javier Blas says that the EU needs to urgently cut its energy use. “There are simple measures to take: Reduce speed limits on highways; ask consumers to turn down their thermostats a touch; encourage the use of public transportation by reducing the cost of tickets, or letting people ride on weekends for free,” he writes.

In the Guardian, columnist George Monbiot argues that cutting off fossil fuel imports from Russia and reducing emissions can both be done at once, stating that the “measures needed to forestall environmental catastrophe are the same as those required to release ourselves from dependency on the autocratic governments and ecocidal corporations that control the world’s fossil fuels”.

Several articles on climate change marked International Women’s Day yesterday. Writing in the Independent, Oladosu Adenike – an “ecofeminist and climate justice leader who specialises in peace, security and equality in Africa” – explains why “we cannot solve the climate crisis without women and girls”. She writes that one reason “progress has been slow when it comes to climate action is because of the limited rights of women. This barrier towards access to resources disempowers women’s ability to participate as solution makers”. For example, “women’s land rights are a crucial and effective carbon capturing technique”, Adenike says, and have a “wide reaching impact on food security, eliminating hunger and poverty, reducing gender-based violence, and on tackling climate change”.

In the Economist, climate activist Vanessa Nakate explains how “girls’ education can help solve the climate crisis”. She writes: “A dearth of education for girls is a crisis itself. It also has implications for the climate because educated young women have the greatest potential to find the most transformative climate solutions. When girls go to school they pick up the skills – especially critical thinking and problem solving – that they need to respond to climate disasters and to acquire green jobs in the future. Such skills will also enable them to help their communities increase resilience to extreme weather events. Education prepares girls to advocate for themselves and to tackle the social-justice issues at the heart of the climate crisis.” Nakate calls on world leaders to invest in “gender-equal climate education”. This means, she says, “offering all students a curriculum that does more to investigate the causes of climate change and promote green skills and sustainable values. My generation is passionate about protecting our planet, but many of us aren’t equipped with adequate knowledge or skills to handle the problems we’ll soon inherit”. The Independent’s senior climate correspondent Louise Boyle has a feature on how “women and girls are disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis”. The article highlights examples from a new report by the development and relief agency Christian Aid, which recommends that “70% of climate financing be directed into locally-led responses, with a focus on solutions championed by women in marginalised communities”. Climate Home News has a piece by Rachel Cox, a campaigner with Global Witness, who writes that since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, at least 108 women have been murdered “after defending the environment from climate wrecking industries”. She argues that solving climate change and gender inequality “go hand in hand”.

Finally, a piece in BusinessGreen by reporter Cecilia Keating asks: “Who is tracking gender disparity in the UK’s green jobs market?”. It notes that a new report by PwC suggests that the green jobs boom resulting from the net-zero transition “could simply exacerbate the diversity and inclusion issues that have long been rife within the manufacturing, energy and construction workforces”.

(Previously, Carbon Brief has mapped how climate change disproportionately affects women’s health and reported on how tackling gender inequality is “crucial” for climate adaptation.)

Climate change could cause the area of land with “frequent fire-prone conditions” to expand by 29% by the end of the 21st century, new research finds. The authors define four climate zones – boreal, temperate, tropical and arid. They then use climate model projections to assess changes in their fire season length and fire-prone area over the 21st century. The study finds that the increase in frequent fire-prone conditions is most notable in boreal and temperate zones, where there may also be a “significant” lengthening of the potential fire season. The authors conclude: “Our estimates of the global expansion of fire-prone areas highlight the large but uneven impact of a warming climate on Earth’s environment.”