Fatih Birol – head of the the Independent Energy Agency (IEA) – says that dependence on coal is preventing a global green recovery from taking off, the Guardian reports. According to the outlet, coal remains a key component of China’s energy system and the country approved more new coal power plants in the first half of 2020 than in the entirety of 2018-2019. The paper adds that, according to Birol, despite a sharp drop in emissions from China in the first quarter, “Chinese emissions for the whole of 2020 may well catch up with the 2019 level”. The paper notes that, while renewable energy generation is growing in India, the country has shown “little sign of reducing its use of the fossil fuel” and coal remains a “huge employer”. It adds that, according to Birol, “China, India and others must grapple urgently with their coal use”. The piece concludes by stating that Birol expects the US, Japan and South Korea, plus some emerging countries such as India, to “put clean energy technologies at the heart of their economic recovery”.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that, according to Japan’s energy minister Hiroshi Kajiyama, “nuclear power will be indispensable” for the country to reach its goal of net-zero by 2050. However, this move would mean “big changes” for the country, as 88% of Japanese energy comes from fossil fuels –most of which are imported. According to the outlet, Kajiyama said that Japan’s electricity supply was “touch and go” during heavy snowfall last month as solar and wind were not generating and “electricity prices rocketed” as a result. Kajiyama added that, due to “geographical constraints”, it is” not as easy” to introduce renewables to Japan as it is in Europe and North America, the outlet reports. Finally, an opinion piece in the Scotsman entitled, “If coal is the worst of the fossil fuels and more expensive than renewables, why is Japan still funding it?” notes that, although many countries have announced that they will stop funding overseas fossil fuel projects, Japan is going ahead with funding a coal power plant in Vietnam.

The UK government has announced an extra £20m of funding for on-street residential charging, to “double the rollout of points installed” from 4,000 to 8,000, Bloomberg reports. However, it adds that to prepare for the 2030 ban on the sale of new diesel and gas cars, the UK will “need to install electric-vehicle charging points five times faster during this decade”. BusinessGreen notes that, so far, £1.3bn in government funding has been provided to assist with the rollout of electric vehicle charging points, as well as £582m in grants to “subsidise the cost of zero or ultra-low emission vehicles”.

Meanwhile, a UK Treasury-backed biodiversity report warns that the world is “at ‘extreme risk’ by the failure of economics to take account of the rapid depletion of the natural world”, the Guardian reports. The Times notes that, according to Partha Dasgupta – lead author of the review – “a new economic measure called ‘inclusive wealth’ is needed that, unlike GDP, recognises the value of nature”. Bloomberg adds that governments will need to put an end to annual subsidies ranging from $4tn to $6tn that “perpetuate harm to the environment”. The Independent, BBC News, and the Daily Telegraph also cover this report.

In other UK news, Bloomberg reports on Boris Johnson’s plans to install heat pumps into UK homes. The outlet states that heat pumps will play a “pivotal” role in the UK’s net-zero targets, adding that Johnson aims to install 600,000 pumps per year by 2028 – a 20-fold increase from the current rate. However, it notes that at the current rate only 159,700 pumps will be installed in 2028. Furthermore, the outlet adds that government will need to increase annual spending on decarbonising heat from its current £6bn allocation to £9bn to meet its heat pump targets. This is the first piece in the Bloomberg‘s new “carbon benchmark” series, which will analyse how countries plan to reach net-zero emissions.

Australian prime minister Scott Morrison has “signalled his hope to set the target as government policy before the next election goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050”, the Sydney Morning Herald reports, in a move that “divides government MPs”. According to the newspaper, Morrison says that the goal would depend on science and technology, stating that “I will not tax our way to net-zero by 2050”. The paper notes that Morrison “avoided making the 2050 pledge last December ”, leading countries such as France to veto his attendance at a London summit.

Former Australian public servant Greg Jericho has an opinion piece in the Guardian entitled, “Australia needs to stop thinking that setting a target of zero emissions by 2050 is good enough”. He shows that a target of net-zero by 2050 would still “go more than 50% over our carbon budget”. He concludes that “if Scott Morrison comes out and pledges getting to zero by 2050, no one should give him any credit whatsoever”, unless he “explains how he will do so and keep within our carbon budget”. Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that proposed gas pipelines under development in Australia would generate the “emissions equivalent” of 33 coal power plants. The development is worth $56bn, the outlet adds, and has the potential to release nearly 5bn tonnes of CO2. A separate Guardian piece reports that “technology that harnesses wave energy through a ‘blowhole’ is being tested” on a Tasmanian island. The research shows that wave energy could contribute up to 11% of Australias energy by 2050.

“America’s oil and gas industry is facing up to an uncomfortable new reality”, the Financial Times reports, as projects to build new pipelines have “become much more difficult”. The outlet notes that Biden “moved quickly” to cancel the “contentious” Keystone XL pipeline last week and that officials in Canada are “nervously watching the fate” of two pipeline expansions planned to ship more oil from northern Alberta into the US. Many people, the outlet reports, are asking if the Mountain Valley pipeline – a natural gas pipeline that is more than 90% built – could be the last big pipeline built across US state lines.

The Biden administration is asking courts to pause litigation on two further climate rollbacks put forward under the Trump administration, the Hill reports that the . The first of these would have ended regulation on methane emissions from “the production, processing transmission and storage of oil and gas”, the outlet says. The second would have given federal governments the “sole authority to set emissions standards”, undercutting the ability of states such as California to make their cars more environmentally friendly. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that a Trump administration rule “limiting which scientific studies the Environmental Protection Agency can use in crafting public health protections” has been overturned.

In other US news, the Washington Post reviews Biden’s actions on climate so far, highlighting that two days before Biden’s inauguration, “high-level managers” from the US Geological Survey filed a complaint against an official from the Trump administration for “trying to dictate how scientists there study climate change”. It adds that this document is currently under review. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that Mexico has “proposed a sweeping overhaul of its electricity market to favour its state-owned utility”, in a move that would raise trade tensions with the US and Canada. Finally, Scientific American reports that the EPA is “expected to draft interim auto emissions standards” and should unveil the standards by April 1st.

An editorial in the Financial Times states that Joe Biden has “taken admirably little time” to address climate change and that “within days of taking office” he began “redressing the four years of climate inaction that are among the unhappiest legacies of the Trump administration”. However, it also notes “conspicuous omissions that underline the vast political effort that will be required to turn policy into reality”. These include the order to pause new oil and gas leases that apply to federal land only, and his “failure to set out a detailed national plan for pricing carbon”, according to the editorial. It notes that Biden emphasises employment as well as emissions cuts – an approach that is “welcome” amongst trade unions and climate campaigners. It ends by stating that Biden is “appointing a team of senior climate experts and embedding climate policy across his administration” and that this could “allow him to turn his ambitious climate plans into reality.”

The Washington Post runs an opinion piece by Dan Becker and James Gerstenzang – director and editorial director , respectively, of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Safe Climate Transport Campaign. They note that a 5% annual improvement in emissions and gas mileage was required of automakers under the Obama administration and state that Biden should set a 7% annual improvement to “make up for lost time”. They also stresse that Biden needs to “set strong standards under the Clean Air Act”. A comment in the Guardian by former director and science advisor, respectively, of the US National Park Service, Jonathan B Jarvis and Gary Machlis, states that Trump’s “four-year assault” on environmental protection and conservation is over and that “the work of restoration must begin”.

In a comment piece for the Times Red Box, Conservative MP Elliot Colburn writes that “we have entered the new year with a sense of optimism” and that we can now look at “how we will build back better than ever before”. He notes that a green industrial revolution involves “embracing” technologies that will both raise our standard of living and help the planet. “Safeguarding for the environment and the economy for future generations is not only deeply conservative, but is also how independent experts like those on the Climate Change Committee recommend we move forward”, he states, adding that the approach of centre-right groups such as the Conservative Environment Network and Tories for Climate is for environmental protection to go “hand-in-hand with economic prosperity”. He says that, by contrast, the “burdensome taxes, cumbersome regulation, degrowth and antagonism” of the left is “politically and economically” unsustainable.

A new review paper discusses the “promise and pitfalls” of nature-based solutions (NbS) to mitigate climate change. There are “serious concerns” that the focus on tree-planting for carbon sequestration is “distracting from the need to rapidly phase out use of fossil fuels and protect existing intact ecosystems”, the authors warn. It is also “coming at the cost of carbon rich and biodiverse native ecosystems and local resource rights”, they add. The authors present four “guiding principles” to enable NbS to provide sustainable benefits to society, which they urge policymakers, practitioners and researchers to follow.