World petrol demand will peak within 13 years thanks to the impact of electric cars and more efficient engines, energy experts have predicted, reports the Guardian. UK-based Wood Mackenzie said it expected the take-up of electric vehicles to cut gasoline demand significantly, particularly beyond 2025 as the battery-powered cars go mainstream. Combined with car manufacturers forced by regulations to produce models that run further on the same amount of oil, a new report by the analysts suggests global gasoline demand is likely to peak by 2030. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that China is offering to buy 5% of Saudi Aramco. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said last year the kingdom was considering listing about 5% of Aramco in 2018 in a deal that could raise $100bn, if the company is valued at about $2 trillion as hoped. Chinese state-owned oil companies PetroChina and Sinopec have written to Saudi Aramco in recent weeks to express an interest in a direct deal, industry sources have told Reuters. The Times also picks up on Reuters’ story. It says: “Industry experts believe that China, the biggest buyer of Saudi oil, is interested in a direct deal in return for a security of supply agreement.” Separately, the Times reports that “oil prices jumped close to their highest level since 2015 yesterday, as political tensions in Iraq triggered a brief shutdown of output from the country’s Kurdish north”.

Australia’s government has rejected calls to set a clean energy target, instead scrapping aid for renewable projects and adopting a fuel-neutral energy policy that it said could “keep the country’s lights” on and cut power prices. Reuters reports that prime minister Malcolm Turnbull won support from his Conservative party for a plan to end subsidies for renewable energy after 2020, while requiring energy retailers to guarantee an energy mix that would bring both reliable power and lower carbon emissions. “These guarantees will ensure there is a place for all power sources in the nation’s future energy mix – solar, wind, coal, gas, batteries, pumped hydro,” Turnbull said, announcing the plan in a video posted on social media. “Our plan has no subsidies, no certificates and no tax.” Reuters adds: “Turnbull had faced a revolt from right-wing members of his party, led by former prime minister Tony Abbott, who do not believe climate change is a threat, and back coal while opposing subsidies for renewable energy.” The Australian has a live-blog capturing all the reaction to the announcement, including how Green party senators stood up in the Senate holding posters which said “COAL KILLS”. The News.com.au website says that government has rejected a clean energy target as recommended by chief scientist Alan Finkel. It adds: “The government insist its new energy policy will meet Australia’s Paris agreement emissions target while saving households more than $90 a year.”

Pope Francis has again expressed dismay at US president Donald Trump’s intention to withdraw from the Paris climate deal. The head of the Roman Catholic church was speaking at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, where he said: “he told an audience that included Trump’s agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue: “Thanks to scientific knowledge, we know how we have to confront the problem and the international community has also worked out the legal methods, such as the Paris Accord, which sadly, some have abandoned.” Meanwhile, in the US, the Hill reports that the Trump administration has approved a proposed expansion of an oil sands pipeline that crosses the Canadian border: “Enbridge Energy’s Line 67, also known as the Alberta Clipper, now has State Department approval to nearly double its capacity at the crossing near Neche, N.D., to about 890,000 barrels per day.” The Hill separately reports that a conservative think tank is raising concerns about a Department of Energy plan to help boost coal and nuclear power: “An analyst for the American Action Forum said the proposal, announced this month by Energy Secretary Rick Perry, aims to address a ‘real problem’ with ‘not the best solution’.” And Associated Press is reporting that a proposed overhaul of New Mexico’s state science standards for public schools has “come under intense criticism for omitting or deleting references to global warming, evolution and the age of the Earth”. Finally, in other US-related news, Climate Home reports that Sonny Perdue, Trump’s secretary for agriculture, has signed a G7 communique recognising that climate change threatens the global food supply.

China will have to launch more ambitious renewable energy and non-fossil fuel targets and ramp up efforts to enforce them to avoid missing the requirements of the Paris Agreement on climate change, two government think tanks have said. China’s capacity for renewable energy, including hydro, wind and solar, will significantly exceed Beijing’s own target set in the five-year plan to 2020, according to the report jointly issued by China National Renewable Energy Centre and the Energy Research Institute of Academy of Macroeconomic Research. China should raise its target for non-fossil fuel to 26% of its total energy mix from a current target of 15% by 2020, the report says.

The Norwegian government has proposed cutting its support for the carbon capture usage and storage sector (CCUS) by 90%. Norway, which is seen as a leader in CCUS research, has proposed cutting funding for the technology from 360m kroner ($45m) to just 20m kroner ($2.5m) next year, according to Norwegian NGO Bellanova. BusinessGreen says: “The move would put in jeopardy the development of carbon capture technology at three sites around the Oslo fjord where experiments are underway – a cement producer, an ammonia producer and waste incineration plant – as well as further research into the transport and storage of carbon dioxide.” The Telegraph also covers the story.

The three writers, who all work for development NGOs on climate change, write in Climate Home that the UN talks on loss and damage are failing to deliver for vulnerable communities. They say: “For the first time, this year’s COP will be presided over by a small island developing country – Fiji. The incoming COP presidency is all too aware of the Caribbean’s pain [following this season’s hurricanes], which occurs despite active efforts to prepare for disasters and climate impacts, and shares its need to urgently address loss and damage. Article 8 of the Paris Agreement recognized ‘loss and damage’ as an issue separate from adaptation and it has now become “third pillar” of the climate action. Fiji has identified loss and damage as one of the priorities for this year’s climate summit (COP23)…The UN climate body that deals with loss and damage, the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM), established in 2013, has disappointed vulnerable people on the frontline of climate impacts…That work plan has a glaring omission: money.”

Last week, Nuccitelli writes, Trump’s EPA administrator Scott Pruitt announced, “the war on coal is over”. He adds, though: “If there ever was a war on coal, the coal industry has lost.” Using Carbon Brief‘s “excellent” US map of electricity power capacity, published last week, to make his point, Nuccitelli says that “natural gas has now surpassed coal to supply 32% of US electricity (up from 21% in 2008), and solar and wind are up to 10% (from 3% in 2008). This trend will continue.” He concludes: “The Trump administration is taking every possible step to burn away our future, but fortunately the transition to a clean energy economy is unstoppable, and many of his party members are coming to grips with that reality.”

An editorial in the Irish Times uses the arrival of former hurricane Ophelia to hit out at the Irish government’s climate policies: “Global warming and extreme weather events, with all their destructive consequences, have become a harsh reality. Rather than merely ringing alarm bells when these events strike, the Government should take what corrective action it can…Extreme events, involving storm surges, flooding and destructive winds, have become a greater part of everyday life as the climate warms…More fundamental action, involving higher carbon taxes, phasing out fossil fuels in transport and ending peat subsidies for electricity generation, would establish the Government’s credentials on global warming.”

“Natural climate solutions” can provide more than one third of the cost-effective climate mitigation needed between now and 2030 to stabilize warming to below 2C, a new study suggests. These natural solutions include conservation, restoration, and improved land management actions that increase carbon storage and/or avoid greenhouse gas emissions across global forests, wetlands, grasslands, and agricultural lands. In addition to contributing to meeting the 2C limit, the solutions also improve soil productivity, air and water quality, and help maintain biodiversity, the researchers note.

New research suggests that tropical and subtropical regions could see large future increases in the frequency of damaging thunderstorms. The study projects changes in “convective available potential energy” (CAPE), which is an important ingredient in measuring the potential for intense thunderstorms. Using a collection of climate models, the researchers show that extremes in CAPE “increase robustly with warming across the tropics and subtropics”. The results “provide a physical basis on which to understand projected future increases in intense thunderstorm potential,” the study concludes

Climate change has “left a detectable fingerprint” on Europe’s freshwater resources, a new study finds. Using a “detection and attribution approach”, the researchers find that observed changes in European river flows is only captured in climate model simulations when human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are accounted for. Their findings reveal that the Mediterranean region has seen a “strong and significant decrease” in rainfall, northern Europe has seen a small increase, and there has been “little change in transitional central Europe”. The results “highlight the necessity of raising awareness on climate change projections that indicate increasing water scarcity in southern Europe,” the paper concludes.