Danish renewable energy giant Ørsted is to press ahead with developing the world’s largest offshore wind farm in the North Sea after the UK increased financial support for the sector, the Financial Times reports. The 2.9GW Hornsea 3 project will power 3.3m homes and, at £8bn, is Ørsted’s single biggest investment decision, the FT explains. Ørsted “had raised doubts about the project in March”, the FT says, “calling on the UK government to offer more support to help it cope with a surge in costs, driven by rising interest rates and supply chain strains”. It continues: “It was among five projects that won contracts with the UK government in July 2022, guaranteeing an inflation-linked electricity price starting at £37.35 per MWh at 2012 prices…Ørsted said it would bid for a higher price for a chunk of Hornsea’s capacity in the next annual auction for government contracts in 2024. Ministers have raised the maximum price available to £73 per MWh at 2012 prices in this round.” The Times quotes Duncan Clark, head of Orsted UK, who says: “Despite an absolutely extraordinary sequence of events, the vast majority of that capacity is being delivered under that original record-breaking low-price contract. The rest of it will be delivered under a competitive price for the world we live in today.” Hornsea 3 will comprise about 200 wind turbines and is expected to “start generating towards the end of 2027”, the newspaper adds. The Daily Telegraph, Bloomberg, Reuters and BusinessGreen all have the story.

The UK government’s approval of the planned Sizewell C nuclear plant was lawful, the Court of Appeal ruled yesterday, dismissing a legal challenge over the environmental impact of the project, reports Reuters. The campaign group Together Against Sizewell C had argued that the government failed to consider the environmental impacts of the need for a water supply when approving the plant, which is being built by French energy giant EDF, the newswire explains. However, it continues, the group’s legal challenge was rejected by the High Court in June and an appeal against that decision has now been rejected. The campaign group said they were “dismayed” by the appeal decision and called on the Office for Nuclear Regulation and the Environment Agency to “flex their regulatory muscles and call Sizewell C out for the polluting, unnecessary and wasteful white elephant it is and refuse to licence it”, reports the Press Association. BBC News quotes a spokesperson for Sizewell C, who says: “After two previous High Court dismissals on this issue, we welcome today’s judgement…Following excellent progress of pre-commencement work this year, we’re now looking forward to beginning the construction phase in 2024.” Sky News notes that, according to EDF, Sizewell C could be operational by 2034 and will generate enough electricity to supply 6m homes. 

Russian president Vladimir Putin has signed decrees granting his government power to confiscate and forcibly sell billions of dollars worth of energy assets belonging to European companies to new state-approved owners, reports Politico. It continues: “In a decree published Wednesday, the Kremlin mandated the creation of new Russian-run companies to take over shares in the colossal Yuzhno-Russkoye oil and gas field, currently owned by Austria’s OMV and Germany’s Wintershall. The two European energy giants, both from countries that Moscow claims are ‘unfriendly’ in the wake of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, together hold a 60% stake in the drilling site in Russia’s icy far north.” While the companies will “theoretically” be compensated, the outlet says, “the amount they receive from the sale will be determined by the Russian state, in a move that marks the biggest asset seizure in the country’s recent history”. The article notes that many western energy firms have announced their total withdrawal from Russia since the start of the war in February 2022, but some – including Shell, BP, TotalEnergies and Wintershall – “have found the practicalities of wrapping up their business in the country and clawing back their funds challenging”.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that the UK and US are “tightening rules around the shipping of Russian oil in an attempt to make it harder for Moscow to circumvent the so-called price cap, a policy aimed at squeezing the Kremlin’s revenue from crude”. Under the rules, published yesterday, “companies involved in shipping Russian oil will need to prepare fresh documentation to show that each voyage has complied with the G7 price cap, rather than generic reassurances that the law would be obeyed”, the article explains. Similar guidance is being issued by other countries, the FT adds, with the intention to “make it more difficult for Russia to take advantage of services such as insurance without complying with the price cap”.

A US government auction of drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday raised $382m – the “highest of any federal offshore oil and gas lease sale since 2015”, says Reuters. Shell, Hess, Anadarko, BP, Chevron, Repsol and Equinor were among the 26 companies that participated in the sale, the newswire continues: “The sale will likely be the last opportunity for oil and gas companies to bid on Gulf of Mexico acreage until 2025, according to the administration’s five year schedule, which includes a historically low number of planned lease auctions.” Bloomberg notes that “while President Joe Biden had vowed during his campaign to stop new offshore drilling, the sale was mandated by Congress under last year’s climate law as a concession to Senator Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who provided the pivotal vote for the Inflation Reduction Act to pass”. The Associated Press explains that the auction was planned for September, but was “delayed by a court battle after the administration reduced the area available for leases…as part of a plan to protect the endangered Rice’s whale”. However, “Chevron, Shell Offshore, the American Petroleum Institute and the state of Louisiana sued to reverse the cut in acreage and block the inclusion of the whale-protecting measures in the lease sale provisions”, the newswire says, adding: “A federal judge in south-west Louisiana ordered the sale to go on without the whale protections, which also included regulations governing vessel speed and personnel.” The Hill also has the story, while Reuters also reports that Shell and Equinor gave the go-ahead on Tuesday to a new oil and gas platform in the Gulf of Mexico and “said it will aggressively invest in exploration to continue production through 2050”.

In oil-related comment, Axios has an article looking at how US president Joe Biden and the US oil boom are “the new odd couple”. Chris Giles, Financial Times economics commentator, says that “peak oil is within sight” and there is “not much that Opec+ [the cartel of oil-producing countries] can do about it”. And Stuart Payne, chief executive of the UK North Sea Transition Authority, writes in City AM that “greenies may not like it, but we won’t get to net-zero without new oil and gas licences”.

In a frontpage story, the Daily Telegraph reports that UK prime minister Rishi Sunak “is facing another major Tory rebellion over his plans to introduce a net-zero ‘boiler tax’ to railroad through the switch to heat pumps”. [Rather than a tax, the government’s plan is to set heat pump quotas for manufacturers of fossil-fuel boilers, with fines for failure to sell enough heat pumps. Some manufacturers have indicated that they will increase boiler prices for consumers to offset the additional costs.] The newspaper continues: “The prime minister is pressing ahead with plans to fine boiler makers who do not meet heat pump installation targets from April…However, the penalties require legislation to enforce, meaning Sunak faces a showdown with MPs who are unhappy with the cost to consumers.” The newspaper says it has been told that the “net-zero scrutiny group”, which consists of around 50 Conservative backbenchers [the names of which have never been formally revealed], is “mobilising to vote against the plans”. The Sun also has the story, while Energy Monitor reports new plans for cutting greenhouse gas emissions from buildings by the UK and EU mean they have “set [a] course for scrapping gas boilers”.

Elsewhere, the Daily Telegraph also reports on claims by “a Treasury source” that “Labour’s plan to borrow billions of pounds to fund its flagship green jobs policy would add almost £2,000 to the average mortgage”. The department calculates that for every extra 1% GDP of borrowing – equivalent to £25bn – interest rates could rise by as much as 1.25%, adding extra costs on homeowners, the newspaper says. In response, a Labour spokesperson said that “the only party that has sent borrowing, mortgages and interest rates soaring over the last 13 years is Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives”. A Daily Mail editorial mentions the claims in passing, referring to them as “Treasury analysis”.

“It’s becoming clear,” writes Karl Mathiesen, Politico’s senior climate correspondent, “that the success of the green revolution will depend on whether policymakers and climate campaigners start taking into consideration those who will bear its greatest costs”. He says: “As climate policies move from position papers to laws and regulations, right-wing politicians and industrial lobbyists have found a rich new seam of anger to mine. In elections around the world in 2024, the right has signalled it wants to champion those at risk of being left behind. Its most potent messaging frames climate efforts as an elite diktat – just one more way to make working people pay for the excesses of the wealthy.” Next year is “arguably the biggest election year in the history of humankind”, notes Mathiesen, “featuring votes in the US, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and probably the UK, as well as European Parliament elections in June”. He continues: “Much of far-right politics is being geared toward migration, but climate antipathy often marches in lockstep. Both issues stir the same sedimentary unease: the fear of lost status in a world where national interest is secondary to serving global – or ‘globalist’ – priorities. If migration thrusts these parties into power or even gives them greater political relevance, hostility to climate policy will gain ground.” In response, “climate campaigners look under-prepared for this moment”, Mathiesen warns: “Until recently, the green movement was unwilling or unable to absorb the concerns of those who feel threatened by the shift to a clean economy. Scarred by decades of attritional war against the fossil fuel industry, it dismissed these anxieties as fear-mongering by lobbyists, or the overblown cries of a noisy minority.” However, he concludes, “unless the advocates of the green revolution can embrace and nurture the millions of people who see themselves as being called on to sacrifice, there’s a real danger that these and future elections could raise the temperature to unbearable levels”.

An editorial in the Financial Times says that “geopolitical risk and climate change” mean that “two continental shipping passages, the Suez and Panama canals, are suffering from obstructions to trade traffic”. The Panama Canal is “suffering from low water levels linked to drought”, the newspaper says, meaning the “channel between the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean is operating at only 55% of its normal capacity”. The Suez Canal is being affected by attacks on ships by “Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi militants” in the Red Sea, the editorial says: “Since the region is an important freight channel for oil, liquefied natural gas and consumer goods, resulting shortages and bottlenecks could push up inflation.” Following the “supply chain wobbles” caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, “the shocks to the Panama and Suez canals are a reminder that with climate change and growing geopolitical risk, supply chain instability is here to stay”, the editorial concludes.

A dominant mode of atmospheric variability in the tropics, known as the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), is known to significantly impact global weather and forecasting. A new study shows how human-caused warming over the past century has increased the predictability of the MJO, with knock-on effects for global weather prediction. The paper explains how warming has been accompanied by a “stronger MJO amplitude, more regular oscillation patterns and organised eastward progression”. The trend towards increasing predictability is likely to continue with further warming in the 21st century, say the authors.

New research appears to counter the “common narrative” that biodiversity loss is mostly characterised by the decline of rare species. The meta-study of 923 terrestrial insect populations across 106 studies found that although rare species had declined, observed decreases in total insect abundance are mostly explained by widespread declines of formerly abundant species. While the authors caution that their findings only represent trends from locations where there was sufficient long-term data, they add that the decline of once-abundant species is likely to have “broad repercussions” for food webs and ecosystem functioning.