Campaigners hope move will force commercial banks to rethink holding assets linked to the fossil fuel

Climate campaigners have declared a victory after the Bank of England said it would no longer accept bonds linked to one of the most polluting industries on the planet for key loan arrangements.

The ban, which comes into force in October, marks a fresh crackdown on thermal coal, which is burned in power plants to create electricity, and has long been a target of green policy activists.

Party manifesto pledged to honour existing North Sea exploration licences but not issue new ones

Andy Burnham risks his first confrontation with Labour MPs if he announces new oil and gas drilling licences when he becomes prime minister, insiders have warned.

Speculation is rife that Burnham will unveil fresh plans for drilling in the North Sea after he is installed in Downing Street.

The predicted £264bn cost by 2050 could be even higher, plus renewables avoid a far higher total of emissions than can be captured, writes Andrew Boswell, while Simon Oldridge calls out vested interests

Prof Myles Allen and colleagues, in their letter (12 July) on carbon capture and storage (CCS), propose licensing gasfields on condition that producers store an increasing proportion of “the carbon dioxide their products generate”. Their proposal only considers CO₂. Methane is excluded by choice although it leaks throughout global fossil-fuel supply chains, including during extraction, processing, liquefaction and shipping.

A growing academic literature, supported by satellite observations of major methane plumes, shows that these emissions can be very substantial, and are the dominant near-term climate impact for gas supplied as liquefied natural gas.

Campaigners say field will bring minimal benefit for UK economy, as industry lobbies Burnham for go-ahead

More people can fit on to the top deck of a standard London bus than will be directly employed on the new Jackdaw gasfield in the North Sea, industry documents show.

Only 27 direct full-time jobs would be created by Jackdaw, one of the biggest gasfields remaining in the North Sea, according to an environmental impact assessment filed publicly by its owner, Adura, a joint venture between Shell and Norway’s Equinor.

Heatwaves, high energy prices, calls for reindustrialisation and North Sea drilling are all high on the to-do list

Wildfires cast a pall of smoke this week over Greater Manchester, whose former mayor Andy Burnham stands on the threshold of No 10. Amid three UK heatwaves so far this year, which have killed thousands of people in England and Wales, damaged harvests and left children crying in classrooms, the new prime minister’s plans for the climate crisis remain as shrouded as his city.

“Burnham has been very quiet about the climate [crisis] so far,” says Chris Venables, an environmental campaigner and fellow at the Green Alliance thinktank. “I don’t think [it] is at the forefront of his mind, but that does not mean he will water down this agenda.”