No news yet from the informal meeting of environment ministers in Sweden that began today, following the G8 agreement on tackling climate change, covered on this blog by Fiona Harvey here and here. But Hu Jintao, China’s president, has been in the country signing a deal for, among other things, sharing environmental knowhow.

Meanwhile, the bloggers have been reacting to the Heiligendamm agreement. 3E Intelligance describes it as a "climate compromise… which will not be mentioned in the history books," and Blueclimate.org is similarly sceptical. The funniest take is from Jon Stewart, at Gristmill (you may need to scroll down.)

But the most disappointed response came from the newspaper pundit Melanie Phillips on BBC TV, who lamented what she saw as president Bush’s capitulation to the "ideological Big Lie" of man-made global warming (she writes about it on her blog here.) Ms Phillips, a graduate in English literature, reports "a steady stream of public support since the programme from people who have also rumbled the scam." Her fellow dissenters, she writes, "are silently refusing to sign up to this demonstrable absurdity, and… are resisting it in the way that all peoples resist lies which are imposed on pain of social ostracism, professional exile or worse – in their minds, which no-one can touch, and where the flame of truth and freedom never dies."

She cites Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic as an inspiration; his views as a climate change sceptic are well-known. But his reaction to the G8 deal, as reported by the Prague Daily Monitor, is a less than whole-hearted attack.

Many in the UK energy industry have grown increasingly frustrated waiting for the UK government to publish its energy white paper, which will set the framework for future energy policy and most likely kick-start the building of new nuclear reactors. After several delays, the paper is now expected in the second half of May. But the Renewable Energy Association says the government should not be too hasty. In a statement, it argues that publication of the white paper should be postponed in order to include measures needed to meet new European Union targets, such as a 20 per cent reduction in energy consumption by 2020. “We can’t keep tinkering with our energy policy – this is the last chance to get on the right path and stay there,” says Philip Wolfe, chief executive of the REA, which represents a range of UK energy companies and technology providers.

Gazprom has done a deal to buy carbon dioxide emissions reduction certiifcates in Brazil, which it can then sell in the EU, the New York Times reports. The arrangement is part of its plan to build a global carbon trading business to take advantage of the massive ptential for emissions reduction in Russia, as highlighted in the FT back in January.

The best quote in the NYT piece, from Gazprom Marketing and Trading’s PR man: "Russia is the Saudi Arabia of carbon.”

Of course, this is the way that the emissions trading system created by Kyoto and the EU’s own scheme, which will be linked from next year, are supposed to work. Incentives are created for emissions reductions to happen wherever in the world they are cheapest.

Whether EU energy users are prepared to pay through higher prices for $60bn worth of credits from Russia, with Gazprom and its partners no doubt claiming a healthy margin on the trades, may be another matter.

ConocoPhillips has become the first major US oil company to announce it wants Washington to enact a federal global warming emissions cap, several US papers, including the Houston Chronicle and the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), report. Other companies have talked of the need for a mandatory federal system to tackle emissions, but ConocoPhillips is the first to throw its weight behind a specific proposal after having joined the US Climate Action Partnership. The move is not altruistic - except perhaps in terms of the company’s shareholders - but a way for the company to influence policy and minimise the impact on its bottom line. Executives from other US oil companies have told the FT they are also concerned about the prospect of multiple state requirements that would be difficult and costly to follow if the federal government did no enact US-wide legislation.

The Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 that the Bush administration must consider regulating carbon dioxide emissions, Greenwire reported today. The ruling is a victory for the 11 states that sued the Environmental Protection Agency to force it to regulate greenhouse emissions from new cars and trucks. The case, Massachusetts v. EPA marks the first time the high court has considered the legal questions surrounding the regulation of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, Greenwire states.