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Daily Briefing Hillary Clinton stakes out climate change agenda

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Explainer: Amber Rudd ends Green Deal energy efficiency scheme 
Department for Energy and Climate Change has announced that it will no longer fund the Green Deal scheme, which provided loans designed to help homeowners improve the energy efficiency of their property. But the government has yet to announce how it will fill the gap in its energy efficiency policies left by the Green Deal. Carbon Brief explains what the move means for energy efficiency in the UK.    Carbon Brief

Paris 2015 Tracking country climate pledges 
We've updated our Paris INDC tracker with pledges from Kenya, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore.   Carbon Brief 

Climate and energy news

Hillary Clinton Stakes Out Climate Change Agenda 
Hillary Clinton said she would both defend and go beyond the efforts of Obama to address climate change in the first detailed description of her potential environmental polices if elected president. A four-page campaign fact sheet said the goal was to increase the share of US power generation from renewable sources to 33% by 2027, compared to 25% under Obama's carbon plan. Clinton pledged to defend from legal or political attack the Obama administration's rule to cut carbon pollution from the nation's fleet of power plants, as well as rewarding communities that speed rooftop solar panel installation, backing a contest for states to go beyond the minimums called for in the environmental rules, and boosting solar and wind production on federal lands. Her promise to install half a billion solar panels by 2021 represents a 700% increase on current installations,  Climate Progress reports. The announcement was accompanied by a  video, in which she also criticises her Republican opponents' stance on climate, the Hill reports.  The Guardian also carried the story.      Bloomberg New Energy Finance 

U.S. companies pledge financial, political support for U.N. climate deal 
Thirteen major American companies are to announce $140 billion in low-carbon investments to lend support to a global climate change deal in Paris in December, the White House has said. Companies including General Motors, Bank of America, Microsoft and Coca Cola, will today join the US Secretary of State John Kerry at the White House to launch the American Business Act on Climate Pledge to support the administration as it tries to secure a climate agreement. The companies also announced they would bring at least 1,600 megawatts of new renewable energy on line, reduce water use intensity by 15 percent, purchase 100 percent renewable energy, and target zero net deforestation in their supply chains. Securing long-term climate finance is seen as a crucial step for a deal in Paris, Reuters reports.         Reuters 

Global Warming Deal Takes Shape as UN Envoys Shuffle Options 
A global agreement to fight climate change is beginning to take shape after the United Nations published a new draft of a deal that 194 nations are working to seal at a December summit, Bloomberg reports. The 88-page document is intended to more clearly organise the options that negotiators have grappled with for months. The new version whittles down the main part of the agreement to a 19-page draft that lays out requirements for all nations to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The streamlined text "gives delegates a strong foundation to advance the climate negotiations," said Jennifer Morgan, global director of the climate program at the World Resources Institute.        Bloomberg 

Oil groups have shelved $200bn in new projects as low prices bite 
The world's big energy groups have shelved $200bn of spending on new projects in an urgent round of cost-cutting, as the oil price slumps for a second time this year. The plunge in crude prices since last summer has resulted in the deferral of 46 big oil and gas projects with 20bn barrels of oil equivalent in reserves - more than Mexico's entire proven holdings.        Financial Times 

Hollande: 80% of fossil fuels must stay in the ground 
Success at 2015 Paris climate summit will mean radical shake-up of oil, gas and coal industry the French president Francois Hollande said on Friday. 80% of known fossil fuels will need to stay in the ground for the world to achieve a "viable" global climate deal later this year in Paris he said. The comments are some of the strongest yet from Hollande, who is injecting "considerable personal input" into diplomatic efforts to ensure the success of an agreement, RTCC reports.         RTCC 

Australia PM dismisses ETS proposal as "electricity tax scam" 
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has today dismissed as a "scam" the opposition party's proposal to introduce an emissions trading scheme to cut the country's GHG output and increase the share of renewables in the energy mix to 50% by 2030. "The ETS that Labor keeps talking about might as well be called an electricity tax scam because that's what it is, an electricity tax scam that will be scamming the consumers of Australia for years and years and decades if it was to be put in place," Abbott told reporters in Canberra. The claim was later undermined by the communications minister, who pointed out that all policies to push low-emission electricity generation come at a cost to households, including the ones the Australian government supports, and that the cost of renewables is falling, the  Guardianreports.         Carbon Pulse 

Fracking permits for half of Britain 
Nearly half of Britain is set to be opened up to fracking by oil and gas companies, under new exploration licences the government will award next month, the Daily Express writes. Friends of the Earth estimates that 43% of Britain's land mass is covered by the new licences, which will be released in two rounds: in August and at the end of the year.       Daily Express 

Climate and energy comment

Tory attacks on green policies signal dark times ahead for the environment 
The UK government has embarked on a disastrous environmental agenda, that has little to do with evidence and everything to do with ideology, argues the veteran environmental campaigner.         Tony Juniper, Guardian 

The triple bill we pay for solar power 
Solar panels are "so unproductive that they generate barely 1% of all our electricity", writes climate sceptic columnist Christopher Booker. He also argues that the public pays three-times over for solar electricity: "First for the subsidised solar power; secondly to the windfarms for their power we don't use; and thirdly a bit extra to compensate them for the fact that we are not using it". As part of the same column,  Booker also says the "greatest scare story of all" of Arctic sea ice decline "simply isn't turning out as their computer models predicted". Last week,  Carbon Brief wrote about the new study referred to in Booker's column.         Christopher Booker, Sunday Telegraph 

Let's cut these regressive wind and solar taxes 
Columnist Matt Ridley, a Conservative peer with declared coal mining interests in Northumberland, argues in the Times that if the Paris climate summit can't agree on reducing emissions, Britain should "seize the moment and make energy bills cheaper". A lack of international agreement in Paris would give the British government the opportunity to amend the carbon targets in the Climate Change Act, he writes. Ridley argues that scrapping subsidies for onshore windfarms "allows Conservatives to champion the poor, on whom the cost of these green measures has fallen disproportionately".        Matt Ridley, The Times 

New climate science

Rising methane emissions from northern wetlands associated with sea ice decline 
Arctic sea ice loss is perhaps one of the most apparent examples of climate change in the world, according to a new paper, which uses satellite imagery to examine at how diminishing ice cover affects terrestrial methane emissions. From 2005-2010, methane emissions were, on average, 1.7 Tg per year higher compared to 1981-1990 due to sea ice-induced warming, the paper finds.         Geophysical Research Letters 

Climate responses to anthropogenic emissions of short-lived climate pollutants 
Controlling aerosols and short-lived climate pollutants will have beneficial impacts on health and crop yields, but the impact on global temperatures is less clear. A new paper examines different mitigation pathways, and shows that sulphur dioxide reductions lead to the strongest response while cutting black carbon doesn't necessarily have a discernible climate impact.         Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

Other stories

Conflicted messages lie at heart of UK climate policy 
RTCC 

Drillers Fracking at Much Shallower Depths Than Widely Believed 
Inside Climate News 

Climate scientist fears murder by hitman 
The Times 

The nine green policies killed off by the Tory government 
The Guardian 

This year likely to be hottest on record 
The Times 

Shell backs plans to fire giant bullets into ground to reach geothermal energy 
Mail Online 

Climate change threatens China's booming coastal cities, says expert 
China Daily 


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