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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