Government ministers will this week approve a world-leading carbon emissions reduction target for the early 2030s, the Guardian reports. The fifth carbon budget – put forward by the Committee on Climate Change last November – commits the UK to a 57% cut in emissions by 2032, on 1990 levels. The approval should allay fears that last week’s vote to leave the EU could water down the UK’s leadership on climate change, says Vaughan, or that the decision to approve the budget would be left to the next prime minister.

The French government has attempted to calm fears that the UK’s vote to leave the EU will scupper the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant. Emmanuel Macron, the French economy minister, says the vote will have “no consequences” for the £18bn project, urging state-owned utility EDF to press with its final investment decision. France and Britain have “bilateral treaties and bilateral commitments” on Hinkley, Macron says, which are not affected by the UK’s membership of the EU. Reuters also has the story.

Outgoing UN climate chief Christiana Figueres says businesses’ commitment to tackling climate change would not be dented by the UK’s decision to leave the European Union. Speaking to an audience of business and policymakers at the annual Business & Climate summit in London, Figueres argued that Brexit would not be an obstacle for the UK in tackling climate change: “Climate change action is by now unstoppable. It is global.” However, Figueres warned that the UK leaving the EU would see “quite a lot of uncertainty, transition, volatility for at least two years,” reports the Guardian. She urged the UK to stay calm “because the UK and EU have had a very important leadership on climate change, there’s no reason to change that whatsoever.”

Siemens is putting new wind power investment plans in the UK on hold due to uncertainty caused by last week’s Brexit vote. Its existing £310m manufacturing hub in Hull will not be affected by the decision, the German company tells the Guardian, and should still begin producing blades and assembling turbines next year. However, UK CEO Juergen Maier says a long-term goal to export blades to Europe and beyond was now uncertain, reports Financial Times: “It could be that we end up with tariff-free trade on those blades to the EU and to other countries, but I don’t know. All of that has to be renegotiated.”

Oil companies could go bankrupt if they do not address climate risks and invest more in renewable energy, Lord Browne has warned. The former chief executive of BP said the big oil and gas firms could follow Peabody Energy, the world’s biggest private sector coal producer, which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. Speaking to the FT, Lord Browne said: “If society is saying it is time to change our energy mix, I do think the big players should be involved in the change.” Adding: “Traditional energy businesses should reflect carefully on the bankruptcy of Peabody coal. Great companies do go into difficult times when they have a product that people don’t want.” Meanwhile, the FT also has a feature article looking into why large oil companies prefer to stick to traditional markets despite pressure to invest in renewables.

31 major scientific organisations in the US have signed a joint letter to Congress urging them to accept that climate change is real and action needs to be taken. The letter – signed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Meteorological Society and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics – says that “Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research concludes that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.” It also points out that to reduce the risk of the “most severe” impacts of climate change, “greenhouse gas emissions must be substantially reduced”. As many as 180 members are thought to be sceptical of human-caused climate change.

UKIP Assembly Member (AM) Mark Reckless will chair the Welsh Assembly’s Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee, it has been announced. The position is one of 13 committees divided among parties according to the number of AMs they have, and is the only one allocated to UKIP. Responding to the appointment, Labour AM Lee Waters told the BBC: “I am appalled that a party that doesn’t believe in climate change is manmade…should be chairing the assembly committee responsible for it.” UKIP said the committee chair position was “allocated to us without our being consulted”.

Less than a week after the UK’s vote to leave the EU, there are “plenty of questions, few answers,” writes King, as he weighs up whether Brexit could mean a cull of green policies. While David Cameron “has broadly stuck to a decarbonisation agenda and accepts the science” on climate change, “it is not clear if those chasing his job share that position.” It’s likely, says King, “given the next government will be a little to the right of the current one, support for the renewables industry in the UK will suffer further cuts.” However, “some problems and realities won’t change. Green isn’t a cult or a philosophy, it’s a vast and fast-growing sector.”

While green issues were far from central to the EU referendum debate, “many in the green business community are struggling to come to terms with the Thursday’s decision to leave the EU,” say Cuff and Murray at Business Green. They look at 12 key questions that “green businesses will want swift answers to.” These include: what happens now to crucial green infrastructure projects?, how will this affect the UK’s Paris climate commitments? and what happens to the EU emissions trading scheme?

In the aftermath of the leave vote, Richard Black, director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, looks at the likely outcomes for six key climate change and energy policy issues. Black predicts that Brexit could see a slow rise in energy prices (with no cuts in VAT on fuel), a lack of investment in energy infrastructure, and the abandonment of the Hinkley nuclear project (a “Hexit”). He also expects the UK to ratify the Paris Agreement while the UK is still part of the EU, rather than risk delaying the agreement’s entry into force.

A study charts the evolution of numerical models over the past four decades, designed to better understand the flux of methane through terrestrial ecosystems. While a lot of progress has been made, the team found large differences across 40 studied models in terms of representing the underlying controls on methane cycling. Among their recommendations, the authors suggest the emphasis for future model development should be on improving how individual processes are represented and what gives rise to hotspots, rather than to expanding the geographical coverage.