The UK would have needed to import an additional £579m worth
of coal and gas in 2013 if it had not had access to wind power, a
new Cambridge Econometrics study finds. Wind farms could save
Britain up to £7.4bn in gas imports in 2030 if they are used to
replace dwindling North Sea supplies, it says. But the report makes
some “excessively simplistic assumptions” about the fuel sources
displaced by wind power, Robert Wilson says on his Carbon Counterblog.

Falling oil prices shouldn’t have a long term impact on
renewables investment, analysts from Deutsche Bank and Goldman
Sachs say. The electricity sector is largely insulated from the
price drop as oil is only used for a tiny percentage of generation.

Oil industry job and investment cuts could cause the price
of oil to rebound to more than $100 a barrel, the Telegraph’s
commodities editor speculates. By cutting back on new production
and exploration projects, companies risk adding to a supply
shortfall further down the line, potentially pushing the oil price
up. The International Energy Agency agrees that oil prices should
rebound but suggests it could take some time, Reutersreports.

The Environment Agency has given shale gas company Cuadrilla
permission to restart fracking at its Lancashire site. Cuadrilla
was ordered to stop the process in May 2013 after tremors were
detected. It has since held two lengthy public consultations to
establish the risks. In an interview with the Telegraph, Cuadrilla chief Francis Egan
expresses frustration at how long it has take to restart
operations, saying fracking scaremongers make him angry.

New research shows polar bear gene flows are heading north
as climate change hastens Arctic melting. The paper studies the
bears’ DNA to track mating and population patterns over
generations. It advances on research using collar-trackers that
can’t work on male polar bears, as their necks are wider than their
heads.

President Obama will deliver his penultimate state of the
union address on Tuesday evening. He’s expected to continue to
assert his executive authority by touting new smog rules to sit
alongside his recent methane regulation announcement and power
plant emissions rules. The Republican senator selected to give the
party’s official response to the speech is a climate skeptic and is
expected to attack at the climate change elements of Obama’s
address.

The world’s business leaders will meet in Davos this week
for the World Economic Forum. Delegates will discuss issues as
diverse as inflation, global conflict, the Ebola response, and
climate change. Al Gore is expected to make an appearance on the
latter, alongside popstar Pharrell Williams.

Scientists have drilled through 740 meters of ice to study
one of the most isolated depths in all of the world’s oceans.
Scientists have never accessed the ocean section before. The
project’s data will be crucial for predicting the future fate of
Antarctica’s ice sheets amid rising temperatures, the scientists
say.

A recent study suggested the carbon price should be around
$220 a tonne. But companies use an internal price of $40-$60 and
the EU’s scheme has a price of around $8. Two PwC analysts explore
the discrepancy.

The New York Times’ Andy Revkin takes a closer look at the
news that 2014 was the hottest on record. The first thing to note,
he says, is that 2010 and 2014 were basically tied in temperature
terms. Wiredexplains the findings in five
charts.

A new paper concludes it is possible, and insightful, to
assess Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise without explicit
use of models. Scientists can use data from several remote sensing
data sets, as well as in situ data such as global positioning
system data. Antarctica is the world’s largest fresh-water
reservoir, with the potential to raise sea levels by about
60?metres.

Many climate models overestimate the influence of the El
Niño Southern Oscillation on global mean surface temperature,
argues a new study, meaning they’re unable to fully capture the
tropical Pacific contribution to the slower rate of warming we’ve
seen in the last decade or so. A new model more fully captures
several aspects of the recent climate evolution, including the
weaker slowdown of global warming over land, according to the
researchers.

Cold water corals may be less vulnerable to ocean
acidification than previously thought. A new study shows surprising
resilience by three major cold water coral species to dissolution
of their shells and skeletons under high carbon dioxide conditions
in field and laboratory experiments. It won’t all be good news,
however. Acidifying oceans are expected to affect a host of other
physiological and reef community processes, the researchers note.