The Australian government has launched a A$500m ($379m, £275m) plan to preserve the Great Barrier Reef, reports the New York Times, calling it “the largest single investment for reef conservation and management in the country’s history”. Environmentalists criticised the plan, the paper adds, saying the biggest threat to the reef is from unchecked climate change. The government’s plan aims to tackle invasive species, reduce water pollution and mitigate the impacts of warming, says the Guardian. While prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said part of the funds would help mitigate the impacts of climate change, he “gave no details”, according to the Telegraph. An article for Bloomberg breaks down the A$500m plan with A$2001m for water quality, A$100m for research, A$58m to fight “coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish”, A$45m for “sea country management” and A$40m for reef health monitoring. The plan was “cautiously welcomed by scientists,” says the Financial Times, adding: “However, some experts warned it would do little to tackle climate change, which poses the greatest threat to the world’s largest reef system.” Reuters also has the story. Separately, a Chinese firm has offered A$250m to buy the Liddell coal-fired power station in New South Wales, report Reuters and the Guardian, in a move that could see the plant remain open beyond a 2022 closure planned by its current owners, which is opposed by the federal government.

The Trump administration is likely to propose freezing vehicle fuel economy standards from 2020 through 2026, Reuters reports, citing “three people briefed on the matter”. It says the move would be likely to “spark a fight with California and other states backing tougher vehicle emissions rules.” The details of the proposal are expected to be sent to the White House for approval “in coming days”, says the New York Times, which says the draft changes would “dramatically weaken Obama-era standards”. It cites “a federal official who had seen [the draft] but was not authorised to discuss the matter”. It says the draft: “Lays out eight different options for revising the Obama-era standards. The preferred course of action would freeze fuel-economy standards at 2020 levels for both cars and light trucks…[and] challenges California’s authority to impose its own vehicle standards.” Separately, the Hill reports that Democratic state attorneys general are renewing calls for Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt to recuse himself from the process of repealing climate rules for power plants. The Hill also reports survey findings suggesting concern over environment and climate change “Could be an important voting issue and may sway some voters toward Democrats.”

All 197 signatories to the Paris Agreement now have at least one national law or policy on climate change, according to updated research from the LSE Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, covered by BusinessGreen. Since the Paris deal was agreed in December 2015, some 106 new climate change laws and policies have been created worldwide, the study finds, bringing the total to more than 1,500 measures. Last year, Carbon Brief published a map from the Grantham climate database, showing the extent of global coverage.

“Drought and heatwaves are inextricably linked, and have devastating socio-economic and environmental impacts,” begins an editorial in Nature Climate Change, introducing a series of articles showing how these extreme events “may increase in magnitude and frequency with anthropogenic warming.” It adds: “It is clear from these studies that heatwaves and associated droughts will become more common and stronger in the future.”

Windfarms are popular with voters and helped keep the lights on as the country went three days without coal last week, argues a business leader in the Observer. “Yet while there is more billpayer subsidy earmarked for offshore windfarms, there is still no support for solar and onshore wind power,” it says. “Onshore windfarms are still significantly cheaper. Research has found they could be built without consumers paying any subsidy and for the same price as new gas power plants…What better time to unblock the cheapest source of green power?” Separately, in a comment for the Independent, green charity 10:10‘s director of strategy Leo Murray explains how planning barriers to onshore wind are set to gain formal status, having previously been guidance only. At his Carbon Commentary blog, author Chris Goodall digs deeper into a government survey of public attitudes on climate and energy, published last week. “The most recent polling shows a rise in support for renewables, including onshore wind. What has not been observed is that this shift in thinking about onshore wind has been caused predominantly by opinion changes in those over 65 years old.” Meanwhile the Times reports that the RSPB has criticised Scottish government approval of an onshore windfarm near Strathy in the Scottish Highlands.

Over the next few weeks, EU politicians “will try to hammer out the bloc’s green goals for the next decade,” says a Politico feature. “On one side, there’s a worry that unless the EU ups its 2030 clean energy targets, the bloc will fall short of the promises it made in the Paris climate agreement to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by then…But for countries like Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, which still get significant shares of their electricity from coal, changing those targets means real economic costs.” As well as the headline emissions reduction goal, leaders must also agree on targets for renewable energy and energy efficiency, currently pegged at 27%.

French president Emmanuel Macron “has made the shift to renewables a central plank of his presidency,” says a Financial Times feature exploring how the new government hopes to reverse earlier failures to diversify beyond nuclear power. It says: “Nuclear has given France some of Europe’s cheapest energy — but the dependence on an ageing nuclear fleet now poses tough questions about how the country makes a belated transition towards renewable sources of power.” It adds that Macron will outline this year how France intends to reduce its reliance on nuclear power.

A new study compares three different methods of solar geoengineering – stratospheric aerosol injections (SAI), marine sky brightening (MSB) and cirrus cloud thinning (CCT). The researchers use a climate model to simulate the effectiveness of using each method to shift from a business-as-usual climate change scenario to an intermediate one. All three techniques result in comparable global average temperature changes, the study finds, but differences emerge on their impact on the hydrological cycle, sea ice, sea level, ocean heat and circulation, as well as the carbon cycle.

A climate change-induced decrease in relative humidity in Mexico will likely mean more cases of chickenpox by the end of the century, a new study suggests. Using climate projections, 30 years of observed data on the cases of chickenpox, and a computer model of disease transmission, the researchers map the potential changes in the magnitude and variability of chickenpox across Mexico’s 32 states. These changes in disease incidence will be not be uniform across the year, the researchers note, with a likely shift in cases from winter to summer months.

In an invited review article, a team of researchers assess the academic literature concerning identifying or engineering “super corals” that have increased resilience to climate change. The term “super corals” is increasingly popular in the media and scientific literature, but doesn’t have a single definition, the authors note. However, the information required to support a single definition does not yet exist, the authors say, “and in fact may never be appropriate – i.e. ‘How Super is Super’?”. The researchers “advocate caution of this term” as there is “potential to mislead inference over factors contributing to coral survivorship”.