The UK’s hottest ever early May bank holiday helped solar panels to contribute to their biggest-ever share of the energy mix, the Telegraph reports. Solar farms powered as much as 28.5% of the country’s electricity – more than gas-fired power plants during the same time period. The previous record for solar’s contribution was 26.1%, set last July. National Grid says that the solar power peak occurred on Sunday afternoon, reaching highs of 9.28 GW. The Telegraph explains: “Solar was able to make its record breaking contribution over the bank holiday in part because workplaces shut and people eschewed kettles and the TV to flock to parks and beaches”.

Marine Protected Areas will be ‘devastated’ by rapid global warming if carbon emissions reductions aren’t made, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. The Mail Online reports that polar bears and penguins are among the most threatened species. Under a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario the conservation zones will be 2.8C warmer than today, enough to make them uninhabitable for many of the species living in them, the scientists say. The Daily Express also covered the story.

The UN plans to hold an extra week-long round of climate negotiations in Bangkok this September, following “lacklustre progress” made the past fortnight at talks in Bonn, Climate Home reports. Countries have spent the past nine days discussing the rules that will govern the Paris Agreement, but have “become bogged down in technical detail”. A decision is due in December in Katowice, Poland.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a British climate sceptic lobby group, invited the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency to give its annual lecture in 2017, but was either rejected or ignored, DeSmogUK reports. Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott eventually gave the lecture instead. The emails were part of more than 24,000 documents from Scott Pruitt’s office obtained by the Sierra Club, an environmental group. The New York Times reports that the trove of emails has also shed more light on Pruitt’s controversial plans to debate climate change. Pruitt is currently embroiled in an ethics scandal in the US, and the Hill reports that senior White House staffers are pushing Trump to fire Pruitt.

Leaked documents seen by the Guardian show that the UK is secretly pushing to weaken key EU climate laws before Brexit. The EU has committed to a 20% cut in its energy use by 2020, through energy efficiency and buildings initiatives. But the UK wants its 2014-2020 timeline to be stretched backwards four years to count “early actions” taken that comply with the efficiency directive MEPs have branded the plan “incomprehensible”, the Guardian reports.

Australia’s 2030 climate pledge will be more difficult to achieve after the government announced that it has “opted to not to extend funding to its ‘centrepiece’ emissions policy and omitted spending on new carbon-cutting programs”, the Sydney Morning Herald writes. Spending on climate is expected to drop from $3 billion this year (0.6% of total spending) to to $1.6 billion for 2018-19. One researcher described the lack of climate funding as “really, really distressing”. “This isn’t the trajectory we need to be having right now – we need to be amping up, not winding down”, Tim Baxter, a research associate at Melbourne University’s Climate and Energy College, told the paper. Carbon Pulse also covered the story.

Excess electricity from wind and solar farms could be used to produce hydrogen for use in heating and other parts of the energy system, suggests a report from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. With a number of large new offshore windfarms due to come online in the UK over the next few years, “the challenge of balancing supply and demand will continue to grow”, the Guardian writes. The report says the the extra electricity could be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, with the hydrogen functioning as a form of energy storage for renewables. “We are seeing continued expansion of renewables. If we’ve got a lot of low-carbon power, we want to make sure we’re using all of that”, said Dr Jenifer Baxter, the report’s lead author. Energy Live News also has the story.

MPs will gather today to discuss the costs of the Swansea Tidal Lagoon project, which a rival developer claims could be half the price. There has been a five year political stalemate over whether to support the £1.3bn project, the Telegraph explains. Green industrialist Dale Vince has put forward competing plans ahead of the hearing, and claims that his rival projects at Solway Firth on the Scottish border will have “superior economics” and the same generation capacity as Swansea.

Academics have suggested that people who tend to accept conspiracy theories are also sceptical of climate change science. But a new study has found that the link between the two “only really holds in the US”, the Guardian reports. Researchers at the University of Queensland questioned 5,300 respondents about their views on climate change and four internationally propagated conspiracy theories, including one about the 11 September terrorist attacks. Only in the US did the correlation fall outside the margin of error. Readfearn comments: “This is perhaps not surprising, given the booming online conspiracy culture in the Trumpocene, with even would-be presidential science advisers hanging around with conspiracy theorists.”

Climate change is shifting politics in the Arctic “as surely as it is shifting ice”, writes Roger Boyes, diplomatic editor for the Times. “The meltdown will make the extraction of rare earth metals that much easier”, he explains, “moreover, as the Arctic warms up so does the racing certainty that China will want to exploit the northern sea route to ship goods quickly from Asia into Europe.” China views Greenland “as an opportunity”, he says. Greenlanders could decide to “exchange the Danish yoke for a no-political-strings-attached commercial relationship with Beijing”. Boyes concludes that it’s time for the West “to pay attention..new partnerships are being formed and their aim ultimately will be to weaken the clout and coherence of the Atlantic alliance, to splinter and confound.”

China’s rapidly increasing demand for milk could see global dairy‐related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions rise by 35% by 2050, a new study finds. The research investigates different scenarios of domestic milk production and imports for China by mid-century, factoring in direct emissions, demand for feed, land use changes and nitrogen losses. Even if China improves their domestic milk and feed production efficiencies up to the level of leading milk-producing countries, GHG emissions in the sector are still likely to increase by 19%, the researchers say.

While coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) may rebound in the coming decade, it is then likely to decline to just 3-26% of current levels by 2050, a new study warns. Using a simple coral model, the researchers simulate coral cover out to 2050 based on six scenarios that combine climate change projections, cyclones and local stressors such as the influx of nutrients from rivers. Management strategies that alleviate these impacts have the potential to reduce the vulnerability of some midshelf reefs in the central GBR by 83%, the researchers note, but “only if combined with strong mitigation of carbon emissions”.

A new study evaluates low-cost, commercially-ready carbon capture and storage (CCS) opportunities for the 216 existing ethanol biorefineries in the US. The researchers find that existing and proposed financial incentives could provide a substantial near-term opportunity to grow CCS infrastructure. This would “improve the impacts of conventional biofuels, support development of carbon-negative biofuels, and satisfy low-carbon fuel policies”, the study concludes.