With the latest round of international climate change talks
start on Monday in Lima, Peru, the Financial Times has a Q&A on
the prospects for a global climate deal. It covers the importance
of the talks, what has happened so far and the likely stumbling
blocks to success.

Germany’s largest utility E.ON is to split in two, spinning
off its power plants to a new company so that it can focus on
renewable energy and power grids, Reuters reports. The wire calls
it a “dramatic” response to industry changes that could trigger
similar moves at European peers. EnergyDesk has a
useful Q&Aon E.ON’s decision.
Business Green also has the story. Another German utility, RWE,
has rejected the idea of following its rival, reportsthe Financial Times.

Japan has allocated about $1 billion in “climate finance”
loans to the construction in Indonesia of power plants fired by
coal, the Associated Press reports. Japan gave the money to help
companies build three such plants in Indonesia and listed it with
the United Nations as climate finance, Associated Press says. Japan
says the plants burn coal more efficiently and are therefore
cleaner than old coal plants.

About 190 governments met in Lima on Monday amid hopes that a
UN. deal to slow climate change is within reach for 2015, Reuters
reports. That’s despite warnings that time is fast running out to
keep global warming within safe limits, it says. Cooperation
between China and the United States, the top two greenhouse gas
emitters, and a decision by the EU to cut its emissions have given
a new sense of momentum to talks that have failed produce agreement
on a global deal in two decades.

China’s lead climate negotiator Su Wei says pre-2020
mitigation action is “the most important thing today”, reports
RTCC. At a briefing in Lima, Peru, Su “intimated” that countries
like the US, Australia, Canada and Japan that have previously
ducked such obligations needed to get on board.

Shares of US banks based in the shale oil heartlands of
America fell late last week after another steep fall in the price
of crude. The fall was sparked by Opec’s decision to maintain
current production rates, which is thought to have the potential to
dent the viability of the shale industry . Analysts are now
considering the outlook for other lenders in the epicentres of the
recent US shale boom, the Financial Times reports.

The tumbling price of oil proves it is a risky investment and
should boost renewable energy technologies, UN climate chief
Christiana Figueres said on Monday. In contrast the price of
renewables was completely predictable, she said, though there were
high up front costs. Figueres was speaking at the opening of two
weeks of UN climate talks in Lima, Peru. Reuters also
has the story

The government’s pre-election infrastructure spending
announcements continues with a six-year flood defence programme
said to be worth £2.3 billion. Other expected developments include
climate secretary Ed Davey starting talks next month to discuss the
potential of the UK’s first lagoon power project, with potential to
provide 8 per cent of the UK’s energy.

Research suggests that smaller mammals may weather climate
change better than bigger ones, reports Time magazine. Its article
is based on recent research from the University of Colorado that
found body size is by far the best characteristic to predict how an
animal responds to climate change.

All eyes are on the climate change conference in Paris in
2015 but Lima is a critical step, reports Australian news website
Crikey. It is in Lima that a new climate deal should be drafted and
where nations will set out their contributions to that deal. Apart
from middle East petro-states it is only Australia that is “seen to
act as a spokesman for the fossil fuel industry”, Crikey says. In
a separate articleCrikey argues that
Australia will “disgrace itself” in Lima, “just as it did in
Kyoto”.

Scientists reveal the most comprehensive evidence to date
that climate extremes such as droughts and record temperatures are
failing to change people’s minds about global warming in the US.
Instead, political orientation is the most influential factor in
shaping perceptions about climate change, both in the short-term
and long-term. The study concludes that there are “little grounds
for optimism that public concern about climate change will be
driven by future climatic conditions.”

A new study reveals how global warming is related to the
amount of carbon emitted. Researchers have derived the first
theoretical equation to demonstrate that global warming is a direct
result of the build-up of carbon emissions. The results show every
million-million tonnes of carbon emitted will generate one degree
Celsius of global warming. They also show that the build-up of
carbon emitted over the last 200 years will last for many centuries
to millennia, even if carbon emissions are phased out.

Computer models used to project climate change could be
missing an important ozone ‘feedback’ factor, according to new
research. Scientists find that a four-fold increase in atmospheric
carbon dioxide results in a reduction in global surface warming of
approximately 20% – equating to 1°C – when compared with most
models after 75 years. This difference is due to ozone changes in
the lower stratosphere over the tropics, which are a result of
changing circulation patterns in the atmosphere under a warmer
climate.