The United Nations has warned that the UK’s reputation is at risk over plans that would harm environmental protections after Brexit, according to a frontpage story in The Observer. Erik Solheim, executive director of the UN’s environment programme, called for environment secretary Michael Gove to come through on his promise to deliver a “green Brexit”. In an interview with the Observer, Solheim said it was “incredibly important that the UK keeps the environmental standards it has had under the European Union”. His words come after government proposals to tackle climate change after Brexit were labelled “toothless” by campaign groups, who also said that a post-Brexit UK would be left with a weaker system for enforcing environmental safeguards than that offered by President Donald Trump’s administration.

Drax Group has announced a £400,000 carbon capture and storage project at its north Yorkshire power station. The British electricity company plans to pioneer a “negative emissions” technology known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). In theory, BECCS can reduce CO2 emissions, as the trees for the power station absorb CO2 as they grow and the CO2 released from generating electricity is captured before it enters the atmosphere. Drax has partnered with University of Leeds spin-off C-Capture for the project, which starts this month. Meanwhile, The Telegraph reports that the first major international initiative to promote the development of carbon capture technology will be unveiled this week.

The French energy group EDF is in talks to sell a 49% stake in its UK wind farms in a deal that could raise up to £600m. EDF Energy Renewables, the group’s UK renewables business, owns 23 onshore wind farms and one offshore wind farm that generate around 550MW of electricity. The Times reports that the money raised by the deal is likely to finance future projects.

The UK’s largest shareholder advisory groups have asked investors in Royal Dutch Shell to reject demands for the oil giant to take steps to fall in line with the Paris Agreement. Shell will conduct a binding shareholder vote today to decide whether to tackle carbon emissions. The proposal is supported by the Church of England, the Dutch pension fund Aegon and, most recently, Nest, the workplace pension scheme set up by the UK government, which has £7m invested in Shell, the Guardian reports. Meanwhile, DeSmogUK reports on “30 years of documents [which] show Shell knew about climate change”.

The government’s plan to clean up cars by 2040 is not ambitious enough, an expert has said. Prof Jim Watson, head of the UK Energy Research Centre, said the target should be set at least five years earlier. The government is currently considering a rule forcing new cars to run on electricity for at least 50 miles by 2040.

“The Hellisheidi power station, 25km (15 miles) outside Reykjavik, is Iceland’s main geothermal plant, and is one of the largest in the world,” reads an article by BBC World Service. “It is also the site for a scientific breakthrough; an experiment to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) and turn it into stone – forever.” The project, called CarbFix, is pioneered by an international consortium led by Reykjavík Energy, the French National Centre for Scientific Research, the University of Iceland and Columbia University.

“Judging by the headlines, renewable energy in Britain is booming,” writes Josh Gabbatiss, the Independent’s science correspondent. “Yet these figures obscure a reality in which the withdrawal of government support and confusion around future investments have led to a ‘dramatic and worrying collapse’ in green investment.” Despite public support for renewables, he writes, annual investment in clean energy is now at its lowest point in a decade.

Deploying the bulk of new Chinese solar power in eastern regions – with interconnections to other provinces – would be the most efficient way to reduce CO2 emissions and air pollution, a new study suggests. Researchers estimated the climate, air quality, and related human health benefits of different deployment scenarios of how China meets its 2030 government goal of 400 gigawatts installed solar capacity. Deployment in the east with inter-provincial transmission results in the largest benefits because it maximises displacement of the dirtiest coal-fired power plants, the study concludes.

The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect – the tendency for urban areas to be hotter than rural regions – could decline with rising temperatures, a new study says. The researchers compare urban and rural temperatures in 54 US cities for 2000–15, using differences in daily minimum or daily maximum temperatures between urban and rural stations as a measure of UHI. The results show the intensity of UHI tends to decrease with increasing temperature in 38 of the 54 cities.