A report warning of Christmas blackouts that purported to come from a group of MPs has been discredited, the Guardian reports, after it emerged it was only backed by a single MP and included misleading claims. The report was promoted in an email to journalists from Conservative MP Grant Shapps as a report from a “group of MPs”, the Guardian says. However, as first highlighted by Carbon Brief, Shapps was the only MP to put his name to the report. Political Scrapbook covered Carbon Brief’s finding, while Business Green also has the story. The Guardian reports comments from campaigners calling the report “laughable” and “not founded in reality”. The report’s lead researcher, Tim Philpott, used to work for Business for Britain, reports DeSmog UK, which says the group was part of a “cosy Euro-sceptic climate denier network”. Philpott also co-authored a report for UKIP, it adds

The European Commission has approved a switch in subsidy arrangements for one of three units burning biomass at Drax, the UK’s largest power station. The decision is expected to raise earnings, reports Reuters. The firm’s share price rose to a five-month high on the news, reports Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Drax has said it could convert its three remaining coal units to biomass. Climate Central looks again at environmental concerns over biomass.

The Obama administration has finalised a rule designed to protect waterways from coal mining pollution, reports the Washington Post. President-elect Trump has threatened to repeal the rule, says the Hill, which also reports that senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is aiming to undo the rule. The rule requires mining firms to avoid practices that may pollute streams and drinking water, reports Reuters. Separately, Reuters reports that thousands of US areas are afflicted by lead poisoning due to old paint and industrial waste left behind.

Most of the people chosen by president-elect Donald Trump have expressed doubt that climate change is caused by human activity, reports the New York Times. Under the headline “The United States of Climate Change Denial”, Motherboard also looks at the incoming administration. Climate Progress looks at the Trump campaign’s promise to undo Obama’s climate action.

Negotiations over the future of EU carbon markets are continuing, with a blocking minority of member states resisting reforms, reports Climate Home. It says Spain, Italy and eastern European countries offered resistance, while the Netherlands, France, Germany and others spoke in favour of greater ambition. Some analysts believe a stronger deal is likely to survive the negotiations, reports Carbon Pulse.

The melting of Arctic ice is already driving extreme weather patterns across north America, Europe and Asia, reports the Guardian, based on discussions with “leading climate scientists”. It says severe winters are “now strongly linked to soaring polar temperatures”. Arctic ice cover is breaking up earlier each year, reports the Daily Express. The Guardian has a second story looking at the fate of polar bears under the headline: “This is the polar bear capital of the world, but the snow has gone”.

Next year is likely to be warmer than average but cooler than the record-hot 2015 and 2016, reports Climate Home, covering Met Office projections for the year ahead. Some 0.2C of this year’s record heat was due to El Niño, the Met Office says. Their projections for 2017 suggest that global average temperature will be between 0.63C and 0.87C above the 1961-1990 average.

The renewable and low carbon energy sector is worth more than £40bn and accounts for 1.3% of the UK’s business economy, reports Bloomberg. However, the sector shrank by 8.7% last year, in part because of cuts to subsidies. Employment in the sector fell by 233,000 between 2014 and 2015. The Office for National Statistics cautioned against over-interpreting the changes, which were also related to a change in survey methods.

New York Times reporters on climate and environment wrap up their most memorable news stories of 2016 in an end-of-year feature. Picks include reports on sea level rise, the US anti-environmentalist phenomenon of “rolling coal”, the efforts of one scientist to “counter [climate] denial by being nice” and local action in communities around the world to confront warming. Separate wraps cover science and health news from 2016.

Arctic temperatures have been 20C above normal, the ice cap is shrinking and Trump and Putin may see it as an advantage, says a Guardian editorial. With the imperative for action now “overwhelming”, the world needs “just the kind of leadership that looks very much to have disappeared from the global scene”. It concludes that in Trump and Putin we have: “Two friendly world leaders facing one another across a vanishing Arctic ice cap. The thawing of the cold war is no longer a metaphor.” Separately, Guardian journalists from Australia and southeast Asia discuss Trump, Japan’s new coal plant plans and more in the first of a new podcast series.

New research compares the carbon footprints of different classes of society in China. The findings show that in 2012 the urban very rich, which makes up 5% of the population, accounts for 19% of the total carbon footprint from household consumption. Between 2007 and 2012, the total footprint from households swelled by 19%, the researchers say, with 75% of the increase coming from the growing consumption of the urban middle class and the rich.

The number of tropical cyclones hitting small Pacific islands during El Niño events could increase by 20-40% as the climate continues to warm, a new study suggests. Using a collection of climate models, the researchers investigated how cyclones develop in the western Pacific and the central North Pacific regions. The findings show that cyclones around vulnerable Pacific island nations such as Fiji, Vanuatu, Marshall Islands and Hawaii become more frequent during El Niño events by the end of the century – and less frequent during La Niña events.

A new study investigates the potential for artificially replacing declining sea ice in the Arctic. The researchers suggest sea ice production could be enhanced by using wind power during the Arctic winter to pump water to the surface, where it would freeze more rapidly. The study concludes that deploying this approach over 10% of the Arctic – especially where ice survival is marginal – could more than reverse current trends of sea ice loss.