China warns that bilateral ties with the UK stand at a “crucial historical juncture” amid doubts over the future of plans to build a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point, in an opinion piece by the Chinese ambassador in the Financial Times. Liu Xiaoming said that he hoped the British government would “continue to support Hinkley Point — and come to a decision as soon as possible so that the project can proceed smoothly.” A Chinese consortium is due to part-finance the power station to be built by France’s EDF. Theresa May is thought to have ordered a delay on the project over concerns that Chinese state-owned companies were being allowed to invest in sensitive infrastructure. The Guardian and the BBC also have the story.

Households near fracking sites may have to wait a decade or more to receive compensation payments, under plans to share tax revenue with local communities. The government has admitted that payments of up to £10,000 per household will not be made until fracking sites are producing gas – at least five years after exploration begins. Environmentalists have dismissed the move as a ‘bribe’ to dampen local opposition. Britons will be able to decide how the £13bn fund is spent,Reuters reports, either by accepting direct personal payments or supporting projects such as railways or flood defences. The Guardian also carries the story.

EDF’s decision to invest in the £18bn Hinkley Point should be declared invalid after crucial information was withheld from some board members, French trade unions have said. Three unions, representing 80% of the workforce, accuse EDF chairman Jean-Bernard Lévy of knowing of probable delay in UK government approval before a vote on the nuclear project. They fear the project will have a negative impact on the company’s over-stretched finances and on jobs and staff benefits, the Times reports.

A new batch of companies are considering suing the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, government body ruled to have mishandled a £7bn contract to clean up some of Britain’s oldest nuclear power plants, by handing it to the wrong company. Any new damages will further raise the cost to the taxpayer, the Times reports, with one source putting the cost for each bid at about £15m.

Members of the Opec cartel of oil producers will meet informally next month to discuss options for stabilising the world oil market, the Times reports. The announcement gave a sharp lift to crude prices, which have drifted lower recently over growing evidence of a glut of oil. The Financial Times also covers the story.

Donald Trump promised yesterday to bring about an “energy revolution” if elected president. The Republican nominee cited predictions from the fossil-fuel-backed Institute for Energy Research that enacting various conservative energy policies would grow the economy by more than $100bn annually, the Hill writes. “Clinton not only embraces President Obama’s job-killing energy restrictions, but wants to expand them, including going after oil and natural gas production that employs some 10 million Americans”, he said in a speech laying out his economic agenda.

More than 60% of the coral in reefs in the Maldives has been hit by bleaching, the Guardian writes, as 2016 experiences record temperatures due to climate change and a strong El Nino phenomenon. Bleaching happens when algae that lives in the coral is expelled due to stress caused by sustained and dramatic temperature changes. It turns the coral white and can be lethal if normal conditions do not resume.

The government’s shale gas fund claim is “at best, massively misleading and, at worst, a bald-faced lie” writes Damian Kahya, editor of Greenpeace’s EnergyDesk. He highlights that no public number of the amount that will be paid was ever officially mentioned, and argues that figures aired in the media make a number of assumptions.

The recent revelation that temperatures last year were that hottest on record, and the this year is likely to break that record again, is a “powerful reason for rich countries to begin making good on their promises to help low-lying island nations, some of the poorest countries in the world, build their defences against the disastrous effects of climate change, which some are already experiencing”, according to an editorial in the New York Times. Industrialised nations must help these countries as they are responsible for a greater share of emissions, but “it is also in their interest. . . because experts expect that tens of millions to several hundred million people will be displaced by climate change.”

The electricity landscape has changed radically in recent years, making the idea that we need nuclear power to keep the light on “outdated”, argues John Sauven, the executive director of Greenpeace UK, in the Guardian. The UK should instead focus time and money on renewables, interconnectors, storage, smart grids and efficiency, he says.

While remaining “skeptical” of Hillary, “compared to an entire political party that not only doesn’t believe in climate change, but will remove important emission regulations and accelerate the current trajectory we are on, the choice is clear”, argues Jared Nesvet, a PhD student at Stanford University, in a comment piece for the Hill. While he finds it “extremely tempting” to vote for the Green Party, a win for Trump could “could push climate change past a tipping point we may never be able to recover from, even in 4 years’ time”.

Warming of Lake Tanganyika has led to a decline in fish and shellfish species – even before the advent of commercial fishing, a new study says. Sandwiched between Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lake Tanganyika is Africa’s deepest and oldest lake. Warming of the lake has limited how much the water mixes, the researchers show, trapping nutrients deep within the lake where they cannot fuel the food web, and reducing oxygen levels at the bottom of the lake. This has “almost certainly reduced potential fishery production, helping to explain ongoing declines in fish catches,” the paper concludes.

Rising temperatures will restrict growth of Douglas fir trees in the western US – outweighing the boost to growth from higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere, new research suggests. Using tree rings from 122 Douglas fir, the researchers examined how growth rates have changed between 1916 and 2006. Their findings suggest that an increase in water stress caused by warming overwhelms other factors such as increasing CO2 levels. “As temperature continues to increase in future decades, we can expect deficit-related [water] stress to increase and consequently Douglas fir growth to decrease throughout its US range,” the researchers say.