With voting taking place today, the former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg and UN climate chief Christiana Figueres have warned that a UK vote to leave the European Union would hit efforts to tackle global warming. “It is the most serious problem facing the world with the potential to literally destroy all life as we know it and turn this planet into a bare planet like Mars,” said Bloomberg, calling on countries to join forces to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. “It’s better to be close to solve problems rather than pulling apart,” he added. Figueres said a vote to leave would see the UK having to rework its contribution to the 2015 Paris climate deal, which could come into force as early as this year. The pair were speaking in Brussels at the launch of a rebooted climate initiative focused on urban areas involving over 7000 cities and regions. Bloomberg has written a comment piece in the Guardian on why the new alliance “unites 600m city dwellers in fight against climate change”. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that Britons gathering round the television to watch the results of Thursday’s referendum on EU membership are set to trigger the “biggest spike in night-time electricity demand ever seen in the UK”, according to National Grid. On the Huffington Post website, Bob Ward explains how the Vote Leave campaign has used the tactics of climate change sceptics.

A federal judge has struck down the Obama administration’s rules for hydraulic fracturing on public lands, which Reuters describes as a victory for oil and gas producers and state regulators who opposed the rules as an egregious overreach. The ruling, which the White House has vowed to appeal, halts the administration’s efforts to address what it sees as safety concerns in the industry and reverses what producers had seen as a first step toward full federal regulation of all fracking activity. The Financial Times say that Obama’s “efforts to leave a robust legacy of environmental protection have suffered another blow”. It adds: “The government could appeal against the ruling, but it means Mr Obama will leave the White House in January 2017 with the future of several signature initiatives still uncertain. His best hope for a lasting green legacy is likely to be the election of Hillary Clinton as his successor.” ClimateProgress also carries the story.

A court ruling in Texas has set the stage for ExxonMobil’s legal challenge to a climate change investigation by the US Virgin Islands to proceed in federal court. Exxon and the Virgin Islands’ Attorney General Claude Walker had been bickering for more than a month over whether the company’s lawsuit to quash a subpoena issued by Walker should be heard in Texas state court or in federal court. The subpoena demands Exxon turn over a broad swath of records as part of an investigation into whether the oil company conspired to cover up its understanding of climate science.

Saudi Arabia’s new oil minister has signalled an end to the worst of the oil glut and indicated the Opec kingpin is preparing to reassert a degree of control over the market after two years of letting prices fall. During a visit to the US, Khalid al Falih said that the kingdom would be “expected” to start balancing supply and demand as the market recovers, with the world’s largest oil exporter once again assuming its role as the global swing producer. “We are out of it. The oversupply has disappeared,” he said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle.

The mayor of London is pressing ahead with plans to create a fully fledged energy company that will target poorer customers. Sadiq Khan said that the not-for-profit supplier, to be called Energy for Londoners, would be based on similar schemes in Bristol, Nottingham and Scotland. He said that the scheme would reduce bills for the 326,000 London households who cannot afford to properly heat their homes, while also delivering environmental benefits. Mr Khan had said that the company would consider using Transport for London’s land and buildings for photovoltaic solar panels. It will also consider issuing green bonds to fund green projects and will look at schemes that harness waste heat, such as one in Islington, in inner London, that extracts heat from the Northern Line.

The total cost of a two-year competition investigation into the British energy market could exceed £80 million, according to industry officials. The Competition and Markets Authority is set to publish its final 500-page report tomorrow, bringing a formal end to a detailed study of the energy market that began in June 2014. However, the total cost to the industry, including the six big energy suppliers and their rivals, is believed to be far higher, with the bulk of this ultimately met by consumers through their energy bills. In a separate article, Pagnamenta, the paper’s energy editor, argues that the inquiry “came in like a lion and is coming out like a lamb”: “It seems the CMA may be preparing to drop a key accusation of ‘overcharging’ by the Big Six. That would represent something of a victory for British Gas, ScottishPower, E.ON, RWE npower, SSE and EDF Energy.”

Wind turbines taller than the tallest buildings in Canary Wharf could be built offshore in the 2020s, as the industry uses bigger machines to cut costs, a leading manufacturer has said. Anders Bach Anderson, senior product manager at MHI Vestas, said he believed wind turbines with blades spanning more than 200 metres (656ft) diameter, and with capacity of at least 12MW, were “likely” before 2030, and said they could potentially span in excess of 230 metres (755ft). Such machines could have a capacity of more than 15MW. But he told the Telegraph: “It may be physically possible, but is it cost efficient? That’s the question.” Separately, BusinessGreen reports that the world’s longest wind turbine blade – at 88.4m in length – has been unveiled in Denmark.

Murray makes his final case for the UK voting to remain in the EU: “The EU, for all its imperfections, has a long term goal of building the sustainable, low carbon, healthy, prosperous and peaceful economy we desperately need. It may struggle to deliver on this vision, but that is the stated goal. I’m yet to be convinced the same goal is shared by many of the Leave camp’s leading lights. I’m absolutely convinced that even if they share this goal their route for reaching it is reckless in the extreme, based on narrow populism, discredited laissez faire economics, and a ‘cross your fingers and hope for the best’ approach to technology and the environment…With many of the same personalities to be found in the UK’s climate and Euro-sceptic camps the climate denialist playbook has been imported pretty much wholesale into the Vote Leave campaign. A group of campaigners from the very heart of the ‘elite’ have denigrated independent experts, downplayed credible risks, offered evidence-light silver bullet solutions, and attempted to paint opponents as shills for corrupt higher powers. It has all felt very familiar for any veteran of the climate ‘debate’.”

In a rare editorial for EnergyDesk, its editor Damian Kahya spells out the implications of what Brexit would mean for climate policies: “Whilst the most urgent environmental problems of our time demand collective action, many who support the Out campaign do so because they want to free us from what they see as the EU’s burdensome regulations on climate change and the environment. Our analysis of their policy positions, from fracking to air pollution, suggests that a government led by them would be swift to water down the protections agreed by their elected predecessors. That’s part of why they want us out…Climate is the one area where the UK has – in some ways – gone further than it’s been forced to go by agreements made collectively at a EU level, at least in terms of the targets which it has set. Yet those targets are already on course to be missed and what the UK’s targets do not have is any clarity about possible punishment for failing to meet them. What will be enforced is the commitments to reduce emissions which we’ve made with our EU partners. Unless we leave.”

Rising air and ocean temperatures in Greece could see the nesting season for sea turtles shift as much as 50–74 days earlier by 2100, a new study says. Using a collection of climate models, the researchers estimate that temperatures at major breeding sites on Greek beaches could rise by 3-5C by 2100. Although earlier nesting may provide minor relief from warming conditions and help promote successful nesting, the overall impact of climate change on habitats will negative affect this sea turtle population, the study concludes.

A new study investigates the impact of the recent slowdown in global surface temperature rise on China. The researchers find that average surface temperatures across China cooled slightly during the slowdown, predominantly a result of more frequent and enhanced extreme cold events during winter. Westerly winds over the north of China weakened during the slowdown, the researchers say, encouraging the invasion of cold air from the Arctic.