President Trump has nominated a climate sceptic to serve as chief scientist at the US Department for Agriculture (USDA). Sam Clovis, a former economics professor and talk radio host, said in an interview in 2014 that he was “extremely skeptical” about climate change, adding that “it’s not proven; I don’t think there’s any substantive information available to me that doesn’t raise as many questions as it does answers.” The nomination of Clovis, who started at USDA as a senior White House adviser just after Trump was inaugurated, will need to be confirmed by the Senate. In an interview in October last year, Clovis said that Trump administration would not prioritise climate science in its agriculture policy, notes the Independent. “I think our position is very clearly that Mr Trump is a sceptic on climate change, and we need more science. Once we get more science, we’re going to make decisions,” Mr Clovis said. the Hill, Science, and Think Progress also have the story. Meanwhile, the The Hill reports that the Senate Appropriations Committee has approved a $38.4bn spending bill for the Department of Energy and water programs, rejecting “numerous proposals by President Trump that would have slashed programmes.” The bill puts funding of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy at $330m – a record high for an agency that Trump has proposed eliminating completely – and it also puts funding of the Energy Department’s energy efficiency and renewable energy at $1.94bn – $1.2 billion above Trump’s budget proposal. The bill now goes to the full Senate for consideration. And elsewhere, the Washington Post reports that the US Interior Department pulled two climate experts at the last minute from a visit to Glacier National Park in Montana by Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

The German energy company RWE plans to build Britain’s biggest gas-fired power station on the site of its defunct Tilbury biomass plant in Essex. RWE said that planning was underway for the 2.5 gigawatt combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plant, and that it is also considering building an energy storage facility and a 300 megawatt capacity open cycle gas turbine plant on the same site. RWE said any final decision to build the CCGT at Tilbury would depend on “future market conditions and commercial viability”, notes the Financial Times. Other companies, such as ScottishPower, have plans for large CCGTs in the UK but have not yet forged ahead as subsidies on offer have been too low to make their plans affordable, the FT adds.

The Government is planning to give some of the UK’s most energy-intensive industries a £130m exemption from helping to fund new renewable technologies, reports the Indy. According to a policy document by the Department of Business, Energy and Industry Strategy (BEIS), high energy using companies will given an exemption from paying subsidies for offshore wind and other emerging technologies because having to pay extra “can undermine competitiveness”. BEIS said the “preferred option” was to move to the scheme from 1 January next year, subject to parliament’s approval, at a cost of £132.5m. Meanwhile, leading investors and businesses have warned Prime Minister Theresa May she risks undermining the UK’s position as a global leader on climate change without urgent action to clarify the government’s decarbonisation policies, reports BusinessGreen. In a letter to Number 10 by green groups representing thousands of companies and high-profile investors, May is warned that a lack of clear climate policies “may give away hard-won UK leadership” in key green industries. The letter was signed by the heads of IEMA, RenewableUK, Tech UK, the UK Green Building Council, the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, and the Environmental Industries Commission. Inside Climate Newsalso has the story. Elsewhere, Environment Secretary Michael Gove will today pledge to deliver a “green Brexit” in his first keynote speech on the environment, say pieces in the Independent and BusinessGreen. “We need to maintain and enhance the natural world around us, or find ourselves facing disaster,” he will say, adding “Indeed, ultimately, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and the energy which powers enterprise, are all threatened if we do not practise proper stewardship of the planet.” And finally, BusinessGreen also reports that statistics released by Gove’s department, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), shows that the UK’s carbon footprint fell by 1% between 2013 and 2014.

A stretch of coral reef off Mexico is to be the testing ground for using insurance to protect fragile environments around the world. The reef, off the coast of Cancún, is the first to be protected under an insurance scheme by which the premiums will be paid by local hotels and government, and money to pay for the repair of the reef will be released if a storm strikes. If any destructive storms damage the reef system, the insurer will pay out sums likely to be $25m to $70m in any given year, and payouts will be used for restoration of the reef – such as building artificial structures that can increase the height of the reef in case of storm damage. Elsewhere, the Mail Online reports that researchers may have found a way to reduce coral bleaching by genetically engineering the algae found inside them, thereby enhancing their tolerance to ocean warming.

New research suggests there is a surprisingly cheap and easy way to slow the pace of deforestation in developing countries: Just pay landowners small sums not to cut down their trees. Setting up a controlled experiment across 60 villages Uganda, the researchers found that the loss of forest was reduced where landowners were offered voluntary payments. And their subsequent analysis showed that deforestation was not simply shifting to nearby lands, as feared. The benefits of the avoided CO2 emissions amounted to $1.11 a tonne, the study found, which far exceeded the programme’s cost of 46 cents a tonne. As a way of reducing emissions, the scheme is “many times cheaper than the cost of subsidising solar panels or electric cars in wealthier countries,” the NYT notes. Reuters, The Atlantic, Inside Climate News and Nature News all have similar coverage.

China’s solar industry is expected to produce 25% more panels in 2017 than last year, says the head of a Chinese industry association. Wang Bohua, secretary general of China’s photovoltaic industry association, told an industry gathering that he expects China to produce solar panels with a combined capacity of 60 gigawatts (GW) this year – up from 48GW in 2016. This is driven by domestic sales and demand from the United States and emerging markets, he said. Meanwhile, five industry groups in Germany say they expect to install 900 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind power collectively this year, reports another Reuters article. So far this year, 626MW of new capacity has been added, putting the industry on course to exceed the 818MW installed in 2016. The rate of expansion could mean the industry will beat government targets of 6,500 MW for 2020, the groups said. And finally, the third Reuters piece says that India has identified 5.5GW of inefficient coal-fired power plants that will be retired. The plants, which are more than 25 years old, will be taken offline in a phased manner on the basis of their “inefficiency and un-economic operation,” India’s Power Minister said.

The highest summer temperatures in France could rise by 6-13C by 2100 compared to historic records, a new study suggests. Using computer models, the researchers found that temperatures during a “mega-heatwave” – similar to the one seen across Europe in 2003 – “could easily exceed 50C by the end of the 21st century” if global carbon emissions aren’t curbed. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that French utility EDF cut output at two reactors at its Tricastin nuclear plant in southern France this week amid scorching temperatures, in order to reduce the amount of heated water from the reactors’ cooling system flowing into the Rhone river.

The challenge of meeting the Paris Agreement global temperature rise limits of 1.5C and 2C has put a greater focus on geoengineering options, says an editorial in Science, “yet it remains unclear how to govern research on, and potential deployment of, geoengineering technologies.” Many questions remain, the piece says, such as how world governments should weigh up the potential risks and benefits, how to address transborder and transgenerational issues, and how any future global agreements could withstand geopolitical changes over decades. “The world is heading to an increasingly risky future and is unprepared to address” these challenges, the article says. “The research community has been addressing many of these issues, but the global policy community and the public largely have not. It is time to do so.” At the same time, Science also has two perspectives articles by scientists about geoengineering options – on injecting sulphur into the atmosphere and seeding cirrus clouds.

Much research effort has been focused on climate geoengineering as a way to offset warming and potentially buy more time for mitigation. While much of this research has focused on sulphate aerosol injections in the stratosphere, there are other methods available as well. A perspective in Science examines the possibility of cirrus cloud thinning to increase outgoing long-wave radiation. This would be achieved by injecting ice-nucleating particles like dust into cirrus cloud levels of the atmosphere.

A newly released ocean temperature dataset from NOAA incorporates additional data from ships, buoys, and Argo floats to provide more realistic assessment of spatial and time variations of ocean temperature, particularly at high latitudes. While the estimates are improved regionally, the global long-term trend remains about the same.

Trees take up a lot of CO2, so one approach to reducing the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 levels is to reduce the cutting down of trees. A new paper evaluates a program in which forest owners in Uganda were paid to not cut down their trees. They find that payments reduced deforestation, and owners did not compensate by cutting down trees in neighbouring forests. They found that tree cover declined by 4.2% during the study period in treatment villages, compared to 9.1% in control villages. This paper provides a rare example of the use of randomised controlled trials in the evaluation of large-scale environmental programs