Over half of the EU’s 619 coal power plants are making a loss, according to a new report by the think tank Carbon Tracker. Higher carbon prices and stricter air pollution rules will push even more stations into unprofitability, the report warns, and the industry’s slow plans for shutdowns will lead to €22bn in losses by 2030 if the EU fulfils its pledge to tackle climate change. Moreover the falling costs of renewables are on track to make building new solar and wind farms cheaper than running existing coal power stations, by 2020. Nearly all European coal-fired plants will be loss-making by 2030, Reuters emphasises. “The changing economics of renewables, as well as air pollution policy and rising carbon prices, has put EU coal power in a death spiral,” said Matt Gray, co-author of the Carbon Tracker report. “Utilities can’t do much to stop this other than drop coal or lobby governments and hope they will bail them out.” Bloomberg, the Financial Times and BusinessGreen also have the story.

Scott Pruitt, administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has said that Obama’s administration rushed an analysis which found that climate change poses a risk to human health and welfare, Bloomberg reports. “There was a breach of process that occurred in 2009 that many believe was not handled the proper way,” Pruitt told a panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee yesterday, offering an argument he could use to undermine the so-called “endangerment finding”, which enabled Obama’s climate regulations. Pruitt’s EPA has been preparing its own review of climate science, using a red team, blue team exercise, a decision-making strategy involving debate between two teams that is used by the military. This public debate could be launched as soon as January, Reuters reports. Pruitt has already moved to dismantle President Barack Obama’s climate regulations, including the landmark Clean Power Plan, Bloomberg writes. The Hill and Inside Climate News also covered the story.

The development of small nuclear reactors suffered a setback yesterday, after the UK government delayed a decision on backing the technology and published a report suggesting that it could be even more expensive that the Hinkley Point C, an over-budget new nuclear power plant currently under construction. Two years ago ministers announced that they were launching a competition to find the “best value small modular reactor (SMR) design for the UK”, and since then companies including Rolls-Royce and Nuscale have been vying to secure the government’s support for their reactor designs. Advocates of the technology have argued that smaller reactors would be quicker, cheaper and easier to build than conventional ones, the Times writes. “We do need more, we cannot continue to invest as an industry without any signal. We have been doing this now for two years under the competition. It is critically important we get some form of forward roadmap from government pretty quickly”, said Alan Woods, strategy director of Rolls-Royce’s nuclear business. The Telegraph and the Guardian also have the story.

A new report by the Irish Environmental Protection Agency has found that evidence of climate change in Ireland is “clearer and more compelling” than ever before with more rainfall and rises in sea level and temperature recorded. The research found that climate change will continue to affect all sectors of the economy, and warns there are “uncertainties” as to whether global action to curb emissions will be sufficient to prevent the worst effects of climate change. “The projections of future climate change across all scenarios suggest that changes will continue, but uncertainties on details of these for countries such as Ireland remain large. Uncertainties also exist with respect to the effectiveness of global actions to address climate change”, said lead author Dr Margaret Desmond, from UCC. Average annual rainfall rose 5pc or 60mm between 1981 and 2010, with the highest increases in the west, while average temperatures in Ireland have increased by 0.8C since 1900, according to the report.

A plant “could eventually help cut atmospheric carbon dioxide, a major player in global warming, by as much as 50 percent”, the New York Post writes. Dr. Joanne Chory was recently awarded the $3 million for her research on engineering a crop that can remove CO2 from the atmosphere while also feeding the planet. The idea is based on a substance called suberin, which can store carbon in the soil for hundreds or thousands of years. Chory “thinks the flood- and drought-resistant crop will probably taste like a chickpea”, the New York Post reports.

Water levels in Malawi’s main hydroelectric power plant have shrunk to critically low levels due to a severe drought, plunging large sections of the country into darkness, including the capital Lilongwe. the Guardian reports. Water from the Shire river normally generates 300MW of electricity, which is 98% of the country’s electricity supply, but the African country has been hit by intermittent outages since last year. However, only 8% of Malawi’s population have access to electricity, according to the World Bank.

“While the carbon wars are being waged, other greenhouse gasses, smaller but far more potent, are being pumped into our air from the world’s air conditioners”, writes Joe Ware in a short feature for the Huffington Post, looking at the problems associated with using HFCs, a powerful greenhouse gas created to replace their predecessors, CFCs, which were responsible for making a hole in the ozone layer. “As the greenhouse effect heats up the world, demand for air conditioners will rise, especially among the burgeoning middle class in India and Africa. If we don’t change the technology we use to cool ourselves we are in danger of cooking the planet and creating a vicious cycle”, he writes.

“We need a treaty to protect the warming Arctic from exploitation”, write the editors in Scientific American’s December issue, in a comment piece delving into what’s at stake in future of the Arctic, and why nations are “scrabbling” to establish territorial rights. “As the ice retreats, financial and national security interests advance”, the piece notes. “The world needs a treaty that governs how we use this valuable region. It is a unique place: parts of the Arctic are national territories, but as a whole, it is a global commons”, Scientific American says, “otherwise the ice will be only the first of many things to disappear.”

Lisa Hymas, director of the Climate and Energy program at Media Matters, a US nonprofit that monitors misinformation in the media, has written an opinion piece in the Guardian, arguing that “the effect of climate change on extreme weather has been dramatically undercovered”. Research done by her organisation has found that “TV news outlets gave far too little coverage to the well-documented links between climate change and hurricanes”. During the height of the hurricane season 60% of the stories on the eight major US networks “included the word Trump, and only about 5% mentioned climate change”. “Scientists have been telling us that climate change will make hurricanes more intense and dangerous, an unfortunate reality made all too clear by this year’s record-busting hurricane season”, she says, continuing: “But while nearly three-quarters of Americans know that most scientists are in agreement that climate change is happening, according to recent poll, only 42% of Americans believe climate change will pose a serious threat to them during their lifetimes.” She concludes: “If we are to fend off the worst possible outcomes of climate change, we need to shift as quickly as possible to a cleaner energy system. We could expect more Americans to get on board with that solution if they more fully understood the problem – and that’s where the critical role of the media comes in.”

This study investigates the response of the East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM) and East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) to weakened Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). It looks at three climate model experiments where large amounts of fresh water from melting ice sheets enters the North Atlantic. These experiments found that a subtle weakening of AMOC does not significantly influence either the EAWM or the EASM. When AMOC weakens more substantially, however, northerly wind anomalies emerge in East Asia throughout the year, strengthening the EAWM and weakening the EASM.