The Netherlands has launched an attempt to fund an offshore wind farm without subsidies. The world’s first ever so-called ‘zero subsidy’ tender for wind power, will see only companies that require no support at all participating. Companies can hand in bids for two slots available in the North Sea, each representing a 350 megawatt (MW) project.

The government is to allow Britain’s £2tn workplace pension schemes to dump their shares in oil, gas and coal companies more easily, reports the Guardian. The government is to introduce new investment regulations that will allow pension schemes to “mirror members’ ethical concerns” and “address environmental problems”. Meanwhile the Express has attacked Jeremy Corbyn for his local Labour council for holding nearly £50m of its pension fund in fossil fuels despite his party’s call to tackle climate change.

Ministers have gone cold on the £1.3bn project to build a tidal power lagoon in Swansea Bay, reports the Financial Times. One cabinet minister said that the project did not stack up economically because it was “eye-wateringly” expensive, and would only directly create only a handful of jobs in the local economy. Another government figure said ministers had cold feet. “It’s hard to see which ministers if any are still championing this at a ministerial level,” he said. The government is currently considering the recommendations of the Hendry Review published in January which recommended rapid approval of the scheme.

The development of fracking in the UK could be limited by a lack of specialist waste treatment facilities, researchers from the University of Edinburgh have said, based on studies of waste waters from wells in the US. “Safe treatment and disposal of the waste water arising from fracking could cost more than £1m over the lifetime of each well, they say,” reports the Independent. The Press Association also has the story. The Mail On Sunday meanwhile runs a story criticising the “criminals, crackpots and extremists” who have “poisoned” anti-fracking camp protests. The investigation claims it finds anti-fracking protest camps in two areas of the country have been “infiltrated by violent criminals, drug users, wild conspiracy theorists and ‘professional’ political activists”.

The US is fighting against any mention of “climate change” in a potential new environmental chapter of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), reports Bloomberg. However the US still wants an environment chapter in the overhauled trade pact. Meanwhile the Trump administration is putting a halt to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Scott Pruitt’s plans to organise a “red team, blue team” forum to challenge consensus on climate change science, reports The Hill. Meanwhile the New York Times has spoken to a number of EPA employees who had their emails scrutinised after speaking out against the agency. The EPA has hired “cutting-edge Republican PR firm” Definers Corp. to help shape press coverage of the agency, Mother Jonesreported last week.

US President Donald Trump has removed climate change from his National Security Strategy which is due to be released today, the US online version of the Daily Mail reports. The Federalist, which says it has access to a draft version of the document, says it will prioritise other threats instead. Any mention of climate policies will be tied to economic growth and energy security, rather than global warming. Meanwhile Buzzfeed says people are ‘horrified” officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDP) have reportedly been forbidden from using certain words, including “evidence-based” and “science-based”. However, CDC Director Dr Brenda Fitzgerald said on Sunday there were “no banned words at CDC”.

The final text of the Republican tax bill made public Friday largely preserves key tax credits for wind and solar power and electric vehicles, reports the New York Times. The last minute changes reverses language in earlier versions that could have slowed the growth of renewable energy across the US. However, the renewables industry has still expressed worry about the new Base Erosion Anti-Abuse Tax (BEAT), reports Reuters. This is intended to prevent multinational companies from abusing the tax code, but has worried the renewable energy industry as it would limit the ability to claim a portion of production or investment credits.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday his priority is to cut carbon emissions and shut down polluting coal-fired production, meaning he will not follow Germany’s example by phasing out nuclear energy. “I don’t idolise nuclear energy at all. But I think you have to pick your battle. My priority in France, Europe and internationally is CO2 emissions and (global) warming,” he told France 2 television in an interview. ““What did the Germans do when they shut all their nuclear in one go?,” he added. “They developed a lot of renewables but they also massively reopened thermal and coal.” Nuclear currently accounts for 75% of France’s electricity production, with renewables accounting for only a small share.

A new process developed by scientists US Department of Energy could be an efficient way to turn waste carbon dioxide into fuel, the Independent reports. The new process produces syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can be used as a fuel. “It integrates two areas that have been on parallel tracks: carbon capture and sequestration and carbon dioxide utilisation,” said Dr Luis Diaz Aldana, a researcher at the Idaho National Laboratory who led the project. Dr Hannah Chalmers, a University of Edinburgh researcher not involved in the study, pointed out the new technique should not be viewed as a replacement for traditional carbon capture and storage that prevents carbon dioxide pollution altogether. “If products containing carbon are produced, carbon dioxide could still be made again later and released to the atmosphere,” she said.

In an extract from his new book, The Water Will Come, American author Jeff Goodell lays out a future world in 2037 where a hurricane hits Miami in a world reshaped by sea-level rise. “All big hurricanes are disastrous. But this one was unexpectedly bad,” he writes of the future world in 2037. “With sea levels more than a foot higher than they’d been at the dawn of the century, much of South Florida was wet and vulnerable even before the storm hit.” … “By the end of the twenty-first century, Miami became something else entirely: a popular diving spot where people could swim among sharks and barnacled SUVs and explore the wreckage of a great American city.”

In an era of environmental deregulation, write Jie Jenny Zou and Chris Young of the Center for Public Integrity, groups like the American Petroleum Institute are focusing resources on the courts. The long read article reports how a three-day symposium attended by 22 state and federal judges to increase their scientific literacy and economics included several seminars designed to promote “skepticism” of scientific evidence among likely candidates for the 140-plus federal judgeships Donald Trump will fill over the next four years. It also looks at a number of other climate lawsuits, including Juliana v United States, the 2015 lawsuit from 21 child and teenage plaintiffs that faults the government for failing to address climate change over half a century.

Global warming could affect the timing that leaves die in autumn and bloom again in spring for the European beech tree, a new study finds. In experiments, the researchers exposed European beech saplings to a range of temperatures and recorded how factors such as autumn leaf senescence and spring bloom were affected. They found that global warming delayed the start of leaf die-out in autumn and caused spring bloom to start earlier in the year. “Interestingly, we found a significantly larger temperature response of autumn leaf senescence than of spring leaf-out,” the researchers say. “This suggests a possible larger contribution of delays in autumn senescence, than of the advancement in spring leaf-out, to extending the growing season under future warmer conditions.”