Britain’s coal plants should be shut down by 2023, two years earlier than proposed by the Government, says a report from the “Bright Blue” group of Conservatives. Current plans by the UK government, announced in November by energy secretary Amber Rudd, are for unabated coal-fired power stations to close by 2025. In their report, the group – which includes former energy minister Lord Barker – argue that bringing forward the planned coal closure date to at least 2023 “would actually provide more certainty for investors in new gas, improving energy security”. The report dismisses fears that cutting coal would lead to supply shortages, even if the proposed new Hinkley Point C nuclear plant is never built.

Parts of the Sizewell B nuclear plant built at the French factory being investigated over possible fake manufacturing records have been given the all-clear by regulators. EDF Energy said it planned to restart the Suffolk nuclear plant, which was shut for planned maintenance, on Friday after the parts made at the Le Creusot manufacturing site passed inspections. EDF said: “EDF Energy can confirm that its Sizewell B nuclear power station in Suffolk is not affected by issues under investigation at Areva’s Creusot forge in France.”

New UN proposals will ask governments, cities and business leaders to develop voluntary plans to cut emissions by the middle of the century. The call to publish “low-emission development strategies” comes at the request of France climate envoy Laurence Tubiana and Morocco environment minister Hakima El Haite. The strategies “will help countries, cities, regions, businesses, investors… understand what it takes to achieve the long-term goals embedded in the Paris Agreement,” the authors write.

A group of offshore wind companies has pledged that the technology will generate electricity as cheaply as fossil fuels in Europe by 2025 – but only if supported by policymakers across the EU. In an open letter, the companies – including General Electric, Siemens, RWE, Iberdrola, Statoil and Vattenfall – say there is “a serious question mark” over what would happen after 2020, when current EU pledges to generate 20% of energy from renewable sources end. The letter argues that the offshore wind industry is on track to bring down costs, but requires politicians across Europe to create a “stable long-term market for renewables in Europe”. Reuters also covers the story.

Global oil demand could peak by the end of the next decade even as global economic growth climbs, says the latest forecasts from consulting firm McKinsey. The firm says it has cut its forecast for growth in demand to 0.8% a year to 2040 – down from the 1.1% it forecast last year. Demand for oil is expected to grow even more slowly beyond 2025, McKinsey says, with a possible peak of 100m barrels a day by 2030, from current levels of 94m.

The US Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from Ecuador’s government in a case involving a $96m arbitration award for oil company Chevron. Ecuador was appealing against a ruling last August that upheld a decision in 2011 in favour of Chevron. The long-running dispute stems from a 1973 deal that called for Texaco – later acquired by Chevron – to develop oil fields in exchange for selling oil to Ecuador’s government at below-market rates, writes Reuters. Texaco filed several lawsuits in the 1990s accusing Ecuador of violating the contract, and then Chevron initiated an arbitration proceeding at The Hague in 2006, claiming Ecuador’s courts failed to resolve the lawsuits in a timely manner.

The academic community could make rapid progress on quantifying the impacts of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C but a refocusing of research priorities is needed in order to provide reliable advice, says a group of leading climate scientists in a new Nature Climate Change commentary. The decision on whether to stabilise temperatures at 2C or raise ambition to 1.5C is arguably one of the most momentous to be made in the coming decades but there is currently a paucity of scientific analysis on the relative risks, they say.

Bleaching as a result of climate change has killed almost a quarter of the coral in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef this year – and many scientists believe it could be too late for the rest. In a new special report, Slezak investigates how the reef has been damaged and what can be done to save it. Accompanying his report are three videos with scientists at James Cook University in Queensland and the Ocean Agency, photos of the dead and dying coral of Lizard Island, and a comment piecefrom marine ecologist Justin Marshall on this “enormous, environmental disaster”. “To put this in a global perspective,” he writes, “considering the reef as a whole, an area of the reef the size of Scotland has coral in it that is largely dead.”

Following the comments from Hugh McNeal of RenewableUK on onshore wind power in England, Hastings writes that “some of us have campaigned against the despoiling of our landscape by these eyesores. Suddenly, belatedly, an unexpected and authoritative voice has made it official: they are a nonsense.” Under a series of headings of “Satanic”, “Slashed” and “Futile”, Hastings argues that “the big mistake made by [Tony] Blair and then Cameron’s Coalition government was to pile into wind because it had the green seal of approval, without asking the hard-headed questions about whether turbines made sense everywhere, for everybody.” Hastings does note, however, that offshore wind turbines “are likely to become an important energy source in future.” Carbon Brief also took a closer look at McNeal’s comments.

A mechanism that led to a warming of the North Atlantic subpolar gyre, more hurricanes and changes to rainfall over Africa, Europe and North America in the 1990s looks to be on the turn. Measurements in the last two decades suggest a decline in the strength of the ocean circulation that had been driving the warming, known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, cooling the upper ocean by approximately 0.45 °C since 2005.

Energy security can be a co-benefit of reducing global emissions, largely by reducing energy imports. A new study examines whether the reverse is also true – that pursuing energy independence can reduce global emissions. Five state-of-the-art energy-economy models suggest that it isn’t. Restricting all fuel imports would lower 21st century emissions by 2–15% compared to the 70% that is needed to hold global temperature below 2C, a new study finds.

A new study suggests the prediction in climate models towards drying over much of the Earth’s land during the 21st century, despite an expected increase in rainfall, has been overestimated. The reason is that the models neglect a mechanism involving leaf pores that reduces evapotranspiration, which increases as atmospheric CO2 rises. The results suggest the drying will be weaker and less extensive than previously thought.