Department for Energy and Climate Change has announced that itwill no longer fund the Green Deal scheme, which provided loansdesigned to help homeowners improve the energy efficiency of theirproperty. But the government has yet to announce how it will fillthe gap in its energy efficiency policies left by the Green Deal.Carbon Brief explains what the move means for energy efficiency inthe UK.

We’ve updated our Paris INDC tracker with pledges from Kenya,Japan, New Zealand and Singapore.

Hillary Clinton said she would both defend and go beyond theefforts of Obama to address climate change in the first detaileddescription of her potential environmental polices if electedpresident. A four-page campaign fact sheet said the goal was toincrease the share of US power generation from renewable sources to33% by 2027, compared to 25% under Obama’s carbon plan. Clintonpledged to defend from legal or political attack the Obamaadministration’s rule to cut carbon pollution from the nation’sfleet of power plants, as well as rewarding communities that speedrooftop solar panel installation, backing a contest for states togo beyond the minimums called for in the environmental rules, andboosting solar and wind production on federal lands. Her promise toinstall half a billion solar panels by 2021 represents a 700%increase on current installations, Climate Progressreports. Theannouncement was accompanied by a video, in which she also criticises herRepublican opponents’ stance on climate, the Hillreports. The Guardianalso carried thestory.

Thirteen major American companies are to announce $140billion in low-carbon investments to lend support to a globalclimate change deal in Paris in December, the White House has said.Companies including General Motors, Bank of America, Microsoft andCoca Cola, will today join the US Secretary of State John Kerry atthe White House to launch the American Business Act on ClimatePledge to support the administration as it tries to secure aclimate agreement. The companies also announced they would bring atleast 1,600 megawatts of new renewable energy on line, reduce wateruse intensity by 15 percent, purchase 100 percent renewable energy,and target zero net deforestation in their supply chains. Securinglong-term climate finance is seen as a crucial step for a deal inParis, Reuters reports.

A global agreement to fight climate change is beginning totake shape after the United Nations published a new draft of a dealthat 194 nations are working to seal at a December summit,Bloomberg reports. The 88-page document is intended to more clearlyorganise the options that negotiators have grappled with formonths. The new version whittles down the main part of theagreement to a 19-page draft that lays out requirements for allnations to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The streamlined text”gives delegates a strong foundation to advance the climatenegotiations,” said Jennifer Morgan, global director of the climateprogram at the World Resources Institute.

The world’s big energy groups have shelved $200bn ofspending on new projects in an urgent round of cost-cutting, as theoil price slumps for a second time this year. The plunge in crudeprices since last summer has resulted in the deferral of 46 big oiland gas projects with 20bn barrels of oil equivalent in reserves -more than Mexico’s entire proven holdings.

Success at 2015 Paris climate summit will mean radicalshake-up of oil, gas and coal industry the French presidentFrancois Hollande said on Friday. 80% of known fossil fuels willneed to stay in the ground for the world to achieve a “viable”global climate deal later this year in Paris he said. The commentsare some of the strongest yet from Hollande, who is injecting”considerable personal input” into diplomatic efforts to ensure thesuccess of an agreement, RTCC reports.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has today dismissed as a “scam”the opposition party’s proposal to introduce an emissions tradingscheme to cut the country’s GHG output and increase the share ofrenewables in the energy mix to 50% by 2030. “The ETS that Laborkeeps talking about might as well be called an electricity tax scambecause that’s what it is, an electricity tax scam that will bescamming the consumers of Australia for years and years and decadesif it was to be put in place,” Abbott told reporters in Canberra.The claim was later undermined by the communications minister, whopointed out that all policies to push low-emission electricitygeneration come at a cost to households, including the ones theAustralian government supports, and that the cost of renewables isfalling, the Guardianreports.

Nearly half of Britain is set to be opened up to fracking byoil and gas companies, under new exploration licences thegovernment will award next month, the Daily Express writes. Friendsof the Earth estimates that 43% of Britain’s land mass is coveredby the new licences, which will be released in two rounds: inAugust and at the end of the year.

The UK government has embarked on a disastrous environmentalagenda, that has little to do with evidence and everything to dowith ideology, argues the veteran environmental campaigner.

Solar panels are “so unproductive that they generate barely1% of all our electricity”, writes climate sceptic columnistChristopher Booker. He also argues that the public pays three-timesover for solar electricity: “First for the subsidised solar power;secondly to the windfarms for their power we don’t use; and thirdlya bit extra to compensate them for the fact that we are not usingit”. As part of the same column, Booker also saysthe “greatestscare story of all” of Arctic sea ice decline “simply isn’t turningout as their computer models predicted”. Last week, Carbon Briefwrote about the newstudy referred to in Booker’s column.

Columnist Matt Ridley, a Conservative peer with declaredcoal mining interests in Northumberland, argues in the Times thatif the Paris climate summit can’t agree on reducing emissions,Britain should “seize the moment and make energy bills cheaper”. Alack of international agreement in Paris would give the Britishgovernment the opportunity to amend the carbon targets in theClimate Change Act, he writes. Ridley argues that scrappingsubsidies for onshore windfarms “allows Conservatives to championthe poor, on whom the cost of these green measures has fallendisproportionately”.

Arctic sea ice loss is perhaps one of the most apparentexamples of climate change in the world, according to a new paper,which uses satellite imagery to examine at how diminishing icecover affects terrestrial methane emissions. From 2005-2010,methane emissions were, on average, 1.7 Tg per year higher comparedto 1981-1990 due to sea ice-induced warming, the paper finds.

Controlling aerosols and short-lived climate pollutants willhave beneficial impacts on health and crop yields, but the impacton global temperatures is less clear. A new paper examinesdifferent mitigation pathways, and shows that sulphur dioxidereductions lead to the strongest response while cutting blackcarbon doesn’t necessarily have a discernible climate impact.