There is widespread coverage and analysis of the news that Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private coal company, has filed for bankruptcy in the US. The Times says it is the “latest casualty of falling commodities prices”. It carries a quote from Richard Black, director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit think tank, who says: “This is very big news. The coal industry has been under sustained pressure for a number of years due to a range of factors, including a glut of coal pushing prices down and the increased availability of natural gas, but environmental pressures are the biggest factor.” The New Scientist‘s analysis piece included the sub-heading “Goodbye coal; Hello renewables”. It adds: “boom has turned to bust. In 2014, China reduced its coal burning by 1.4% and last year there was a further fall of around 3%.” Megan Darby in Climate Home says “Peabody’s climate-denying crash is a warning to investors”. The Washington Post says Peabody was “weighed down by debt from its poorly timed $5.2 billion acquisition of Macarthur Coal of Australia in 2011”. The Guardian and EnergyDesk are among the many other publications examining the coal giant’s demise.

The Green Deal home energy efficiency scheme, abandoned last summer, cost taxpayers £240m and failed to deliver energy and carbon savings, the National Audit Office has said. While 1.4m homes had benefited from measures ranging from new boilers to insulation by the end of last year, just 1% of households took out green deal loans. The National Audit Office concluded the green deal did not achieve value for money and delivered “negligible” carbon savings. Taken together, the government’s various energy efficiency schemes in the past few years cost £94 for each tonne of carbon they saved, significantly more than the £34 per tonne of carbon dioxide of the schemes they replaced. The Guardian, Daily Mail, Telegraph and Sun are among the newspapers also covering the story.

The Guardian reports on Carbon Brief’s analysis which found that last weekend, for the first time in UK history, solar panels produced more electricity over a 24-hour period, than all the nation’s remaining coal-fired power plants. “The economics of coal are terrible at the moment,” said Peter Atherton, an energy analyst at Jefferies International bank told the paper.

Scientists monitoring the vast Greenland ice sheet announced on Tuesday that it is experiencing a record-breaking level of melt for so early in the season. The Danish Meteorological Institute reported that although it’s only April, nearly 12% of the ice sheet’s surface is covered with a layer of meltwater of a depth of at least a millimeter. “The former top 3 earliest dates for a melt area larger than 10% were previously all in May (5th May 2010, 8th May 1990, 8th May 2006),” the institute noted on the website Polar Portal. The MailOnline‘s headline screams: “Greenland is melting TWO MONTHS early.” The Guardian and New Scientist also carry the story.

Japan is considering releasing thousands of tonnes of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean from the beleaguered Fukushima plant. Many scientists argue it is not worth it and say the risks of dumping the tritium-laced water into the sea are minimal. But their calls to release the effluent into the Pacific Ocean are alarming many in Japan and elsewhere. The Guardian’s Eco Audit column also picks up the story, posing the question: “Is it safe to dump Fukushima waste into the sea?”

The UK government has been accused of including a large loophole in its legal definition of fracking which could enable companies to bypass safety regulations, according to a leading geologist. In rules that came into force on 6 April, fracking is defined by the amount of high-pressure fluid used to fracture shale rocks and release gas or oil. However, the only well fracked in the UK so far, which caused small earthquakes near Blackpool in 2011, would not qualify as fracking under the definition. Furthermore, according to Prof Stuart Haszeldine at the University of Edinburgh, analysis of more than 17,000 gas wells fracked in the US from 2000-10 shows 43% would not be defined as fracking under UK rules. More than 4,500 US wells were fracked to release oil in that time but 89% would not be covered by the UK definition.

In the latest instalment in Inside Climate News’s investigation into how far back the oil industry knew about the risk of carbon pollution, the publication has uncovered that consultants advised the American Petroleum Institute in 1968 that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels deserved as much concern as the smog and soot: “The records, unearthed from archives by a Washington, D.C. environmental law organisation, the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), reveal that the carbon dioxide question—an obscure corner of research for much of the 20th century—had been closely studied since the 1950s by some oil company researchers.” The Guardian reports the findings.

The Obama administration will announce today safety regulations for offshore oil and natural gas drilling to prevent the kind of explosion that happened six years ago on a BP rig in the Gulf of Mexico, an official told Reuters. The US Department of Interior will unveil the final version of its well control regulations, which will require more stringent design and operating procedures for well control equipment used in offshore oil and gas operations, said the official, who is close to the rulemaking process. The Hill also carries the story.

Tim Palmer, a professor in climate physics at the University of Oxford, writes: “Given their increasing relevance for society, I suggest that the climate science community itself does not treat the development of error-free ab initio models of the climate system with sufficient urgency…Firstly, I believe that climate science should make better use of the pool of post-PhD talent in mathematics and physics, for developing next-generation climate models. Secondly, I believe there is more scope for the development of modelling systems which link weather and climate prediction more seamlessly. Finally, here in Europe, I call for a new European Programme on Extreme Computing and Climate to advance our ability to simulate climate extremes, and understand the drivers of such extremes.”

Butler urges caution to those writing headlines announcing the end of the oil price downturn: “A slightly higher price as a result of the freeze — say $45 or even $50 a barrel — will bring on more production; not least in the US, where 500,000 barrels a day has been shut in over the last year. The owners of that output, and the people who have lent them money, will be keen to see some revenue flowing…If the oil producers want a substantially higher price — meaning $70 or $80 a barrel — they will have to cut production. The cut will have to be sharp and to last for quite a long time. When the Saudis accept this it will be safe to say that the downturn in the oil market is coming to an end. We are not there yet.”

Wilkins, who leads global environmental & climate risk research at Standard & Poor’s, writes that “questions linger over the UK’s Contracts for Difference scheme, with allocation for the latest round of contracts postponed from October”. He adds: “With consistent policy and much-needed transparency, these contracts can play a vital role in securing the country’s low-carbon energy future…Yet, despite initial success, the scheme has stalled somewhat over the past year, in large part due to political volatility.”

The FT’s Lex column – aided by a video explainer by Ed Crooks, the paper’s US industry and energy editor – say that Peabody Energy’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing doesn’t automatically spell the end for the coal giant: “Climate campaigners may cheer, but beware what follows. Chapter 11 keeps zombie companies staggering along. Once Peabodys $6bn in net debt is winnowed down, Peabody will be reincarnated in some form.”

Gardiner, Labour’s shadow energy and climate change minister, writes from the World Bank spring meeting in Washington DC , where the bank has been updating its climate change action plan. He writes: “Legislators in Washington are clear that governments need to quickly ensure international ambition is embedded in national planning. Paris is a deal that rests upon domestic action. That places critical importance on the need for MPs to scrutinise effectively their governments’ plans to meet and go beyond existing targets over the next five years…It is the decisions made by finance and economic ministers about infrastructure investments that must cement the low-carbon transition in practice…We have to join the dots between long-term climate obligations and infrastructure decisions if we are to build smart, modern economies.”

How much carbon dioxide established forests take up might be more sensitive to short-term fluctuations in climate than previously thought, a new study says. Researchers monitored the uptake and release of CO2 from an old-growth forest in the northwest US between 1998 and 2013. On average, the forest was a net sink of CO2, the study finds. But while this sink was much stronger during La Niña events, it became neutral or a small net source of CO2 during El Niño events.