Last year the ethics watchdog for Norway’s sovereign wealth fund recommended that “a small handful” of firms be excluded from the fund for producing too much greenhouse gas emissions. Now more companies could be blacklisted as a result of their emissions, as the watchdog scrutinises more sectors, including power and shipping, as well as considering more firms in the steel and concrete industries. A company that is a big emitter of climate gases must show what plans it has to cut emissions by 2030 to remain in the fund’s portfolio, revealed Johan Andersen, chair of the fund’s publicly appointed Council on Ethics. “They will need to have very credible plans to reduce emissions, that they have said they are going to do, not only to us, but to their shareholders”, Andersen commented.

A new study suggests that the output from global fisheries will decline by 20% by 2300 if nations fail to put the brakes on climate change. The North Atlantic region is predicted to be the worst-hit, with output slumping by 60%. The paper, published in the journal Science, found that unchecked long-term warming would thaw sea ice around Antarctica and disrupt ocean currents, winds and the growth of tiny plankton, causing ever more nutrients to sink to the ocean depths. “Marine ecosystems worldwide will be increasingly starved for nutrients”, said J Keith Moore, the study’s lead author.

Scientists have succeeded in creating the world’s first rechargeable proton battery, an innovation which is a “crucial step towards cheaper and more environmentally-friendly energy storage”, the Guardian reports. The researchers used carbon and water to power the battery instead of lithium, which used in currently available batteries. The invention is a small-scale prototype, but it could become commercially available within 5-10 years, said the lead researcher Professor John Andrew.

A major new American project says it will put fusion power on the grid within 15 years. A collaboration between the scientists at MIT, and the company Commonwealth Fusion Systems, the initiative “will take a radically different approach to other efforts” in order to take nuclear fusion from a dream to a viable energy source, the Guardian reports. They intend to use new types of high-temperature superconductors. “The aspiration is to have a working power plant in time to combat climate change. We think we have the science, speed and scale to put carbon-free fusion power on the grid in 15 years” said Bob Mumgaard, chief executive of the private company involved in the project.

A new report prepared by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has found that high-tide flooding is becoming more commonplace across the US, due to rising seas. “Due to rising relative sea level, more and more cities are becoming increasingly exposed and evermore vulnerable to high-tide flooding, which is rapidly increasing in frequency, depth and extent along many US coastlines”, the report says. William Sweet, and oceanographer who lead the report, said that at many locations “today’s storm flood will become tomorrow’shigh tide sometime this century”. Sea levels have risen nearly 8 inches worldwide since 1880, USA Today reports.

The Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto is denying UK investors an opportunity to vote on a motion that would force it to review its membership of powerful industry associations that support fossil fuels. The Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, which co-authored the resolution, said it was disappointing that Rio’s board would only allow it to be heard at the company’s annual general meeting in Melbourne, the Financial Times reports. The resolution follows a follows a similar motion filed at BHP, which won a significant minority of votes and resulted in the company announcing that it would quit the World Coal Association, the Guardian reports.

Coverage continues of Carbon Brief’s analysis showing that the UK’s carbon emissions in 2017 fell to levels last seen in 1890, notably in Xinhua, Treehugger, the Times, Clean Technica and the Express. “Coal now accounts for only 5.3% of total primary energy consumed in the UK, down from 22% in 1995. The British government has pledged to close all coal-fired power stations by 2025” Xinhua writes. But cutting emissions in other sectors could prove more difficult, Treehugger says: “what comes next is an open question, because coal is the low hanging fruit. Now that much of it has been eliminated, Britain will have to tackle areas like transportation, land use and agriculture—not to mention the use of natural gas for electricity and heating too.”

Ben van Beurden, the chief executive of oil giant Shell, has said that climate change is the biggest issue facing the energy sector. Speaking at a conference in Houston, van Beurden said: “There’s no other issue with the potential to disrupt our industry on such a deep and fundamental level”. Although he predicts that: “Oil and gas will continue to be the core for Shell for many decades to come”. Shell intends to invest more in offshore wind farms, biofuels, carbon capture projects and the planting of trees and forests, Energy Voice reports.

Liz Hutchins, director of Campaigning Impacts at Friends of the Earth, has written a comment piece for the Huffington Post on the links between climate change and gender equality. “The impacts of climate change are not felt equally…Climate-change induced disasters disproportionately affect women”, she notes. She honours the contributions of women like Rachel Carson, Berta Cáceres and Christiana Figueres to the climate change movement, concluding that: “When women are allowed a seat at the table, we all benefit”.

“As a scientist, I used to wonder why climate science deniers target polar bears so fiercely: Why put so much energy into trying to obscure the plight of these magnificent creatures?”, writes Shaye Wolf, the climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in DeSmogUK. She explains: “But the answer is increasingly obvious…Because global warming is impossible to debunk, they try to undermine the perceived legitimacy of its mascot. In doing so, they attempt to chip away at the strength and credibility of all climate science by association.”

A new study investigates the impact of a potential new grand solar minimum–if it were to occur–on atmospheric chemistry and climate. They find that a grand solar minimum would result in significant stratospheric and mesospheric cooling. Under the grand solar minimum scenario, and modestly slower warming of the troposphere than would otherwise be the case. On the global scale a reduced solar forcing compensates for at most 15 % of the expected greenhouse warming at the end of the 21st century. In the stratosphere, the reduction of around 15 % of incoming ultraviolet radiation leads to a decrease in ozone production by up to 8 %. This, in turn, leads to a delay in ozone hole recovery, with a global ozone recovery to the pre-ozone hole values happening only upon completion of the grand solar minimum.

Projected increases in greenhouse gas emissions could suppress marine biological productivity for a thousand years or more. As the climate warms, westerly winds in the Southern Hemisphere will strengthen and shift poleward, surface waters will warm, and sea ice will disappear. This paper suggests that one effect of these changes will be a dramatic decrease in marine biological productivity. This decrease will result from a global-scale redistribution of nutrients, with a net transfer to the deep ocean. By 2300, this could drive declines in fisheries yields by more than 20% globally and by nearly 60% in the North Atlantic.