Patricia Espinosa has been formally confirmed as the new Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC after a governing council of countries agreed with Ban Ki-moon’s nomination. Espinosa, currently the Mexican ambassador to Germany, will replace outgoing climate chief Christiana Figueres when she steps down in July after six years at the helm, reports Business Green. In a statement, Espinosa said: “I stand ready to work with all governments – as well with all other stakeholders – to realize the inspiring aims and ambitions of the new UN climate agreement adopted in Paris last December.” When asked about presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s recent comments about renegotiating the Paris Agreement, Espinosa told Reuters that renegotiating “is really not a scenario that in a multilateral process you can see as something feasible.” – adding that she would be “respectful of everybody who has a role to play in any country” but at the same time seek to build momentum for action. Associated Press also covers the story.

The cost of four government policies designed to guarantee supply and support low-carbon electricity will add £100 to annual bills within five years, a new report says. Independent consultancy Cornwall Energy says overall energy subsidies will rise by 124% by 2020-21 to fund the capacity market, renewable obligations, contracts for difference and feed-in tariff schemes. Cornwall estimates that three of the renewable energy subsidies will cost £7.7bn by 2020 – £100m more than the spending limit of the levy control framework, but less than the estimated £1.5bn overspend predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility last July.

Profits at National Grid rose 6% to £4.1bn last year as the company benefited from Britain importing cheaper power from France, the company’s annual results show. The utility giant, which manages Britain’s gas and electricity networks, saw a “strong performance” from the its 2 gigawatt undersea power cable between the UK to France, with operating profits rising 19% to £123m. Chief executive John Pettigrew said the company was able to benefit from UK traders buying cheaper power from Europe, reports Reuters, but he expected this will “go back to more normal levels” this year. National Grid is also pushing ahead with plans to build more connections, including a second to France and a new one to Denmark, notes Reuters, with final decisions expected in late 2016 and 2018, respectively. The Times and Associated Press in the MailOnline also cover the story.

The British Museum was temporarily closed for around four hours on Thursday during a protest from Greenpeace aimed at BP’s sponsorship of the museum’s new ancient Egypt exhibition. Approximately 85 people took part in the protest, which involved hanging huge banners of the museum’s columns, renaming the new Sunken Cities Egypt exhibition as ‘Sinking Cities’. The Telegraph reports that it was the first time the museum has closed as a result of protesters, amid fears for the safety of visitors. The police arrested 11 people for aggravated trespass.

There are around 96,500 low-carbon and renewable energy businesses in the UK, generating a total annual turnover of £46.2bn for the economy, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). These companies provide jobs for the equivalent of 238,500 full-time employees, the data shows, the majority of which are in the construction sector, reports Energy Live News. The figures are the first update under a new method of measuring the low carbon and renewable energy economy, which makes comparisons with previous years difficult, notes BusinessGreen.

Russia will loan Egypt $25bn to finance building and operating a nuclear power plant in Egypt. The two countries signed an agreement in November last year for Russia to build Egypt’s first nuclear power plant in Egypt and to extend Egypt a loan to cover the cost of construction. Only now has the value of the deal been disclosed, reports Reuters, which Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi says will be will be paid off over 35 years.

With CO2 levels in the southern hemisphere reaching 400 parts per million, Readfearn asks scientists about the last time the Earth’s atmosphere reached this milestone over 15m years ago. “Climate change is about the rate of change, ” says Dr David Etheridge, a principal research scientist at Australia’s CSIRO. “This is all coming at us very quickly and the increases are faster than anything we have seen in history. That’s a big issue.” When sustained CO2 levels were this high 15-20m years ago, temperatures were 3-6C warmer than today and sea levels were 25-40 metres higher. “And therein lies the rub,” says Prof Michael Mann of Penn State University. “Once you melt an ice sheet, it takes many, many thousands of years to rebuild it.”

Writing in the Guardian, climate and ocean scientist Dr Sarah Myhre argues that fellow scientists should be more vocal about the dangers of climate change. As nations, businesses and communities are “more and more threatened by the advancing impacts of climate warming…our role as objective scientists has to change.” We have passed the threshold where “climate change shifts from being about science and quantification to being about loss and the suffering of others,” Myhre says. She challenges other scientists to “summon our voices and start shouting from rooftops…What could you write? What could you say? Who could you speak to? Is your voice really being heard?”

As cumulative CO2 emissions rise, global surface temperature changes in proportion. But is the same true when emissions turn net negative, a prerequisite for most scenarios holding warming below 2C? According to a new model study, the temperature response when CO2 is decreasing is slower because the deep ocean is still adjusting to previous increases, suggesting that “positive CO2 emissions are more effective at warming than negative emissions are at cooling”.

As part of a special issue on the “urban planet”, a new study in Science looks at how cities can reduce energy consumption and better harness renewable energy sources. As well as technical advances, the study explores the economic, behavioural and political challenges that stand in the way of decentralised energy generation – the hallmark of low-carbon, resilient and “livable” cities.