Scotland’s draft climate change plan lacks credibility, according to an independent body. The UK Committee on Climate Change (CCC) found the plan focused too much on the rapid deployment of low carbon heating rather than addressing wider areas like transport emissions. But it added that the Scottish government was still leading the UK on tackling greenhouse gas emissions. In response, the Scottish government has said it showed “the strong progress being made”. The BBC says ministers met the 2015 target to reduce emissions and are on course to hit the interim aim of reducing emissions by 42% by 2020. The Times carries the story, too, focusing on the CCC’s warning that Scottish ministers must bring forward new policies to curb emissions in sectors such as transport and heating. The Guardian says it is an “unusually critical progress report” by the CCC. In response, Roseanna Cunningham, the Scottish environment secretary, says her government is now putting action on climate at the heart of its policymaking. Its final plan, due to be published in 2018, would reflect the committee’s advice. The Scotsman also carries the story.

Britain will need to boost its generation of electricity by about a quarter, Scottish Power has estimated. The energy firm said electric cars and a shift to electric heating could send demand for power soaring. Its chief executive also said there would have to be a major investment in the wiring necessary to handle rapid charging of car batteries. Keith Anderson was speaking as the firm reached the milestone of 2,000 megawatts of wind power capacity. That equates to about an eighth of the British total. He added: “The system that takes the wires into the house, down the street, to local businesses – how do we make sure it can cope with that level of demand? It’ll take a long time to plan and deliver.” Carbon Brief recently published a factcheck on “misleading headlines about electric car charging while boiling the kettle”. Separately, Jonathan Ford, the Financial Times’ chief leader writer, promotes a new briefing published by the climate sceptic lobby group Global Warming Policy Foundation which seeks to argue that “cheap renewable contracts [for offshore wind] could be options in disguise”.

Portuguese schoolchildren from the area struck by the country’s worst forest fires are seeking crowdfunding to sue 47 European countries, alleging that the states’ failure to tackle climate change threatens their right to life. The children, from the Leiria region of central Portugal, where fires this summer killed more than 60 people and left hundreds injured, are being represented by British barristers who are experts in environmental and climate change law. Supported by the NGO Global Legal Action Network (Glan), they are seeking an initial £35,000 to mount the case in the European court of human rights.

Floods, droughts and heatwaves could cost the economy tens of billions of pounds and hundreds of thousands of jobs by 2050, according to a new report commissioned by conservation charity WWF-UK. A “natural capital” stress test found that flooding in 2050 on a similar scale to the winter of 2013/14 would affect more than twice as many homes if current policies – such as allowing construction on flood plains – continued. The process is based on stress tests used in the financial sector to try to work out the future health of a company, such as a bank, in the event of an economic crisis. WWF-UK said there were some “major environmental challenges” on the way, so it made sense to try to “future-proof” the economy.

The future of the US solar power industry, writes the Financial Times, has been placed in the hands of President Donald Trump after the country’s International Trade Commission ruled that domestic panel manufacturers had suffered serious injury from foreign competitors. It says: “The finding of injury in a 4-0 vote of the commissioners, following an inquiry launched in May, means the ITC will now move on to make recommendations for remedial action, due on November 13. The ultimate decision on whether to impose tariffs or other remedies lies with the president, who has been looking for ways to use trade barriers to protect US manufacturing. Renewable energy groups warned that imposing tariffs on imported panels would raise prices for consumers, and could cost tens of thousands of jobs in the US solar industry in marketing, installation and maintenance.” The Washington Post also carries the story.

Emerging markets are set to eclipse developed nations next year in their capacity to generate wind and solar power as equipment costs fall and the energy market approaches “peak coal”, according to Moody’s, the credit rating agency. The FT says: “While developed countries have long been leaders in renewable power generation, emerging economies are close to overtaking them, bringing their total installed capacity of wind and solar to 307GW and 272GW — respectively 51 per cent and 53 per cent of global capacity, according to Moody’s calculations. China accounts for the lion’s share of the upsurge.” Separately, the FT reports that “the head of BP’s trading arm in Asia [has] said global oil consumption led by China is helping to reduce excess crude stockpiles and alleviate pressure on a market now into its third year of a downturn”.

A frontpage story in today’s edition of the Sydney Morning Herald says Australia will fall short of its Paris carbon reduction targets signed under former prime minister Tony Abbott unless it increases its renewable energy production to levels higher even than the Labor party’s plan for 50% green energy reliance by 2030. The first assessment by the Australia Institute’s new Climate and Energy Program, to be released on Monday, has found that unless a higher burden is placed on the more expensive process of carbon reductions in other sectors – agriculture, transport and manufacturing – then the electricity generation sector will need to aim for a renewable energy target of at least 66% by 2030, and possibly as high as 75%. This would mean the fossil fuel component being reduced to perhaps a quarter of the size it is now. The Guardian also covers the story.

Unearthed, formally known as EnergyDesk, has interviewed David Attenborough, the legendary natural history presenter, at his home in London. On climate change sceptics, Attenborough says: “It’s a free world and we aren’t thought dictators. All we have to do is go along declaring the facts as we see the facts and producing the evidence whenever we can. The trouble is there are a lot of vested interests and a lot of people who it suits to deny it. It’s what happened in the smoking debates in the fifties. I think there were evil men, I certainly think that – I think there were people who really knew and denied it – but there were quite a lot who didn’t. And I think there are probably plenty of people now who think ‘Well it’s not really true about carbon dioxide’. But all we can do, all anybody can do is go on stacking up the evidence from every quarter.” He adds: “My hope is that the world is coming to its senses…I’m so old i remember a time when…we didn’t talk about climate change, we talked about animals and species extermination. For the first time I’m beginning to think there is actually a groundswell, there is a change in the public view. I feel many more people are more concerned and more aware of what the problems are. Young people – people who’ve got fifty years of their life ahead of them – they are thinking they ought to be doing something about this – that’s a huge change.”

Simon Clarke, the Conservative MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, argues: “I fully understand local concerns around onshore wind farms. I would never impose one in the face of community opposition. But as things stand we have, in effect, a national ban that takes the power to out of the hands of local people and leaves it with Sir Humphrey. Onshore wind is inherently cheaper than offshore wind…Surely local people should be able to decide if they want to take part in this revolution?…This has been a great few weeks for supporters of action on climate and renewable energy – and if we continue to steer a sensible course between the fatalists and sceptics, we can meet our Paris targets and become a hub for cheap, clean energy.” Meanwhile, in BusinessGreen, Luke Clark, head of public affairs at RenewableUK writes: “This month’s astounding announcement showed that offshore wind can produce power for under 6p per kilowatt hour – lower than the cost of new nuclear and new gas plants. That doesn’t change the need for an energy mix, but it does change how we think about the costs of the choices we make in building that mix…Former fishermen have become captains of offshore wind service vessels and ex-North Sea oil workers have become wind turbine technicians. If there is an industry with a better record of delivering multi-billion-pound energy infrastructure projects, I’d like to see it.”

RealClimate has published a lengthy explainer by German climate scientist Prof Stefan Rahmstorf in the wake of the controversial 1.5C carbon budgets study which came out last week. He cites Carbon Brief’s own factcheck and then concludes: “At this point, debating whether we have 0.2C more or less to go until we reach 1.5C is an academic discussion at best, a distraction at worst. The big issue is that we need to see falling emissions globally very very soon if we even want to stay well below 2C.” The Sunday Times has published two comment pieces on the back of the study, one by climate sceptic Rod Liddle and the other by science writer Nigel Hawkes who concludes: “The climate warmers aren’t wrong, though a touch more humility would be appreciated.” In the Hill, Bob Ward, the policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, explains why a recent ruling by the UK press regulator confirming that a Mail on Sunday article had been “significantly misleading” about how a NOAA study had “duped” world leaders ahead of the Paris Agreement. Ward aims his article at Lamar Smith, the Republican chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, who had heralded and promoted the false Mail on Sunday article. Meanwhile, in the Sunday Telegraph, climate sceptic Christopher Booker continues his weekly attack on climate change, this time something about hurricanes.

Extreme climate events could increase the chances of falling into poverty, according to a study conducted in Nigeria. The study analysed the impact of the 2012 flood that occurred in Nigeria on households’ chance of entering into poverty. The study finds that the flood “may have significantly decreased the per capita expenditure of households located in the flood affected areas and were heavily dependent on agriculture for their income.” The researchers add: “The effects were not uniform across the households as the result showed that the effects were more on female-headed households compared to male-headed households, and more on households that had no access to credit compared to those that had access to credit.”