Ministers have been accused of striking a major blow against household solar power after the government said its feed-in tariff (FIT) subsidy scheme would end next year without a replacement, the Guardian reports. Renewables advocates had hoped there would be a replacement for the scheme, but a government consultation launched on Thursday made it clear there would be no extension or new alternative. The Guardian quotes Emma Pinchbeck, executive director at RenewableUK: “Today’s confirmation that there will be no replacement for the feed-in tariff is a major blow to small-scale renewables in the UK.” The paper adds that: “Controversially, anyone installing solar after April will no longer even be paid for exporting their excess solar electricity to local power grids.” Solar Power Portal has a detailed analysis of the new proposals, while Energy Live News also has the story. The government also yesterday published a Call for Evidence on the support it should provide in the future for small-scale green power generation, reports BusinessGreen. A separate BusinessGreen story reports on changes to the government’s ECO energy efficiency scheme, also announced yesterday, which has been refocused on “affordable warmth” for fuel poor households, rather than carbon reduction.

The government yesterday unveiled a newly-updated strategy designed to prepare the UK for the most pressing climate risks over the next five years, BusinessGreen reports. The National Adaptation Programme 2018-2023 aims to tackle water shortages, flooding, soil erosion and overheating, as well as threats to infrastructure, business and industry. The strategy is, for the first time, integrated with plans to encourage infrastructure operators to report on the actions they are taking to adapt to climate change. Environment minister Lord Gardiner described the UK as “climate ready”, adding that the new plan “will help us develop our long-term plans to tackle these risks so we can continue our work to protect the nation today and for future generations”. But Chris Stark, chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change, identified several “gaps” in the strategy in areas such as on overheating, risks to the UK from climate change overseas and affordability of flood insurance. Energy Live News also covers the new plan.

The US House of Representatives passed a resolution on Thursday to denounce a carbon tax, reports Think Progress. The measure stated that a tax on CO2 emissions “would be detrimental to American families and businesses, and is not in the best interest of the United States”. Only 4 of the 43 Republicans who claim membership in the Climate Solutions Caucus voted against the resolution, reports Inside Climate News. “If the bipartisan caucus had held firm, the resolution would have been handily defeated,” it adds. However, the Bill is still notable for winning even a little Republican support, says Reuters. It will be unveiled on Monday by Carlos Curbelo, who represents a Miami-area district where he faces a tough re-election battle in a state that is confronting stronger storms and rising waters associated with climate change, Reuters adds. The Hillalso has the story.

A government-backed Carbon Capture, Utilisation, and Storage (CCUS) Taskforce has urged the government to act now to ensure the technology can be deployed at scale in the most cost effective manner, BusinessGreen reports. “Time is limited if we are to deliver CCUS on the scale which may be necessary by 2050,” the taskforce said in its concluding report yesterday. The report says at least two CCUS clusters should be up and running by the mid-2020s and calls on government to publish a policy framework and criteria in the first half of 2019.Euractiv reports on comments written by Claire Perry, the UK’s climate minister, in the forward to the report. “We want to have the option to deploy CCUS at scale during the 2030s, subject to costs coming down sufficiently,” Perry said. Sandbag, a not-for-profit climate change policy think tank, told Euractiv negative emissions have become even more important for tackling climate change as the UK and EU government consider a date to reach net zero emissions. “We look forward to the publication of the UK government’s deployment pathways in just a few months,” Sandbag added.

The Times reports that MPs have approved a price cap meaning that energy bills for “up to 11m households should fall this winter”. The paper explains: “Approval of the legislation moves the ball into the court of Ofgem, the regulator, which is preparing to consult in the coming weeks on the level of the cap. The government decided to introduce a cap on standard variable tariffs, the price-plans customers end up on by default, after it was learnt that they were overpaying by £1.4bn a year. It will apply to those who are not covered by existing caps, which limit prices for 5m vulnerable households.” The Sun is among the other publications covering the news. The paper includes a joint reaction by Claire Perry MP, the energy minister, and John Penrose MP: “Big energy companies won’t be able to shrug their shoulders and blame wholesale prices for eye-watering price rises while making record profits, like some did last year. Wholesale prices go down as well as up.”

A US judge yesterday threw out New York’s lawsuit seeking to hold five of the world’s biggest oil companies financially responsible for contributing to climate change, Bloomberg reports. John Keenan, the US district judge, said the problem of climate change is for Congress and the Executive Branch to address. The claims against Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, Shell and ConocoPhillips sought to recoup billions of dollars from the oil companies that New York City alleged were spent helping contribute to climate change, reports the Hill. A spokesman for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said they intend to appeal the decision. The New York Post, Inside Climate News and the New York Times all have the story. Grist meanwhile covers the story with an article arguing the climate change lawsuit is “just beginning”. It adds: “Just because one judge rules a certain way doesn’t mean other judges looking at similar cases will make the same decision.”

Energy giant SSE has lost £80m in profits due to the current heatwave, The Times reports. Customers used 10% less gas than expected in the three months to June, while still and dry conditions led to reduced output from wind and hydroelectric sources at a time when gas prices are “persistently high”. The Mail Online also covers the story, explaining that SSE “lost 430,000 customers [since last year] and was stung by charges linked to the merger of its retail arm with rival Npower.” Energy Live News also has the story.

A new study may help dispel fears of changes in Atlantic ocean currents leading to a “rapid cooling around the world with resulting global chaos”, writes Matt McGrath for BBC News. Scientists may have “found a natural pattern with declines, flat periods and increases over the decades” in the currents, says Professor Ka-Kit Tung from the University of Washington. According to the researchers, “a slower current will carry less heat down to the deep oceans meaning more will enter the atmosphere”, contributing to increases in atmospheric temperature. Carbon Brief also covered the research.

“Deep waters have long been seen as potential refuges for endangered corals,” writes Ed Yong in the Atlantic. “But a new study suggests that they offer no sanctuary.” Yong explains how scientists had expected that shallow-water coral species would appear on deep “mesophotic” reefs too, but that research in five countries suggests this is rarely true. “These habitats have very different communities of fish and corals than their shallower counterparts,” Yong writes. “[The new research] showed that even though a quarter of shallow-reef fish do descend into this world, they are far less common there — more like visitors than residents.”

Antarctic ice shelf break-ups over the past 50 years have led to speed-up, thinning, and retreat of upstream tributary glaciers and increases to rates of global sea-level rise. The southward progression of these episodes indicates a climatic cause and suggests that the larger Larsen C and George VI ice shelves may undergo a similar collapse in the future. This study examines the effect of the removal of these ice sheets on upstream tributary glaciers. Its finds that a collapse of Larson C would result in 2.5mm of sea level rise in 2100. The George VI Ice Shelf may add up to 8mm to global sea levels by 2100.

The consequences of global warming for fisheries are not well understood, but the geological record demonstrates that increases in atmospheric CO2 are frequently associated with ocean deoxygenation. Of particular interest is the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) where the CO2 input into the atmosphere was similar to the high-end IPCC RCP8.5 emission scenario. This paper finds that significant parts of the ocean must have become sulfidic during the PETM, rendering deep ocean areas uninhabitable by multi-cellular organisms. This could affect many marine species whose eco-zones stretch into the deep ocean.