The Trump administration will pull the US out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, according to Myron Ebell, who headed the US Environmental Protection Agency transition team until 20 January. Ebell, speaking at an event in London co-hosted by climate sceptic group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, repeatedly said he was not speaking on behalf of the administration and did not know what it planned. He also said he had never met president Trump. Ebell nevertheless predicted the move to leave the Paris deal would come within 12 months (Mailonline adds his view that it could be “as early as tomorrow”), despite the likely opposition of Rex Tillerson, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, reports the Financial Times. Bloomberg reports Ebell’s comments under the headline “Trump likely to withdraw” from Paris, whereas the Hill and the Independent say his prediction was that the US will “definitely” pull out of Paris. Speaking at the London event, Ebell called the green movement the “greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world”, report the Guardian and Climate Home. Ebell also railed against the “climate industrial complex” while claiming only to represent the interests of “freedom”, reports DeSmog UK. It adds that the Competitive Enterprise Institute, where Ebell works, is known to have received funding from a range of fossil fuel interests.

Countries will need to speed the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) if they are serious about reaching global goals on climate change, according to a new study covered by InsideClimate News and others. Slow progress on CCS is a weak link compared to “booming” wind and solar, reports Climate Home. Several authors of the describe their findings in a post for the Conversation. They say the 2C goal is still achievable “but the hard work is about to start”. Carbon Brief also covers the research.

President Trump’s ban on entry for those from seven Muslim-majority nations could hinder research and the recruitment of top talent, scientists and officials are warning, reports the New York Times. For InsideClimate News, Lisa Song reports that the ban has “stunned” climate scientists, leaving one researcher unable to join a field trip to Greenland.

Ministers should ban coal power stations from the UK’s capacity market, according to utility Scottish Power and trade group RenewableUK, reports the Guardian. The groups said it was an “obvious paradox” for the scheme to pay coal plants money to stay open when the government has committed to phasing them out by 2025. The capacity market pays firms to guarantee electricity supplies from 2017/18. An auction starting today will secure contracts for the coming winter.

Delays to the government’s carbon plan are “deeply concerning”, Iain Wright, chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee tells the Independent. The plan, on how the government intends to meet the UK’s legally binding fourth and fifth carbon budgets for 2024-2032, has been repeatedly delayed and now looks likely to slip beyond a self-imposed deadline of the end of March set only days ago by climate minister Nick Hurd.

Republicans in Congress are moving to roll back regulations on the oil, gas and mining industries, reports the Financial Times. Targets include a rule requiring these firms to disclose payments to foreign governments, reports Reuters. The Washington Post has a run down of the targets.

Official accounts for the climate sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation show its membership generated just £5409 in the year to 30 September 2016, writes Bob Ward in the Independent. The figure suggests it now has fewer than 60 members, he says, which would be a fall of two-thirds in five years. Despite apparently dwindling membership, the organisation “still enjoys a cosy relationship with some parts of the British media, particularly the Mail on Sunday”, Ward writes.

“Andrea Leadsom should ignore bickering about global warming and take radical steps to clean up our toxic cities”, writes Hugo Rifkind for the Times. “Air quality is not the stuff of computer models”, he adds.

The desire of Prince Charles “to use his privileged position to express personal views threatens to undermine a state visit by Donald Trump”, says a Times editorial. “The possibility that the prince would take issue with Mr Trump’s views on climate change…has been deemed a serious risk factor”, it says, adding: “To do so would be politically unwise and constitutionally improper”. Separately, climate sceptic writer James Delingpole uses a column in the Sun to say that a Prince Charles lecture to Trump “won’t have a fairytale ending…there’s a danger that Charles’s environmental agenda could hijack ceremonial event between two great nations”.

The capacity of the Earth’s land surface to absorb CO2 may have been underestimated, a new study suggests. In estimates of CO2 emissions, processes such as tree harvesting and land clearing from shifting cultivation have not been considered, the researchers say. As scientists know how much CO2 the land surface absorbs overall (the land “sink”), this implies that the extra emissions are being offset by greater CO2 uptake by the land. Therefore, land-based ecosystems might have greater potential to sequester carbon in the future, the researchers conclude.

A new study provides revised estimates of the sources of the black carbon (soot) that ends up in the Russian Arctic. Researchers collected measurements in northeastern Siberia for two years. Contrary to previous studies, the researchers find that contributions from gas flaring (6%), power plants (9%), and open fires (12%) are relatively small, with the major sources instead being transport (38%) and domestic (35%).

Storing domestic solar energy rather than returning it to the grid could reduce peak power demand, but would ultimately increase energy consumption, a new study suggests. The researchers show that a typical battery system for homes with solar panels could reduce peak power demand by 8–32%. But because this storage isn’t particularly efficient, the energy lost would mean higher household energy consumption. “Thus, home energy storage would not automatically reduce emissions or energy consumption unless it directly enables renewable energy,” the study concludes.