The UK government has asked the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) how and when to make the leap to a zero carbon economy, BBC News reports. [As Carbon Brief’s updated analysis piece notes, the government has asked when the UK should hit net-zero greenhouse gas emissions “and/or” net-zero CO2, as well as whether the UK’s current aim to cut all emissions 80% by 2050 is sufficient]. “If it happens it would mark an extraordinary transformation of an economy built on burning fossil fuels,” BBC News says. Energy and clean growth minister Claire Perry has written to CCC chair Lord Deben asking his committee to provide advice on whether the target is needed, BusinessGreen writes. The transport, aviation, farming and power industries will be “ordered to comply” with the zero emissions target, the Sunday Times reports [this is not correct; however, all sectors of the economy would have to contribute towards the goal]. The Sunday Times adds that “reducing to zero would be a huge challenge”. The Daily Mail‘s write up says the new targets would mean “more radical changes than the country’s existing commitments” if they are adopted, including faster progress in switching to electric power for transport and an increase in planting trees. The Press Association reports comments from prime minister Theresa May, who said: “To ensure that we continue to lead from the front, we are asking the experts to advise on targets for net zero emissions.” The article also carries comments from shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, saying the announcement came as government “slashes support for small scale renewables, scales back support for electric vehicles.” The article continues Long-Bailey’s comments: “This gaping contradiction is no accident – it is hypocrisy of the highest order, and an affront to those communities on which this government has forced the fracking industry.” The Independent says environmental groups welcomed the move but cautioned that any new goals must be sufficiently ambitious to avoid the worst effects of climate change.The Daily Telegraph says the call for fresh targets makes the UK the first major economy to grow its climate ambitions since the landmark 1.5C UN report warned that “unprecedented” action is needed to avert the worst effects of climate change.ITV News and Sky News and Bloomberg also have the story.

Fracking is today due to begin in Lancashire, reports the Press Association. Energy firm Cuadrilla had hoped to start work at the site in at Preston New Road near Blackpool, on Saturday but this was delayed by the effects of Storm Callum, it adds. The fracking firm was given the go-ahead to resume drilling by the High Court on Friday after the judge dismissed safety concerns, the Daily Telegraphreports. Bob Dennett, who applied for the injunction to prevent the company from fracking the UK’s first horizontal shale gas, said he plans to take the case to the Court of Appeal, the Daily Mail reports. The Independent reports that ex-Nasa scientist James Hansen has written to energy minister Claire Perry warning that supporting fracking is a grave mistake that will contribute to “climate breakdown”. Hansen also told theObserver over the weekend that the UK “joins Trump, ignores science… full throttle ahead with the worst fossil fuels,” in its decision to press on with fracking. The Independent meanwhile has an editorial arguing “fracking is too high a price to pay for cheap energy”. In the Guardian , Green MP Caroline Lucas writes that the “high court’s decision in favour of the shale gas giant will not deter the mass movement fighting the industry all the way” The fracking story was widely covered over the weekend by many other outlets, includingBBC News and Reuters. Carbon Brief has also updated its Q&A on fracking and climate change with the news. In related news, the Times reports that it has emerged that the judge who jailed three fracking protesters has family links to the oil and gas industry. The protestors could see the sentences overturned, the Times reports.

US president Donald Trump has accused climate change scientists of having a “political agenda” as he cast doubt on whether humans were responsible for the earth’s rising temperatures, reports BBC News. “But Mr Trump also said he no longer believed climate change was a hoax,” it adds. The Guardian says Trump made the comments during an interview with CBS programme 60 Minutes that aired last night. Trump said: “I think something’s happening. Something’s changing and it’ll change back again. I don’t think it’s a hoax. I think there’s probably a difference. But I don’t know that it’s manmade. I will say this: I don’t want to give trillions and trillions of dollars. I don’t want to lose millions and millions of jobs.” Many other new outlets have covered the story. CBS News has the full transcript.

Forcing Theresa May to abandon her Chequers plan and back a Canada-style trade deal would be a “disaster” for the environment, a coalition of 13 environmental organisations working on Brexit has today told Michael Gove. The NGOs said this would put Gove’s green credentials at risk. BusinessGreenreports on the latest government Brexit technical notices, writing that “disruption to carbon and energy trading looms in event of no deal”. Meanwhile Climate Change News provides an update on the status of Euratom talks warning that no deal on March 29 still threatens power and medical supply. Reuters reports comments from the government on Friday saying Britain will be excluded from the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) if the country leaves the bloc in March 2019 without a deal.

The EU is planning to allow “state aid” (government support) for electric battery research and will offer billions of euros of co-funding to companies willing to build giant battery factories in the bloc, reports the Financial Times. Roughly 80% of current and planned battery production capacity is in Asia, the article notes. Separately, the UK, which is leaving the EU, has ended incentives for consumers buying plug-in hybrid electric cars and “slashed” support for pure electric vehicles, according to the Guardian. The paper says the car industry – which lobbied against a more ambitious government strategy on moving to zero-emissions vehicles earlier this year –  is calling the grant changes “astounding”. Meanwhile, the US has passed the million electric vehicle mark according to E&E News. In a feature republished by Scientific American, E&E News notes that transport is nevertheless the fastest growing contributor to emissions in the country.

Climate minister Claire Perry has said it is not the government’s job to advise people on a climate-friendly diet, in an interview with BBC News to mark the start of Green GB week. Scientists say we ought to eat much less meat because the meat industry causes so many carbon emissions, but Perry’s comments have shown “just how hard that will be”. Perry also refused to say whether she agreed with scientists’ conclusions that meat consumption needed to fall, the BBC adds. Meanwhile, in another interview with the Times on Saturday, Perry said environmentalists who campaign against fracking are peddling “wild myths”. “Gas is a relatively easy fossil fuel to decarbonise, it’s much cleaner than coal and oil and we are importing more and more of it,” she said. “We have a choice — we can either import more and more of it from a market in which the swing producer is Russia or we could explore in a sober, science-led way a resource that’s right beneath our feet.” Perry also has an article in the local Eastern Press Daily outlining how Norfolk can “play its part” in tackling climate change. Meanwhile business and energy secretary Greg Clark writes in the Daily Telegraph that “now is the time to reap the benefits of a low carbon economy”.

There is a 10% likelihood that global average temperature in one year by 2021 will temporarily exceed 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, a new study suggests. Using decadal climate predictions, the researchers assess the chances that natural variability combined with human-caused warming will push temperatures over the 1.5C limit between 2017 and 2021. There is a 38% chance that a single month exceeds 1.5C, the findings show, but “virtually no chance of the five‐year mean being above the threshold”.

As the final part of their periodic assessment reports, the Intergovernmental Panel on the Climate Change produces an overall “synthesis report”. A new paper assesses to what extent these summary reports meet the needs of “an increasingly decentralised and polycentric [climate] policy landscape”. The reports necessarily require “standardisation, aggregation and simplification”, the researchers note, which allows them to “produce a coherent story of global climate change”. However, this process also means the synthesis reports “are less attuned to demands for geographically-sensitive representations of climate impacts, vulnerabilities and a diversity of response options,” the study concludes.