There is still a large gap between the pledges by governments to cut greenhouse gas emissions and the reductions needed to limit global warming to 2C or less, a new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report says. Current plans from national governments, and pledges made by private sector companies and local authorities across the world are only a third of what is needed, says the Evening Standard, and would lead to temperature rises of 3C or more by the end of this century. This “emissions gap” is “alarmingly high”, reports that BBC. UNEP also warns that if the emissions gap is not closed by 2030 then “it is extremely unlikely that the goal of holding global warming to well below 2 degrees C can still be reached”. Countries will need to phase out coal and invest in renewable energy even faster than previously expected, reports InsideClimate News. UNEP executive director Erik Solheim also hailed signs of progress, notes Reuters, thanks to an apparent three-year plateau in CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, cement production and other industrial processes, largely due to slower growth in coal use in China and the US. “We are at a watershed moment where we have stopped the rise in CO2 emissions, there is every reason to believe we can bring them down, and we see great news coming from all over the world every day,” he said. Solheim also said the US is likely to live up to the Paris climate deal despite President Donald Trump’s planned pullout, because “all the big American companies” are working toward greener operations, reports the Associated Press. “In all likelihood, the United States of America will live up to its Paris commitment, not because of the White House, but because of the private sector,” he said. The Mirror, Vox, The Hill, Business Green and Carbon Pulse also cover the report, as does Carbon Brief – in addition to a guest post from two of the authors of the chapter on negative emissions. Meanwhile, another Reuters article describes a new study that finds the world’s 250 biggest listed companies account for a third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced that it will bar certain scientists from serving on its independent advisory boards. The decision had been widely expected since EPA administrator Scott Pruitt outlined the move during a speech last week at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “Whatever science comes out of EPA, (it) shouldn’t be political science,” Pruitt said in a press release, adding that committee members will be “financially independent” from the agency. The move “sets in motion a fundamental shift”, says the Washington Post, “one that could change the scientific and technical advice that historically has guided the agency as it crafts environmental regulations”. Initial analysis of the current membership of the EPA’s main science advisory board suggests that five of the 47 members could be barred by the new policy, says Nature News. A much larger number might be affected in forthcoming panel appointments, as the terms of 15 people expired at the end of September. The Associated Press, The Hill and Grist also have the story. Elsewhere, Scientific American reports that a US Forest Service scientist has been blocked from speaking about climate change and wildfires at an international conference next month.

Cod, herring and haddock could migrate away from Scotland’s west coast waters because of warming sea temperatures, according to new research. Scientists at the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) say the cold water species are already nearing “edge of their temperature tolerance range” and could vanish from the west coast by the year 2100. Over the coming decades these species will gradually be replaced by more abundant saithe, hake and whiting, reports the Times. Between 1985 and 2013, the population of saithe and hake off the Scottish west coast has increased fourfold. The study’s lead author Dr Natalia Serpetti said the results “highlight the importance of considering environmental change, as well as fishing quotas, to achieve sustainable fisheries management at an ecosystem level,” reports the Herald. “Even under the best case climate change scenario, cod and herring stocks were predicted to collapse off Scotland’s west coast,” Serpetti adds in the Scottish edition of the Daily Mail.

International climate negotiations seeking to implement the Paris agreement are being undermined by corporate interests, a new report warns. The investigation, co-authored by Corporate Accountability, uncovers a string of examples in which fossil fuel companies have gained high-level access to negotiations and manipulated outcomes, including the world’s biggest polluters sponsoring the meetings in return for access to high-level events. The report argues that corporate influence has skewed outcomes on finance, agriculture and technology. For example, the US and Canada have adopted agricultural corporations’ approach to “climate-smart agriculture” – arguing against regulation of non-CO2 emissions from agriculture – and most of the funds from the Green Climate Fund have so far been allocated to private sector projects.

The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) will once again close its Halley VI research station at the end of the coming Southern Hemisphere summer as the Brunt Ice Shelf it sits on is developing two large cracks. BAS withdrew its staff from Halley this past winter because of uncertainty over how these fissures would evolve. The station will be shut down between March and November 2018, says the Guardian, with the 14-strong staff who had been gearing up for the winter stint redeployed elsewhere in Antarctica or brought home to the UK. The cracks are most likely part of the normal calving processes that occur at the edges of ice shelves, says BAS director of science Prof David Vaughan. “We don’t believe that this is related to climate change – certainly not atmospheric change,” he said. “We don’t truly know enough about the oceans to exclude it, but it is not a strong line of reasoning at the moment.” The station has already been relocated because of one crack, notes the Telegraph, and now the second crack has been “steadily growing to the north of the station since last year”.

Uncertainty over Britain’s participation in the European Union’s carbon market after Brexit is unacceptable and clarity is needed to avoid risks to business, two Scottish ministers have said in a letter to the UK government. Roseanna Cunningham, Scotland’s climate change secretary, and Michael Russell, minister for UK negotiations on Scotland’s place in Europe, asked the UK government for “immediate discussions” on the future of Britain’s involvement in the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS). Britain is the EU’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and its utilities are among the largest buyers of carbon permits, but the EU has decided to void permits issued by any country leaving the bloc from January 2018 onwards. “The EU amendment presents significant and immediate risks to business in Scotland in terms of additional costs of compliance if UK allowances can no longer be freely allocated,” the letter warns.

Members of the US International Trade Commission (ITC) have made three different recommendations for restricting solar panel and solar cell imports to the US. These range from an immediate 30% tariff on all imported solar modules to a four-year quota system that allows the import of up to 8.9 gigawatts of solar cells and modules in the first year. The ITC made a preliminary finding in September that domestic solar manufacturers had been harmed by cheap imports after a complaint brought by bankrupt Georgia-based producer Suniva Inc in April, says another Reuters article. “The US solar industry let out a collective sigh of relief” as the ITC’s recommendations were less than half what Suniva Inc requested, says Bloomberg. Other US solar companies had been bracing for higher duties, which they said would have disrupted the $29bn industry, stifling installations and triggering job cuts. President Trump will make a final decision on the restrictions later this year. The Hill also has the story.

Argentina plans to start building two new nuclear reactors next year, the government has announced, as well as extending the life of one of their three existing plants. Argentina’s undersecretary of nuclear energy, Julian Gadano, told Reuters the new reactors will be built over the next 10 years at a cost of $13bn. A new 720 MW nuclear plant will be built by a Canadian company and the Argentinian state nuclear company, and a second project for a 1,150MW reactor will be built by the China National Nuclear Corp. The projects will be financed 85% by Chinese institutions and 15% by the Argentine treasury.

In the FT’s Big Read, South Asia correspondent Kiran Stacey explores the risks of a bubble developing in India’s solar sector. The recent auction to build the 500-megawatt Bhadla solar park in Rajasthan was one of the lowest prices for solar power ever seen anywhere in the world – at just Rs2.44 ($0.04) for every unit of electricity sold. “But despite ambitious targets and blue-chip backing, some in the industry itself are now starting to ask whether projects can really be built at such low costs,” writes Stacey. Problems include air pollution sapping solar power generation by a quarter and the cost of solar panels now rising as countries such as the US and India consider putting duties on Chinese-made panels. “Already, concerns over the runaway Indian solar power industry have started to slow its growth,” says Stacey. “The pace of new tender announcements has slowed 68% in the past year…and since May, no company has come close to bidding Rs2.44 for a new project.”  “The growing confidence in the solar sector around the world would take a heavy blow if Indian projects were to become financially distressed or even collapse,” Stacey concludes. There is also a related news article in the FT as the boss of the company that won the Bhadla auction now says he regrets the cheap deal, “fuelling fears that the country’s fast-falling solar energy prices may be unsustainable”. “When we made our bid, we factored in a price for every solar panel of 30 cents per watt of power, but since then it has risen to around 35c. Our bid works at 30c,” said Manoj Kumar Upadhyay. If he was bidding again, “the price would be closer to Rs3”, he added.

The unique community of fish that live in the Arctic is being rapidly altered by fish arriving further south as a result of climate change, research finds. Large, generalist, motile species, such as cod and haddock, are the most likely to move towards the poles as temperatures continue to rise, the authors say. “We found that the functional traits characteising Arctic fish communities, mainly composed of small-sized bottom-dwelling benthivores [feeds on bottom-dwelling prey], are being rapidly replaced by traits of incoming boreal [from the climatic zone south of the Arctic] species, particularly the larger, longer lived, and more piscivorous [fish-eating] species,” they say.