Windy weather across Europe this week has set records for renewable power, reports the Guardian. Wind, nuclear and solar power were together generating more electricity than gas and coal combined at 1pm on Wednesday, for the first time ever. The record 19.3GW output of renewable energy – including hydropower and biomass – was enough to meet more than 50pc of midday power demand which reached 35.4GW, reports the Telegraph. The news comes after a report from international renewable body Ren21 found the world added enough renewable energy capacity to power every house in the UK, Germany, France and Italy combined last year, the Independent reports.

France will go beyond its initial international commitments to combat climate change after US President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of last year’s Paris accord, a spokesman for the French government said on Wednesday. “The aim of the president and Nicolas Hulot (Ecology Minister) is to go beyond the targets we set ourselves within the framework of the Paris agreement,” government spokesman Christophe Castaner told reporters after a government meeting. He added that a detailed list of policy actions would be issued in the next 15 days.

Australia’s carbon emissions jumped at the start of 2017, the first time they have risen in the first few months of a year for more than a decade, projections produced for the Guardian have shown. The rise was driven by increases in emissions from electricity generation. “The unseasonal rise in emissions continues a trend of rising national emissions which began in 2014 and which the government’s own modelling suggests will continue for decades to come, based on current policies,” the Guardian writes.

US coastal areas will be hit by far more frequent and severe flooding events if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t slashed, new research has found. Rare floods will become the norm for places such as New York City, Seattle and San Diego if emissions are not curbed, found the study, which was undertaken by researchers from Princeton and Rutgers universities. The research comes as a bipartisan group of lawmakers wrote a letter urging appropriators to preserve the $25.3m in funding for the National and Regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers, as reported in The Hill

Hawaii has become the first US state to pass a law committing to the goals and limits of the Paris climate accord, despite President Donald Trump’s announcement he would withdraw the country from the agreement, the New York Times reports. The bill signed by Gov. David Ige in a Tuesday ceremony, formally aligns the state’s goals with the Paris climate agreement reports The Hill. “Together, we can directly contribute to the global agenda of achieving a more resilient and sustainable island Earth,” Ige said in a statement. Reuters and Carbon Pulse also carry the story. IN a seperate New York Times article meanwhile the mayors of Pittburgh and Paris together respond to Donald Trump’s statement made during his announcement that he will withdraw from the Paris climate deal that “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.” The two mayors respond: “As Mayor of Pittsburgh, I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris. As Mayor of Paris, I was elected to represent the citizens of Paris, not Pittsburgh.But the only way to do right by Pittsburghers and Parisians is to abide by the principles of the Paris Agreement, which guarantees the future health and prosperity of both of our cities — and every other city in the world.”

The president is acting for a world of yesterday, not tomorrow, says the Financial Times in an editorial on US President Donald Trump’s climate stance. “Donald Trump claims to be defending US jobs and industry by abandoning the international effort to tackle climate change. US multinationals have rushed to disassociate themselves from his decision.…The question, however, is how far the nascent United States Climate Alliance of state governments, cities and businesses can compensate for lack of federal support — assuming they do not face active federal obstruction, in the form of subsidies for coal, or tariffs on solar panel imports, for example.” In a separate article published in Project Syndicate , American economist Jeffrey Sachs argues Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement is not just dangerous for the world but “sociopathic”. “Here’s the simple truth: The entire world needs to move quickly and resolutely to a low-carbon energy system, in order to end emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases by mid-century.… Here’s more simple truth: With its large, rich, fossil-fuel-intensive economy, the US has done more than any other country to bring about the global peril of climate change, so it should accept its responsibility in helping to get us all out of danger. At a minimum, America should be eagerly cooperating with the rest of the world.”

As the UK wrestles with its biggest peacetime challenge in half a century, alongside the biggest security challenge in a generation and the biggest environmental challenge in human history, getting the answer right on who to vote for has rarely felt more important, writes James Murray. “Elections are not single issue referenda (we’ve seen how much damage they can do), but if you were to vote based solely on the question of what is best for the green economy, who should you back? Sadly, the answer, like everything else in this most confusing of elections, is anything but simple,” he writes, before considering each of the parties in turn. Carbon Brief has also published a grid allowing direct comparison of manifesto pledges from the different parties on energy and climate change.

When Donald Trump announced last week that the US was pulling out of the Paris accord on climate change, thoughts immediately turned to carbon border tax adjustments, writes Alan Beattie. But like many good ideas, the reality is far more complex. For a start, creating a comparable carbon cost across the varied forms of emission pricing…would be challenging. “There is a heartening amount of political will from the major economies to press ahead with carbon emissions reduction in the face of Mr Trump’s destructive decision. But the technical challenges of designing an international carbon border tax may be even harder than summoning the political will to create it.”

Appropriately for World Oceans Day, the journal Current Biology has published a special issue on the oceans, which includes Reviews, Primers, Features, and Quick Guides “discussing many aspects of this habitat that covers most of the Earth’s surface”. Among the articles, for example, is a Primer on “Polar oceans in a changing climate,” which discusses how some of the most rapid recent oceanic warming has been occurring at the poles, which “directly challenges the physiological tolerance of the resident organisms and indirectly affects their physical environment through decreasing ice cover and increasing river and glacial run-off.”

Rising summer average temperatures in India have increased the probability heat wave deaths between 1960 and 2009 by 146%, a new study says. Using data from the India Meteorological Department, researchers analysed changes in summer temperatures, the frequency, severity, and duration of heat waves, and heat-related deaths across India. Their results indicate that even moderate increases in average temperatures may cause large increases in heat-related deaths and that governments and international organisations need support “to build up the resilience of these vulnerable regions to more severe heat waves.”

A new study analyses changes in “large” wildfires – i.e. those that affect an area of more than 400 hectares – over a 30 year period across the Great Plains of the US between 1985-1994 and 2005-2014. The researchers find that the average number of large wildfires rose from 33 per year to 117 per year, the total area burned by increased 400%, and over half the region had greater than a 70% probability of a large wildfire occurring in the last decade.