Many publications cover this year’s coal report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), which finds that global demand has fallen for the first time in two years despite growth in Asia. The Guardian reports that the decline is largely down to countries in Europe and the US turning their back on coal in favour of renewables and “cheap gas” (which echoes recent analysis published by Carbon Brief). This year’s dip in demand was also driven by “high growth in hydroelectricity and relatively low electricity demand in India and China”, Bloomberg says. Reuters reports that demand is now expected to “remain stable” until 2024. “Despite the growth in low-carbon fuels in recent decades, the reality is coal remains a major fuel in global energy markets…the world consumes 65% more coal today than in the year 2000,” the report reads, according to Reuters. Demand is expected to remain stable for the next few years as reductions in the EU and the US are offset by growth in China, India and southeast Asia, Reuters adds. The Times covers the findings with the headline: “Coal use in Asia blunts UK efforts to tackle climate change.” The article says: “Britain’s success in phasing out coal to tackle climate change will be eclipsed by the expansion of coal-fired power in Asia over the next five years.” Grist covers the report with the headline: “Coal isn’t dying. It moved to Asia.”

The Independent reports that UK prime minister Boris Johnson could scrap a promise made to guarantee environmental protections are withheld after Brexit. Johnson made the promise to protect environmental standards after Brexit in October, when Johnson was trying to convince MPs to accept his EU withdrawal agreement. Johnson plans to reintroduce the bill this week. According to the Independent, sources at No 10 refused to say whether the guarantees on the environment would be in the revised draft being brought back this week.

In other UK news, the Guardian reports that Scotland has been warned it could miss its next climate target after “failing to take sufficiently radical and urgent action”. The warning was made by the Committee on Climate Change, which advises the UK and devolved governments on their targets and policies. The CCC said that Scotland’s recent rapid progress on cutting emissions was in danger of stalling because its policies on transport, farming and home heating are “insufficiently far-reaching”. Scotland risks missing its target of cutting overall emissions by 56% compared with 1990 levels by 2020, the CCC says, and needs to take “urgent and significant action” to hit its target of net zero by 2045, the Guardian reports. BusinessGreen also covers the news.

Several publications report on a new study using satellite data which found that a gas-well accident at an Ohio fracking site led to one of the largest methane leaks ever recorded in the US. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study uses data from a satellite that continuously studies the planet in search of methane leaks, according to the New York Times. The scientists behind the study told the New York Times that the new findings reinforced the view that methane leaks could be far more widespread than previously thought. The study is also covered by the Washington Post and Reuters.

An editorial in the Financial Times lambasts the lack of climate action at this year’s UN climate talks in Madrid. “The year is closing on a sober note for the climate,” it reads, adding: “As the longest UN climate change talks ever held stumbled to an end in Madrid, the world’s governments responded to the threat of climate breakdown with a familiar display of rancorous discord.” The failure puts the onus on the UK, which will hold next year’s climate talks in Glasgow, the editorial says: “The meeting in Scotland will be the most important since the Paris agreement because it is supposed to deliver a new round of emissions-cutting pledges from countries…For a post-Brexit UK, the event offers opportunities as well as challenges, and Britain is potentially well-placed to exploit them.” In a similar vein, an editorial in the Guardian asks whether Boris Johnson is “up for” the task of climate diplomacy: “The Paris agreement has Johnson facing one way on climate, but Brexit has him facing the other way. He will have to choose, perhaps symbolically by cracking down on City financing for dirty coal abroad.” An editorial in the Washington Post (which twice links to Carbon Brief’s detailed summary of COP25) says that “with US representatives not only refusing to lead but actually pushing in the wrong direction, the wheels are coming off the Paris accord”. Meanwhile, an editorial in the LA Times says: “The world needed a bang from the Madrid climate meeting. It got a whimper instead.”

Elsewhere, BBC News explores “five things we’ve learned” from the Madrid talks. These include that “leadership is REALLY important”, “disconnect is the key word” and “Glasgow has a mountain to climb”. Climate Home News explores why this COP “turned its back on climate action”. A second Climate Home News article explores what was achieved in Madrid and what is likely to happen next. E&E News also produces a summary of the talks, which it describes as “limping to a disappointing close”. The article says: “Much of the blame fell on the Chilean delegation, which led the talks. The Chilean presidency was criticised for failing to balance the needs of different negotiating groups and for a process that ran perpetually behind.” However, Chile has defended itself against such criticism, Reuters reports, instead pointing the blame at big polluters. Chilean President Sebastian Pinera told local media: “You have to convince 195 countries, and so if just one opposes, there is no agreement. The four big countries didn’t accept the proposals.”

An opinion article in the Daily Telegraph by former Labour MP and fracking “tsar” Natascha Engel argues that climate change policies could be accepted by ordinary voters in “the new Tory heartlands” if they offered voters better prospects. She argues: “It’s an important lesson if the Tories want to keep hold of their new voters: [ordinary voters] are talking about broader environmental issues when they say they care about climate change; they are deeply price-conscious; and above all, they will vote for jobs.”

The different phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) – the main source of decadal variability in the North Pacific – could become less predictable under future climate change, a new study suggests. Using CMIP5 climate models, the researchers show that “the prediction lead time and the associated amplitude of the PDO decrease sharply under greenhouse warming conditions”. The study’s findings present “a cruel reality”, says an accompanying News & Views article: “While we are currently struggling with how to obtain reliable PDO prediction one or two years in advance, ongoing greenhouse warming may lead to a more difficult situation, as the improvement of predictive skills may be not fast enough to offset the reduction in PDO predictability.”

Demand-side response (DSR) measures – which help integrate variable power generation from renewables into the electricity grid – “may disproportionately impact the energy bills and health of vulnerable households”, new research suggests. The study examines almost 7,500 households in the southwestern US as part of a randomised pilot study of “time of use” (TOU) electricity rates, which charge higher rates during peak times. The findings indicate that bills for households with elderly and disabled occupants saw disproportionate increases, and “predicts worse health outcomes for households with disabled and ethnic minority occupants than those for non-vulnerable counterparts”. While the findings might not translate into cooler parts of the US, an accompanying News & Views article says, “it seems reasonable to expect that one of the authors’ recommendations – that building energy efficiency improvement should be employed to help avoid negative outcomes for groups with vulnerability indicators – would likely apply in both contexts”.

Hundreds of species of nocturnal birds in the US are migrating earlier in the year, a new study says. The researchers use 24 years of remotely sensed data collected by weather surveillance radar to quantify the response of a “nocturnal avian migration system” in the US to temperature change. The findings suggest “the average peak migration timing advanced in spring and autumn, and these changes were generally more rapid at higher latitudes”. The study adds: “During spring and autumn, warmer seasons were predictive of earlier peak migration dates.”