As the next round of UN climate talks gets underway in Germany today, concerns over a possible US withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement are likely to dominate, says the BBC. The May meeting is normally a pretty low-key and technical affair but this time the mood is far more tense, as negotiators work behind the scenes to convince the US to stay in the deal. Britain’s Prime Minister, Theresa May, faced a call from leading environment and development groups to use her influence to disuade Donald Trump from leaving, reports The Guardian. A “strongly worded” letter from the heads of Oxfam, the RSPB, Greenpeace, WWF, Christian Aid, Cafod and other groups urged May to “pick up the phone” to her US counterpart. Separately, The Guardian has spoken to a number of key officials about a potential US departure from the deal, or significant backsliding on its pledge to reduce emissions. Frank Bainimarama, the prime minister of Fiji, who will officially head the UN climate change talks this week, said: “Don’t let the whole side down by leaving, just when we have a game plan.” Elsewhere, Reuters and The Financial Times report on a letter signed by 214 institutional investors with a collective $15 trillion of assets, urging governments to stand by their Paris commitments “regardless of what the U.S. administration does”. This comes as Australian conservative MP, Zed Seselja, warned that while the Turnbull government was committed to Paris agreement “as it stands”, a US departure would change the nature of the agreement, reports today’s Guardian. Over the weekend, Inside Climate News took a closer look at the two factions within the Trump administration battling it out over the Paris Agreement while Vox’s Dave Roberts says Bannon is “pulling one over on Trump”, adding that pulling out of Paris is “incredibly reckless and would shoot the US in the foot.”

Scott Pruitt, head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, has replaced half of the members of its key scientific review board, part of a broader effort to change the way the agency evaluates the scientific basis for its regulations. The 18-member board advises the EPA on whether the research it does has sufficient rigour and integrity, reports The Washington Post. Also over the weekend, The Washington Post reported that Pruitt will recuse himself from ongoing lawsuits he filed against his own agency. This includes cases challenging the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, the Clean Water Rule, the 2015 ozone pollution rule, the methane emissions limits for oil and natural gas, the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal and more, says The Hill. The Washington Post and The Hill both also report on the EPA’s sidelining of a website aimed at teaching schoolchildren about climate change. The children’s site, “A Student’s Guide to Global Climate Change”, still exists online but is effectively buried on the EPA’s website without any links to it, says The Hill.

A new report by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) has rated the UK poor on transparency in phasing out coal-fired power, with the coal sector benefitting from £356m a year in subsidies in the UK. The UK has committed to phasing out coal-fired plants by 2025 and, back in April, had its first full day of zero electricity generated from coal since the 19th century. ClimateHome reports the ODI’s finding that six EU member states have introduced support totalling nearly $1bn since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, which signalled a move away from fossil fuels. Justification in Germany and Poland, for example, of keeping old coal plants online as back-up generation for times when variable wind and solar power cannot meet demand is “false justification”, co-author Shelagh Whitley told Climate Home. Such capacity mechanisms are “favouring incumbents, where there is very little evidence that they provide the best solution to the problem…It is very well recognised that capacity mechanisms are a subsidy.”

Big energy suppliers failed to pass on wholesale cost savings to their customers despite record high profit margins last year, reports The Sunday Times. Analysis of company accounts by Lazarus Research shows the combined profits of five of the Big Six suppliers (British Gas, EDF Energy, Eon, Npower and Scottish Power) rose by 7.8% to almost £1.1 billion in 2016. The Conservatives pledge to cap energy prices has plunged the sector into uncertainty as it awaits details in the party’s manifesto, says the Times. Elsewhere, many of the UK’s biggest power companies have already withdrawn their cheapest deals in response to the government pledge to cap household energy bills, reports The Financial Times.

The Paris Agreement calls to hold the increase in the global average temperature to “well below 2°C” – but what does that mean? Glen Peters, a senior researcher at Cicero, explores some of the definitions and uncertainties associated with the targets laid out in the Paris Agreement. He says: “It appears that emission scenarios with a 66% or higher probability of staying below 2°C will be consistent with the Paris Agreement’s “well below 2°C”. This means we know what it takes to meet the ambition of the Paris Agreement, and there is no need to wait for the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C.”

Trailed on this morning’s front page of the Financial Times is the story of Russian hydropower company EN+ and its role in the country’s nascent renewable electricity industry. Already the world’s largest private hydropower company, EN+ is keen to ramp up its activities, says the piece, but stories like this are few and far between. Calling Russia’s tiny use of renewables – 3.6% of total energy consumption – a “black spot in a global surge in the use of green technology”, Foy explains the gap is mainly due to Russia’s historical dependence on vast reserves of fossil fuels and the political clout of its state-run oil and gas industry. But while there is a growing awakening of the potential for renewable energy, addressing the shortfall will be harder than recognising it, the piece concludes.

New research describes an update to the models used in the weather@home project, which uses volunteered spare capacity of personal computers across the world to assess changes to extreme weather events. The new version – “weather@home 2” has a higher-resolution regional climate model over Europe (an increase from 50km grid cells to 25km). The model represents regional extreme events reasonably well, the researchers say, and it is likely that more reliable statements can be made with regards to climate change impact, especially at local scales.

Wheat crop yield in France could decline by 21% in winter and 34% in spring by the end of the 21st century if CO2 emissions aren’t curbed, a new study suggests. Using a crop model, researchers investigate the impacts of temperature and rainfall changes on wheat and barley yields. They find that all yields respond negatively to an increase in spring–summer temperatures under a range of climate models and CO2 emissions scenarios. The result suggest winter barley yields could decline by 17% by 2100.

A new paper describes the formation, impact and lessons learned of Hurricane Fred, the first hurricane to hit Cape Verde in 124 years. During 31 August 2015, the Category 1 Hurricane Fred traversed through the Cape Verde Islands, passing near Boa Vista and possibly making landfall over São Nicolau during the evening hours. Fred caused damage on 7 of the 10 islands, the researchers say, and also caused the sinking of a ship and 7 deaths off the coast of Guinea-Bissau and damage along coastal zones of Senegal.