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Electrification of cars and home boilers best choice to fight the climate crisis, say scientists

Using hydrogen-based fuels for cars and home heating risks locking in a dependency on fossil fuels and failing to tackle the climate crisis, according to a new analysis.

Fuels produced from hydrogen can be used as straight replacements for oil and gas and can be low-carbon, if renewable electricity is used to produce these “e-fuels”. However, the research found that using the electricity directly to power cars and warm houses was far more efficient.

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Environmental markets platform IncubEx has hired a new director to further develop its European carbon and renewables certificates offerings.

California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) rebounded towards a one-month high this week even after the programme posted its highest quarterly credit surplus in four years.

Unless actions by governments and corporations cut emissions in the here and now, a dose of scepticism is in order

So it’s goodbye climate deniers, hello – and you’ll pardon me for being blunt here – climate bullshitters.

The impacts of the climate emergency are now so obvious, only the truly deluded still deny them. Instead, we are at the point where everyone agrees something must be done, but many are making only vague, distant promises of ineffective action. As a result, we are currently on track for a 0.5% cut in global emissions from 2010 levels by 2030, when a 45% drop is needed to avoid climate catastrophe.

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Toby Willison has taken leading role at water firm due in court for sentencing after sewage dumping

A former chief of the environment watchdog has defended his move to take up a senior position at a water company that is under investigation by the regulator.

Toby Willison has taken a leading role at Southern Water, which this summer is due in court for sentencing after admitting dumping poisonous, noxious substances including raw sewage. The case followed a criminal investigation by Willison’s former employer, the Environment Agency.

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South Korean carbon allowances have rebounded 28% since hitting a 5-year low last month, though uncertainty is high in the market as the government has yet to announce the exact ETS emissions balance for 2020.

There are signs infections have slowed in some regions - but is India past the worst?

Spindly rows of plastic-wrapped trees represent a misguided urge to control nature and risk polluting our countryside

Remember the English hedge? That meandering, bushy-bottomed muddle of blossom and blackberries, honeysuckle and wild rose, singing warblers and gothic trees half-buried in the greenery? More than 150,000 miles were grubbed out by farmers between the end of the second world war and the 1970s to make room for their big machines.

What have been called the countryside’s “locust years” ended, mercifully, and in the 80s there were a few halfhearted attempts at planting new, mixed hedges. But over the past decade, and especially the last two years, a new threat has emerged. Not destruction this time but debasement. We’ve entered the era of the ersatz hedge, a hybrid of plastic and bush that is being planted across lowland England, especially in arable areas, and which is managed as ruthlessly as a suburban privet border.

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Despite pandemic-enforced isolation, scientists from around the world have produced a vital climate change forecast

Sea levels are going to rise, no matter what. This is certain. But new
research I helped produce shows how much we could limit the damage: sea level rise from the melting of ice could be halved this century if we meet the Paris agreement target of keeping global warming to 1.5C.

The aim of our research was to provide a coherent picture of the future of the world’s land ice using hundreds of simulations. But now, as I look back on the two years it took us to put the study together, what stands out is the theme of connection running through it all – despite the world being more disconnected than ever.

Connecting digitally: our study brought together 84 people working at 62 institutes in 15 countries (nine in Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and China). I led the study but haven’t met many of my co-authors. Even if we had planned to meet, over half the 120 days I spent on the study have been since the first UK lockdown.

Connecting parts of the world: the world’s land ice is made up of global glaciers in 19 regions, and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets at each pole. Our methods allow us to use exactly the same predictions of global warming for each. This may sound obvious, but is actually unusual, perhaps unique at this scale. Each part of the world is simulated separately, by different groups of people, using different climate models to provide the warming levels. We realigned all these predictions to make them consistent.

Connecting the data: at its heart, this study is a join-the-dots picture. Our 38 groups of modellers created nearly 900 simulations of glaciers and ice sheets. Each one is a data point about its contribution to future sea level rise. Here, we connected the points with lines, using a statistical method called “emulation”. Imagine clusters of stars in the sky: drawing the constellations allow us to visualise the full picture more easily – not just a few points of light, but each detail of Orion’s torso, limbs, belt and bow.

Our process of joining the dots meant we could make a more complete prediction of the full range of possible futures – mapping out our uncertainties in the levels of the rising seas. For instance, if we reduce emissions from current pledges to meet the Paris agreement targets, which would reduce warming from more than 3C to 1.5C, the median predictions for sea level rise from melting ice reduce by half, from 25cm to 13cm, by 2100. For the upper end, there is a 95% chance the level would be less than 28cm if we limit warming to 1.5C, compared with 40cm under current pledges.

Connecting to each other: some of the initial conversations for the study were in person. Most memorable and important among them were visiting the ice sheet project lead, Sophie Nowicki, at Nasa to analyse their data in June 2019, and long walks discussing the statistical methods with my mentor and friend Jonty Rougier in Hastings. But even when we went digital, many of us kept a personal, sometimes emotional, connection under the pressures of work and family life amid the pandemic, and with a number of people involved in the research living in California close to the huge wildfires last summer.

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Australians have endured floods, bushfires and hailstorms and more over the last two years. The government is better aligning policy to deal with disasters, but its plan is somewhat half-baked. Paul Barnes, Research Fellow (Disaster & Urban Resilience), UNSW Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Taylor promises $15 million to Darwin big battery, which is designed to support more solar and cut gas generation, and more funds for renewable micro-grids.

The post Taylor awards $15 million grant to Darwin big battery that will cut gas generation appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Queensland’s state Labor government joins Victoria’s in indicating it won’t back a move to tax solar households for electricity sent to the grid.

The post Queensland joins Victoria in opposing rooftop solar tax, prefers battery support appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Edify Energy kick-starts is ambitions for large-scale green hydrogen production, lodging development applications for 10MW plant near Townsville.

The post Edify seeks approval for 10MW green hydrogen facility that could grow to 1GW appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Sanjev Gupta's GFG Alliance seeks buyers or partners for its Australian solar and battery projects as it re-emerges from wreckage of Greensill collapse.

The post Gupta’s cash-strapped GFG mulling sale of Australian solar and battery projects appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Welcome to RenewEconomy’s newest podcast, in which Nigel Morris deep-dives into what makes a great solar business, and how to learn from the past and prepare for the future so that your business thrives.

The post New podcast: Great Solar Business appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Australia is scrambling to drill hundreds more gas wells, and more are planned. How could this be when the evidence of health impacts is so clear?

The post Australia must kick the gas habit, because it is bad for our health appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Resources minister Keith Pitt intervenes to veto $280 million from government fund to Neoen's Kaban green energy hub in north Queensland.

The post Keith Pitt vetoes federal funding deal for wind and battery hub in Queensland appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

Standard-setting body Verra this week accused Greenpeace of misrepresenting its forest carbon offset methodologies and cherry-picking expert opinions to undermine the credibility of its REDD+ projects in two recent articles.

More lenient carbon intensity benchmarks at the outset of Washington state’s recently passed low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS) will limit the impact of the programme until the latter half of this decade, traders said.