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New research paper creates a database of CCS plants that were proposed and never built, underlying the false promise of "clean coal".

The post Carbon capture’s litany of failures laid bare in new report appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Australia in 10th biggest burner of coal in the world, and has the fifth highest share of coal of total power generation.

The post Australia is world’s 10th biggest burner of thermal coal for power: report appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Scientists are starting to use genetic information from bacteria to measure the health of vast areas of the ocean. Eric Jorden Raes, Postdoctoral researcher Ocean Frontier Institute, Dalhousie University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Māori treasure kiwi feathers for weaving cloaks for high-ranking people. But the bird's first description by European scientists is quite recent, based on a specimen that arrived in London in 1812. Paul Scofield, Adjunct professor, University of Canterbury Vanesa De Pietri, Fellow, University of Canterbury Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

EUAs hit an all-time high for the second straight day on Tuesday, but prices quickly fell back below €44 on losses put down to profit-taking.

The sponge species was unnamed for a decade before nine-year-old Sylvie suggested Parpal Dumplin.

Donkeys can grow so sick from mourning the loss of a companion that they die

When a donkey brays it is as though every rusted gate nearby is opening and closing at once; as though the iron seesaws and swings and roundabouts in one hundred abandoned playgrounds have begun to move by themselves: squeaking, creaking, screeching.

“Better to be born a limpet in the sea than a load-bearing donkey,” they say in Sicily. But the first load I ever heard of a donkey bearing was rather grand: Christ himself, riding a beast of burden into Jerusalem. People grabbed their cloaks, cut branches from palm trees “and strawed them in the way” for the donkeys to walk on. “Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.”

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Five Washington state senators this week reiterated their support for significant changes made to a recently-passed low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS) bill, saying any final proposal must maintain its ties to a comprehensive transportation funding package and legislative reauthorisation to earn their backing.

Instead of stopping unnecessary air travel, the UK is considering measures that would make it cheaper

This week the French national assembly voted to ban domestic flights on routes that could be travelled via train in under two and a half hours. The new rule, which is the result of a French citizens’ climate convention established by Emmanuel Macron in response to the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement, will capture 12% of French domestic flights. Though it’s more moderate than the convention’s initial proposal, which sought to ban all domestic flights on routes with rail alternatives of less than four hours, this is the first time any major economy has prohibited domestic air travel for environmental reasons. It’s also far more drastic than anything the UK has done to curb flight emissions.

The huge blow the pandemic has dealt to the aviation industry could be an opportune moment to rethink the future of flights. Before Covid, air travellers rated around half of all flights as unnecessary. Apart from a few exceptions in particularly remote regions, domestic flights in small countries must be among the least necessary of all. Just over half a million flights were taken every year between London and Manchester before the pandemic, a journey that takes around two hours by train. Because so much of the pollution from any given flight takes place during take-off and landing cycles, the emissions produced per kilometre for each passenger on a domestic route are 70% higher than long haul flights – and six times higher than if the same journey was made by rail.

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California’s WCI-linked cap-and-trade floor price is on track to rise near $19.00 in 2022 due to higher inflation in March, according to federal data released Tuesday.

Australia's Clean Energy Regulator has issued just over 230,000 carbon credits in a little less than a week, while the government has opened funding applications for its new biodiversity pilot scheme.

Without the app, mapping reefs usually involves high amounts of data and low-quality photos, which leads to slow analysis

Less than 1% of the ocean floor consists of coral reefs. But more than one-quarter of marine animals live in them. With rising temperatures bleaching corals across oceans, Nasa scientists turn to an unlikely tool: a smartphone app.

A team of Nasa scientists in Silicon Valley has developed NeMO-Net, a game to classify corals, into a tool for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

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To avoid the grimmest outlook posed by warming oceans, we need to extract heat-trapping gases from the atmosphere

The climate emergency is bigger than many experts, elected officials, and activists realize. Humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions have overheated the Earth’s atmosphere, unleashing punishing heat waves, hurricanes, and other extreme weather – that much is widely understood.

The larger problem is that the overheated atmosphere has in turn overheated the oceans, assuring a catastrophic amount of future sea level rise.

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A carbon tax of $25/tonne could put a significant dent in Asia-Pacific greenhouse gas emissions, but would have to be raised to three times that level to be in line with a 2C or lower global warming target, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

With record high CO2 levels and destructive tornadoes, Ben Rich has more on extreme weather around the globe this spring.

An emissions trading scheme with steadily tightening benchmarks and increased use of auctioning could cut CO2 emissions from China’s power sector by over 1 billion tonnes by 2035, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The shortlist, runner-up and overall winners from the Mammal Society’s 2021 photography competition, the theme of which was mammals during lockdown

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Most experts say it's a normal and safe practice but environmentalists and locals are not happy.

Yes, some of this is normal seasonal transition. But at least a portion of it is due to a particularly vigorous cold front that swept across southeast Australia over the weekend. Sarah Scully, Senior Meteorologist, Australian Bureau of Meteorology Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Should we go for oat milk? Seaweed-fed cows? But then there’s the packaging to worry about … Every choice seems bad

I have a problem with milk. Well, multiple problems. Let me elaborate. (Are you excited?) Cow’s milk is, of course, bad news for the planet: three times worse in greenhouse emission terms than any plant milk. I have known for ages, but pretended not to, because tea is horrible with oat milk.

I do, however, seek out the least bad dairy. I get my milk from cows fed on seaweed, which reduces bovine belching: research has recently found this can cut methane emissions by up to 82%. So, great? Well. First, it comes in a plastic bottle, not a glass one. Worse, as a household we finish our two pints of seaweed milk precisely six days after our weekly delivery. If I ordered another two-pint bottle, most of it would end up down the sink. I have tried holding out, but I feel bad imposing my eco-guilt on my younger son, who has the smallest carbon footprint of any of us, and just wants milk on his cereal, so I end up buying a pint of Bad Milk from the corner shop. The household vegan is disgusted by dairy, but drinks a litre of oat milk a day delivered in packaging the council does not recycle.

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