Around The Web

Latest Emissions Reduction Fund auction nets 7 million tonnes of emissions abatement, the best result in years, but questions remain around its role in meeting emissions targets.

The post Prices remains high, volumes low in latest Emissions Reduction Fund auction appeared first on RenewEconomy.

New energy retailer and leader in VPP (virtual power plant) energy trading, Discover Energy is delighted to announce a Saver Plan with LG Chem and GoodWe to incentivise new installs of LG Chem LV batteries and GoodWe solar inverters.

The post Discover Energy partners with LG Chem to promote the untapped potential of energy trading income from VPP appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A Canadian company debuts a powerful new capability to monitor the potent greenhouse gas.

Concern about climate change is growing, but there are big differences about the need for rapid action.

EU carbon prices could double within the next four years should lawmakers agree to tighten the market based on some of the proposals floated by the European Commission.

Charity says world’s fast-shrinking carbon budget should be used to improve lot of poorest

The wealthiest 1% of the world’s population were responsible for the emission of more than twice as much carbon dioxide as the poorer half of the world from 1990 to 2015, according to new research.

Carbon dioxide emissions rose by 60% over the 25-year period, but the increase in emissions from the richest 1% was three times greater than the increase in emissions from the poorest half.

Continue reading...

"Gas chose Itself". Those who profess - like Scott Morrison - to be 'technology neutral' are scrambling for a way to dismiss the urgency of climate action.

The post Scott Morrison’s three hundred year climate plan is a dark moment for Australia appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Covid-19 provides an opportunity to "reset" the economy for a more sustainable future, he says.

Now is a time for courage. It will take sacrifices from everyone for us all to survive, the president of the Marshall Islands writes

My country joined the United Nations nearly 30 years ago, in September, 1991. But unless my fellow member states take action, we may also be forced from it: the first country to see our land swept away by climate change.

As the UN General Assembly meets in New York, celebrating the 75th anniversary of its formation, we must ask, how many of the 193 nations that it brings together will survive to reach its centenary?

Continue reading...

Energy Minister Angus Taylor is this week expected to release the government's first Low Emissions Technology Statement. It's likely to include ways to remove CO₂ from the air – but do they work? Annette Cowie, Adjunct Professor, University of New England Han Weng, Research academic, The University of Queensland Lukas Van Zwieten, Adjunct Professor, Southern Cross University Stephen Joseph, Visiting Professor, School of Material Science and Engineering, UNSW Wolfram Buss, Postdoctoral fellow, Australian National University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Exclusive: Grattan Institute contradicts PM’s suggestion gas would be key to post-Covid economic recovery

Fewer than 1% of Australian manufacturing jobs are in gas-intensive industries that would materially benefit from a massive gas industry expansion proposed by the Morrison government, according to an upcoming analysis.

A report by the Grattan Institute, to be released in November, examines the number of manufacturing businesses and jobs across the country that are heavily reliant on gas.

Continue reading...

Britain’s commitment to a net zero carbon footprint by 2050 can be the catalyst for a jobs revolution in regions beyond London and the south-east. The government is doing far too little to make it happen

As Britain confronts the unemployment crisis that will blight so many lives this winter, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has promised to be “creative” in introducing new measures to support jobs. Mr Sunak still seems stubbornly determined to end, next month, the furlough scheme that remains a lifeline for so many workers. But the misery that will ensue appears to have persuaded him that some kind of alternatives must be found. Inevitably they will be cheaper and less effective, but when the criticism comes, Mr Sunak will protest that it is not the government’s role to indefinitely prop up businesses that the pandemic has consigned to the past.

What about propping up the future then? The government’s failure to develop any kind of plan to meet legally binding net zero targets has flown under the radar in recent months, as coronavirus-related chaos reigns in Whitehall. With the exception of a minimalist £2bn “green homes” grant, some new cycle routes and other minor measures, Boris Johnson’s promise to “build back better” has so far proved to be of purely alliterative value.

Continue reading...

The 27 wooden coffins are said to have lain undisturbed inside a well at an ancient necropolis.

WA government wants to create a 1.5GW wind and solar hydrogen hub north of Perth, and has called for expressions of interest.

The post W.A. puts out call to develop 1.5 gigawatt wind and solar hydrogen hub appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Failure to protect fragile moors habitat fans doubts about the government’s green credentials

Ministers have been accused of deliberately stalling plans to ban the environmentally damaging process of burning peat bogs, in a further sign of government support for people who enjoy shooting grouse on moorlands.

After a week in which it emerged that people who shoot grouse had been exempted from the “rule of six”, which limits gatherings in the fight against Covid-19, activists believe the environment secretary, George Eustice, who is from a farming family, is blocking moves to ban peat burning.

Continue reading...

Morrison back-flips on plans to build 1GW gas generator in Hunter Valley, conceding that a fraction of that was needed to replace Liddell. "I'm interested in doing," he said.

The post Morrison performs massive backflip on Liddell gigawatt gas plan appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Energy companies stand accused of trying to downplay their contribution to global warming.

Artist Annalee Davis was walking in fields once used for sugarcane in her Barbados homeland when she spotted unfamiliar plants. “I was taught to see them as weeds but now I understand their value offering biodiversity to exhausted land and their historical use in bush medicine.” Davis started pressing and using specially mixed Victorian paint to draw these plants on old plantation ledger pages. Colonialism wiped out Barbados’s biodiversity in the 17th century by replacing local vegetation with the monoculture of intensively farmed fields of sugarcane, but wild plants are proliferating again. The series is now on show at Haarlem Artspace, Derbyshire, until 11 October as part of re:rural. “I want to use the plants to learn to listen to the land in another way and acknowledge its trauma,” she says.

Continue reading...

A company steeped in oil and gas production may not find it easy to convince investors of its environmental credentials

‘This is serious stuff,” said BP’s Bernard Looney. The chief executive, speaking last week at the oil giant’s three-day investor event, was talking tough on the need to tackle the climate crisis. He could just as easily have been referring to the existential tightrope that BP, and others in the fossil fuel industry, will need to walk between investor confidence and the rising public pressure to slash their greenhouse gas emissions.

Over the course of three days and 10 hours of executive presentations, Looney’s new leadership team sought to convince investors that their plan to become a carbon neutral company will allow them to toe this line successfully. BP’s nascent renewable energy interests will grow while the oil production business that has powered the company for over 110 years will begin to shrink within the next decade. A whiplash of clean energy innovation, carbon capture technologies and emissions offsetting schemes will then power the company to net zero carbon by 2050.

Continue reading...

Trump long ago made clear that in the with-us-or-against-us climate war, he is against us and has enthusiastically joined the side of the inferno

The fires that continue to incinerate the west coast, pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and blanket the country in smoke are the latest sign that the climate crisis has made landfall in America and is torching its way inward like an occupying army overwhelming battle-weary fortifications. Only, that military metaphor seems a bit off, because if you look carefully, you can see that we are not valiantly losing a battle – our government has made it impossible for us to even fight, and has arguably taken the side of the invasion.

Related: Trump 'associates' offered Assange pardon in return for emails source, court hears

Continue reading...