Around The Web

EUAs extended a six-week high above €29 on Wednesday but later fell back, consolidating their late August surge after one of the month's bigger sales cleared comfortably.

The Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART) programme’s new standard for combating tropical deforestation may start yielding carbon credits as soon as next year, depending on the status of negotiations with potential partner governments, a webinar heard Wednesday.

The remote Western Australian town of Kalbarri could find itself at the bleeding edge of a renewables revolution

Brandon Bickford is only in town for the weekend. The 26-year-old has come back home to Kalbarri, the tiny Western Australian town where he grew up, with his fiancée to visit family. He’ll be making the 574km drive back south to Perth on Monday morning.

The young man with an athletic build says growing up here was like living in the flipside of a postcard. In his teenage years he “ran amok” between the ancient cliffs that hug the coast and the rugged natural landscape that stretches out to the horizon.

Continue reading...

Australia loves coal. About 60% of our electricity still comes from polluting, coal-fired power plants, while only 20% comes from renewables. Successive governments have told us that decommissioning coal-fired power would hurt the economy and cause a wave of unemployment. But that's not actually true. In fact, there are enormous opportunities to create jobs and wealth in renewable industries in Australia, including in exporting to countries without the sun and space we enjoy here

Continue reading...

Australia loves coal. About 60% of our electricity still comes from polluting, coal-fired power plants, while only 20% comes from renewables. Successive governments have told us that decommissioning coal-fired power would hurt the economy and cause a wave of unemployment. But that's not actually true. In fact, there are enormous opportunities to create jobs and wealth in renewable industries in Australia, including in exporting to countries without the sun and space we enjoy here

Continue reading...

Founding partner says ‘investing in the resilience of nature is investing in the resilience of the economy’

A push to better recognise the economic value of “natural capital” – water systems, biodiversity, soil and carbon stores – has prompted the creation of what aims to be the world’s largest investment firm dedicated to projects that help the planet.

Multinational financial services giant HSBC and Pollination, a boutique climate advisory and investment firm, announced a joint venture that they predicted would meet a multi-billion dollar demand for environmentally friendly investment beyond renewable energy.

Continue reading...

California’s heatwave this month pushed power consumption above levels for the same period in 2019, with much of the increase filled by carbon-emitting sources, according to California Independent System Operator (CAISO) data.

The discovery of 17 of the mammals raises questions and causes sadness and anger among locals.

An Icelandic direct air capture (DAC) project is to remove 4,000 tCO2 a year from a geothermal power plant, the project developers said on Wednesday in a significant scaling up of the three-year-old pilot.

Many of Romania’s heavy industries risk insolvency as the government has not yet compensated facilities for their indirect ETS costs, despite getting EU state aid approval to do so in May.

The price of bread is set to rise after what could be the worst UK wheat harvest in 40 years.

Climate-focused investment firm Pollination has teamed up with the wealth management arm of HSBC to develop the world’s largest fund focused on natural capital.

AEMO says all states expected to be within new reliability standard this summer thanks to new wind and solar capacity, but catastrophic events still a risk.

The post New wind and solar improving grid reliability and lowering costs, AEMO says appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Critics say plan for fields off Svalbard threatens ecosystem and relations with Russia

Norway is planning to expand oil drilling in previously untouched areas of the Arctic, a move campaigners say threatens the fragile ecosystem and could spark a military standoff with Russia.

A public consultation on the opening up of nine new Norwegian oilfields closed on Wednesday. The areas in question are much further north in the Arctic than the concessions the US president, Donald Trump, announced for Alaska this month.

Continue reading...

The Hubei Emissions Exchange has carried out a first live test of the registry that will serve China’s national carbon market, one of the major hurdles China must clear before it can launch the scheme.

The chance find was made on the Isle of Eigg where scientists have been searching for the fossils for 200 years.

Our food supply comes from an environmentally unsustainable system that is going to unravel

Picture an ideal dinner plate. If you’re like most Americans, it features a hearty portion of meat, from animals fattened on midwestern corn and soybeans, and a helping of vegetables, largely trucked in from California. The unique landscapes we rely on to deliver this bounty – the twin jewels of the US food system – are locked in a state of slow-motion ecological unravelling.

California’s agricultural sector has flourished from decades of easy access to water in one of the globe’s biggest swaths of Mediterranean climate. The Sierra Nevada, the spine of mountains that runs along California’s eastern flank, captures an annual cache of snow that, when it melts, cascades into a network of government-built dams, canals and aqueducts that deliver irrigation water to farmers in the adjoining Central Valley. In light-snow years, farmers could tap aquifers that had built up over millennia to offset the shortfall.

Continue reading...

Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator has issued over 400,000 new carbon credits, with almost half of that going to just two developers.

Painting one blade of a wind turbine black could cut wind farms' fatal bird strikes by up to 70%.

The prospect of a "really, really exciting" find will be checked by the Natural History Museum, experts say.