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Risen Energy has completed the construction of the 100 megawatt AC Yarranlea Solar Farm and achieved network registration with Australian Energy Market Operator on January 3.

The post Risen Energy’s Yarranlea Solar Farm is connected to the grid appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Electric car charging rate hike draws backlash from EV owners who say new rates make powering an electric vehicle more expensive than fossil fuels.

The post Norway shock as rate hike pushes EV charging price higher than petrol appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Australia has been presented with a credible plan to reach 90 per cent renewables and slash emissions. Why won't it embrace it?

The post Australia has a credible path to a low carbon grid. Why won’t the Coalition embrace it? appeared first on RenewEconomy.

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT OF DEAD ANIMALS

An estimated 1 billion animals have been killed during or as a result of Australia’s catastrophic bushfire season, and experts fear some species now face extinction. Huge numbers of mammals, birds, reptiles, insects and other species have been lost, with images of burned koalas and kangaroos fleeing the fire front beamed around the world. Slow-moving native animals have been hit particularly hard.

‘We really sleepwalked into this disaster,’ says University of Sydney ecology professor Christopher Dickman, who explains what the crisis means for the country’s wildlife and why it may take up to 100 years for the ecosystems the animals depend on to bounce back.

• More than 100 threatened species hit hard by Australian bushfires, pushing many towards extinction
• Podcast: will native animals recover from this bushfire season?
  
  

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Alberta offset prices are increasing as companies look to cover their obligations under the Canadian province’s outgoing large emitter programme, though future negotiations with the federal government over the new scheme’s CO2 price are clouding the outlook beyond the spring true-up deadline.

The Swedish climate activist and the US president gave very different speeches at Davos.

For decades Australian scientists have, clearly and respectfully, warned about the risks to Australia of a rapidly heating climate. After this season's fires, perhaps it's time to listen. Will Steffen, Emeritus Professor, Australian National University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Sea eagles in England | Loneliness and churches | Circumcision and Shakespeare | English usage | Sperm donations

So a sea eagle has chosen to live in Oxfordshire (Report, 18 January). It is not the first time. Archaeologists digging near Oxford have discovered sea eagle bones on bronze age and Anglo-Saxon sites. And the name of the village Earley, on the Thames near Reading, means “eagle wood” – probably because of the presence there of sea eagles’ nests over 1,000 years ago. Let’s hope this magnificent bird finds a mate and stays around.
David Miles
Retired chief archaeologist, English Heritage

• Weekends can be very lonely (The curse of weekend loneliness, G2, 16 January) so on Sunday why not go to a service at the local church? Most serve coffee afterwards and there are lovely people to meet. Maybe even go again the following week!
Carolyn Charlesworth
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire

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Rapidly growing sector could prove lucrative as Britain seeks post-Brexit trade opportunities

UK investors could seize a $24bn investment opportunity by helping to connect millions of people without access to electricity to off-grid home solar power systems.

The market for pay-as-you-go home solar packages is expected to boom in Africa, where millions of homes are using mobile technology to rent low-cost solar panels.

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Germany will seek independent advice annually to guide EU carbon permit retirements linked to its coal phaseout, with each cancellation cycle taking around two years, according to draft legislation seen by Carbon Pulse.

A Democratic Oregon state senator who opposed her party's WCI-modelled cap-and-trade proposal last year is open to supporting a carbon reduction bill during the state's short 2020 lawmaking term, but has stopped short of backing her colleague's revised legislation.

EU member states will be asked in June to endorse a law to bind the bloc to a 2050 net zero emission goal, fast-tracking a process that kicks off a wide-ranging Brussels plan to green its economy.

Nova Scotia will hold its first two carbon allowance auctions later this year for the 26 entities regulated by its ETS, the Canadian province announced this week.

From colonial times to today, these refuges from hazards posed by surf and rips offer calmer, cooler, shark-free water
• Interactive: the magic of New South Wales’ ocean pools
• Liquid assets: a treasure trove of ocean pools seen from the air – video

Seawater pools sitting on rocky surf coasts so that waves can wash into them are wet, wild, convivial public places that are both part of the beachscape and the wider poolscape.

Australia’s tourism campaigns routinely feature the beloved pools on the New South Wales coast. Although nature can create them without our help, human efforts in the state have developed about 100 ocean pools since colonial times. They range from simple rings of rocks to huge rectangular pools catering for competitive and recreational swimmers.

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Exclusive: anti-Adani campaigners may protest bus company’s involvement in controversial mine, email tells workers

The boss of the Australian bus company Greyhound has warned its workers they could be caught “in the crossfire” after signing a contract to help build the Adani coal project in Queensland.

The email from the chief executive, Alex de Waal, seen by Guardian Australia, asked staff not to “undermine your colleagues or brand” by sharing internal updates or posting to social media.

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If US president really wants to protect trees he should rethink his climate-wrecking policies

Trees are great. They give us oxygen, take away CO2, provide nests for birds and habitats for wildlife, protect against flooding and even help to clean up lung-shredding air pollutants from traffic.

As the world’s forests come under increasing threat from fires, agriculture and logging, the WWF-led initiative to ensure 1tn trees are restored, saved from loss or better protected by 2050 has gathered international support. Now Donald Trump is onboard too, he told Davos.

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The US president attacks activists at the World Economic Forum, with Greta Thunberg in the audience.

Greta Thunberg told a World Economic Forum panel on climate that activists were demanding an end to all investment in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, calling for a drastic reduction of emissions to zero. She dismissed some of the measures mooted by governments and companies, such as planting billions of trees to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Her comments came after Donald Trump announced the US joined the global 1 trillion tree initiative

• Davos 2020: Greta Thunberg says 'world is on fire' and blasts leaders' climate inaction – live
  

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Book aims to raise awareness of conservation – and some much-needed funding

From stories about capercaillies strutting around like “cocksure” hedge fund managers to corn buntings shrieking like old fruit sellers, Britain’s nature writers, artists and scientists have flocked together to create an illustrated book celebrating 67 of the country’s most endangered birds.

Red Sixty Seven is an elegy to the growing number of British birds on the “red list” of highly vulnerable species drawn up by conservation scientists for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

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EUAs dipped below €25 early on Tuesday as auction demand continued to be lacklustre even as Germany gave further clarity about efforts to ensure its coal power phaseout won't dampen demand.