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3D printing is meeting some of the ambitions touted when the technology emerged 20 years ago.

Rapid climate change forced urgent upgrade of ‘failsafe’ doomsday storage facility

The Arctic global seed vault has reached the milestone of having 1m varieties stored in its deep freeze. The new deposits are being made after unexpected flooding of its entrance tunnel in 2017 prompted an upgrade.

Seeds from 60,000 crop varieties from across the world are being placed in the vault to back up those held in other seed banks.

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Calls for food standards to be enshrined in law to avoid post-Brexit ‘betrayal’ of consumers

Farmers have hit back at suggestions the government will allow imports of chlorinated chicken and other low-standard farm produce in trade talks with the US, escalating the row over post-Brexit food standards.

Minette Batters, the president of the National Farmers’ Union, will call for rules on minimum standards for imports to be enshrined in law, and insist that other countries must trade with the UK “on our terms”, rather than seek to water down food rules.

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Britain contributed only 3% of continent’s 2019 green spending, report says

British companies are lagging far behind their European neighbours in low-carbon investment after contributing only 3% of the continent’s €124bn (£104.2bn) green spending last year.

A report has revealed that German-listed companies invested 11 times more in low-carbon investments such as electric vehicles, renewable energy and smart energy grids than UK firms.

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Germany has purchased more than 1 million carbon credits between 2014 and 2018 to offset the federal government’s emissions from business trips, according to a new report, with virtually all of the units coming from Africa or Asia and almost half from a single project type.

Fourteen US states asked a US District Court to reject a Department of Justice (DOJ) motion that seeks to declare the California-Quebec cap-and-trade linkage as unconstitutional.

The European Commission approved on Monday Romania’s plans to grant a €251 million emergency loan to state-owned utility CE Oltenia to help the struggling firm meet its EU ETS obligations.

Let’s imagine what it would be like if we all had electric cars now and some people were proposing a transition to petrol cars.

The post What if we proposed a transition from electric to petrol cars? appeared first on RenewEconomy.

You will become part of a dynamic, interdisciplinary team that is actively involved in shaping a key future task for the 21st century. They observe and analyze the international climate negotiations and use this as a basis to develop recommendations for political decision-makers and other actors.

The European Roundtable on Climate Change and Sustainable Transition is seeking a (senior) researcher to join its team in Brussels to work on EU and international climate and energy policy.

The person in this role will engage with a range of partners in Europe and globally to drive media debates around the EU’s international climate leadership role. The work will involve maintaining trusted relationships with key media correspondents and sharing information about newsworthy EU and international climate and energy debates.

Companies spent $84m on congressional campaigns in 2018, analysis of votes and political contributions shows

The oil and gas industry substantially rewards US legislators with campaign donations when they oppose environmental protections, according to a new analysis of congressional votes and political contributions.

Oil and gas companies spent $84m on congressional campaigns in 2018. Researchers found a correlation between an increase in anti-environment votes and an increase in contributions. They documented how lawmakers’ scores from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) dipped and then were followed by campaign funding from the industry.

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Our Energy and Climate team works extensively on improving energy efficiency and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions at national and international level. We would like to add two Research Assistants to the Energy and Climate team, to contribute and expand all aspects of our work. 

The Washington legislature is unlikely to approve both of the market-based GHG reduction programmes up for debate this year, as negotiations get underway on several climate-related bills in the final weeks of the 2020 session, a key lawmaker told Carbon Pulse.

Oregon Democrats sent a WCI-modelled cap-and-trade bill to the Senate on Monday after passing a key committee, but the vote sparked an immediate decision by Republicans to walk out to protest the carbon market legislation.

Montenegro’s climate law entered into force on Friday, paving the way for a national ETS featuring an auction floor price that could eventually help the market to link with the EU's cap-and-trade system.

The absence of climate drivers – specifically, the Indian Ocean Dipole and La Niña – explains why Australia has gone so long without heavy rains. Andrew King, ARC DECRA fellow, University of Melbourne Andy Pitman, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, UNSW Anna Ukkola, Research Fellow, Australian National University Ben Henley, Research Fellow in Climate and Water Resources, University of Melbourne Josephine Brown, Lecturer, University of Melbourne Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

The GHG removal trading platform led by Finnish utility Fortum foresees holding auctions every other month this year as its first voluntary market sale of 2020 saw prices climb back above €20/tonne.

But the UN health body says the coronavirus outbreak does not yet meet the criteria for a pandemic.

Boris Johnson is hiding from this defining issue. Labour will win if it sets the agenda

Where is Boris Johnson? As flooding devastates large parts of the north, the Midlands and Wales, the prime minister’s strategy is to hide from public scrutiny and hope the whole thing blows over. It’s now 11 days and counting since his last public appearance.

This is a huge miscalculation. Because for all of Dominic Cummings’ talk of “superforecasting”, the government is ignoring the issue that will define politics for decades to come: our response to the climate crisis. From wildfires in Australia and the Amazon, to extreme heat in India, to drought in east Africa, climate-induced extreme weather is already reshaping our planet in disastrous ways.

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