Around The Web

India's re-elected prime minister has paved the way for Queensland coal to power Bangladesh. Quentin Beresford, Professor of Politics, Edith Cowan University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Thousands of years of history tells the same story over and over: you ignore soil at your peril. Anthony Dosseto, Associate Professor, University of Wollongong Alex Francke, Research Fellow, University of Wollongong Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

European carbon prices dipped in a quiet session on Thursday to remain locked in a narrowing channel, as the market braced for new allowance supply to mushroom next week.

Exported waste, intended for recycling, is being sent back to Canada by the Philippines.

While EU carbon’s increasingly rangebound trade is pointing to an impending breakout, more experts are breaking with those technical conventions and expecting prices to remain near current levels in the coming months.

My friend Walter Menzies, who has died of a brain tumour aged 69, made a profound contribution to the cause of sustainable development, driven by his fascination with people and places. He was a twinkly-eyed, mischievous, inspiring and determined doer. “Sustainable development is the only credible way of organising our environment, economy and society,” he stated uncompromisingly in a collection of 30 years of his writings.

He and I met when I was reporting for the Guardian in the north and he was chief executive of the Mersey Basin Campaign, a pioneering project set up by Michael Heseltine after the 1981 Toxteth riots. Heseltine wanted the river cleaned up. The campaign was so successful that fishermen caught cod across the river from Liverpool’s Pier Head and seals were seen lazing on sandbanks at Warrington.

Continue reading...

Day-to-day operation of the Rosalind Franklin Mars rover will be run out of a facility in Turin.

Exclusive: report reveals investment in the sector has halved in recent years

The number of jobs in renewable energy in the UK has plunged by nearly a third in recent years, and the amount of new green generating capacity by a similar amount, causing havoc among companies in the sector, a new report has found.

Prospect, the union which covers much of the sector, has found a 30% drop in renewable energy jobs between 2014 and 2017, as government cuts to incentives and support schemes started to bite. It also found investment in renewables in the UK more than halved between 2015 and 2017.

Continue reading...

New study confirms natural cycles play little role in global temperature trends and tackles discrepancies in previous models

Emissions from fossil fuels and volcanoes can explain nearly all of the changes in Earth’s surface temperatures over the past 140 years, a new study has found.

The research refutes the popular climate denial myth that recent global warming is merely a result of natural cycles.

Continue reading...

There could be more than 1 billion flights in electric air taxis by 2030, in an industry predicted to be worth more than $2 trillion.

The post How we could clock up one billion electric flying taxi flights by 2030 appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Roy Morgan suggests drivers increasingly want to buy hybrid cars, but overall sales will fall as people look to electric and car-sharing options.

The post More Australian drivers looking to hybrid vehicles, young looking to ride-share appeared first on RenewEconomy.

ASX-listed property developer inks deal with Allume Energy to use its solar sharing technology at new apartment complex – and potentially across all multi-occupant buildings.

The post Mirvac taps Melbourne start-up for shared solar at new apartments appeared first on RenewEconomy.

New Zealand on Thursday allocated funds to begin building an NZU auctioning platform through its 2019 budget, but did not offer any new information on the future level of the fixed price option, sending prices tumbling to 6-month lows.

The London-based satellite operator announces a major expansion of its telecommunications network.

We don’t talk enough about the street food scandal – leftovers chucked away without a second thought

Every day for the past month complete strangers have bought me lunch. And breakfast. And dinner. And they don’t even know it.

I have been living high on the hog, and it hasn’t cost me a penny – because I have been dining out on the half-eaten fast food and takeaways thoughtfully abandoned by my fellow Britons on pavements and park benches and tube platforms all over the city. Sometimes they even leave them in bins.

Continue reading...

Human activity has transformed the Earth – but scientists are divided about whether this is really a turning point in geological history. By Nicola Davison

It was February 2000 and the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen was sitting in a meeting room in Cuernavaca, Mexico, stewing quietly. Five years earlier, Crutzen and two colleagues had been awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry for proving that the ozone layer, which shields the planet from ultraviolet light, was thinning at the poles because of rising concentrations of industrial gas. Now he was attending a meeting of scientists who studied the planet’s oceans, land surfaces and atmosphere. As the scientists presented their findings, most of which described dramatic planetary changes, Crutzen shifted in his seat. “You could see he was getting agitated. He wasn’t happy,” Will Steffen, a chemist who organised the meeting, told me recently.

What finally tipped Crutzen over the edge was a presentation by a group of scientists that focused on the Holocene, the geological epoch that began around 11,700 years ago and continues to the present day. After Crutzen heard the word Holocene for the umpteenth time, he lost it. “He stopped everybody and said: ‘Stop saying the Holocene! We’re not in the Holocene any more,’” Steffen recalled. But then Crutzen stalled. The outburst had not been premeditated, but now all eyes were on him. So he blurted out a name for a new epoch. A combination of anthropos, the Greek for “human”, and “-cene”, the suffix used in names of geological epochs, “Anthropocene” at least sounded academic. Steffen made a note.

Continue reading...

Blustery conditions lead to record wind output in Australia's main grid on Tuesday, as the Tesla big battery also plays heavily in the arbitrage market.

The post Wind energy sets new records as strong investment and windy weather combine appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Rush of new fossil fuel projects, egged on by the Coalition Government, is likely to push global emissions higher while ACCC warns gas producers on prices.

The post Galilee Basin “carbon bomb” about to explode as coal and gas developers rush in appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Leading Australian clean energy accelerator to launch Women in Clean Energy Fellowship in Melbourne.

The post EnergyLab on the lookout for female founders to take on the Clean Energy sector appeared first on RenewEconomy.

An alliance of 21 local governments have called for a renewed state government commitment to renewable energy and tackling climate change.

The post WA councils urge state to step up on clean energy appeared first on RenewEconomy.