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Peak policy group on electric vehicles and fuel emissions met only 12 times in four years

The federal Coalition’s peak policy body for deciding issues relating to fuel emissions and electric cars has met 12 times in its four-year existence but minutes for five of these meetings cannot be found.

The revelations emerged during a public hearing of the Senate select committee on electric vehicles held last year when a member of the department of infrastructure, regional development and cities struggled to name the chair of the ministerial forum on vehicles emissions.

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Baobabs are also known as upside-down trees, bottle trees and in Australia - boabs. What can their genetics tell us about their travelling history?

Satellite data suggests protection measures are being ignored as huge fishing lines snare endangered seabirds

Industrial fishing vessels that accidentally kill tens of thousands of albatrosses each year routinely ignore regulations designed to save the birds from extinction, according to research.

Using satellite data, investigators found that vessels employing longline fishing techniques showed a “low level of compliance” with measures to reduce albatross deaths.

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You could be unwittingly eating sharks that are on the brink of extinction, a study suggests.

Stranded porpoises, dolphins and seals had average of 5.5 particles in their guts

Microplastics are being widely ingested by Britain’s marine mammals, scientists say, with samples found in every animal examined in a study.

The research on 50 stranded creatures including porpoises, dolphins, grey seals and a pygmy sperm whale is the most comprehensive analysis of microplastics in the digestive tracts of both wild cetaceans and seals.

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People buying generic fish such as rock could in fact be eating a range of shark species

Fish and chip shops and fishmongers are selling endangered sharks to an unwitting public, according to researchers who used DNA barcoding to identify species on sale.

Most chip shop fish sold under generic names such as huss, rock, flake and rock salmon turned out to be spiny dogfish, a shark species classified as endangered in Europe by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s red list.

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A group of Japanese companies have scrapped plans to build a coal-fired power plant that would have emitted some 12 million tonnes of CO2 annually, and are considering constructing a gas-fired plant in the same location.

South Australian Premier Steven Marshall joins RN Drive.

Mining giants put aside competition in joint statement on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

Bird poaching – for meat or for the pet trade – has become a silent epidemic across China, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of migratory birds each year. Gu Xuan, a young conservationist, is determined to break this cycle of death and destruction, and set the birds free

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European settlement of the Americas killed so many people, it disturbed Earth's climate.

Australia's government insists it is on track to surpass its emissions reduction commitments under the Paris Agreement. But while that may be true, it will only happen with some clever accounting. Alan Pears, Senior Industry Fellow, RMIT University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Many big companies are happy to reduce demand in the middle of a heatwave, but are not allowed to by their retailers. It's outrageous.

The post Who’s afraid of demand response? appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Report recognises urgent need for national plan, as the rest of the world powers ahead

When the Senate select committee on electric cars released its long-awaited report on Wednesday, it announced Australia was “on the cusp” of a change not seen since the advent of the internal combustion engine.

It’s not the first time public figures have claimed an electric car revolution is imminent and while the report did not recommend brash action, it offered a moment of bipartisan recognition that a lack of government action to date has left Australia lagging behind the rest of the world.

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US government climate scientists take unprecedented step of tweeting a rebuttal to PDonald Trump’s recent tweets implying that winter storms and cold weather in US somehow disprove global warming.

The post US government scientists debunk Trump’s ‘global waming’ tweets with cartoon appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

To say 2018 was a record year for Australian solar PV is practically an understatement. Every imaginable record was broken, and broken repeatedly.

The post Australian solar’s record-smashing year. In eye-watering charts appeared first on RenewEconomy.

It’s time for the regulators to take a closer look at the behaviour of the main participants in the market as well as the underlying operating rules of the market.

The post Blackouts and hot air: Is this the new normal? appeared first on RenewEconomy.

More than 10 million Australian energy customers are set to benefit after the launch of a world-first, cross-sector energy industry framework focussed on better customer outcomes.

The post Energy sector working together in world first customer initiative appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The deep freeze gripping much of the US has been blamed on a polar vortex. Here's what that means.