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We talk to Electric Vehicle Council boss Behyad Jafari about the year just gone and what to expect in 2019.

The post The Driven Podcast: Why 2019 be the year that EV market finally takes off appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The emissions projections provide detail on emissions trends, including sector specific analysis of factors driving emissions. The projections also track progress against Australia’s emissions reduction targets.

Carbon prices on both North American coasts rose this week as New Jersey released its proposed cap for its re-entry into the RGGI market, while California Carbon Allowances (CCAs) nudged toward next year’s floor price.

Scrubbing up the skies is hard – however many filter towers and houseplants are on the job

Among the high-rise apartment blocks of Xi’an, China, there is a 100-metre cylindrical tower. It looks like a chimney, but it has a very different purpose. It is trying to filter the city’s air. Smaller examples of outdoor air filters have been erected in the Netherlands and Poland, and filters have been installed next to roads in Delhi and on buses in Southampton. Other ideas include plants and surfaces that react with the pollution, but cleaning outdoor air is difficult since the pollution is already diluted. It’s like trying to take the milk out of your tea.

Related: What would a smog-free city look like?

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The Canadian government will further relax the stringency of industry production benchmarks for certain sectors under its output-based pricing system (OBPS), the government announced Thursday, as it also revealed more information on the national clean fuel standard (CFS) beginning next decade.

What a year 2018 has been for solar PV in Australia! Here are nine reasons to celebrate solar as we head into what may well be another record-braking year for photovoltaics.

The post Nine reasons to celebrate solar PV in 2018 appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Japan looks set to make a bid to resume openly commercial whaling for the first time since the 1980's.

Scientists warn policymakers not to ignore links, and stress that ‘every action counts’

Policymakers have severely underestimated the risks of ecological tipping points, according to a study that shows 45% of all potential environmental collapses are interrelated and could amplify one another.

The authors said their paper, published in the journal Science, highlights how overstressed and overlapping natural systems are combining to throw up a growing number of unwelcome surprises.

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Findings expose ‘big lie’ behind European marine conservation, scientists say

Destructive trawling is more intense inside official marine sanctuaries, while endangered fish are more common outside them, a startling analysis of Europe’s seas has revealed.

It shows that far from conserving sealife, legal marine protection areas (MPAs) are in fact the places most damaged by industrial fishing. The work has exposed “the big lie” behind European marine conservation, experts say, with most MPAs completely open to trawling.

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Fifty years ago people saw our planet from the outside for the first time. Dr Simon Torok, Honorary Fellow, School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne Colleen Boyle, Senior Advisor, Learning and Teaching, RMIT University Jenny Gray, Chief Executive Officer - Zoos Victoria, University of Melbourne Julie Arblaster, Associate Professor, Monash University Lynette Bettio, Australian Bureau of Meteorology Rachel Webster, Professor of Physics, University of Melbourne Ruth Morgan, Senior Research Fellow, Monash University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

David Humphreys says the BBC should abandon its ‘illusion of impartiality’ about climate change

The call from Extinction Rebellion for the BBC to make global warming its top editorial priority should be welcomed (Letters, 17 December).

The BBC is journalistically objective when reporting global warming. If a scientist or activist talks on air about the human causes of climate change then someone else, often from one of the denial groups funded by the fossil fuel lobby, is usually invited to provide a “counterargument” (for example, that recent warming is caused by “natural” factors). This leaves many viewers with the erroneous impression that a genuine scientific is debate taking place and weakens social support for strong measures to address climate change, which is precisely what the organised denial lobby wants.

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European carbon closed down slightly on Thursday, though steady buying throughout the day lifted prices back from their morning lows below €24.

The European Commission has amended the EU ETS Registry Regulation to allow for the lifting of restrictions on British EUAs should a wider Brexit deal be reached.

The EU faces a tight timeline to adopt a 2050 low carbon strategy in time for UN deadlines as several environment ministers on Thursday called for more analysis and wide consultation first.

Private organisations and individuals are stepping in to protect vulnerable habitats but they are increasingly under pressure

In September the former publisher and philanthropist, John B Fairfax, quietly gave $2m to the Nature Conservancy in support of the largest private conservation project ever undertaken in New South Wales: the Gayini Nimmie-Caira project on the Murrumbidgee floodplain.

After spending a night glamping on the 85,000 hectare property near Balranald, Fairfax pulled out his chequebook and helped to make the ambitious project a reality.

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High levels of contamination in Mariana Trench show how pervasively planet has been contaminated

The deepest point on Earth is heavily polluted with plastic, scientists have discovered, showing how pervasively the world has been contaminated.

The researchers plumbed the depths of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean, near Challenger Deep, the lowest place on the face of the planet. They found the highest levels of microplastics yet found in the open ocean, compared with surveys from elsewhere in the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans.

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Australia’s leading scientific research group and the country’s energy market operator have released a benchmark study that shows the cost of new wind and solar – even with hours of storage – is “unequivocally” lower than the cost of new coal generation. The joint study – GenCost 2018 – by the CSIRO and AEMO shows...

The post CSIRO/AEMO study says wind, solar and storage cheaper than coal appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator on Thursday for the first time released a set of key carbon offset market data, concluding that supply in the short term will be sufficient to meet demand as Safeguard Mechanism entities approach their Feb. 28 compliance deadline.

The InSight mission begins to lay out the sensors that will listen to the Red Planet's "heartbeat".

Engineers at the Ocean Cleanup project are working on a fix to stop collected debris leaking back out from the 600m barrier

A giant floating barrier launched off the coast of San Francisco as part of a $20m project to cleanup a swirling island of rubbish between California and Hawaii, is failing to collect plastic.

The mastermind behind the Ocean Cleanup, an ambitious plan to clear a swathe of the Pacific twice the size of Texas of floating debris, reported four weeks into testing that while the U-shaped device was scooping up plastic, it was then losing it.

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