Around The Web

How will retailers meet their emission reduction obligations under the proposed NEG. It's a tangled web, and we suspect the ESB is starting to understand the monster it is creating.

Including battery storage and rooftop PV in new home packages is soon "just going to be the norm", says home builder Metricon. Already, they're putting them in around half of the new homes they build.

New report suggests household battery storage set to boom in Australia, with uptake predicted to have tripled in 2017, and costs of the key technology expected to halve in less than seven years.

Pearl Global Limited (Pearl) (ASX:PG1) has begun commissioning its first production plant after receiving state government, environmental and council approvals for its unique process to convert waste tyres into valuable secondary products.

Tasmania Labor unveils energy policy targeting 120% renewables, increased electricity exports, and an 80% boost to distributed resources like rooftop solar.

A surprising study published in Science found that as fuel emissions drop, consumer products are playing a larger role in air pollution. Jenny Fisher, Senior Lecturer in Atmospheric Chemistry, University of Wollongong Kathryn Emmerson, CSIRO Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Windows have been ubiquitous in society for centuries, filling our homes and workplaces with natural light. But what if they could also generate electricity?

Commonwealth, State and Territory Environment Ministers have released statements regarding the Environmental Management of Industrial Chemicals, and a National Environmental Management Plan for PFAS

The machines that ensure smooth ice for athletes can be responsible for air pollution

Watch the live streams from the Winter Olympics and you will see the ice rink resurfacing machines that ensure smooth ice for the athletes. Running any engine indoors is a bad idea, especially in a room full of thousands of spectators and heavily breathing ice-hockey players or skaters. The first case of air pollution problems from ice resurfacers was reported in 1975 when 15 children became ill from carbon monoxide poisoning at a Seattle rink. Nitrogen dioxide was added to the list of concerns when concentrations in the average Finnish rink were found to be more than three times World Health Organisation guidelines. Practical solutions include exhaust clean-up equipment, better ventilation, warming up the resurfacing machine outside and opening the ice rink doors to get faster air changes. Even so, accidents can and do happen. In 2011 two ice hockey players were hospitalised after training in a rink where the ventilation system had failed. A yellow haze had been seen in the cold air that settled over the ice. Thirty one people became ill, some of whom began to cough up blood several days later. The advent of new electric-powered machines offers the best long-term solution to this problem.

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Scientists develop technology that goes inside the lung to make fast diagnoses of infection.

Research shows paints, perfumes, sprays and other synthetic items contribute to high levels of ‘volatile organic compounds’ in air

Household cleaners, paints and perfumes have become substantial sources of urban air pollution as strict controls on vehicles have reduced road traffic emissions, scientists say.

Researchers in the US looked at levels of synthetic “volatile organic compounds”, or VOCs, in roadside air in Los Angeles and found that as much came from industrial and household products refined from petroleum as from vehicle exhaust pipes.

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Tarli, an endangered Asian elephant, has beaten the odds to overcome an Ebola-like virus.

The probe provides access deep inside a patient’s lung, which means doctors will be able to diagnose lung conditions much quicker and more accurately.

New South Wales has pledged to walk away from the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, while Victoria's water minister has declared the plan 'over'. Quentin Grafton, Director of the Centre for Water Economics, Environment and Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University John Williams, Adjunct Professor Environment and Natural Resources, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Fresh efforts needed to protect critically endangered animals from hunters and habitat loss as population more than halves

Hunting and killing have driven a dramatic decline in the orangutan population on Borneo where nearly 150,000 animals have been lost from the island’s forests in 16 years, conservationists warn.

Related: Borneo orangutan found riddled with gunshots in latest attack

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Australia sells South Korea $6bn of coal a year, so Canberra unease over the governor’s anti-coal message is unsurprising

For a South Korean presidential hopeful, Ahn Hee-Jung is not what you would expect.

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The Hopi tribe is taking on an Arizona ski resort over its use of artificial snow: ‘People compare it to baptizing a baby with reclaimed water’

• As threat to America’s public land increases, so does our coverage

To the Hopi tribe, the San Francisco Peaks are sacred. The cluster of mountains rise dramatically from grasslands and ponderosa forests in northern Arizona, and the Hopi say they are home to spiritual beings called kachinas, believed to bring the rain and snow to their reservation.

But the tribe has been allowed to move forward with a lawsuit against a local ski resort over what the tribe deems to be a desecration of the holy mountains: spraying artificial snow made from treated sewage.

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Levels of powerful air pollutant rose by 3.2% from 2015 to 2016 according to government statistics

Emissions of ammonia have been on the rise in the UK, new statistics from the government show, even while the amount of other pollutants entering the atmosphere has fallen.

Levels of the powerful air pollutant rose by 3.2% from 2015 to 2016, the latest year for which statistics are available, according to a report published by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on Thursday morning. The rise came despite an overall fall of 10% in ammonia emissions since 1980.

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Nitrogen pollutants from motor vehicles fell 12% from 2012 to 2016, according to official statistics.

German energy giant Innogy enters Australia market, buying two large solar projects and on the lookout for wind projects and battery storage.