Around The Web

Sun Brilliance Power will sell the electricity from its 128MW "merchant" solar farm to the WA grid, after signing deals with Western Power.

Tesla big battery officially switched on in South Australia, after helping local grid deal with soaring temperatures and demand peak a day earlier, meaning one less gas generator was needed. "History in the making," said Premier Jay Weatherill.

Australia is home to one in 10 of the world’s unique bird species – and most of the world’s birds can trace their lineage to the continent

• Vote in the Australian bird of the Year

If you live in Australia, you may not realise how unique and special the birds around you are. Our continent was perhaps the most important for the evolution of modern birds, with a majority of the world’s species tracing their ancestry here.

Long ecologically adrift as an island continent, Australia benefited through the evolution of a remarkable diversity of fascinating, colourful, noisy, clever, innovative species of bird.

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CT Climate Change and Sustainability Minister Shane Rattenbury will today sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Mayors and Ministers from several other jurisdictions to support the greater use of electric vehicles (EVs).

New report says coal plants vulnerable to failure in summer heatwaves should contract with solar and storage to provide "heat-safe" back-up. Meanwhile, Frydenberg launches Menzies report full of economic and ideological claptrap about renewables.

Sir Isaac Newton's papers and personal accounts are added to a Unesco register of globally important documents.

The PV plant has been constructed by Belectric. Ingeteam has supplied five of its 2.33 MW power stations in order to inject the energy coming from the PV array into the camp’s internal grid.

A collection of 200 eggs gives new insights into the development of the extinct flying reptiles.

Whistleblowers accuse the agency in charge of the largest pest eradication effort in Australia's history of mismanagement.

South Australia powers on the world's biggest lithium battery.

SA Premier Jay Weatherill has announced a Royal Commission into breaches of the Murray Darling Basin agreement. But will it solve the long running problems with river management? Jamie Pittock, Director, International Programs, UNESCO Chair in Water Economics and Transboundary Water Governance, Australian National University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Penguins in New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere face an uncertain future as a new review documents the number accidentally ensnared in fishing nets. Ursula Ellenberg, Honorary Lecturer, La Trobe University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Nasa releases footage captured over China, Korea and Japan of "lightning, city lights and fishing boats".

The system works fine when there two candidates in an election but is a poor option when there are multiple ones – and it can lead to some bad results

• Ben Raue is Guardian Australia’s resident psephologist

The results so far of the Guardian’s bird of the year poll have not been without controversy. The Australian white ibis, a bird that is disliked by many who encounter it, took an early lead and has maintained that lead for more than a week. While this seems like a strange result, it makes sense when you think about the options provided to the voters. With so many birds to choose from, the voting system used has a tendency to produce a winner who has a committed support base, even if that option also has a lot of opponents.

The vote was conducted using the first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting method – everyone gets one vote, and the candidate with the highest vote wins. This system works fine when there are just two candidates running in an election, but when you get more than two, it inevitably results in candidates winning with less than a majority of the vote. The ibis is sitting on 13.6% of the total vote, with the magpie coming second on 11.1%. The top two birds combined have received less than a quarter of the total vote.

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Decision to hear Saul Luciano Lliuya’s case against the energy giant is a ‘historic breakthrough with global relevance’, campaigners say

A German court has ruled that it will hear a Peruvian farmer’s case against energy giant RWE over climate change damage in the Andes, a decision labelled by campaigners as a “historic breakthrough”.

Farmer Saul Luciano Lliuya’s case against RWE was “well-founded,” the court in the north-western city of Hamm said on Thursday.

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The Africa Food Prize winner talks about her work with Kenya’s smallholder farmers, and how indigenous crops can be a tool in the battle against food insecurity and climate change

When Ruth Oniang’o was working as a nutrition researcher in 1980s Kenya, she noticed an ominous change in the country’s agricultural landscape: regions that had once provided a diversity of nutritious food crops were being turned over to cash crops like sugarcane. Grown mostly for export, these crops were usurping land and soil that was intended for feeding people.

Spurred on by what she witnessed all those years ago, today Oniang’o--a professor of nutrition and a native Kenyan--leads the Rural Outreach Program, a nonprofit that champions the role of indigenous African crops and smallholder farmers in safeguarding food security. With the ROP, Oniang’o visits hundreds of farming communities in Kenya and helps them access, grow, and share seeds for indigenous crop varieties like sorghum, cassava, arrowroot, and jute mallow--foods that are not only nutritious, but also disease-resistant and climate-resilient. This year, these efforts got her recognised as the joint winner of the 2017 Africa Food Prize.

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MPs say ministers are showing no confidence in tackling the illegal levels of air pollution that prematurely kill an estimated 40,000 people a year

Ministers have been accused of having to be “dragged screaming” to tackle illegal levels of air pollution across the UK, which kills an estimated 40,000 people a year prematurely.

Neil Parish, co-chair of a parliamentary inquiry into air quality, told ministers from the Treasury, environment, transport and local government departments they were showing no confidence that they would tackle toxic air pollution as soon as possible.

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After digitising old weather data from atop Ben Nevis, citizen scientists tackle a much bigger project.

Annual survey by the Marine Conservation Society records 10% rise in litter in 2017 - with much of it plastic

The rubbish washing up on the UK’s beaches is continuing to increase, rising by 10% in 2017, the Marine Conservation Society’s (MCS) annual beach clean has revealed.

Much of the waste is plastic, leading the MCS to call on the government to urgently introduce a charge on single-use plastic items, such as straws, cups and cutlery. The chancellor, Philip Hammond, recently announced the government is considering such action.

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Retailers in favour of setting up mandatory system in England and Wales after government sought views on idea

Iceland and the Co-op have become the first supermarkets to support a bottle deposit scheme after the government sought views on the idea to reduce plastic pollution in the oceans.

The retailers came out in favour of setting up a mandatory deposit return scheme (DRS) in England and Wales as the environment secretary, Michael Gove, began to review the results of a seven-week consultation on whether to introduce a system to increase recycling rates of plastic bottles and reduce leakage into the oceans.

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