Around The Web

TAI report shows 64% of all party supporters in favour of policies to increase EV uptake – so what aren't governments doing?

The famous World Solar Challenge was won for the seventh time by the Netherlands’ Nuon Solar team.

Australia Institute wants free access to bus lanes after electric cars accounted for just 0.1% of new car sales in 2015

Tax breaks and free access to bus lanes should be used to help reverse Australia’s poor uptake of electric vehicles, a new report has said.

Australians remain deeply reluctant to buy electric cars, which accounted for just 0.1% of new car sales in 2015. Australia is increasingly falling behind other countries, particularly in Europe, where sales of electric cars represented 1.2% of new European Union car sales in the same year.

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The UK Government has announced an ambitious new Clean Growth Strategy to drastically cut carbon emissions and combat climate change.

UK-based Foresight Solar Fund Limited continues Australian buying spree, taking shares in three Queensland projects under development.

We will never have an effective broad-based emission reduction policy – no matter who is in government. Best to look at alternatives, like reverse auctions.

A UK-assembled satellite is set to go into orbit shortly to monitor air quality around the globe.

MPower tapped by Endeavour Energy to install 1MWh battery on network in NSW, in a trial hoped to save $1m a year on grid costs.

What will it take to build the ultra-fast internet of the future?

Clock ticks down on Victoria government's plans to have two large scale battery storage projects in place by January 1, with the winners still not known.

China is to stop or delay work on 151 planned and under-construction coal plants as Beijing struggles to respond to a flat-lining of demand for coal power.

What do you get when you bring together some of Australia’s most fervent climate science deniers with anti-Islam activists, fledgling right-wing political groups, and an American “free market” Libertarian?

New polling shows two thirds of voters would prefer to see governments increasing energy conservation rather than building new power stations.

Environmentalists hail decision that comes almost exactly a year after BP ditched its own scheme for the untapped basin

Chevron has become the second big oil company to abandon plans to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight, almost exactly a year after BP ditched its more advanced plans for the untapped basin.

Oil companies have compared the potential of the bight to the Gulf of Mexico, where there are thousands of oil rigs.

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After failure of Adélie penguins to breed, WWF calls for measures to ensure they do not face competition from fishing fleets for food

Only two Adélie penguin chicks from a colony of more than 18,000 breeding pairs have survived the Antarctic summer due to unusually extensive sea ice, prompting environmental campaigners to call for a new protected marine area.

The penguins in Terre Adélie in eastern Antarctica, which only reproduce on ice-free land, suffered a catastrophic breeding season after unseasonable growth in sea ice forced parents to travel further for food, causing their chicks to starve.

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New data from a NASA satellite show in unprecedented detail the flow of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Future satellites should even be able to detect the signatures of individual power stations. Pep Canadell, CSIRO Scientist, and Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project, CSIRO Alex Held, Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO Cathy Trudinger, Senior Research Scientist, CSIRO Peter Rayner, Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne Vanessa Haverd, Research Scientist, Carbon Water Observatory, CSIRO Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

David Finlay writes that his experiment in sustainable and ethical meat and dairy farming shows that it is achievable

I had just got back into the house from milking the cows when I read the discussion (Letters, 7 October) on George Monbiot’s latest contribution to the debate about the future of our food production system. While George is a fundamentalist, I must confess I agree with much of what he says! The problem is that, as an extremist fundamentalist, he just goes too far. Here on our rented family farm of 100 dairy cows with some beef and sheep, we are in the first year of a three-year, final-stage experiment to challenge the idea that treating our animals, land, environment and the people who work and live here with respect is somehow incompatible with financial viability and our industry’s ability to provide adequate amounts of affordable food, and is therefore unsustainable.

This is the final part of a much longer-term experiment, incorporating agroecology, agroforestry and calf-with-cow dairying along with appropriate technologies that allow us to achieve these public benefit outcomes. On paper this could work. In practice it hasn’t been easy. But there are glimmers of daylight. We are on the final stretch and many of our targets have been met: substantial (90%-plus) cuts in the use of antibiotics, anthelmintics, vaccines, soluble fertiliser and pesticides (and diffuse pollution) without compromising productivity or animal health; and substantial increases in biodiversity and reductions in staff working hours.

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Plan to accelerate production of biofuels for passenger planes would lead to clearing of rainforests to produce ‘vast’ amount of necessary crops

A new plan to accelerate production of biofuels for passenger planes has drawn stinging criticism from environmentalists who argue that most of the world’s rainforests might have to be cleared to produce the necessary crops.

Aviation is one of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions, with an 8% leap reported in Europe last year and a global fourfold increase in CO2 pollution expected by 2050.

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Researcher reveals up to 86.7% of edible tomatoes are thrown away, underlining Australia’s costly food waste culture

Up to 87% of undamaged, edible tomatoes harvested from a commercial Queensland farm were rejected and wasted based on appearance, a study has found, highlighting the problem of food wastage.

Tara McKenzie, an environmental scientist at the University of the Sunshine Coast, said that at every point in the supply chain, edible tomatoes that were slightly odd-shaped or marked or deemed too small or too large were rejected because they didn’t meet market standards for premium, unblemished product. She found between 68.6% and 86.7% of the produce was rejected.

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Exclusive: Consumers do not want plastic-polluted oceans so supermarkets and packaging industry have to work together, says Andy Clarke

The former boss of Asda is calling for supermarkets to stop using plastic packaging saying billions of pounds of investment in recycling has failed to resolve the world’s plastic proliferation crisis.

Andy Clarke, CEO of one of Britain’s biggest supermarket chains for six years, said the only solution was for retailers to reject plastic entirely in favour of more sustainable alternatives like paper, steel, glass and aluminium.

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