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A field trial to develop highly efficient solar energy heliostats made from plastic has opened in South Australia.

Report reveals Adani needs to refinance $2bn of loans for Abbot Point coal terminal, which is more than it paid for it in 2011

Adani’s financing for its proposed Carmichael coalmine could face a further hurdle, with Westpac appearing to indicate it will not refinance its existing loan to Adani’s coal terminal at Abbot Point.

A recent report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (Ieefa) revealed Adani needed to refinance more than $2bn worth of loans for its Abbot Point coal terminal in the coming year – an amount that is more than it paid for the port in 2011. That means the company has negative equity on the facility – owing banks more than it is worth.

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Technology troglodytes in conservative media have collective meltdown over "demand response" – a new initiative to encourage consumers, particularly industry, to shift loads to help manage demand peaks and moderate prices.

The Clean Energy Council congratulates the winners of the 2017 Solar Design and Installation Awards, which were announced yesterday at the All-Energy Australia Exhibition and Conference in Melbourne.

Carnegie is pleased to announce the appointment to its Board of Directors of two new, non-executive directors

Coal, oil and gas finance from major development banks totalled $5bn in year after historic climate pact, according to estimates

Billions of dollars of public money was sunk in new fossil fuel projects by the world’s major development banks in the year after the Paris climate change deal was agreed, according to campaigners who are calling for the banks to halt their financing of coal, oil and gas.

The new analysis also reveals that some of the taxpayers’ money given to coal and gas projects was counted as “climate” finance.

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Queensland renewables and storage tender attracts proposals amounting to 9,000MW of wind, solar and biomass, and 6000MW of storage.

Australia's species, like this green python, are remarkable and need far better protection. Euan Ritchie, Senior Lecturer in Ecology, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University Dale Nimmo, ARC DECRA Fellow, Charles Sturt University Don Driscoll, Professor in Terrestrial Ecology, Deakin University Geoffrey Heard, Lecturer in Wildlife Ecology and Management, Charles Sturt University Megan C Evans, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Environmental Policy, The University of Queensland Tim Doherty, Research Fellow, Deakin University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

For decades the national park’s stunning vistas have been compromised by poor air quality, and prospects of improvement were derailed by Trump Tuesday

Big Bend national park is Texas at its most cinematic, with soaring, jagged forest peaks looming over vast desert lowlands, at once haughty and humble, prickly and pretty. It is also among the most remote places in the state.

Even from Alpine, the town of 6,000 that is the main gateway to the park, it is more than an hour’s drive to one of the entrances.

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Scientists are discovering more and more about the internal lives of animals. But what does this mean for the way humans behave?

Last week footage of five young elephants being captured in Zimbabwe to sell to zoos travelled round the world. Parks officials used helicopters to find the elephant families, shot sedatives into the young ones, then hazed away family members who came to the aid of the drugged young ones as they fell.

The film, shared exclusively with the Guardian, showed the young captives being trussed up and dragged on to trucks. In the final moments of footage, two men repeatedly kick a small dazed elephant in the head.

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The NUS vice president wants university unions and young people to play their part in reducing plastic waste

Robbie Young has had enough.

“We’re surrounded by plastic straws. 500 million of them are used and discarded every day in the United States alone, with fatal consequences for the wildlife that swallows them. As young people we have a responsibility to do something about that.”

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A house-sized asteroid is set to pass close to the Earth allowing scientists to rehearse future strike threats.

This new device literally sucks rubbish from the water’s surface, and it’s starting with Portsmouth harbour

Name: The Seabin.

Age: Brand new.

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Deaths of environmental activists locked in conflict with mining, logging and agricultural companies across three continents has passed 150

• Interactive: recording the deaths of environmental activists around the world

The number of people killed this year while defending their community’s land, natural resources or wildlife has passed 150 – meaning 2017 is on course to be the deadliest year on record.

Environmental activists, wildlife rangers and indigenous leaders are locked in fierce conflicts with mining, logging and agricultural companies in hundreds of places around the world. The Guardian is working with watchdog Global Witness to record all the deaths in 2017, and this week that figure reached 153 with a spate of killings across three continents.

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The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific concepts

This year we have had a big problem with jackdaws spoiling our apples: they have taken a peck from so much of our fruit that it has ruined a good crop of russets. We never used to have jackdaws round here, but they moved in a few years ago and are now a serious pest – they rival the magpies. Does anyone know why jackdaws arrived here, or if there’s anything we can do to prevent them ruining our apples in the future?

Jill Bennett, St Albans, Herts

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Mitsuko Sonoda will say evacuees face financial hardship and are being forced to return to homes they believe are unsafe

A nuclear evacuee from Fukushima will claim Japan’s government has violated the human rights of people who fled their homes after the 2011 nuclear disaster, in testimony before the UN in Geneva this week.

Mitsuko Sonoda, who voluntarily left her village with her husband and their 10-year-old son days after three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant went into meltdown, will tell the UN human rights council that evacuees face financial hardship and are being forced to return to neighbourhoods they believe are still unsafe almost seven years after the disaster.

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Surveyed corporations stated that Trump’s election had no impact on their decision to buy renewable energy

After the election of Donald Trump, many of us in the climate and energy fields were rightfully fearful. What would happen to international agreements to cut greenhouse gases? What would happen to funding for climate research? What would happen to the green energy revolution?

In most instances, Trump is worse than we could have imagined. But in one special area, Trump may not matter. That is in the growth of corporate purchasing of renewable energy. It turns out there are factors that even Trump cannot stop that make choosing renewable energy an easy decision for many companies.

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An Antarctic ice shelf is shown to have a deep gorge cut in its underside by warm ocean water.

Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of storms, floods and fires.

Cash-strapped councils would save money thanks to reduced littering and landfill charges as well as having less recycling bins to collect, says report

Councils across England could save up to £35m every year if the government introduces a deposit return scheme [DRS] for plastic bottles and other drinks containers, according to a new report.

Earlier this month environment secretary Michael Gove told the Conservative party conference that he would work with the industry to see how the scheme might be implemented in England.

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