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The Tokyo metropolitan government has begun discussions with experts on potential post-2020 reforms to its emissions trading scheme and will launch a public consultation process before making final decisions, an official said Tuesday.

To celebrate World Environment day, Reuters photographers met people from Athens to Singapore trying to play their part as the war on plastics becomes a key political topic

Eight million tonnes of plastic - bottles, packaging and other waste - are dumped into the ocean every year, killing marine life and entering the human food chain, the United Nations Environment Program said in December.

While governments and retailers started clamping down on plastic bags through bans and small fees more than a decade ago, the focus has now increasingly turned to eradicating throwaway items such as straws and takeaway food and drink packaging.

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CPI is looking for a talented, highly skilled and motivated Consultant to join its Energy Finance programme, which focuses on the potential for financial and policy innovations to drive a transition to low carbon energy. The successful applicant will lead and undertake robust analysis that draws on methodologies from a range of disciplines including public policy, finance, and economics.

NewClimate Institute seeks a junior Climate Policy Analyst in Cologne, to strengthen the team primarily in the area of Climate and Development. Your work would focus on policy analysis and scenarios, with a focus on the energy sector. Possible project areas may include working together with partners in developing countries on the energy transition, and the further development of methods to quantify climate mitigation co-benefits.

California Governor Jerry Brown on Monday appointed three experts to sit on the Independent Emissions Market Advisory Committee (IEMAC) - a five-member panel created under AB-398 to monitor the environmental and economic performance of the state’s carbon market.

The Shanghai municipal government has set an absolute limit on CO2 emission growth for 2018 and reduced its annual coal consumption cap, while vowing to get local industry ready for the national emissions trading scheme.

South Korean carbon allowances drifted further on Tuesday as emitters picked up nearly a million KAUs coming to market ahead of a deadline for banking units.

NZUs recorded their lowest levels of 2018 on Tuesday as demand remained muted, while government data showed over 3 million permits have been issued to forest-owners over the past two weeks.

Ex-minister says opponents of third runway should be allowed to have their say

The government must allow a free vote on Heathrow expansion plans to allow ministers and MPs to represent their constituents, the former education secretary Justine Greening has said.

Greening, a fierce critic of the plans, said ministers such as Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, should be allowed to register their long-held opposition to a third runway without breaking collective cabinet responsibility.

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Origin Energy has announced it's reducing power prices for customers in NSW, Queensland and South Australia.

Call for fisheries changes after study says excessive fishing mostly to blame

The number of large fish species in Australian waters has declined by 30% in the past decade, mostly due to excessive fishing, a new study says.

Marine ecology experts are calling for changes to fisheries management after publication of the study by scientists from the University of Tasmania and the University of Technology (UTS), Sydney.

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Sydney Airport Corporation is celebrating World Environment Day with a carbon neutral certified event

Reef monitoring program shows northern section has lost half of its coral cover

A steep decline in coral cover right across the Great Barrier Reef is a phenomenon that “has not been observed in the historical record”, a new report by the Australian Institute of Marine Science says.

The institute, Australia’s government-backed marine research agency, periodically releases results of a long-term reef monitoring program. Each reef along the Queensland coast is visited by researchers every two years to assess its condition and coral cover.

The latest results, released on Tuesday, detail how major bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 have impacted on different sections of the reef. AIMS said it had no previous record of bleaching events occurring in successive years.

“Over the 30-plus years of monitoring by AIMS, Great Barrier Reef reefs have shown their ability to recover after disturbances, but such ‘resilience’ clearly has limits,” the report says.

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Sadiq Khan should take heed of the evidence and push on with the changes needed to keep cyclists safe on London’s roads

The decay of London’s cycling programme is starting to cost lives. In the last three and a half weeks, three cyclists have been killed at locations where schemes to make the road safe, or provide a safe alternative route, have been watered down or stopped under the mayoralty of Sadiq Khan.

On 11 May, Oliver Speke died after a collision two days earlier with a lorry at Romney Road, Greenwich. On 18 May, Edgaras Cepura was killed by a lorry on the same road, a mile or so to the east. There was supposed to have been a new cycle superhighway avoiding Romney Road by now, and a safe, segregated junction at the roundabout where Cepura was killed. Both schemes were postponed indefinitely after Khan came to office.

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We urgently need consumers, business and governments to cut consumption of single-use, throwaway plastics, writes the UN Environment chief

Plastic pollution has grabbed the world’s attention, and with good cause.

More than 100 years after its invention, we’re addicted. To pass a day without encountering some form of plastic is nearly impossible. We’ve always been eager to embrace the promise of a product that could make life cheaper, faster, easier. Now, after a century of unchecked production and consumption, convenience has turned to crisis.

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Ben Lecomte hopes to make it from Japan to San Francisco in 180 days while raising awareness of plastic pollution

A French anti-plastic campaigner has begun a six-month journey to swim through the giant floating rubbish mass known as the Great Pacific garbage patch.

Ben Lecomte, who has previously swum across the Atlantic Ocean in 1998, left the shores of Choshi in Japan on Tuesday morning, heading east.

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Survey finds Australian consumers’ lack of trust in power companies holding back the shift to a smarter, cheaper grid.

Another record month of rooftop solar installations in May, as NSW leads the charge to become the clear leader in the market.

The US president's plan to bail out unprofitable coal and nuclear plants will cost American consumers. Hardest hit will be the Trump-supporting southeastern states.

How new grid connection standards could be made more equitable and transparent for customers, while maintaining power system reliability and security.