Around The Web

A new Community Power Bank scheme led by WA utility Western Power will allow local solar homes to store their excess generation in a shared battery.

Mount Alexander Shire to install 14.5kW solar PV on heritage listed visitor centre building, as part of zero carbon 2025 goal.

To stay up, the bird must overcome gravity with a force called 'lift'. Simon Griffith, Professor of Avian Behavioural Ecology, Macquarie University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Startup claims to automatically switch smart-meter users three times a year and save them £300

A device that plugs into a home broadband router and automatically switches supplier when cheaper deals become available is set to revolutionise the home energy market.

The launch of Labrador comes as more and more people are changing their energy companies.

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Researchers in Texas aim to create robots that can cope with our messy world.

What happens to a town that has been abandoned for seven years after a nuclear meltdown? Greenpeace took former residents and a 360-degree camera into the radiation zone north of Fukushima to mark the anniversary of the disaster. The Fukushima Daiichi plant was damaged by a tsunami triggered by a magnitude-9 earthquake on the afternoon of 11 March 2011. The tsunami killed almost 19,000 people along the north-east coast of Japan and forced more than 150,000 others living near the plant to flee radiation. Some of the evacuated neighbourhoods are still deemed too dangerous for former residents to go back.

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Companies say mining poses scant threat but conservation groups say ban should remain until environmental risks have been fully explored

The US mining industry has asked the supreme court to overturn an Obama-era rule prohibiting the mining of uranium on public lands adjacent to the Grand Canyon.

Related: Trump official under fire after granting broad access to mining and oil firms

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Rare footage of a baby western lowland gorilla was taken in Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park, Congo.

Michael Mann has been acknowledged with the Award for Public Engagement with Science from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

And sea levels are rising faster causing flooding in many coastal cities.

The Cooks River is a tributary of Botany Bay in the south-east of Sydney. A new book traces the rivers history, by its environmental history.

Engineers are working on turbine blades that automatically adjust to high wind pressure and will stand up to strong winds and turbulent gusts

Wind turbine blades are getting ever larger and producing more power, but fluctuations in wind speed mean they are not always efficient. Blades can now be 85m long (and will be longer in the future) and they swing through an area the size of four football pitches. The wind speed will vary at the top and bottom of each rotation. The blades also have to be robust to withstand the pressure of high winds. Even so, in the worst weather operators sometimes need to angle the blades away from the wind and turn the turbines off to avoid damage. Then they lose production altogether.

Related: Mersey feat: world's biggest wind turbines go online near Liverpool

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Join a feral fox hunt in Western Australia; a monster saltwater croc goes to school; we head off on a camel beach safari; and volunteers harvest the hops at Van Dieman Brewing.

Research shows that planets orbiting distant stars may be surprisingly colourful.

UK is pushing for a deal that would boost imports linked to deforestation despite EU moves to ban unsustainable palm oil, diplomatic papers reveal

The UK is defying EU institutions to push for a hike in nominally “sustainable” Indonesian palm oil imports which have nonetheless been linked to deforestation, leaked documents show.

The European parliament is currently trying to force a ban on EU biofuels using palm oil, which have driven deforestation and contributed to the loss of 150,000 orangutans in Indonesia since 2002.

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Sir John Sulston, a key figure in the race to decode the human genome, has died at the age of 75.

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

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Spinner dolphins and a rehabilitated owl are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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Exclusive: extractive industry companies who met with Kathleen Benedetto later saw direct benefits from administration decisions

A key Trump administration official scheduled roughly twice as many meetings with mining and fossil-fuel representatives as with environmental groups, public records requests have revealed.

Further investigation shows that some of the firms she met with later benefited directly from administration decisions that weakened wilderness and wildlife protections.

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United Nations hits back after Philippines lists special rapporteur on terrorist ‘hit list’

The United Nations and the Philippine government have come to blows over the treatment of human rights investigators, with a UN chief saying the country’s president, Rodrigo Duterte, needs a psychiatric evaluation.

The Philippine government angered the UN after one of its human rights investigators was included on a list of 600 people declared to be communist terrorists.

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