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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.

Australia Post has rolled out close to 100 all-electric three-wheeled scooters that are quieter, safer, and can carry three times more than a postie motorbike.

Nissan reaches milestone of 100,000 LEAF electric vehicles sold in Europe.

$1bn project in Queensland’s Bowen basin to consist of almost 200 turbines

The Queensland government has approved the country’s largest windfarm, a $1bn project to build almost 200 turbines in the shadow of the Bowen basin’s coalmines.

The 800-megawatt Clarke Creek project, in cattle country north-west of Rockhampton, received planning approval on Tuesday morning. The company behind the project, Lacour Energy, says it will create about 350 jobs during three years of construction and has the capacity to provide 3% of the generation required to power the entire state. It also includes a solar component.

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Queensland government gives development approval to 800MW wind farm - the state's largest - that could be built with 400MW solar farm and battery storage.

Levies and bans have been among the most effective strategies to curb plastic waste, a UN report says.