Around The Web

Origin Energy rolls out flexible energy trial in South Australia, allowing commercial and industrial customers to align demand with renewables output.

The Turnbull Coalition government unveils its new energy policy.

With energy policy set to remain a political battleground in Australia, physics, in the form of global warming, will continue to gradually push decarbonization to the top of the policy agenda.

With China, India, Norway, UK, France and California planning to ban manufacture and sales of new internal combustion engine cars, and EVs on the rise, will a solar roof become popular add-on option for plug in EV’s?

A team of Australian researchers is turning the notion of recycling on its head, while also building a new green manufacturing sector.

The buzz might be about batteries, but the mass adoption of solar PV by Australian homes – and the efficient use of this asset – has only just begun, as prices reach levels that appeal to the late majority, and as early adopters look to upsize their systems.

Breaking: Coalition set to unveil an energy policy that supports fossil fuel electricity generators, while putting a handbrake on renewable energy development.

New research casts doubt on the idea that dogs are naturally more tolerant and friendly than wolves.

The amount of atmospheric energy available to thunderstorms will increase in response to climate change, putting the tropics and subtropics at risk of being lashed with more intense storms. Martin Singh, Lecturer, School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Instead shop in markets and smaller shops, which are less packaging obsessed and often use paper bags, says Rachel Meredith

The idea of increasing the use of aluminium and steel packaging, as proposed by Andy Clarke (Bring in plastic packaging ban, former Asda boss tells stores, 13 October), is not a sustainable solution. Both materials rely on finite substances and intensive energy to produce them, and there is no guarantee that they will be recycled and will avoid ending up in the sea as well. One possibility would be to increase the use of starch based “plastic”; it’s biodegradable and therefore matters less where it ends up. Obviously another solution is to avoid shopping in supermarkets as far as is possible and to instead shop in markets and smaller shops, which are less packaging obsessed and often use paper bags, as in the good old days.
Rachel Meredith
York

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

Continue reading...

It's the first time this noise has ever been detected.

Pipeline company downplaying major legal and financial risks of crossing unceded First Nations territory in British Columbia

The controversial expansion of a pipeline that would carry tar sands crude from Alberta to British Columbia’s coast will be doomed by the rising power of Indigenous land rights.

That’s the message that Kanahus Manuel, an Indigenous activist from the Secwepemc Nation in central BC, plans to deliver to banks financing the project as she travels through Europe this week.

Continue reading...

Scientists investigating marine life in the Baltic Sea have found mussels, oysters and clams are emitting greenhouse gases – but cows still trump them

Swedish scientists have found that flatulent shellfish are creating vast amounts of greenhouse gases, leading to a predictable slew of comments about farting cockles and clams. But beneath the schoolboy humour, there is a serious point. The two gases in question – methane and nitrous oxide – are potent agents of climate change, with a warming potential 28 and 265 times greater than carbon dioxide respectively.

Scientists studying the Baltic Sea off the coast of Sweden have found that shellfish are producing one-tenth of all the greenhouses gases released there – the equivalent to the amount produced by 20,000 cattle. If the same situation is being replicated around the rest of the world’s seas and oceans, we have a serious problem.

Continue reading...

Scientists detect the warping of space generated by the collision of two neutron stars.

The Saetereng family are trying to live a sustainable lifestyle in Akkarfjord, northern Norway.

He opened the Soviet Union and ended the Cold War, but lost the admiration of his people

Coal can’t compete with cheaper clean energy. The Trump administration can’t save expensive, dirty energy.

Last week, Trump’s EPA administrator Scott Pruitt announced, “the war on coal is over.” If there ever was a war on coal, the coal industry has lost. According to a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, many old American coal power plants are being retired or converted to natural gas, and new coal power plants aren’t being built because they’ve become more expensive than natural gas, wind, and solar energy:

The share of US electricity coming from coal fell from 51 percent in 2008 to 31 percent in 2016—an unprecedented change. New UCS analysis finds that, of the coal units that remain, roughly one in four plans to retire or convert to natural gas; another 17 percent are uneconomic and could face retirement soon.

Continue reading...

In a new project, an international group of photographers have joined forces to use their powerful images to raise awareness and funds to help stop the illegal wildlife trade

Continue reading...

World Land Speed record holder Andy Green describes the sensation of starting up the Bloodhound supersonic car for the first time.

Fasten your seatbelts, we're heading into a big week of contested politics and policy.