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Pumping heat from our cars and buildings into the outside world adds to climate change, increasing the need to stay cool

Air conditioning was a luxury in Britain 40 years ago, but the long hot summer of 1976 changed that. The scorching heat that summer lasted two months and most people sweated it out indoors with only open windows and electric fans for ventilation. After that, air conditioning no longer seemed so extravagant and its popularity soared.

Air conditioners consume huge amounts of energy, though, and that’s adding to climate change. The US uses as much electricity to keep buildings cool as the whole of Africa uses for all its electrical needs. That power largely comes from polluting power stations, adding to the warmer climate.

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Gas is back on Australia’s agenda in a big way. Last week’s meeting of state and federal energy ministers in particular saw an extraordinary focus on gas in the electricity sector.

While the meeting promised major reform for the energy sector, the federal energy and environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, highlighted the need for more gas supplies and “the growing importance of gas as a transition fuel as we move to incorporate more renewables into the system”.

Gas is certainly a lower-carbon energy source than coal, but gas prices have soared as Australia begins shipping gas overseas.

So what might this mean for energy and climate policy?

Rising gas

In 2013-14 natural gas-fired generation rose to account for 22% of Australia’s electricity generation, although the figure falls to 12% in the National Electricity Market (NEM), which excludes Western Australia and the Northern Territory, both of which use a large amount of gas.

Among the NEM states, South Australia relies the most on gas-powered generation. This means that gas generators generally set the state’s average electricity price, which has usually been higher than those in the eastern states. Average electricity prices in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland tend to be set more often by coal power generators than by gas.

Over the past couple of decades, the construction of interstate transmission lines has helped to smooth out the different prices among states by allowing exports from those with excess, and cheaper, power to those with shortfalls or more expensive power. On balance, the process has helped to provide more affordable and reliable power across the country.

For some years views of the role and future of gas in Australia have been mixed.

But in the United States, abundant natural gas at low prices prompted industry and politicians to welcome gas as a bridge between today’s coal-intensive electric power generation and a future low-carbon grid. The share of natural gas-fired electric generation capacity more than doubled from 19% in 1990 to 40% in 2014, while the share of actual generation from natural gas rose from 12% to 28% over the same period. Last year it accounted for a third of all US electricity generation.

Soaring prices

Yet in Australia, the renewable energy target has forced our energy supply towards renewable energy, namely wind and solar. Together with the absence of a carbon price and the high price of gas produced by the lucrative export market, there have been few reasons for growth in the role of gas to generate power in Australia. This all changed last month.

In July the average wholesale electricity price in South Australia was A$229 per megawatt-hour, compared with around A$60 in the other NEM states. The state’s spot price soared to A$8,898 on the evening of July 7. Low wind output, the darkness of night, high cold-weather electricity demand and the absence of coal plants after several shutdowns all handed strong pricing power to a few gas generators.

The price volatility attracted much alarm, although the Australian Energy Market Operator noted there were no system security or reliability issues, nor departures from normal market rules and procedures. Climate Councillor and former Origin Energy executive Andrew Stock concluded that “increasing reliance on high-priced gas is not a viable solution to reduce power prices or to tackle climate change”.

He argued that more gas power would push up prices even more, increase reliance on the state’s ageing obsolete gas-fuelled fleet and increase greenhouse emissions, including risks of fugitive methane emissions.

On the side of gas, Origin Energy chief executive Grant King pointed out: “South Australia’s electricity demand was met in full. The reality is that, while spot prices ran up, 99.99% of customers in South Australia did not pay one more cent for their electricity. So, from a reliability and affordability point of view, the market delivered.”

Similarly, Tristan Edis from the advisory group Green Markets noted: “In reality the wholesale electricity market as it is currently designed is doing precisely what you would want it to do to accommodate increasing amounts of renewable energy while also ensuring reliable supply of electricity.”

What energy system do we want?

The role of gas is now a conundrum, particularly if, as seems to be the case, Australia’s energy ministers see gas playing a bigger role in shoring up the electricity market.

How this would work is far from clear. Current energy and climate change policies combined with relatively high gas price forecasts suggest that the proportion of gas in the power generation mix is unlikely to rise significantly.

Yet gas plants that can provide backup for intermittent renewable sources such as wind and solar may very well be needed. How much will be needed, for how long and how it will be paid for will depend on how quickly a superior mix of generation and storage technologies with very low emissions emerges and what policy mix drives the transition.

One consequence of these changes must be recognised. Whatever mix of wind, solar and gas power begins to replace our coal-dominated supply sector will cost more. Without a carbon price, electricity is generated from existing sources at less than A$50 per megawatt-hour, while wind, solar and gas all cost at least more than A$80 per megawatt-hour.

In responding to the real or perceived recent crises in South Australia (and Tasmania), our political leaders need to abandon wishful thinking and laying blame to focus on delivering and explaining the energy system that we want and need.

Tony Wood owns shares in companies including in energy and resources through his superannuation fund.

Grouse shooting | Sugar and schoolchildren | Ikea furniture | Uber drivers | Cryptic crossword | ‘Pithicisms’

George Monbiot is right: wholesale destruction of wildlife is obscene (The grouse shooters aim to kill, 16 August). Why no grousing, then, on the imminent destruction of the diverse habitats and endangered species, including many red list birds, on the west coast of Cumbria? Why no grouse about the collateral damage in obsessive pursuit of the “biggest nuclear development in Europe” at Moorside? The environmental destruction planned is on a scale the most bloodthirsty grouse hunter could only dream of.
Marianne Birkby
Radiation Free Lakeland, Milnthorpe, Cumbria

• This morning I entered my local Morrisons supermarket to be greeted by a large display, just inside the entrance, selling multipacks of filled chocolate bars. The sign above said “Back to School”. Selling high sugar goods is one thing, but encouraging the purchase for children is quite another (Report, 22 August). Shame on Morrisons.
Roger Frisby
Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire

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Archaeologists have uncovered a mysterious stone structure buried under what they describe as Scotland's "largest Neolithic rubbish dump".

As the National Parks Service turns 100 this week, we look at how receding ice, extreme heat and acidifying oceans are transforming America’s landscapes, and guardians of national parks face the herculean task of stopping it

After a century of shooing away hunters, tending to trails and helping visitors enjoy the wonder of the natural world, the guardians of America’s most treasured places have been handed an almost unimaginable new job – slowing the all-out assault climate change is waging against national parks across the nation.

As the National Parks Service (NPS) has charted the loss of glaciers, sea level rise and increase in wildfires spurred by rising temperatures in recent years, the scale of the threat to US heritage across the 412 national parks and monuments has become starkly apparent.

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Spider silk is used to create a superlens for a microscope, allowing Bangor University scientists to view objects previously deemed "invisible".

Summer Arctic sea ice is at its lowest since records began over 125 years ago

Scientists have pieced together historical records to reconstruct Arctic sea ice extent over the past 125 years. The results are shown in the figure below. The red line, showing the extent at the end of the summer melt season, is the most critical:

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Peter Cowling, Anne McEntee and JC Sandberg discuss the global landscape for renewables, policy and innovation and what the future energy mix looks like.

Award-winning state green building program scrapped by Victoria's former Coalition government, has been reinstated by Labor with a $33m investment over two years to cut building energy consumption and emissions.

Energy ministers hailed progress, but their summit ducked key issues. They refused to embrace the target zero net carbon emissions, while South Australia indicated it favoured an "emissions intensity" scheme to replace the renewable energy target.

Fight looms between retailers and networks over right to install solar and battery storage in homes, businesses. Spark Infrastructure says proposed rules "ludicrous".

DUE’s share price will likely be driven by the success or otherwise of its remote energy and clean energy segment.

Multicoloured slug, a species of nudibranch, was discovered in 2000 off the Western Australian coast and will be officially named Moridilla fifo

A multicoloured sea slug discovered off the coast of Western Australia has been named for the state’s fly-in, fly-out mining workforce after a judging panel ruled that Sluggy McSlugface breached the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.

The slug, which is a species of nudibranch, was discovered in 2000 off the coast of Dampier, about 1,500km north of Perth, by the WA scientist Dr Nerida Wilson.

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New water policies could cause even more harm to the already damaged Tukituki River. Phillip Capper/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Balancing the environment with development is tricky. One way for policymakers to include the value of ecosystems in development is to set limits for pollution and other environmental impacts, known as environmental bottom lines (EBLs). These can be a helpful way of embedding into an economy the value of ecosystems. They also help protect natural assets in order to maintain a sustainable cash flow.

Unfortunately, bottom lines also risk developments meeting limits without actually helping the environment. Bottom lines form a significant part of environmental policy in New Zealand, in particular in the areas of freshwater and greenhouse gas emissions.

Bottom lines should not have as much influence in New Zealand policy as they do. So how can we make better policy that actually helps the environment?

Setting a low bar

The New Zealand government is reviewing its National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management and is emphasising the need to maximise an economic return on fresh water as a commodity.

In addition, the statement identifies various bottom lines for local councils (such as maximum acceptable concentrations of pollutants and/or minimum water quality attributes), as well as mechanisms to protect minimum flows.

The combination of listing bottom lines while looking for the best economic return can lead to perverse outcomes. For example, the proposed Hawke’s Bay Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme would protect water supply for intensifying farming, but increases the risk of worsening the already ecologically crippled Tukituki River.

The bottom-line philosophy is so entrenched that environmental groups recently celebrated a ruling that developers could not pollute a river so badly that it would kill off organisms. A bare minimum standard must be met, but it is not something we should aspire to celebrate.

On the other hand, many regional councils are trying to do better than this by specifying goals for improving water quality in certain areas. The Rotorua Lakes and Lake Taupo are examples of central and local government working together to improve conditions.

Lake Taupo Sids1/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

But without clear central government support, those councils that want to go beyond the bottom line and make more significant environmental improvements may end up facing legal action brought by those suffering real or imagined erosion of their property rights.

The same is true of greenhouse gases, particularly those related to transport development. The current benefit-cost approach to investment in roads is not assessed against national emission reduction targets. This leads (as one example) to nationally signficant road projects being approved without accounting for transport emissions increases.

While better roads increase fuel efficiency and so lower emissions per vehicle, they also generate more car use, meaning a net increase in emissions. Road transport emissions have increased 72% between 1990 and 2014.

True, the government has voiced support for electric cars and use of biofuels and also funded more public transport, walking and cycling, which will help reduce emissions. But overall the lack of joined-up thinking and a bottom-line approach – we will pollute, but only this much – protects economic growth rather than the environment.

While water quality and greenhouse emissions are less bad than they might have been with no policies at all, the bottom-line concept implies that ecosystems can be maintained at some measurable minimum acceptable standard, with the option of improvement when conditions allow.

Unless matched with clear timelines and goals to improve ecological health, the result is a continued trading down of ecosystem assets in order to boost economic ones.

Positive developments

An alternative to the bottom-line mindset would be to implement environmental policies that call for net positive ecological outcomes – so-called “positive development”.

This integrates ecological decline and improvement into economic decision-making. The human and ecological history of a place would be accounted for. You would look not only at whether the materials for, say, a building came from sustainable sources, but whether you were contributing to improving ecosystems.

For example, protecting and enhancing biodiversity is done in Australia and New Zealand to offset development impacts. The preference is not just to minimise harm, but to improve things.

In the same way that economic investments need to demonstrate a positive financial outcome, so positive development will require a demonstration of how human activity will contribute to improving ecological health – water quality, biodiversity, local and global air quality, and so on.

Attached to resource consents, it could mean failure to demonstrate net ecological benefit means no permit. This shifts things from, say, just rehabilitating a mine site to requiring demonstrated improvement in its post-mining ecological value, or contributing to improving ecological values elsewhere.

As explained by Janis Birkeland in her 2008 book Positive Development, this approach goes beyond reducing use of materials, carbon and energy (the kind of outcomes attached to such initiatives as green buildings), to requiring improvements in total ecological health over the life cycle of a proposed development.

Applied to water quality, it would require developers to show how they would improve water quality and associated ecological values, rather than merely meeting minimum defined standards. And in terms of climate change, it would require proof that transport funding would result in a decline in emissions, rather than simply limiting the rate of increase.

What is needed is a government that is willing to go beyond requiring that development minimises harm to requiring that it does actual good.

Stephen Knight-Lenihan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Burneside, Cumbria I walked a narrow bank, the mill race on one side and a steep drop to the swirling Sprint on the other. And I thought of last December’s flood

Sprint Mill sits in a small wooded gorge below a cascade of sinuous waterfalls on the river Sprint. There has been a cloth manufacturing or processing mill on this site since at least the 1400s, all dependent on water power provided by the river. The current owners have restored the 19th-century mill with the help of a grant from Natural England; the front wall had developed a worrying bulge. When work began, they found that this three-storey building had been constructed without foundations.

The Dales Way weaves around the most recent mill race, hollowed out of the earth like a small canal and used until the mill closed in 1954. Ahead of me, long-tailed tits fidgeted, tails flicking up and down as they moved on, their ratcheting, rolling contact calls travelling on the breeze.

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ANU scientists achieve record solar thermal efficiency of 97% – a breakthrough that could cut CST electricity costs by 10%.

Spot prices were below last year, in all States, possibly reflecting good level of wind generation, soft demand and that most interconnectors seem to be working.

Shishmaref is one of dozens of indigenous villages in Alaska that face growing threats of flooding and erosion due to global warming.

Originally published in the Guardian on 26 August 1966

HAMPSHIRE: The wondrous fine days of last week have come just right for the harvesters. Although tractors with trolleys are not so picturesque as horses with wains, there remains a flavour of the sacred earth at harvest-time. The more especially in large fields with men and girls scattered at various jobs. And I have seen a young fellow, stripped to the waist, and as brown as a South Sea islander, with a girl beside him, her hair neatly plaited in pigtails, both holding on to a jolting bar, as they returned to the farm after work. The quality remains, in spite of the combustion engine. In many fields the straw is being trussed, and not wastefully burnt. Various uses are being found for it besides the bedding down of animals; in right conditions cabbages can be grown, also seed potatoes bedded and grown, with great saving of labour. If for no better use, it can be made into compost. The hot days have brought swarms of flying ants, fat, juicy, young queens, that birds relish. Starlings, that naturally have quick, gliding flight, learn to hover, not very well, but sufficiently slowly to snatch at the flying ants in midair. The starlings fly at a low level over fields and gardens, and, higher up, seagulls circle to taste the formic acid flavour. They remind me of the time when I have eaten honey-ants in West Australia that were dug up by aborigine girls. These were the only form of sweetmeats that the bush provided, and very good too. I was sorry to learn that the Scops owl had escaped, with but poor chance of survival I fear.

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An exotic visitor, that should should have been sunning itself by the Mediterranean, attracts crowds of birdwatchers to the Ham Wall reserve

My birding friend Rob may have got married only the day before, but nothing stops him from looking regularly at his pager to check out the latest sightings of rare birds. Fortunately, he then took the trouble to text me the news: that a collared pratincole had turned up at the RSPB’s Ham Wall reserve, just down the road from my home.

It would have been rude not to pay this bird a visit, especially as it should have been sunning itself on some Mediterranean marsh, not flying around the Somerset Levels. I had never actually seen this species before in Britain, so I walked along the disused railway line that bisects the marshes with more than the usual spring in my step.

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