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Fewer than 2,000 farms have applied to sustainable farming scheme replacing EU system in England

Farmers may miss out on thousands of pounds after government chaos over the post-Brexit nature-friendly farming schemes caused them not to apply.

These schemes were developed to replace the EU’s old subsidy system for farmers, which paid according how much land they managed. The new English system would instead pay for public goods such as improving the environment and enriching biodiversity.

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Blue whales consume up to 1bn particles over a feeding season with as-yet-unknown impacts on health

Filter-feeding whales are consuming millions of particles of microplastic pollution a day, according to a study, making them the largest consumers of plastic waste on the planet.

The central estimate for blue whales was 10m pieces a day, meaning more than 1bn pieces could be ingested over a three- to four-month feeding season. The weight of plastic consumed over the season was estimated at between 230kg and 4 tonnes.

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Petition signed by 300,000 people demands Home Office drops ‘attempt to overthrow democracy’

• UK politics live – latest news updates

Civil rights campaigners and environmentalists have called on peers to kill a public order bill targeting radical climate protesters, as it comes before the House of Lords for its second reading. The bill will make “locking on” – where protesters cuff themselves to a target – a criminal offence, among other measures.

A petition signed by more than 300,000 people and coordinated by Liberty and Greenpeace was handed into the Home Office, demanding it drops its “attempt to overthrow democracy”.

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Ellekan, an islet in Marshall Islands, has been reduced to a pile of sand in the middle of the reef. Those who loved it have already held its funeral

• Before it is lost is series of essays from the Pacific islands

On a trip to the islet of Kalalen, eight years ago, a man named Yoster Harris ran out to meet me.

Yoster is married to the alap, or landowner, of Kalalen and he took my hand and led me to point out Ellekan, a neighbouring islet at the very end of the Majuro atoll lagoon, in my home of the Marshall Islands in the north Pacific.

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Every week it appears there is another major step forward in discovering how to shift more renewables around Australia's main grid.

The post Networks find smarter ways to shift more renewables around the grid appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Xpansiv is launching a standardised spot contract for cookstoves offsets next month that hopes to overcome general criticisms of poor quality projects in the voluntary carbon market (VCM) with the requirement of achieving at least five sustainable development goals (SGDs).

The US and UAE have signed a partnership to catalyse $100 billion of investment in clean energy projects and add 100 GW of clean energy globally by 2035, state news agency WAM reported on Tuesday.

EUA prices fell for a second session early on Tuesday, further trimming last week's 18% gain as a weak auction dampened sentiment and energy prices continued to decline as the short term demand outlook remained bearish.

Calls by countries such as UK and US to halt auction for drilling permits in the world’s second-largest rainforest branded ‘galling’

• Sale of oil and gas permits casts shadow over world’s second-largest rainforest

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has criticised the west for pressuring it to halt oil and gas exploration in the Congo basin rainforest, while continuing to search for fossil fuels in their own countries.

The Congo basin, more than half of which is located in DRC, is the last rainforest on Earth that sucks in more carbon than it releases and is second only to the Amazon in size. The DRC announced in July that oil and gas permits in parts of the rainforest would be auctioned off. The blocks up for sale include areas in Virunga national park, as well as critically endangered gorilla habitats and the world’s largest tropical peatlands, which store the equivalent of three years of the world’s fossil fuel emissions.

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G20 countries and multilateral development banks (MDBs) provided at least $55 billion per year in international public finance for oil, gas, and coal projects between 2019-21, nearly twice as much as was provided by from those sources for clean energy over the same period, a report from non-profit climate groups revealed on Tuesday.

A carbon accounting start-up has launched a platform aiming to help enterprises account for and cut Scope 3 emissions, which often represent more than three-quarters of corporate carbon footprints.

There will be no intervention to inject additional UK allowances into the British carbon market until at least May 2023 after the latest step-change to the formula used to calculate the trigger price for the market’s cost containment mechanism.

Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) issuance soared to nearly 750,000 units in its latest update - over half of them to landfill gas projects - while the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) urged companies to opt in to next year’s Corporate Emissions Reduction Transparency (CERT) report.

Chinese regulators have jointly released an implementation plan to establish a wide range of emissions-related standards to realise carbon neutrality.

A tech firm specialising in allowing users to tokenise carbon credits will introduce know-your-customer (KYC) requirements on some of its services in an effort to meet expected demands from major offset standards.

Activist among 30 people in three states and ACT to report visits from officers at request of NSW police ahead of mining forum

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Counter-terror police in Queensland have visited the home of an environmental activist following a request from New South Wales ahead of planned protests at a mining conference in Sydney.

The activist is one of about 30 people across four jurisdictions to report visits from police in the past week ahead of the International Mining and Resources Conference, which starts on Wednesday.

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Oil and gas companies are showing improvement in their measurement and reporting of methane, but efforts by the industry need to accelerate so that emissions of the potent greenhouse gas can be reduced quickly enough to align with a 1.5C pathway by 2030, a report released this week said.

‘Polluting elite’ responsible for same amount of carbon dioxide in a year as poorest 10% are in a decade, data shows

The top 1% of earners in the UK are responsible for the same amount of carbon dioxide emissions in a single year as the bottom 10% over more than two decades, new data has shown.

The findings highlight the enormous gaps between what have been termed “the polluting elite”, whose high-carbon lifestyles fuel the climate crisis, and the majority of people, even in developed countries, whose carbon footprints are far smaller.

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Emissions from New Zealand’s liquid fossil fuel sector climbed in 2021-22 while several other sectors reported a drop in carbon output, according to regulatory reporting, as GHG emissions have not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels.

New study analysing 42 years of data shows that wind and solar droughts are relatively short and shallow, and 100 per cent renewables is very doable.

The post A 42-year study shows wind and solar droughts in 100% renewable grid not as bad as thought appeared first on RenewEconomy.