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All the talk of offshore wind and green hydrogen in Australia is hugely promising, but they won't get us to 80% renewable energy by 2030. So what will?

The post Who is going to make sure Australia can get to 80 pct renewables by 2030? appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Two organic dairy farmers have slashed their energy costs by tens of thousands of dollars using renewable energy and equipment upgrades.

The post “At least they’ll have free power:” Renewables change future for organic dairy farm appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Pressure mounts on Labor to rule out the use of native forest biomass for renewable energy generation, just as it gains popularity as a replacement for coal.

The post “More emissions than coal:” Pressure mounts to rule out forest biomass appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Shanghai, Moscow and Tehran have the highest levels of NO2 pollution, according to the research

Cities in relatively prosperous countries are blighted by serious levels of air pollution from nitrogen dioxide, often without realising the extent of the problem, research has found.

Moscow is the world’s second worst city for nitrogen dioxide pollution, behind Shanghai in China, while St Petersburg takes fourth place. Other cities near Russia follow close behind, including Ashgabat, capital of Turkmenistan, and Minsk, capital of Belarus, at seventh and eighth place respectively, according to the research, published on Wednesday.

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Forests in Russia are most affected, as scientists warn of escape of huge quantities of buried carbon dioxide

The boreal forests in the far northern latitudes have suffered more tree cover loss owing to fire in the last decade than any other place on Earth, with Russia losing more trees to fire than any other country, data has shown.

The boreal region is a huge stretch of coniferous forests that encircles the northern hemisphere taking in parts of Scandinavia, Estonia, Lithuania, Russia, Alaska and Canada, among other countries.

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BlackRock's new battery storage company Akaysha is to test limits of battery storage market, and has an eye on other island grid markets in Asia.

The post BlackRock to push battery limits and new markets with eight hour storage and inertia appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Bid led by Atlassian co-founder and his wife gets nod from renewables and storage developer Genex Power after lifting its indicative offer.

The post Atlassian’s Farquhar gets nod from storage developer Genex with improved offer appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Harnessing natural insect power can, with proper management, have higher efficacy than resorting to harmful chemicals

Ants can be more effective than pesticides at helping farmers produce food, according to new research. They are better at killing pests, reducing plant damage and increasing crop yields, according to the first systematic review of ants’ contributions to crop production.

Ants are generalist predators and hunt pests that damage fruits, seeds and leaves, leading to a drop in crop yields. A greater diversity of ants generally provides more protection against a wider range of pests, the study found.

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A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

Offset standards body Verra published its VCS methodology for biochar Tuesday, outlining how emissions removals will be calculated using the increasingly popular carbon credit technique.

The government is in a row with the EU over the UK's membership of the €100bn Horizon research programme.

Traders have identified a roughly $2 range as to where the August WCI current vintage allowance auction will likely settle on Wednesday, with bullish market sentiment stemming from California Governor Gavin Newsom’s (D) ambitious climate plan running up against lighter speculator participation and a recent secondary market price leap.

Shifting to renewables means many more high voltage powerlines. But these powerlines are seeing strong pushback from farmers and rural communities. Are there any alternatives? Asma Aziz, Lecturer in Power Engineering, Edith Cowan University Iftekhar Ahmad, Associate Professor, Edith Cowan University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

When the pandemic hit, green space was there for us at a time when others weren’t or couldn’t be. Urban greening might be the solution to the ‘lonelygenic environment’ that our cities have created. Xiaoqi Feng, Associate Professor in Urban Health and Environment; NHMRC Career Development Fellow, UNSW Sydney Thomas Astell-Burt, Professor of Population Health and Environmental Data Science, NHMRC Boosting Dementia Research Leadership Fellow, University of Wollongong Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Singapore's Vena Energy is the latest to reveal interest in Australia's first offshore wind zone, and there may be even bigger players to come.

The post Singapore’s Vena Energy joins rush to Australia offshore wind with Gippsland project appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Hedging emissions with vintage 2026 to 2030 nature-based offsets will cost more than $24 a tonne on exchange ICE, which launched ten new voluntary carbon market (VCM) futures this week.

The regulator approved a rescuer of Southern that hardly had a clean record in the sector

Ofwat is not a complete patsy and is in the business of holding companies to account, the chief executive of the water regulator argued on the Today programme on Tuesday. David Black even waved a metaphorical big stick at a couple of firms. “I think that companies like Thames and Southern really need to up their game,” he said.

He described Thames as “a repeated poor performer”. And he said Ofwat’s £126m penalty on Southern in 2019 for wastewater and reporting breaches was instrumental in forcing a change of ownership last year. “That’s an example of a company that performed poorly, that was held to account by Ofwat and the investors lost their shirt,” argued Black. “That is exactly as it should be.”

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Thousands of owners of small forestry plots in the US could be enrolled into carbon markets with the launch of a dynamic baseline methodology for calculating emissions that could be later rolled out to more than 100 countries globally, and help end the criticism of hot air, its proponents claim.

The EU’s total GHG emissions rose 6% year-on-year in Q1 but held below levels seen before the coronavirus pandemic, the bloc’s statistics office said in an update on Tuesday.

Firefighters are struggling to contain large wildfires tearing through forests in Valencia. Powerful winds have made the fires difficult to put out and it has swept through 6,500 hectares. More than 1,000 people have been evacuated from nearby villages. Spain has been simultaneously struggling with another blaze in the Aragon region, which has forced authorities to evacuate 1,500 people. According to data from the European Forest Fire Information System, 659,541 hectares of land burned across the continent between January and mid-August, 260,000 of which has been in Spain alone

• Wildfires in Europe burn area equivalent to one-fifth of Belgium
• ‘It’s much easier to stop someone lighting a match than to put out a 1,000-acre fire’

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