Feed aggregator

Consumers should not have to pay excessive prices to use public car charging, MPs say.

Karl Brown from Instyle Solar on the myriad of challenges to overcome.

The post Great Solar Business Podcast: The secrets to scaling up your solar business appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Carbon emissions, ocean acidification, Amazon clearing all hurtling toward new records

A new study tracking the planet’s vital signs has found that many of the key indicators of the global climate crisis are getting worse and either approaching, or exceeding, key tipping points as the earth heats up.

Overall, the study found some 16 out of 31 tracked planetary vital signs, including greenhouse gas concentrations, ocean heat content and ice mass, set worrying new records.

Continue reading...

Scientists call for three-pronged action on emissions after new research finds Covid-19 did little to slow climate emergency.

The post Scientists demand urgent action after Covid-19 did little to slow climate emergency appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The EU’s power sector CO2 emissions rose 11% year-on-year in H1 but remain well below pre-pandemic levels despite a near-full recovery in electricity demand as cleaner forms of generation prevail, according to a report published on Wednesday.

The UK’s current carbon pricing measures are “inconsistent, regressive, unclear, and cannot put the country on the path to reach net zero emissions by 2050”, a think-tank said Wednesday, urging wide-ranging reforms to the system.

An octogenarian Oxford alumnus has been handed a longer prison sentence for not complying with a confiscation order to repay ill-gotten gains from an investment fraud related to the reforestation carbon market.

New research reviewed more than 200 studies, and found the science underpinning artificial refuges — think nest boxes and artificial burrows — must be improved. Darcy Watchorn, PhD Candidate, Deakin University Dale Nimmo, Associate Professor in Ecology, Charles Sturt University Mitchell Cowan, PhD Candidate, Charles Sturt University Tim Doherty, ARC DECRA Fellow, University of Sydney Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Eight of the ten top-selling passenger vehicles in New Zealand are now utes or SUVs. With carbon emissions reduction an urgent priority, that’s not a sustainable trend. Kirsty Wild, Senior Research Fellow, Public Health, University of Auckland Alistair Woodward, Professor, School of Population Health, University of Auckland Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

The EU has committed €118 million to 32 small-scale carbon-cutting projects across 14 nations under its ETS-funded Innovation Fund, the bloc’s executive said on Tuesday as it announced the financing vehicle's first awards.

US biofuel credit (RIN) prices went on the upswing over the past week as traders pointed to a diesel arbitrage and gasoline import data as supporting factors for the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) market.

E-highway study given £2m to draw up plans for overhead electric cables on motorway near Scunthorpe

The government will fund the design of a scheme to install overhead electric cables to power electric lorries on a motorway near Scunthorpe, as part of a series of studies on how to decarbonise road freight.

The electric road system – or e-highway – study, backed with £2m of funding, will draw up plans to install overhead cables on a 20km (12.4 miles) stretch of the M180 near Scunthorpe, in Lincolnshire. If the designs are accepted and building work is funded the trucks could be on the road by 2024.

Continue reading...

Male spending – on petrol and meat – is apparently worse for the environment than women’s. But it’s the system, not individuals, that needs to change

Sorry, boys, but it’s all your fault. Melting ice caps, flash floods, rising sea levels: men are to blame for the lot of it. Please don’t drown the messenger, I’m just relaying the results of a Swedish study that found that men’s spending habits cause 16% more climate-heating emissions than women’s. The biggest difference seems to be that men spend more money on petrol. Another big difference: the men surveyed bought more meat than women. So this is the way the world ends, eh? Not with a bang, but with blokes eating too many burgers.

I don’t know how many studies published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology go viral, but this paper has had an enormous amount of traction. Of course, this is largely because its findings leant themselves to delicious clickbait such as Men Are Worse for Climate Change Than Women Because They Love Meat and Cars. To be fair, the study didn’t lean into gender war territory in the way you would expect based on the headlines it generated. Gender wasn’t even mentioned in the paper’s title, which was “Shifting expenditure on food, holidays, and furnishings could lower greenhouse gas emissions by almost 40%”.

Continue reading...

Conservationists demand killer is found after creature harpooned from close range

An orphaned monk seal known as Kostis, who had become a local celebrity in Greece after being rescued by fishers three years ago, has been found harpooned from close range, prompting outrage from conservationists and demands to find his killer.

MOm, the Hellenic Society for the Study and Protection of the Monk Seal, a not-for-profit group that works to protect the endangered species, said Kostis had been deliberately killed in the waters near Alonnisos, in the northern Sporades islands.

Continue reading...

California gasoline usage increased for the second consecutive month in April, as consumer demand continues to skew back towards pre-COVID levels amid fewer state-level restrictions, according to state data released this week.

China is on track to see its installed capacity of non-fossil power generation surpass its coal capacity at the end of 2021 for the first time, a report said, while a separate publication showed the country did not fund any new coal-fired power plants through the Belt and Road Initiative in H1, also a first.

From strengthening flood defences to creating low-traffic neighbourhoods, our city is taking bold action

• Sadiq Khan is the mayor of London

Too often, we in the UK have thought of countries such as India and Bangladesh as being on the frontlines of the climate crisis. But the serious flooding in London over the weekend and in the last month – coupled with the extreme weather we’ve seen in other parts of the UK over recent years – shows the realities of climate change are no longer a distant problem, but one that is increasingly reaching our own doorsteps.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen homes, businesses and tube stations inundated with floodwater in our city. And while it’s been inspiring to see communities pull together, and local authorities and emergency services reacting quickly to support those in need, the truth is that freak weather events – like the ones we’ve been experiencing here in London and around the world – should be a wake-up call, spurring us all to take much more ambitious climate action.

Continue reading...

Germany-based utility RWE, historically the EU’s top corporate emitter, reported a 39% jump in its ETS-covered thermal power output for H1 2021 as demand rebounded following coronavirus restrictions.

EUAs drifted slightly despite firmer natural gas prices, as Russian state producer Gazprom declined yet again to book additional gas transit capacity through the Ukrainian network.

Australia's biggest battery is ready to begin production with its Tesla Megapacks, but Elon Musk has warned of looming supply crunch.

The post Australia’s biggest battery registered, but battery storage supply crunch looms appeared first on RenewEconomy.