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Shell tipped to deepen ties with battery storage maker Sonnen as it accelerates its push into green technology.

The post Shell tipped to deepen links with battery storage maker Sonnen appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Five projects and 7 studies aimed at boosting integration of distributed energy resources on Australia's grid have won total of $9.6m funding from Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

The post ARENA tips nearly $10m into distributed energy projects, pilots appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The boom is small-scale rooftop solar installations has continued into 2019, with total installs at record level for January.

The post Small-scale rooftop solar installs reach record 159MW in January appeared first on RenewEconomy.

NSW Coalition and Labor unveil separate pledges to boost distributed renewables in state: a rooftop solar rebate from Labor and zero-interest loans for PV and batteries from LNP.

The post Rooftop solar, batteries early winners in NSW election race appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Families in West Virginia say the coal mines have poisoned their water. Now they're fighting back.

The Department has published a new Recovery Plan for the Macquarie Perch (Macquaria australasica).

Grattan debunks conservative claims that an increase in renewable energy will inevitably make the electricity system less reliable, and says such views are both wrong and dangerous.

The post Blaming renewables for reliability issues is “wrong and dangerous” appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A new report predicts that one-third of the ice in the Himalayas will melt, even if we contain global warming to 1.5C. So what does that mean for the flood-prone valleys below? Anthony Dosseto, Associate Professor, University of Wollongong Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Scientists hope to discover one of the most famous ships in Antarctic exploration history this week.

Exclusive: Insects could vanish within a century at current rate of decline, says global review

• Why are insects in decline, and can we do anything about it?
  

The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.

More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.

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Answers to key questions about the global insect collapse

• Insect collapse: ‘We are destroying our life support systems’

Many scientists think the current worldwide annihilation of wildlife is the beginning of a huge loss of species on Earth. It has happened five times in the last 4bn years, as a result of meteorite impacts, long ice ages and huge volcanic eruptions. But this one is the result not of natural causes, but of humanity’s actions.

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Salad plants are already being grown in old bomb shelters but floating dairy farms and 16-storey food towers could be next

Only the Northern line tube trains rumbling through tunnels overhead provide any clue that Growing Underground is not a standard farm.

The rows of fennel, purple radish and wasabi shoots could be in almost any polytunnel, but these plants are 100 feet below Clapham High Street and show that urban agriculture is, in some cases at least, not a fad.

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At first the distant icy object Ultima Thule looked like a snowman. Now it's a "gingerbread man".

An inspiring US campaign to restore the mighty chestnut to its eastern forests points the way to saving at-risk species in the UK

If you move south through the US Appalachian region, between New York and Georgia, you get a feel for what Bill Bryson described in A Walk In The Woods as “mile after endless mile of dark, deep, silent woods”. Chestnut country once occupied some of the most spectacular wooded landscapes in the world, from the Shenandoah valley and the Catskills to Tennessee’s Smoky mountains. It is deep-gorge and clear-river country, where an understory of vibrant dogwood gives way to an imposing hemlock, a tulip tree or an exhilarating view. But something is amiss. When I visited last autumn, these woods would have been littered with fallen nuts from the magnificent American chestnut (Castanea dentata) – but for the blight that erased 4 billion trees from the landscape.

Just under a century ago, the American chestnut disappeared from the vast eastern forests of the US. A broadleaf of immense size and distribution, the chestnut suffered catastrophic decimation by the inadvertent introduction of an Asian blight, Cryphonectria parasitica. The blight arrived in 1904, on ornamental Japanese chestnut trees imported to furnish New York’s expanding Bronx zoo. Infection swept north and south, and by the 1950s the great “redwood of the east” – whose fruit was relied upon by herbivores such as the wild turkey, bluejay and red squirrel – all but vanished, a tragedy considered one of the greatest ecological disasters to hit the world’s forests. Thankfully, however, the story did not end there: following a monumental conservational effort, the chestnut now stands on the brink of return.

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Roca London Gallery’s latest show explores real-life projects and products helping city buildings grow food and reuse waste. The exhibition runs 9 Feb to 18 May

All images courtesy of Roca London Gallery

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Many of our best loved garden plants are there because they were once recommended to heal the sick.

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

Environmental justice groups have urged Oregon legislators to curtail the use of free allowances and offsets in the state's proposed cap-and-trade programme, while natural gas utilities are advocating for greater allocations in line with their electric counterparts.

On the last day of January, Oregon lawmakers introduced their highly-anticipated cap-and-trade bill, sending a loud and clear message that climate change is a top priority this coming session. Massachusetts-based think-tank Climate Xchange breaks down the legislation and offers an analysis of the proposal.

Does limited edition ‘artisanal’ water represent the apogee of late capitalism?