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The Kilauea volcano has been pouring lava into the ocean off Hawaii, causing a hydrochloric acid mist.

New Zealand’s opposition leader on Friday backed the establishment of a climate change commission, brightening the outlook for a non-partisan body to set up national carbon budgets and oversee the emissions trading scheme.

China’s five major state-owned power companies last year racked up combined losses of 13.2 billion yuan ($2.1 bln) from generating coal-fired electricity, a sign of the challenges facing the industry in the world’s biggest-polluting nation.

Wollemi pines have survived for hundreds of millions of years. Once covering Australia, they now survive in a few isolated spots – but they're coming back in a big way. Cris Brack, Assoc Professor Forest measurement & management, Australian National University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

You can’t make money from letting cows run wild, right? When Patrick Barkham got access to the sums at a pioneering Sussex farm, he was in for a surprise.

Orange tip butterflies jink over grassland and a buzzard mews high on a thermal. Blackthorns burst with bridal white blossom and sallow leaves of peppermint green unfurl. The exhilaration in this corner of West Sussex is not, however, simply the thrilling explosion of spring. The land is bursting with an unusual abundance of life; rampant weeds and wild flowers, insects, birdsong, ancient trees and enormous hedgerows, billowing into fields of hawthorn. And some of the conventional words from three millennia of farming – ‘hedgerow’, ‘field’ and ‘weed’ – no longer seem to apply in a landscape which is utterly alien to anyone raised in an intensively farmed environment.

This is Knepp, a 3,500-acre farm in densely-populated lowland Britain, barely 45 miles from London. Once a conventional dairy and arable operation, at the turn of this century, Knepp’s owners, Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree, auctioned off their farm machinery, rewilded their land and, as much by accident as design, inched towards a new model of farming. Some view the result as an immoral eyesore, an abnegation of our responsibility to keep land productive and tidy. Others find it inspiring proof that people and other nature can coexist.

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The independent Energy Security Board has released a draft detailed design paper on the National Energy Guarantee. The Australian Government has released a draft detailed design paper on the design elements that it is responsible for.

ESB to put meat on the skeleton of the National Energy Guarantee after briefing state and territory ministers on Friday.

Hermitage Stream, Langstone, Hampshire: One agitated moorhen was corralling four skittish chicks on the far bank, while the other frantically zigzagged after a fifth

As we walked alongside the Hermitage Stream, we noticed a day-old moorhen chick bobbing upside down beneath the replica wooden mill wheel, its oversized feet splayed to the sky. Without a second thought, my father climbed over the railings and plunged into the water, scooping up the limp body. The chick appeared lifeless, but as he warmed it in his hands it began to stir and slowly raised its tiny bald head.

Moorhens habitually kill their own chicks in order to whittle down a large brood, or in times of food shortage – drowning them by violently shaking them and pushing them underwater. There are six to eight eggs in an average clutch, but it’s uncommon to see adults with that number of well-grown young – usually only two or three will survive to maturity. However, with no parents in sight, it seemed more likely that this chick had been snatched and dropped by a predator.

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Australian electric vehicle sales jumped 67% in 2017 – but off an embarrassingly low base. New report calls for urgent policy support for EV uptake, as Australia continues to fall behind the rest of the world.

The Australian government bought its lowest volume of offset credits yet at last week’s seventh Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) auction, purchasing just 6.67 million units.

IPCC says ‘rapid and far-reaching’ measures required to combat climate change

The world is on track to exceed 1.5C of warming unless countries rapidly implement “far-reaching” actions to reduce carbon emissions, according to a draft UN report leaked to Reuters.

The final draft report from the UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) was due for publication in October. It is the guiding scientific document for what countries must do to combat climate change.

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NRMA kicks off roll-out of $10m EV fast-charging network across NSW and ACT, after tapping Brisbane-based company Tritium to supply the hardware.

A Men’s Shed group, sporting clubs and a local radio station are among organisations in Mayo benefitting from the Turnbull Government’s $5 million Solar Communities Program.

Global energy demand grew above its 10-year average in 2017 and carbon emissions increased after three years of little-to-no growth, according to BP’s 67th annual Statistical Review of World Energy.

Macquarie raises $889m in bonds to finance green projects such as renewable energy projects, energy efficiency, and clean transportation.

AEMO sees rooftop solar and battery storage uptake surging in WA, but grid to remain stable even as fossil fuel plants retire. EV forecasts vary widely.

The CER has today released results of its successful seventh auction, leaving around $250 million in the ERF to purchase further abatement to help reduce emissions and meet our international targets.

Tesla moves towards more conventional marketing methods, saying EV Models S and X save lots of money compared to similar-priced petrol cars.

Silicon Valley is in love with E-scooters as electric scooter company Bird raises more capital that doubles its value in just a fortnight.

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