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The physicist, who has died aged 76, had motor neurone disease.

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire: this is mythologised woodland, a secular sacred place, a hunting ground and a sanctuary

Sunlight pools on thousands of wild garlic leaves on the bank of an abandoned railway cutting. Trees stand in companionable silence, the breath between them is slight. Days ago, slender ash trunks rattled like yacht masts in a marina, hawthorns hissed in the east wind, great oaks and steeple limes soughed in deep snowy murmurs. Much of the storm wreckage has been cleared from the path; it is now a gallery full of early birdsong and light falling in patches as if from high windows.

Yesterday a blackbird repeated a one … two-three … four syllable phrase of song; today it is elaborated by bright description and excited story. Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It about the bird under the greenwood tree singing “come hither” with no enemy but “winter and rough weather”.

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Visionary physicist Stephen Hawking has died, aged 76.

Macquarie Group makes its biggest-yet push into Australian renewables market, with equity stake in Murra Warra wind farm.

Gupta expands solar rollout to more than 1GW in South Australia alone, advances plans for his own big battery and pumped hydro storage, and makes offer to 6,000 employees in Australia to install solar and batteries in their homes.

Matt Canavan uses global "energy future" stage to poke fun at the Tesla Big Battery, embarrassingly for Australia. In other news, Coalition MPs also hate EVs.

Sydney Markets adds another 2.2MW PV array to take total rooftop solar capacity to more than 3MW, says there’s room to go bigger.

They might be disparaged as bin chickens now but in ancient Egypt they were revered

In Australia they’re reviled as bin chickens. But in ancient Egypt, ibises were revered and offered as gifts to the gods.

Two mummified ibises have given researchers at the University of Sydney a riveting insight into their ancient appeal.

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German battery storage specialist VARTA enters Australia market, attracted by huge solar uptake and growing push to “aggregated” systems.

Two separate reports illustrate the vital role communities will play in the success or failure of Australia’s shift to a renewable powered grid.

Mike Pompeo is ex Tea Party, a climate science denier, opponent of Paris climate deal, and biggest recipient of Koch Industries dollars.

Conservationists say planned clearing would make sediment problems on the reef – which funding is designed to prevent – much worse

A property in Queensland with one of the biggest tree-clearing proposals in Australia, and which is specifically identified by experts as a risk to Great Barrier Reef water quality, is one of the beneficiaries of a $4m federal government reef water quality program.

Australian Conservation Foundation campaigner Andrew Picone said that it showed the federal government “isn’t taking its reef commitments seriously” since the proposed clearing would exacerbate the very problem the funding is meant to mitigate.

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A think tank warns of the risk of unintended consequences from the current concern over plastics.

From the Amazon to Africa, WWF report predicts catastrophic losses of as much as 60% of plants and 50% of animals by the end of the century

The world’s greatest forests could lose more than half of their plant species by the end of the century unless nations ramp up efforts to tackle climate change, according to a new report on the impacts of global warming on biodiversity hotspots.

Mammals, amphibians, reptiles and birds are also likely to disappear on a catastrophic scale in the Amazon and other naturally rich ecosysterms in Africa, Asia, North America and Australia if temperatures rise by more than 1.5C, concludes the study by WWF, the University of East Anglia and the James Cook University.

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Committee says government should have got stronger commitments on bank’s future

MPs have accused the government of a “deeply regrettable” failure to put in place strong guarantees that the UK’s green investment bank will continue to support renewable energy after its privatisation.

The public accounts committee said it was unclear whether the bank would continue to support the government’s energy policy or climate change goals, because the bank’s new owner is not legally bound to stick to its green aims.

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Government should have got binding commitments a private owner would continue to invest

The government’s £1.6bn sale last year of the Green Investment Bank (GIB) to the Australian financial outfit Macquariewas a shambles, it was argued here at the time, and now the public accounts committee agrees. The rough summary of its report runs as follows: in their eagerness to trim a few quid from the national debt ministers accepted a few airy pledges from Macquarie about future investment and called them commitments.

The MPs’ verdict makes a nonsense of the government’s claim that a sale would deliver “the best of both worlds” – value for money and a new owner that would definitely use GIB to support UK energy policy and invest in low-carbon infrastructure. The price tag looks OK since the Treasury made a profit of £186m, but the boast about Macquarie’s good intentions has been exposed as an exercise in hopeful assumptions. The Aussie financiers may decide to play ball, but, if they don’t, there is little the government will be able to do.

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Energy-savvy Queenslanders with home battery storage can put $50 in their pocket from today by signing up to Australia’s first battery storage database.

The liquid tinkling of this tiny finch adds to the springtime chorus in Spain but can we expect to see the bird in Britain?

Under a fiercely blue sky, the sun shines down on groves of oranges and almond blossom. I am in the mountain village of Sella, in Spain’s Alicante province, enjoying a sneak preview of spring – a month or more before it arrives in Britain.

The migrant birds are not yet back, but half a dozen different butterflies are on the wing and birdsong fills the air. The scratchy sound of Sardinian warblers, the metallic song of the black redstart, and, from every little bush and tree, the liquid tinkling of serins.

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There has been some progress in the war against the toads with Queensland scientists using their own song and their own poison to trap them.

Wind is just air moving from one place where there is high pressure to another place where there is low pressure. Andrew B. Watkins, Manager of Climate Prediction Services, Australian Bureau of Meteorology Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.