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AER report finds generators jacked up energy prices 100-fold, even when there was more than enough capacity. But don't expect regulators to do anything about it.

Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright announced today that experienced energy and resources partner Gavin Scott will join the Brisbane office.

Josh Frydenberg claims South Australia is burning ‘80,000 litres of diesel an hour, just to keep the lights on’. With so many half-truths floating about in the so called ‘energy debate’, it’s worth unpacking this claim.

Victorian homebuilder Porter Davis has announced a partnership with Australia’s leading solar and battery provider, Bradford Energy, to equip knockdown rebuild homes with the Bradford Solar ChargePack, which includes the innovative Tesla Powerwall 2 home battery.

While the president’s rhetoric has raised hopes for renaissance of American coal, Trump’s policies have done little to revive the ailing industry.

We're off on a fossil dig in north-west Queensland; we go in search of yellow footed rock wallabies in South Australia's northern pastoral region; and check out the latest in chicken couture.

Blockchain is now helping to bring much-needed transparency to the global tuna industry, which has been prone to corruption, human slavery and unsustainable fishing practices. Candice Visser, PhD Candidate, University of Wollongong Quentin Hanich, Associate Professor, University of Wollongong Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Right geology and local consent are key in consultation due to be launched this week

The government is expected this week to begin a nationwide search for a community willing to host an underground nuclear waste dump to store highly radioactive material for thousands of years.

Britain has been trying for years to secure a site with the right geology and local communities which would volunteer to host a £12bn geological disposal facility (GDF), as a long-term solution for the most dangerous waste from nuclear power stations.

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• Fishing industry and environmentalists mull lawsuits
• EPA tried to delay report detailing chemicals’ harm to wildlife

Commercial fishermen and environmental groups could file lawsuits against the Trump administration, if it fails to follow a recommendation by one of its own agencies to protect salmon, sturgeon, orca and other endangered species in the Pacific north-west.

Related: Common pesticide can make migrating birds lose their way, research shows

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Private landowners present a rising threat to the millions of acres set aside for public use by blocking access to public lands

The Diamond Bar X is a postcard-perfect slice of Montana solitude. A former cattle ranch that’s been parceled up into sprawling home sites, it sits not far outside Augusta, a cowboy town beneath Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front, where the Great Plains crash into majestic snow-peaked mountains to dramatic effect.

The area is prime habitat for elk and grizzlies, people are few, and its residents have easy access to countless miles of trails and streams on the adjacent public lands.

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Some in the car industry claim that modern diesel engines have been unfairly maligned.

Extinction prevention plan branded ‘deeply inadequate’ after environment department publishes paper without targets

The federal government’s latest strategy to protect Australian plants and animals facing extinction has been branded “deeply inadequate” and “a global embarrassment” by environment groups.

The Sydney Morning Herald revealed that a new 13-page document had quietly replaced the old 100-page biodiversity conservation strategy just before Christmas on the Department of Environment’s website.

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The Ka’apor tribe fight a daily battle in Brazil’s Maranhão state to protect their forests

Sairá Ka’apor patrolled one of the most murderous frontiers in the world, a remote and largely lawless region of the Brazilian Amazon where his indigenous community has fought for generations to protect their forest land.

Armed with clubs, bows and arrows, GPS trackers and crude guns, he and fellow members of Ka’apor Forest Guard drove off – and sometimes attacked – loggers who intruded into their territory, the 530,000-hectare Alto Turiaçu Indigenous Land, which is roughly three times the area of Greater London and contains about half of the Amazon forest left in Brazil’s northern Maranhão state. That vigilante role came to an end last April when Sairá was stabbed to death in Betel, a logging town close to Ka’apor territory.

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Friends of the Earth, National Trust and others voice ‘serious concerns’ that UK will not cooperate with EU

A coalition of leading environmental groups says there is a “significant risk” that British environmental protections will be reduced after Brexit, despite the government’s positive rhetoric.

Greener UK, which represents 13 campaign groups including WWF, National Trust, RSPB, Friends of the Earth, Green Alliance and the Wildlife Trusts, says there are “serious concerns” that the government will not cooperate with the European Union after Brexit on environmental issues which need international agreement. Although the environment secretary, Michael Gove, has made several recent announcements, such as the 5p levy on plastic bottles, Greener UK believes there may be a “lack of willpower to ensure high standards across the UK”.

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A 70-metre-high waste incinerator is being built next to the M5

Marooned on the flatlands between the Severn river and the Cotswolds escarpment, Stonehouse in Gloucestershire isn’t the sort of place to make the news. But, of late, outrage has been the dominant emotion here as construction traffic has brought what was a country village to a standstill. Blue plastic barriers proliferate, mobile traffic lights are set down apparently at random and workers clad in hi-vis saunter about with the swagger of the new sheriff in town.

While the slow crawl of traffic to and from the M5 is frustrating, it is the cause of the blockage that is more troubling. Stonehouse is being dug up to lay a cable to service the giant waste monster being built next to junction 12 of the M5, an edifice that its opponents warned would grow to four times the size of nearby Gloucester cathedral, a glorious testament to the grand folly of another age.

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One $2.2m experiment involves giant fans to cool water down, despite government’s own advisers highlighting risks

Millions of dollars of commonwealth money is being handed to tourism-linked groups for Great Barrier Reef protection, despite official advice recommending against the projects, or repeatedly finding them to be failing.

The contracts include millions of dollars for tourism operators to cull out-of-control coral-eating crown of thorns starfish. Funds continue to be distributed, despite researchers employed to evaluate the program repeatedly finding it to have failed, and potentially having made the problem worse.

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Canada aquarium has announced it will end the practice of keeping cetaceans in captivity, after pressure from the public

For years the Vancouver aquarium fended off pressure from animal right activists, local government and residents, arguing instead that whales and dolphins were central to its mission. But this week the tourist attraction gave in to public pressure, and announced that it would end the practice of keeping cetaceans in captivity.

“It had become a local hot topic, to the point where it was just hijacking everything else,” said John Nightingale, the aquarium’s president.

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We find organic mushrooms in non-recyclable trays next to plain veg in compostable wrapping

My environmentally conscious wife Clare is the keenest recycler possible. She even collects and recycles the silver milk bottle tops that I tend to chuck out. But when it comes to organic food she’s furious. Why? Because she finds it is the worst culprit for wrapping almost everything in plastic and polywrap that cannot be recycled. How, she asks, did we reach the situation where the most environmentally produced food is also the worst for packaging and recycling?

Like many others, the Brignall household despairs at the revelations over the past year that 86% of collected plastic is not actually recycled, and the Blue Planet claim that 8m tonnes of the stuff ends up in oceans.

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Exclusive: Boonchai Bach allegedly ran tusk and horn smuggling route from Africa

Police in Thailand have arrested one of the world’s most notorious wildlife traffickers, allegedly involved in the smuggling thousands of tonnes of elephant tusks and rhino horns from Africa to Asia, the Guardian has learned.

Boonchai Bach, who goes by multiple aliases including Bach Mai Limh, was arrested at his operational base in the north-eastern province of Nakhon Phanom, next to the Mekong River on Thursday.

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Keyhaven, Hampshire: The brent geese feeding on the grassland are restless, but not because of the people walking along the skyline above them

The mudflats are still, but first impressions are deceptive. On a grey, raw day, we stop on the bridge across the Avon Water as it enters the Keyhaven Marshes. The tide is out, gulls mill in the air, but below us the glutinous foreground seems devoid of life. As our eyes settle to what we are seeing, we realise how misleading those first impressions are. The mudflats are teeming with waders. We’ve left the binoculars in the car and so don’t attempt identification until one long-legged, straight-billed bird wades out to feed, head-down into the stream. In this murky light, it’s impossible to see markings but surely this is a black-tailed godwit.

We press on along the Solent Way, a track lined with lichen-festooned bushes. Near the village, the lichens are mostly orange with shades of pastel green where different varieties fight for possession of the branches. Some of these pale species are so dense that from afar they look like sprigs of meadowsweet thrusting up through the hedgerow.

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