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Czech utility CEZ saw its coal power output further decline in the first half of 2021, as a result of divestment of assets and a “deterioration of medium-term market conditions” following the increase in the EU’s climate ambition and a potential phaseout of Czechia’s coal-fired generation.

The head of European carbon research at BloombergNEF is leaving to join the trading desk of a large energy company, Carbon Pulse has learned.

The world seems to be on the verge of collapse – yet I have just brought a baby into it

“Babe, look!” my wife said excitedly, as we sprawled on the grass reading on one baking hot afternoon. She passed me her book: “Read this – this person is just like you!” I read the paragraph she was pointing to. A clearly distraught character was fulminating about poorly designed roundabouts; she kept going on and on and on about them. To be clear, I don’t have any opinions about roundabouts. Not a single one. I curtly informed my wife of this. “Yeah,” she said. “But you do have, you know, certain rants you keep coming back to. Like, incessantly.”

I couldn’t argue. While I have always been a committed pessimist, recently I’ve gone into full-blown Chicken Little mode with existential obsessions. I’ll wake up, look at the latest terrifying news on my phone and immediately launch a diatribe about how we are almost certainly going to experience climate emergency-induced societal collapse in our lifetimes. “Have you seen what’s happening in Greece/northern California/Turkey?” I’ll screech. “Have you seen how many billionaires are fleeing to New Zealand to avoid the imminent apocalypse? The weather is out of control! Joe Biden and his woefully inadequate infrastructure bill aren’t going to fix anything! We are all doomed! DOOMED!”

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*PREMIUM LISTING – A Senior Program Officer will coordinate and help implement our climate projects that help to shape climate policy in Asia.

Following the unequivocal IPCC climate report, we must all put pressure on governments to end the fossil fuel era

The sixth assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is no ordinary publication. Its 4,000 pages were written by hundreds of independent scientists from 66 countries. It was commissioned by 195 governments and all of them signed off on the conclusions after reviewing them line by line and word by word. These governments, whether supportive, ambivalent or hostile to climate action, now own the messages in the report. So what does it say?

The report concludes that there is now “unequivocal” evidence that human actions are changing our climate. Behind this are alarming findings. The burning of fossil fuels and deforestation has led to levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that are higher today than at any time in the past 2 million years. Alongside methane and other greenhouse gases, this has driven Earth to be warmer than at any point in the past 125,000 years. The impacts of this can be seen in the loss of Arctic sea ice, accelerating sea level rise, hotter and more frequent heatwaves, increased and more frequent extreme rainfall events and, in some regions, more intense droughts and fires.

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Climate Investment Partners LLC is seeking a Project Associate and/or Project Manager of Natural Climate Solutions to lead feasibility and project development of nature-based carbon offset projects for the voluntary carbon market.

Analysts at a major investment bank have raised their EUA price forecasts for the period from 2022 through to 2030, citing a “rapidly tightening system leading to structural shortage" of allowances later in the decade.

If the Evia fire ferry video seems extraordinary, it’s not only because of what it shows but because of how it shows it

To have lived through the last few decades is to have, in our minds, an all too accessible video library of historical nightmares. The assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK. The collapse of the Twin Towers. Derek Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck. The 6 January insurrectionists swarming the Capitol building. We can call up these scenes whenever we choose. They haunt us, uninvited.

The latest grim addition to that ineradicable collection is a video that surfaced, days ago, of a tourist ferry sailing across the water from the raging fire incinerating the Greek island of Evia.

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Newcomer on dairy alternative scene is vegan, sequesters carbon and increases biodiversity

I’m sitting in my kitchen, about to try my first sip of a milk that is vegan, sequesters carbon and increases biodiversity. Dairy milk has a high carbon footprint. Soy is linked to deforestation, almond to high water use. But how does the new kid on the scene – hemp seed milk – measure up for taste?

An Innovative Farmers project coordinated by the Soil Association is investigating how industrial hemp production could aid the transition to a low-carbon economy. In collaboration with scientists at Cranfield University and the British Hemp Alliance, research will quantify the environmental benefits of growing hemp. In farm trials that launched last month, five farmers are helping to investigate this plant’s ability to sequester or store carbon, improve soil health and increase biodiversity.

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The last three months have seen European power generation economics upended, as margins for gas-fired generation have been driven so low that not even a strong carbon price can restore them.

EUAs posted further gains in quiet trade on Tuesday morning, reaching a new five-week peak as energy markets also forged higher.

Obama campaigned in climate poetry and then governed in fossil fuel prose. Joe Biden may well follow in his footsteps

If after Monday’s news you didn’t feel a pang of doom, you’re either a zen master, a recluse living in a news vacuum, or a nihilist. The new United Nations report on climate change predicts an actual bona fide apocalypse unless our civilization discards our fetish for incrementalism, rejects nothing-will-fundamentally-change fatalism and instead finally takes the crisis seriously.

The bad news is that we’ve been here before during the last era of Democratic supremacy, and if the Obama era we sleepwalked through now repeats itself, we’re done. It’s that simple.

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Prime minister challenged on his government’s record on climate action after IPCC’s landmark report on global heating

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Scott Morrison says when he declared incorrectly in 2019 that Labor policies to reduce vehicle emissions would “end the weekend” he wasn’t opposed to electric vehicles, even though he told voters they were expensive, would not tow trailers or boats, or get Australians to their favourite camping spots.

The prime minister faced sustained questioning over his government’s heavily criticised record on climate action on Tuesday after a landmark assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found human activities were unequivocally heating the planet and causing changes not seen for centuries and, in some cases, thousands of years.

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Andrew Constance says the second-hand market for EVs could be driven by state and federal government adoption of the new technology

New South Wales transport minister, Andrew Constance, has urged the Morrison government to accelerate the uptake of electric vehicles in Australia by using them for federal government fleets.

Speaking at a Smart Energy Council summit, Constance said state and federal governments should “drive the second-hand market” by buying up electric vehicles in order to lower the price.

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New Zealand carbon allowances rose to yet another record high on Tuesday, taking the spot contract to just a hair’s breadth away from the NZ$50 level that would release volume from the cost containment reserve at auction.

Project will pipe the ‘dirtiest fuel left on the planet’ across Minnesota’s pristine lakes and wetlands

More than 600 people have now been arrested or received citations over protests amid growing opposition to the Line 3 oil sands pipeline currently under construction through Minnesota.

Native American tribes including the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe and indigenous-led environmental organisations such as Honor the Earth are leading opposition efforts in court and on the ground, mobilizing ‘water protectors’ to try to halt the project.

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Two soldiers are recovering from ‘horrific injuries’ after 700km rescue mission from remote bay in state’s north

Wildlife officers have killed a crocodile that mauled two soldiers who went swimming in a remote Queensland bay where the reptiles were known to live.

The officers had no trouble identifying their target, with the reptile becoming highly aggressive as they approached it in their vessel north of Lockhart River on Tuesday.

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NSW government looking to use wastewater from treatment plants as key element of green hydrogen facilities in drought-affected regions.

The post NSW eyes treated wastewater as key source for green hydrogen appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The Beijing environment exchange has launched tenders for the construction of a registry and trading system for the national offset market, bringing the restart of the Chinese Certified Emissions Reduction (CCER) programme a step closer, though the exact launch date remains unclear.

The president of the upcoming Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow on Monday described the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report as a 'wake-up call' for the world. Alok Sharma urged leaders to do more so they can 'credibly say that we have kept 1.5 degrees alive'.

The report, which calls climate change clearly human-caused and 'unequivocal' and 'an established fact,' makes more precise and warmer forecasts for the 21st century than were made in the last report in 2013.

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