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The EU’s newly-proposed STEP funding platform for clean and digital technology will not meet the needs of the bloc’s industry amid increased competition from the US and China, lawmakers from across the political spectrum told a European Parliament hearing on Wednesday. 

Counter terror police have raided the homes of a swathe of Australian environmental activists.

These incidents are spreading – and along with them, bogus narratives casting the killer whales as marine avengers

In the opening sequence of the BBC’s original Blue Planet series of 2001, TV’s first real look at life within the world’s oceans, a pod of orca are shown hunting a grey whale and her calf. Over and over, the killer whales jump on the calf, pushing it under the waves, determined to drown it. Once it is finally dead, after a six-hour battle, they eat only its lower jaw and tongue.

I vividly remember watching this as a 10-year-old in 2001 and thinking: I wouldn’t like to take on a killer whale. Lately, however, their attention seems to have turned uncomfortably close to home. In the past few years, a pod of orcas has been ramming boats in the waters off south-west Europe at seemingly increasing rates. From 52 such “interactions” recorded in 2020, there were 197 in 2021, 207 last year and a steady number so far this summer. In three cases, the orcas have damaged boats so badly that they have sunk.

Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist

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The winners of a UN-sponsored clean cooking innovation challenge have been announced, with four “promising” solutions selected to help ease developer access to finance and streamline carbon credit issuances.

The push for higher-quality carbon credit methodologies is driving increasing convergence between compliance, voluntary, and Article 6 markets that is creating bigger demand and greater opportunities for investors, a conference heard Wednesday.

Leveraging Netflix’s innovative and fast paced culture, help Netflix attain its public climate targets to cut our emissions in half by 2030 and (as of 2022), to annually bring our remaining net carbon footprint to zero by investing in the power of nature to capture carbon.

Technocratic tinkering and cautious managerialism can’t begin to address the crisis. We need vision – and now

Some would argue that the speech by Tony Blair at Labour’s 1994 party conference in Blackpool was era-defining. “It is time to break out of the past and break through with a clear, radical and modern vision for Britain,” he said.

One may disagree with that vision – but he committed to it years before his election, and delivered much of it in the years after. Huge investment in public services; a minimum wage; a Freedom of Information Act; devolution for Scotland and Wales, and commitment to peace in Northern Ireland.

Caroline Lucas is the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion

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A voluntary carbon market standard has approved a methodology co-developed by one of the world's biggest food trading companies that will enable beef producers to measure methane emissions reductions from altering the diet of cattle and receive credits for the resulting mitigation. 

Italy's Agnelli family extends its interests beyond Fiat, Ferrari and Juventus to become a major backer of the developers behind Australia's biggest wind and battery project.

The post Italian billionaires buy into renewable developer behind Australia’s biggest wind farm appeared first on RenewEconomy.

European carbon prices were little changed at midday Wednesday, after a strong opening in line with the previous day's closing price faded amid a sell-off in energy markets, while weekly positions data showed little overall change.

Africa's first direct air capture (DAC) and storage facility will begin operations in 2024 at an annual scale of 1,000 tonnes, with the developers partnering with a voluntary carbon removals certifier and platform to generate commercial credits in the same year, the companies involved announced Wednesday.

The warming of the planet – including the most up-to-date data for 2023 – is entirely consistent with what climate modelers warned decades ago

Thirty years ago, the world’s nations agreed to prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system. But what is “dangerous climate change”? Just turn on the television, read the headlines of the morning paper or view your social media feeds. For we are watching it play out in real time this summer, more profoundly than ever before, in the form of unprecedented floods, heatwaves and wildfires. Now we know what dangerous climate change looks like. As has been said of obscenity, we know it when we see it. We’re seeing it – and it is obscene.

Scorching temperatures persist across Europe, North America and Asia, as wildfires rage from Canada to Greece. The heat is as relentless as it is intense. For example, Phoenix, Arizona, has broken its record of 18 consecutive days above 110F (43.3C). Even the nights, generally relied upon as a chance to recover from the blistering days, now offer little relief: for more than a week, nighttime temperatures in Phoenix have exceeded 90F (32.2C). Meanwhile, severe and deadly flooding has stricken South Korea, Japan, and the north-east United States, from Pennsylvania to Vermont.

Michael E Mann is a professor of earth and environmental science and the director of the Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at The University of Pennsylvania. He is author of the forthcoming book Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis

Susan Joy Hassol is the director of Climate Communication. She publishes Quick Facts on the links between extreme weather and climate change

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James Hansen, who testified to Congress on global heating in 1988, says world is approaching a ‘new climate frontier’

The world is shifting towards a superheated climate not seen in the past 1m years, prior to human existence, because “we are damned fools” for not acting upon warnings over the climate crisis, according to James Hansen, the US scientist who alerted the world to the greenhouse effect in the 1980s.

Hansen, whose testimony to the US Senate in 1988 is cited as the first high-profile revelation of global heating, warned in a statement with two other scientists that the world was moving towards a “new climate frontier” with temperatures higher than at any point over the past million years, bringing impacts such as stronger storms, heatwaves and droughts.

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Bayer and Syngenta accused of breaching legal obligations and unethical behaviour over brain toxicity studies

The pesticide companies Bayer and Syngenta have been excoriated in a European parliament hearing after failing to disclose studies on the brain toxicity of their products.

European regulators said the companies had breached legal obligations and behaved unethically. MEPs questioning executives from the companies said their actions had been “outrageous” and represented a “scandal”. The companies rejected the accusations and said they had provided all relevant studies.

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Trade in EUA futures on Germany's EEX platform plunged by 59% in the first half of the year even as the volume of business in power surged by 12% and gas grew by 20% overall, the bourse reported on Wednesday.

Twenty-three of Italy’s 27 main cities expected to be under red alerts as searing temperatures continue; wildfires north and west of Athens force residents to flee

• Italian hospitals report sharp rise in emergency cases as Rome hits 41.8C

Here are some more images form the wires of the wildfires that swept through forestland and towns north-west of Athens for a second day. The fires forced the evacuation of more than 1,000 children close to a Greek seaside resort.

Tourists flocked to China’s scenic Flaming Mountains to experience searing high temperatures amid punishing heatwaves that have scorched much of the Northern Hemisphere.

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An Australian biochar industry could be worth A$1-5 billion by 2030, however a dedicated method to earn Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) from the practice is at least two years away, a conference heard Wednesday.

Get used to it humanity! The planet you thought you lived on is gone

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The Tokyo Electric-owned company has started all of the initial work it will need to undertake -- if it gets a licence.

The post Flotation Energy starts Gippsland offshore wind work – before getting a licence appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Transgrid says it is seeking services from two separate battery energy storage systems following a “thorough assessment” of options for NSW network growth areas. 

The post Big batteries chosen over poles and wires to shore up grid in “doubly significant” tender appeared first on RenewEconomy.