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Heat, humidity, dust, swarms of flies and monotonous work. Building a solar farm in the outback is not quite what they say in the brochure.

The post Hot, humid, dusty and …. boring: Building solar farms in the outback is not piles of fun appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Carbon credit certifier Gold Standard issued new guidelines on Thursday for how its units can be used by voluntary buyers given the new Paris Agreement context, providing greater flexibility on the need for authorisation from the project’s host-country government.

Plans by EEX to grab market share in the voluntary carbon market (VCM) include beefing up its CORSIA-eligible VER future with Gold Standard credits, and introducing many individual future vintages for its nature-based VER as far out as 2025, the exchange revealed on Thursday.

The EU’s institutions are striving to avoid any ultimate delays to the passage of the bloc’s Fit for 55 climate policy package, sources close to the process said on Thursday as parliamentarians agreed to a swift return to vote following their chaotic failure to adopt positions a day earlier.

New research shows the gut of the Zophobas morio beetle larvae contains enzymes capable of breaking down the plastic, which is difficult to recycle

Beetle larvae that can shred and eat polystyrene may provide alternative methods of breaking down and upcycling plastic waste, new research suggests.

The larvae of Zophobas morio, a species of beetle, are commonly known as superworms and contain several gut enzymes that are capable of digesting polystyrene, Australian scientists have found.

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Scientists are watching an area in Pacific Ocean that has been unusually cool – a signal current La Niña could linger

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Australia’s east coast could be hit by a rare “triple La Niña” that brings flooding rains and cooler weather for the third summer in a row, a senior US government scientist says.

Experts say the prospect of a triple La Niña is real, but there is disagreement between different computer models and Australia could yet avoid a return of summer floods.

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Energy crisis has made Kent scheme aimed at unobtrusively building up solar output more timely

Tennis fans tucking into strawberries at Wimbledon this month may find their fruit has an unusual origin – a solar-powered greenhouse.

Transparent panels have been attached to the sides of glasshouses in Kent as part of a trial to build up solar power supplies without using more land.

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Identification of Galápagos tortoise celebrated by scientists as a big deal for island’s biodiversity

A rare Galápagos species, the “fantastic giant tortoise”, long thought extinct, has been officially identified for the first time in more than a century in what scientists called a “big deal” for the famed islands’ embattled biodiversity.

The animal is the first Chelonoidis phantasticus to be seen since a male specimen was discovered by the explorer Rollo Beck during an expedition in 1906. The newcomer has been named Fernanda, after the Fernandina Island, a largely unexplored active volcano in the western Galápagos Archipelago that she calls home.

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Analysts envisage a period of high volatility and low liquidity for the EU ETS as participants step back amid the uncertain outlook following the European Parliament's rejection of proposed reforms, with experts split on whether a second attempt by the assembly would lead to higher ambition.

Carbon prices of between $100 and $150/tonne are necessary for the global oil refining market to switch to using green and blue hydrogen in the long term unless their production costs fall sharply, a consultancy warned Thursday.

A major global carbon credit marketplace has partnered with a ratings agency to host grades for voluntary carbon market offsets on its site, it announced Thursday.

Jair Bolsonaro’s dog-whistle politics is risking the lives of Indigenous people and the reporters who tell their stories

It’s now more than four days since veteran Brazil correspondent Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Araújo Pereira disappeared in the Javari Valley, a remote part of the western Amazon thought to have the world’s highest concentration of uncontacted people.

Pereira, a longtime defender of Indigenous rights who previously worked for Funai, Brazil’s government Indigenous rights agency, had reportedly received threats for his work monitoring illegal activities in the region.

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EUA prices advanced on modest volume on Thursday morning as traders moved on from the previous day's European Parliament controversies and awaited news on the next steps for the ETS reform, while natural gas prices jumped as much as 15% after a fire knocked out a major US LNG exporting terminal. 

A US-based technology startup is offering buyers of its tokenised voluntary carbon market offsets the ability to earn compound interest, lend, borrow, and underwrite loans from the financial product, it announced Thursday as an industry first.

University of Southampton palaeontologists identify the remains of a dinosaur measuring 32ft.

South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) will develop a “next generation” liquefied CO2 (LCO2) carrier, it has announced, reflecting a further step being taken by Asian industrial players to bring CO2 transport options to commercial scale.

Researchers call for recognition of latest online strategies used to derail climate action

Climate policy is being dragged into the culture wars with misinformation and junk science being spread across the internet by a relatively small group of individuals and groups, according to a new study.

The research, released on Thursday, shows that the climate emergency – and the measures needed to deal with it – are in some cases being conflated with divisive issues such as critical race theory, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion access and anti-vaccine campaigns.

Elitism and hypocrisy: these posts focused on the alleged wealth and double standards of those calling for action, and in some cases referenced wider conspiracies about globalism or the “New World Order”. The study identified 199,676 mentions of this narrative on Twitter (tweets and retweets) and 4,377 posts on Facebook around the time Cop26 took place

Absolution: it found 6,262 Facebook posts and 72,356 tweets around Cop26 which absolved one country of any obligation to act on climate by blaming another. In developed western countries this often focused on the perceived shortcomings of China and, to a lesser extent, India, claiming they were not doing enough so there was no point in anyone acting.

Unreliable renewables: over a longer period – from 1 January to 19 November 2021 – the study found 115,830 tweets or retweets were shared, alongside 15,443 posts on Facebook, that called into question the viability and effectiveness of renewable energy sources.

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China has announced new rules for determining the number of carbon allowances in its emissions trading scheme that traders say will lead to a bump in the number of permits, while also extending the deadline for submitting 2021 emissions data due to Covid disruptions.

We have to start thinking about batteries in completely new ways. They aren’t just our backstop insurance policy, they are the pathway to energy independence and a decarbonised economy.

The post Energy crisis: Government has been thinking about batteries the wrong way appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Japan’s Osaka Gas Energy Oceania, the carbon trading arm of Osaka Gas, has acquired a minority stake in an Australian carbon project developer, to gain a deeper understanding of carbon markets, it announced Thursday.