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Dozens of ‘small modular reactor’ designs are being promoted, but precious few will reach construction stage and likelihood of SMRs being built in large numbers is negligible.

The post Small modular nuclear reactors: a history of failure appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Using a ‘grid of grids’ network, New Zealand’s growing electric vehicle fleet could contribute to national energy resiliency, feeding electricity back into the system during peak demand. Alan Brent, Professor and Chair in Sustainable Energy Systems, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Community batteries are everyone’s favourite whipping boy at the moment, but a trial at Narrabri shows that its the parameters that need to change, not the technology.

The post Why we need to fight for the “community” in community batteries appeared first on RenewEconomy.

RGGI allowances (RGAs) tied a record settlement price for the benchmark contract this week before sinking significantly as traders rolled their position to next year, with the vast majority of trades being spreads over the past five days.

A US-based carbon crediting startup for farmers and a sustainability certification provider launched a partnership to trace the progress of regenerative agriculture practices in sequestering carbon.

Reforming and scaling climate finance, including moving forward on operationalising a new loss and damage funding mechanism, establishing global renewables targets, and the future of fossil fuels, are likely to be the core topics of discussion at COP28 in Dubai, according to climate experts and other observers, which will also bear witness to the first ever global stocktake (GST) of the Paris Agreement.

Climate scientists say fossil fuel use needs to fall rapidly – but oil-rich kingdom is working to drive up demand

Saudi Arabia is driving a huge global investment plan to create demand for its oil and gas in developing countries, an undercover investigation has revealed. Critics said the plan was designed to get countries “hooked on its harmful products”.

Little was known about theoil demand sustainability programme (ODSP) but the investigation obtained detailed information on plans to drive up the use of fossil fuel-powered cars, buses and planes in Africa and elsewhere, as rich countries increasingly switch to clean energy.

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The number of CO2 transport and storage projects supported financially and benefiting from streamlined permitting by the EU will double in 2023 compared to last year, the bloc's energy chief told an event in Denmark on Monday, signaling the EU's growing commitment to developing a CCUS sector.

Trade picked up in the voluntary carbon market last week as corporates looked to square end-of-year emission books, and some sellers ditched REDD credits at rock bottom prices.

Xpansiv has launched a consultation to support the trading of instruments aligned with the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Markets’ (ICVCM) Core Carbon Principles (CCP), due to be assigned to the first carbon credits in the opening quarter of 2024, the market platform said Monday.

Three-year pause in fishing is the only way to prevent disappearance, researchers say

It is one of Sicily’s most popular dishes: spaghetti ai ricci di mare, or sea urchin spaghetti. Prepared with a simple base of oil and garlic, plates of the stuff are demolished every summer, particularly by the hundreds of thousands of tourists who descend on the island every year.

But sea urchins’ status as a culinary delicacy is leading to their gradual disappearance from local waters, and last week researchers said the Sicilian sea urchin, which resides on the sea floor and feeds primarily on algae, could soon become extinct if urgent conservation policies were not implemented.

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Leaked briefing documents for meetings with governments contained ‘asks’ from state oil firm

The host of the UN Cop28 summit, the United Arab Emirates, planned to use climate meetings with other countries to promote deals for its national oil and gas companies, according to leaked documents.

Cop28 begins on Thursday and will be run by Sultan Al Jaber, who is the chief executive of the national oil company Adnoc as well as the UAE’s climate envoy. This dual role has been criticised as a conflict of interest, and climate summit veterans said the new revelations undermined trust in Al Jaber’s presidency of Cop28, potentially threatening a successful outcome.

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How does a species survive hundreds of millions of years unfazed? You must live in a shell – and it must grow with you, chamber by chamber

Where to start with the nautilus: at the centre of the spiral or its culmination? It is a cephalopod in a shell, a spiral no wider than the length of a ruler, ending in 70 tentacle-like wavy bits. Its eye works slowly, like a pinhole camera. It swims like a bellows. It can live for two decades, and its eggs take a year to hatch. The tentacle-like bits are called cirri, and they are very good at touch and smell.

One scientist describes it like this: “Right now everything’s in bloom, and, you know, you can smell the azaleas. But can you imagine if you could also say, ‘That azalea bush has 3,002 blossoms on it’.” (Their favourite things to touch and smell are not flowers but anything rotting).

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Carbon credit certifier Verra on Monday announced its new REDD methodology for protecting forests, which moves away from site-specific projects to jurisdictions and brings in third-party data to set the baselines used to calculate the emissions reductions of individual projects.

European carbon prices sagged back towards a key support level on Monday morning as weather models appeared to suggest milder temperatures in the coming days, prompting weakness in natural gas prices, which fed through to EUAs.

Australia should set up a $5-billion ($3.3 bln) fund dedicated to buying up land of high biodiversity value to ensure it meets its commitments under the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), a green group-led initiative said Monday.

France will inject €1 billion into funding biodiversity protection and restoration next year as part of a 40-part national biodiversity strategy unveiled Monday.

United States projected to extract 12.9m barrels of crude oil as countries at Cop28 to push for agreed fossil fuels ‘phaseout’

The United States is poised to extract more oil and gas than ever before in 2023, a year that is certain to be the hottest ever recorded, providing a daunting backdrop to crucial United Nations climate talks that hold the hope of an agreement to end the era of fossil fuels.

The US’s status as the world’s leading oil and gas behemoth has only strengthened this year, even amid warnings from Joe Biden himself over the unfolding climate crisis, with the latest federal government forecast showing a record 12.9m barrels of crude oil, more than double what was produced a decade ago, will be extracted in 2023.

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The Tokyo Stock Exchange on Monday introduced a three-month trial market maker scheme for its carbon trading platform as it is working with the government to boost liquidity in the J-Credit market.

Phrases such as ‘green economy’ turn voters off, it seems – and Labour has already reframed its language

• Roger Harrabin is a former BBC climate correspondent

As Cop28 approaches, the Swiss solar aviator and environmentalist Bertrand Piccard says he will be given a platform at the conference to argue that we need to rethink the words we use to discuss climate change. He says many climate terms can numb people with fear instead of inspiring them into action, and proposes new language that will reframe our situation as an opportunity, rather than a crisis.

Take the key phrase “green economy”: Piccard says this motivates environmentalists but repels those who discern an assault on their lifestyle or a rise in their bills. Why not, he says, rechristen it the “clean economy”, because no one likes “dirty”. Likewise “clean energy” instead of “green energy”. He has come up with an entire list of terms in common use that he believes need a rebrand.

Roger Harrabin is a fellow at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and a former BBC correspondent

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