Feed aggregator

The California legislative Assembly on Monday passed a bill requiring large companies doing business in the state to publicly report their Scope 1–3 emissions, with the bill headed back to the Senate for final approval.

The Washington Department of Ecology (ECY) on Tuesday announced a forthcoming rulemaking to consider adding new offset protocols and updating existing ones under the state's cap-and-trade programme.

Net zero is achievable in the construction sector by 2050, and moving aggressively to decarbonise the built environment is critical, the UN said Tuesday in a report outlining key steps that the sector can take.

Stakeholders are still eyeing a November release for the European Commission’s carbon management strategy, despite concerns about the effectiveness of a recently-closed consultation and the impact of new appointments within the EU's executive. 

Financial institutions can no longer claim a lack of data means they can’t track their impact on forests for net zero and TNFD processes, according to a new report released by a US-government-backed initiative.

France’s state-owned utility EDF has set up a new carbon credit business to develop a portfolio of nature-focused projects at home and abroad, it said on Tuesday.

The risk of having to pay hefty third-party liability charges due to operational failure with carbon capture and storage networks will be significantly reduced by using digital twin technology to predict potential integrity breaches, according to a digital services company positioning for a role in the sector.

Biotech companies are the laggard of the industrial world for corporate climate action, with a collective emissions trajectory equivalent to warming the world by 3.3C above pre-industrial levels, according to a new analyst indictor model that found no business sector was on track with the Paris Agreement goal to limit warming to 1.5C.

More should be done to prepare for the impact of heating, Climate of the Nation survey suggests, but certainty about the cause of extreme events falls

• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

A majority of Labor voters think the Albanese government is not doing enough to prepare for or adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis, according to a long-running national poll.

The Climate of the Nation survey of voters, now in its 16th year and managed by the progressive thinktank the Australia Institute, found 52% of ALP supporters think the government should be doing more to prepare for the impacts of climate-related extreme events. Only 26% said it was doing enough, 10% too much and 12% were unsure.

74% supported a “polluter-pays tax” applied to businesses based on how much they emit had 74% support

66% supported a tax on the windfall profits of the oil and gas industry 66%, up from 61% last year.

59% supported levy on fossil fuel exports to fund climate adaptation programs.

Answers on coal and gas mining were contradictory. Two-thirds of people said governments should plan to phase them out, and 53% supported a moratorium on new coalmines. But 46% said the benefits of coal and gas outweighed the negative impacts.

70% wanted coal-fired power plants to be phased out, compared with 79% a year ago. About a third – 34% – said they should be phased out by 2030.

An overwhelming majority (75%) suggested they were concerned the climate crisis would make insurance more expensive and disrupt supply chains so that it became harder to buy necessities.

Continue reading...

Process of consulting experts and industry could mean important habitat areas would be left without protection until 2025

• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

The New South Wales Greens and community groups have raised concerns about a Minns government plan to suspend logging operations in just 5% of its promised great koala national park while it consults experts and industry about the proposal.

The Greens environment spokesperson, Sue Higginson, has also warned that the more than 12-month process announced by the environment minister, Penny Sharpe, on Tuesday could leave important habitat areas without any protection until 2025.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Who will take the crown this year? That will be for you to decide

• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

It’s that favourite time again for many of our readers – Australian bird of the year is back, with polls to open on 25 September.

In the last Guardian Australia/Birdlife Australia poll in 2021, the superb fairywren was voted the winner, narrowly beating the tawny frogmouth and gang-gang cockatoo in a nail-biting competition.

Continue reading...

Hundreds of thousands of raw sewage discharges were recorded last year. These maps show where these were and what the impact is

More than 384,000 discharges of raw sewage were reported by water companies across England and Wales in 2022, official figures show, in what the Rivers Trust has described as “extremely bad news for environmental and human health”.

However, the true scale may be even greater, as a new legal challenge has claimed. Meanwhile, another set of water firms are under investigation by the regulator Ofwat and the Environment Agency for alleged illegal dumping of sewage from treatment works, and an independent watchdog is now saying that the government and even the regulators themselves may have broken the law by letting firms discharge raw sewage more often than law allows.

Continue reading...

A major tech giant is making its first foray into the world of direct air capture (DAC) by purchasing carbon removal credits from the world’s largest DAC facility and investing in a developer of modular DAC systems.

Nasa's James Webb Telescope may have discovered a molecule thought only to be produced by life.

EUAs were little changed on Tuesday morning amid a relatively narrow trading range as the market geared up for Wednesday's weekly Commitment of Traders data, while natural gas prices also fluctuated as North Sea maintenance was postponed while China re-entered the LNG market to buy winter cargoes.

Two German companies active in the voluntary carbon market (VCM) announced a partnership Tuesday that will enable the customers of a platform to buy credits from a portfolio of carbon removals projects, including via long-term automated purchase agreements. 

Australian oil and gas company Woodside has expanded its cross-border carbon, capture, and storage (CCS) value chain plans through a deal with three Japanese companies.

Study highlights conflict between Washington’s claims of climate leadership and its fossil fuel growth plans

The US accounts for more than a third of the expansion of global oil and gas production planned by mid-century, despite its claims of climate leadership, research has found.

Canada and Russia have the next biggest expansion plans, calculated based on how much carbon dioxide is likely to be produced from new developments, followed by Iran, China and Brazil. The United Arab Emirates, which is to host the annual UN climate summit this year, Cop28 in Dubai in November, is seventh on the list.

Continue reading...

Wood-based products have the highest biodiversity impacts within the manufacturing sector relative to their output, French consultancy CDC Biodiversite has said.

Correspondence shows nature watchdog had recommended that housebuilders pay for pollution

• UK politics live – latest updates

The government ignored its nature watchdog’s advice in weakening rules on pollution from housebuilders in England, the Guardian can reveal.

Michael Gove, the housing secretary, and Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary, recently announced they would be ending what they termed “defective” EU laws, which require developers to offset any extra nutrient pollution they cause in sensitive areas, under the habitats directive. These areas include the Lake District and Norfolk Broads.

Continue reading...