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Tens of thousands of Victorians were left without power over the long weekend as the distribution network struggled with blistering temperatures, reigniting fears about the stability of our energy system.

The Tesla big battery now has a widget to show its ground-breaking activities - rapid charge and discharge - on Australian energy market.

Report warns Australia must act quickly to take advantage of its leading position in the global lithium resources market, or risk missing out on what could be a $2 trillion value supply chain.

Security-of supply justifications are seen in Spain as just political schemes to support the status quo. Hello Australia.

Remember the predictions that the solar market would consolidate from 4000 businesses to four or forty major solar companies serving the Australian market? The opposite happened.

The Climate Council’s Cities Power Partnership, Australia’s fastest-growing national climate program for local government, today welcomed 35 new councils to the fight against climate change.

JinkoSolar today announced that it participated in an exclusive interview with CNN as part of the network’s Marketplace: Middle East program. which focuses on business developments in the Middle East reason.

Annual issuance of green bonds not only passed $100bn in 2017, it sailed right past it, says BNEF, driven by 67% yoy growth.

As more media outlets use automated algorithms to write news stories, are journalists doomed?

Help us to move these issues up the public agenda and challenge governments to do more

Australia’s fragile environment is under attack. Environmental protections have been dramatically eroded and funding slashed. The threat to climate change so dominates debate that other pressing and immediate environmental dangers struggle for attention. Few Australians know that our country has one of the worst records for species loss, with even the koala threatened; that microplastic pollution is so prevalent it can be found in the sediments of our river estuaries and nearby ocean floors; or that land clearing rates are just as severe as the notorious deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon.

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• Founder of Patagonia firm donates 1m acres of private land
  
• President Bachelet signs ‘unprecedented’ measure into law
  

Chile has created five sprawling national parks to preserve vast tracts of Patagonia – the culmination of more than two decades of land acquisition by the US philanthropists Doug Tompkins and Kristine McDivitt Tompkins and the largest donation of private land to government in South America.

The five parks, spanning 10.3m acres, were signed into law on Monday by Chile’s president Michelle Bachelet, launching a new 17-park route that stretches down the southern spine of Chile to Cape Horn.

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There has never been a more serious time to pay attention to Australia's environment, yet Bob Brown, Peter Garrett and other activists say protections have been slashed, funding cut and charities silenced

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Our new in-depth series focuses on the less-scrutinised threats to Australia’s natural places, and you can get involved

Threats to the Australian environment get reported in bursts – a contested development decision or a particular conservation campaign can thrust an issue into the headlines and on to the nightly news bulletins for weeks before a deal is crunched and a “solution” heralded.

Related: 'The Franklin would be dammed today': Australia's shrinking environmental protections

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The nation is losing the political will to protect our pristine places – and biodiversity is suffering

What if the Franklin river hadn’t been saved?

Stopping the Gordon-below-Franklin dam was one of the Australian environment movement’s great victories: in the late 1970s, the state-owned Hydro-Electric Commission wanted to flood one of three last temperate rainforests in the southern hemisphere to create a power station.

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February is the riskiest time of the year for blackouts, as the nation returns to work and school and soaring temperatures put pressure on the system. Hugh Saddler, Honorary Associate Professor, Centre for Climate Economics and Policy, Australian National University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Maggie Sutton calls on all sellers of loose fruit and veg to supply only paper bags, and Kate Lammin says Waitrose and Prince Charles’s Duchy brand aren’t helping, while Melanie Wood looks to the Guardian to set an example

I do so agree with Joleah Lamb (‘It’s like gangrene’: disease soars as plastic fouls reef, 26 January) about the need for people to take direct action against plastic. I would love to do so and so would thousands like me, but the question is how when manufacturers and supermarkets are calling the shots? I will buy only loose fruit and vegetables to avoid packaging, but all supermarkets and some market stalls offer only plastic bags to wrap them. A very simple and immediate change that could be made, long before the introduction of biodegradable packaging becomes available, would for all sellers of loose fruit and vegetables to supply only paper bags from now. I for one will be buying my greengrocery at the first supermarket and market stall that does that, and I expect many feel the same way.
Maggie Sutton
Wells, Somerset

• It is infuriating to find my local Waitrose wrapping more and more vegetables in plastic. Since the supermarket teamed up with Prince Charles’s Duchy brand, it has been almost impossible to buy less than six of most fruit, and every green vegetable is plastic-wrapped. Duchy is meant to be organic and interested in saving the planet; a pity Harry didn’t question Pa about that, but then of course, they don’t shop! I have emailed both Waitrose and Duchy, to no avail. Good for Iceland taking the lead: I now only buy fresh veg and fruit at my local greengrocer, who uses time-honoured brown paper bags.
Kate Lammin
Twickenham

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Reading human DNA used to take laboratories, a pile of cash and a long time.

A new species of dinosaur unearthed in the Egyptian desert sheds light on Africa's Age of the Dinosaurs.

We Americans can do better in the fight to protect our threatened heritage, writes Theodore Roosevelt IV, a descendant of the ‘conservation president’

A truly noble idea – one deeply democratic in its inspiration and one that honors the human need to be in relationship to awe and majesty.

America’s public lands.

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Today, we're asking why some of the most disadvantaged parts of our cities cop the worst of a heatwave and how you -- yes, you! -- can do your bit to reduce the risk of a summer time blackout. Sunanda Creagh, Head of Digital Storytelling Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.