Feed aggregator

RHS says ensuring access to green space as part of housebuilding push could make Britons healthier

Requirements for gardens and the planting of trees must be included in Labour’s planned new rules for housebuilders, green groups have said.

The government is drawing up its future homes standard for new developments and it is not yet clear what requirements there will be for green space.

Continue reading...

A carbon registry on Wednesday officially launched its biodiversity credit programme, inviting project developers to join its two-year pilot phase.

The UK, Australia, and Canada dominated fossil fuel extraction and its associated carbon emissions across the 56 Commonwealth countries in 2023, despite accounting for just 6% of the population in the group, according to a new report released on Wednesday as Commonwealth leaders meet for a summit.

Three international organisations on Wednesday released a set of 21 high-level principles (HLPs) for biodiversity credits in a move designed to encourage the multitude of global market initiatives to align with a set of collective fundamentals.

US firm Wolfspeed and German car parts supplier ZF postpone plans over doubts over viability

A project to build a €3bn factory making microchips for electric vehicles once hailed as part of a “return of the industrial revolution” in Germany has been put on hold, as the crisis in the country’s hi-tech manufacturing industry deepened.

US company Wolfspeed and German car parts supplier ZF have postponed plans to build an EV chip factory, adding to problems caused by a delay to two large-scale factories by US chip giant Intel and potential factory closures being considered by German carmaker Volkswagen.

Continue reading...

Demand-side signals for Article 6 credits are positive, with investors increasingly speculating on the units expected to be approved for trade, a rating agency representative told a conference Wednesday.

Eleven carbon removal (CDR) companies have been given a boost after a non-profit announced it had made its largest quarterly purchase to date worth $3 million.

The latest version of the new global climate finance goal due to be agreed at COP29 sets out three options for structuring the headline target, including the transfer of trillions of dollars per year from wealthy to poor countries, or a wider annual investment sum from public and private sources.

A London-based AI chemical manufacturing firm has raised an undisclosed sum to accelerate research and development of climate technologies, including sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), solar cells, and carbon removal, the company announced Tuesday.

Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg told the US cable host its biggest threat was not the climate crisis, but do his claims stack up?

• Great Barrier Reef’s worst bleaching leaves giant coral graveyard: ‘It looks as if it has been carpet bombed’
• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Instead of an existential crisis for species worldwide, or threatening to submerge entire Pacific nations and coastal cities where hundreds of millions of people live, or a phenomenon driving unprecedented heatwaves and wildfires, the climate crisis was characterised somewhat differently on major US cable show Real Time with Bill Maher.

Climate change was “a problem”, Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg told comedian Maher, but would only shave a few percentage points off global GDP by the end of the century and in any case, he claimed, by then people would be much richer anyway.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

Continue reading...

Greens MP says number of mortalities is ‘enormous’ and ‘most likely the result of overstocking’

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Environmentalists are calling on the Tasmanian salmon industry to explain why more than 1,000 tonnes of salmon died in fish farms in Macquarie Harbour over seven months last spring and summer.

A government document published after a request by the Neighbours of Fish Farming, a group that campaigns against commercial salmon operations, suggest 1,150 tonnes of fish died in farms in the vast harbour on the state’s west coast between September and March.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

Continue reading...

Mining has increased by 52% since the turn of the century due to surging demand for metals and minerals, exerting an outsized impact on tree cover loss in tropical primary rainforests and in Indigenous and local community territories, according to a new report by a non-profit.

Under $1 million in biodiversity credits have been purchased, despite surging supply, with the figure dwarfed by biodiversity offsets, BloombergNEF said on Tuesday in a report set to launch at conference COP16 this week.

Oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf explains why Amoc breakdown could be catastrophic for both humans and marine life

The dangers of a collapse of the main Atlantic Ocean circulation, known as Amoc, have been “greatly underestimated” and would have devastating and irreversible impacts, according to an open letter released at the weekend by 44 experts from 15 countries. One of the signatories, Stefan Rahmstorf, an oceanographer and climatologist who heads the Earth system analysis department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, explains here why he has recently upgraded his risk assessment of an Amoc breakdown as a result of global heating – and what that means for Britain, Europe and the wider world.

Continue reading...

A billion of hectares of land, bigger than the size of the US, is needed to meet the carbon removal (CDR) commitments by countries in Paris Agreement pledges, finds analysis.

Long-delayed regulations may ‘encourage’ housebuilders to equip homes with solar panels, rather than requiring them

Labour is considering making solar panels optional on new homes in England, after pressure from housebuilders, in a move that would weaken low-carbon regulations, the Guardian has learned.

Ministers are preparing to publish long-delayed regulations for new homes, known as the future homes standard, which would ensure that all newly built homes are low-carbon.

Continue reading...

European carbon allowances erased the last five days' losses after a steep mid-morning rally on Wednesday triggered by some closing out of short positions, as the weekly positions data showed investment funds had only marginally added to their bearish bets.

Commissioner-designate Wopke Hoekstra has sent responses in writing to EU lawmakers ahead of a confirmation hearing for his second term as the EU’s climate chief, shedding light on the bloc’s future climate priorities.

The European Commission has selected 85 innovative net-zero projects to receive €4.8 billion in grants from the Innovation Fund, which is supplied by revenues from the EU ETS.

Taiwan has stepped into a new era of carbon pricing as the government this week finalised long-awaited carbon levy rates for the island's major emitters.