Feed aggregator

About 150 animals wash up on a beach south of Perth, prompting a major rescue effort.

Rescue operation under way to save 15 beached whales in Hamelin Bay near Augusta on state’s south-west coast

More than 150 whales have washed ashore in Western Australia, of which about 75 have died.

A rescue operation is under way in Hamelin Bay, near the town of Augusta on the state’s south-western tip, with volunteers and vets trying to keep the surviving short-finned pilot whales alive before deciding when to herd them out to sea. About 50 of the whales are on the beach and 25 are in the shallows.

Continue reading...

'Social licence to operate' is a term describing how much community support a project or company has. As the Northern Rivers CSG experience shows, failing to get it can have costly impacts for firms. Hanabeth Luke, Lecturer, Southern Cross University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

How do the competing battery storage rollouts compare? Is the Marshall plan better than the Tesla proposal embraced by Weatherill?

Grid-scale battery storage is taking off in Australia but it is still a struggle for investors to get value from their services. The contracts for the new Victoria big batteries explain why.

It's not worth getting too excited about the many technical deficiencies in the proposed National Energy Guarantee and the poverty of the vision that underlies it.

Tony Burke says if the Greens back the plan, the ‘largest removal’ of a conservation area will be locked in for a decade

Labor has blasted the Greens for not lining up immediately behind their commitment to disallow controversial new marine park management plans proposed by the Turnbull government this week.

The shadow environment minister, Tony Burke, told Guardian Australia the government had been intent for four years “on the largest removal of area from conservation in history”.

Continue reading...

Whatever shape the shift to renewables takes, energy storage will be the Swiss Army knife for electricity grids – a tool for any task.

Ground broken at 80MW Victoria wind farm – fruition of Melbourne project involving 14 universities, cultural institutions, corporations and Councils.

Computing giant says it now contracts enough renewables to "send Marty McFly back in time in a DeLorean" after sealing 315MW Virginia solar farm PPA.

The dream of carbon capture and storage (CCS) continues to keep coal industry and its political backers hopeful for the future. But at what cost?

Agreements between the Commonwealth and state governments that protect native forests are based on hopelessly out-of-date information. It's a huge mistake to renew them without assessment. David Lindenmayer, Professor, The Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Schneider Electric has launched new services to assist businesses in the adoption of low-cost renewable energy.

Students will be graded numerically on a scale from 9 to 1.

A new museum dedicated to IK Brunel reveals the man behind the carefully cultivated public image.

British scientists think DNA could be used to solve a global problem - where to store all our data.

VR has suffered from an image problem, so could very high resolution headsets be the answer?

AEMO report says AGL's plans to replace Liddell with new dispatchable technology more than enough to address any shortfall. Not that you'd know that if you relied on mainstream media headlines.

The most sustainable phone is the one you already own. But if you're in the market for a new handset, consider choosing one with replaceable parts to avoid having to replace the whole thing again. Miles Park, Senior Lecturer, Industrial Design, UNSW Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

If we are to reduce our consumption levels, says Linda Marriott, we must walk the walk, not just talk the talk

Bravo, Mark Boyle – your world sounds very beguiling to an oldie like me (I left a troubled world behind. Now let me tell you how to fix it, 20 March). However, I’ve lost count of the number of times in my life that I have heard this siren song, but no one with any influence ever seems to listen or even wake up. But, as Mark says, we can try small remedies ourselves should we be lucky enough to have a garden. It reminds me of an old Canadian friend who was convinced he could protect his family from the coming apocalypse by buying a farm, until he realised he’d have to have a gun – and use it – to stop those less fortunate from taking what he had. Or the 1970s German bumper sticker that translated as “everyone wants to go back to Eden but no one wants to go on foot”.
Linda Marriott
North Hykeham, Lincolnshire

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

Continue reading...