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Port Augusta solar thermal on track as renewables attract investment and create jobs
Two major new solar farms in SE Queensland going ahead
Australia’s ‘electric car revolution’ won’t happen automatically
The climate solution no-one in Davos will be talking about
China adds more solar than coal and gas for first time, as Trump slaps solar tariffs
#30: The woman who lived in a tree
RET is met, and Frydenberg concedes more wind and solar will lower prices, improve reliability
Corporations purchased record amounts of clean power in 2017
Could 'assisted evolution' save the Great Barrier Reef?
Australia's 'electric car revolution' won't happen automatically
Pioneering female becomes first wolf in Belgium in a century
Researchers have tracked Naya from eastern Germany into the Netherlands and now Belgium
The first recorded wolf on Belgian soil for at least 100 years has made her bloody mark.
Farmers in north-east Flanders have been put on high alert after evidence emerged that Naya, a female originally from eastern Germany that has been making a pioneering trek across Europe, had killed two sheep and injured a third near the Belgian town of Meerhout.
Continue reading...Fears for future of UK onshore wind power despite record growth
2.6GW of capacity built in 2017 before subsidies ban industry says will make generation dearer
A record amount of onshore wind power was built in the UK last year, but government policy has been stalling the sector and risked increasing energy bills for consumers, the industry has warned.
Turbines capable of generating 2.6GW were installed across Britain in 2017 as developers rushed to meet the government deadline for securing subsidies. The previous record was 1.3GW in 2013.
Continue reading...Why you can't judge a zebra by its stripes
ISS cosmonaut does 'test flight' on a vacuum cleaner
New Caledonian crows show how technology evolves
Switching to electric cars is key to fixing America's 'critically insufficient' climate policies | Dana Nuccitelli
Nearly 60% of US carbon pollution comes from power and transportation, and power is already decarbonizing fast
In order to meet its share of the carbon pollution cuts needed to achieve the 2°C Paris international climate target, America’s policies are rated as “critically insufficient” by the Climate Action Tracker. The Trump Administration has taken every possible step to undo the Obama Administration’s climate policies, including announcing that America will be the only world country to withdraw from the Paris agreement, and trying to repeal the Clean Power Plan.
In 2020, the next American president will have to make up the lost ground and come up with a plan to rapidly accelerate the country’s transition away from fossil fuels. Currently, transportation and power generation each account for about 30% of US greenhouse gas emissions, so those sectors represent the prime targets for pollution cuts.
Day Zero: What happens when a global city runs out of water
Country diary 1918: winter wandering in Ayrshire
21 January 1918 Just before dawn the landscape was the chillest pale grey; it seemed pure white, with a dash of pure black
Wandering in Ayrshire just now is cold work, and one reads with a mixture of pride and envy of the warmer weather in the south. Pride because of one’s endurance of nipped fingers and senseless feet and burning windpipe for pleasure in the glorious brisk feeling, the dry squeak of the clean hard snow under one’s feet; for delight in watching the children sliding and sleighing, the exquisite lights of dawn and sunset on the snow.
Related: Walking in the winter woods: Country diary 100 years ago
Continue reading...Country diary: lowest land in Britain is unsettling in the gloom
Holme Fen, Cambridgeshire: The trunks tangle back from both sides of the track, like wiry hair, their bark papery. Packed dense, this makes the forest look grey and odd
Britain’s highest highpoint is Ben Nevis. The lowest highpoint, if you like, is in what was Huntingdonshire: Boring Field, an old county top, at 81m above sea level. But hereabouts too is a mountain’s true inverse: the lowest lowpoint. The road to Holme Fen protrudes, like a fat plank thrown over a bog. You could fall off it if you’re distracted. I am, first by the red kites: they’re everywhere here, black wraiths cruising on dog-leg wings. I count nine within a kilometre. Then two herons, side by side at the side of the road and unbothered by it, those stripe-masked faces like strange little highwaymen.
It’s early, and the morning is feebly painted in winter colours: black fields full of rain, brown water, grey sky. It should be light by now but it isn’t. I turn on to the fen track and suddenly there’s red: the lights of a railway crossing, then the train blurring noisily beyond it. Beyond that, in a thicket of woodland, is the lowest land in Great Britain.
Continue reading...Great Barrier Reef to get $60m rescue package from government
Malcolm Turnbull announces $36.6m will be spent on ‘supporting farmers stopping runoff’ to improve water quality
Malcolm Turnbull has announced a $60m rescue package for the Great Barrier Reef which includes research on developing “resilient” coral, and paying farmers to pollute less.
The package, to be spent over 18 months, will also include an increased number of reef officers and vessels targeting crown of thorns starfish outbreaks.
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