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It's been a stellar year for news, readership, podcasts and feedback. We'd like to thank our readers and supporters. We'll be back soon.

Three local banks agree to finance 530MW Stockyard Hill wind project in western Victoria, validating its record low price for wind project in Australia.

Telstra, ANZ lead consortium to buy output from new 429MW wind farm, and lock in similar low price achieved by Origin earlier this year.

Tesla big battery's dramatic intervention after Loy Yang trip, and a separate 0-100MW injection in just 140 milliseconds, illustrates yawning gap between technologies and market rules. The future is here, but market rule makers are not ready for it.

Snake populations worldwide may already be infected with a potentially deadly disease, say scientists.

Chocolate poisoning is a risk to the family dog over the festive season, vets are warning.

A new study warns if the degradation rate continues, all wilderness areas will be at risk over the next 50 years

The world’s last great wildernesses are shrinking at an alarming rate. In the past two decades, 10% of the earth’s wilderness has been lost due to human pressure, a mapping study by the University of Queensland has found.

Over the course of human history, there has been a major degradation of 52% of the earth’s ecosystems, while the remaining 48% is being increasingly eroded. Since 1992, when the United Nations signed up to the Rio convention on biological diversity, three million square kilometres of wilderness have been lost.

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Snowy 2.0 or Snow Job? Costs for Turnbull's pet scheme more than double, the economics are kept secret, and project may do little more than use coal power to push water up hill unless Coalition seeks more wind and solar.

The death spiral for cars; Tesla's Big Battery – and electric truck; the two faces of Malcolm Turnbull; and all the other stories that caught our readers' attention this year.

Medals of Valour should be awarded to Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, AEMO chief executive Audrey Zibelman, and South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill.

Wildfires are expected to increase in a warming world, but there is another way humans are changing the patterns and intensity of fires: by introducing flammable plants to new environments. Tim Curran, Senior Lecturer in Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand George Perry, Professor, School of Environment, University of Auckland Sarah Wyse, Early Career Research Fellow, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Research Fellow, School of Environment, University of Auckland Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

The US Coast Guard tries to save the animal tangled in line connecting bales of cocaine in the Pacific.

Northern Territory government insists no report about resulting combustion and emissions exists, despite investigating McArthur river mine

An Australian mine owned by the global trading firm Glencore mistakenly dumped 63 truckloads of dangerous waste material in the wrong place, where it combusted and sent sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere.

The scale of the incident, which occurred at the remote McArthur river zinc-lead mine in Australia’s north, was kept out of the public eye. The Northern Territory government ordered an investigation but refuses to release any details, claiming no report exists because the findings were delivered verbally.

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Dr Adam Rutherford and Dr Hannah Fry offer a scientist's guide

The Andrews Labor Government will invest $30 million to help Victoria’s farmers manage energy costs through improved efficiency and new technology.

French parliamentarians have passed a law banning fossil fuel extraction. President Macron says he wants France to lead the world with switch to renewables

France’s parliament has passed into law a ban on producing oil and gas by 2040, a largely symbolic gesture as the country is 99% dependent on hydrocarbon imports.

In Tuesday’s vote by show of hands, only the rightwing Republicans party opposed, while leftwing lawmakers abstained.

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Monitoring network Traffic says smuggling of undocumented ivory into China could undermine enforcement of imminent ban

Japan’s failure to prevent illegal ivory exports could undermine China’s forthcoming ban on its domestic ivory trade, conservation groups have warned.

Inaction by Japan’s government has allowed the smuggling of large quantities of undocumented ivory overseas, mainly to China, according to a report released in Tokyo on Wednesday by the wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic.

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Rome's new Christmas tree is being ridiculed by residents of the Italian capital after it began losing its pine needles. The sickly tree has been compared to a toilet brush and is nicknamed 'Spelacchio', meaning mangy or balding. The city hall has promised to investigate why the tree was brought over from Austria in such bad shape 

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Vandals 'took a hammer or rock' to a 115 million year old fossil, breaking off sections of its toes.

A pod of 28 bottlenose dolphins is found to be permanently living off the south-west coast of England.