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BOC will support CSIRO during its $3.4 million ammonia to hydrogen cracking and membrane purification project that is set to revolutionise the global supply chain for hydrogen.

Are Australia's wind farms living up to expectations? Why the market preferred Origin's results to AGL's; and a dive into the Windlab prospectus and its "busload" wind and solar plant.

Changes to the draft Australian Standard for installing home battery units are essential, but it is also important to ensure appropriate technical standards are in place to ensure consumers are protected, the Clean Energy Council said today.

Major renewable energy tender announcements expected from Victoria, along with more details of state renewable energy target architecture.

The Sill, Once Brewed, Northumberland Planting at the National Landscape Discovery Centre aims to recreate the area’s rare whin grasslands

Standing on the roof of the Sill with the wind in my hair, I have a new view of familiar countryside. For years I’ve driven along Hadrian’s Wall, enjoying the way the land forms a series of waves like a frozen sea.

Now, from the highest point of this building, I watch a buzzard circling above the Roman quarry at Barcombe Hill, see walkers labouring up the craggy steps at Steel Rigg, glimpse far-off bales in a recently cut hay field and cows tail flicking in the summer heat.

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California's solar-centric grid manages eclipse without a hitch. In Australia, preparations already being made for 2028 eclipse.

Solar pioneer Martin Green says solar PV will fall to $US10/MWh within a few years, but this will be good news for Australia's mining industry because the fall in Australia's thermal coal exports will be offset by a factor of more than 5 by demand for other resources.

Energy market rule maker backs down on proposal to charge solar households to export excess PV generation back to the grid.

Taronga Western Plains zoo in Dubbo, New South Wales, has welcomed two brand new additions to the giraffe herd, born within one week of each other. This video was shot within minutes of the first calf’s birth and shows it taking its first steps and bonding with adult members of the giraffe herd. The first calf is named Zuberi, which means strong in Swahili, and the second calf is Kibo, which means the highest. The zoo says that in just 30 years the global giraffe population has fallen by up to 40% due to poaching for bush meat and habitat encroachment. The zoo aims to spread awareness of their plight and raise money for conservation in Kenya

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South African power utility Eskom recently repeated that it will not conclude supply contracts with developers of new renewable energy power stations.

BBC correspondent James Cook views the total eclipse from 40,000ft above the Pacific Ocean.

Ministers said plans to extract iron near a penguin reserve lacked sufficient environmental guarantees.

A Brisbane-based energy technology startup Redback Technologies plans to double its current workforce of 54 over the next six months.

Dr David Grimes says the Earth's climate system has entered a new meteorological era.

A Nasa telescope captures the total solar eclipse as it passes over the western US state of Oregon.

With some tweaks to the recipe, cement and concrete can be made kinder to the planet. Postman Photos/Shutterstock.com

Cement is the world’s most widely used material apart from water, largely because it is the key ingredient in concrete, the world’s favourite building material.

But with cement’s success comes a huge amount of greenhouse emissions. For every tonne of cement produced in Australia, 0.82 tonnes of CO₂ is released. That might not sound like much, especially when compared with the 1.8 tonnes emitted in making a tonne of steel. But with a global production of more than 4 billion tonnes a year, cement accounts for 5% of the world’s industrial and energy greenhouse emissions.

Read more: The problem with reinforced concrete.

The electricity and heat demands of cement production are responsible for around 50% the CO₂ emissions. But the other 50% comes from the process of “calcination” – a crucial step in cement manufacture in which limestone (calcium carbonate) is heated to transform it into quicklime (calcium oxide), giving off CO₂ in the process.

A report published by Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE) (on which I was a consultant) outlines several ways in which the sector can improve this situation, and perhaps even one day create a zero-carbon cement industry.

Better recipes

The cement industry has already begun to reduce its footprint by improving equipment and reducing energy use. But energy efficiency can only get us so far because the chemical process itself emits so much CO₂. Not many cement firms are prepared to cut their production to reduce emissions, so they will have to embrace less carbon-intensive recipes instead.

The BZE report calculates that 50% of the conventional concrete used in construction can be replaced with another kind, called geopolymer concrete. This contains cement made from other products rather than limestone, such as fly ash, slag or clay.

Making this transition would be relatively easy in Australia, which has more than 400 million tonnes of fly ash readily available as stockpiled waste from the coal industry, which represents already about 20 years of stocks.

Read more: Eco-cement, the cheapest carbon sequestration on the planet.

These types of concrete are readily available in Australia, although they are not widely used because they have not been included in supply chains, and large construction firms have not yet put their faith in them.

Another option more widely known by construction firm is to use the so-called “high blend” cements containing a mixture of slag, fly ash and other compounds blended with cement. These blends have been used in concrete structures all over the world, such as the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Hindu temple in Chicago, the foundation slab of which contains 65% fly ash cement. These blends are available everywhere in Australia but their usage is not as high as it should due to the lack of trust from the industry.

Built on the fly (ash): a Hindu temple in Chicago. BAPS.org/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

It is even theoretically possible to create “carbon-negative cement”, made with magnesium oxide in place of traditional quicklime. This compound can absorb CO₂ from the air when water is added to the cement powder, and its developer Novacem, a spinoff from Imperial College London, claimed a tonne of its cement had a “negative footprint” of 0.6 tonnes of CO₂. But almost a decade later, carbon-negative cement has not caught on.

Capturing carbon

The CO₂ released during cement fabrication could also potentially be recaptured in a process called mineral carbonation, which works on a similar principle as the carbon capture and storage often discussed in relation to coal-fired electricity generation.

This technique can theoretically prevent 90% of cement kiln emissions from escaping to the atmosphere. The necessary rocks (olivine or serpentine) are found in Australia, especially in the New England area of New South Wales, and the technique has been demonstrated in the laboratory, but has not yet been put in place at commercial scale, although several companies around the world are currently working on it.

Read more: The ‘clean coal’ row shouldn’t distract us from using carbon capture for other industries.

Yet another approach would be to adapt the design of our buildings, bridges and other structures so they use less concrete. Besides using the high-performance concretes, we could also replace some of the concrete with other, less emissions-intensive materials such as timber.

Previously, high greenhouse emissions were locked into the cement industry because of the way it is made. But the industry now has a range of tools in hand to start reducing its greenhouse footprint. With the world having agreed in Paris to try and limit global warming to no more than 2℃, every sector of industry needs to do its part.

Rackel San Nicolas is affiliated with the University of Melbourne, International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials, Systems and Structures, the Australian French Association of Science and Technology, She receives funding from Australian Research Council.

The US witnesses the spectacular effects of its first coast-to-coast solar eclipse in 100 years.

Common moss changes shape in areas of high nitrogen pollution and drought and has potential to be big bioindicator, say scientists

Delicate mosses found on rocks and trees in cities around the world can be used to measure the impact of atmospheric change and could prove a low-cost way to monitor urban pollution, according to Japanese scientists.

Moss, a “bioindicator”, responds to pollution or drought-stress by changing shape, density or by disappearing, allowing scientists to calculate atmospheric alterations, said Yoshitaka Oishi, associate professor at Fukui Prefectural University.

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Noxious byproducts from slurry spill at Crouchland biogas farm poisoned neighbouring land and animals

Lynda and Richard Whittemore bought Quennells farm in the quiet Sussex countryside six years ago. They were hoping for what Lynda calls “an idyllic lifestyle”, tending their flock of 400 pedigree sheep and 45 cattle on 180 acres of farmland.

“We have an undulating field at the back of the stream, winding to the other corner,” Lynda says. “Usually it has lovely clear water, with a gentle slope down to the water supply. It’s picturesque – the [livestock] don’t need troughs, they can walk down to drink the water.”

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Environment Agency figures show severe incidents are weekly occurrence as farms struggle with cost of pollution prevention despite subsidies

Serious pollution incidents in the UK from dairy, poultry and pig farms are now a weekly occurrence, leading to damage to wildlife, fish, farm livestock and air and water pollution.

The Environment Agency in England and its devolved counterparts in Wales and Scotland recorded 536 of the most severe incidents between 2010 and 2016, the worst instances among more than 5,300 cases of agricultural pollution in the period.

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