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The government’s promise to slash the cost of household batteries should be welcomed – it could drive a change that benefits everyone who uses the power grid

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It’s taken years to get here, but Labor’s election pledge to make household batteries cheaper is a significant step forward that should cut climate pollution and limit power price rises. While it has been criticised by some as a subsidy for the wealthy, it could drive a change that benefits everyone who uses the power grid, and not just those who can afford to put an energy storage unit in their garage.

Labor’s promise is that from July it will cut the cost of a typical household battery by about $4,000, or 30%. The discount will be delivered through a long-running small-scale renewable energy scheme that has helped make rooftop solar panels and hot water systems affordable for more people.

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Adam Morton is Guardian Australia’s climate and environment editor

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Dr Amanda Lilleyman, a shorebird expert and advocate, says a defence housing project and an industrial development plan in Darwin are threatening the habitat of the critically endangered far eastern curlew.  The bird relies on undisturbed Australian shorelines to fatten up before making an epic migration to the northern hemisphere. It’s one of more than 2,000 Australian species listed as under threat in what scientists are calling an extinction crisis

• A high-flying visitor – the wondrous far eastern curlew – faces fresh threat in NT wetlands haven

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Carbon credits have the potential to drive large-scale investment into clean cooking solutions in Africa, but limited engagement from financial regulators continues to stifle market growth, a policy brief published Monday has found.

The ongoing climate crisis could jeopardise half of the world's mangrove ecosystems by the end of the century, with some of the most biodiverse regions in Southeast Asia facing the biggest risks, according to a new paper.

The European chemicals industry has so far met its EU decarbonisation targets thanks to efficiency improvements in production, but going further will require shifting to hydrogen or electrification technologies that are either unavailable or too expensive to keep the sector profitable, a senior industry executive told Carbon Pulse.

Gold Standard has approved a new methodology aimed at reducing emissions from elevator operations by capturing and reusing regenerative power, the standard body said Monday.

Charity crowdfunding initial sum to build £750,000 facility on Bodmin Moor to study overlooked but biodiverse natural habitat

Europe’s first research station for the study of Atlantic temperate rainforest is set to be built beside an ancient wood in Cornwall.

The Thousand Year Trust charity is crowdfunding an initial amount to build the £750,000 facility, which will enable students and academics to study this historically overlooked but biodiverse natural habitat.

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The Central Bank of Kenya has issued a green finance taxonomy and a disclosure framework for climate-related risks, in an effort to green the banking sector and mitigate the risks associated with climate change.

European carbon prices extended their tariff-induced plunge for a fourth day, reaching the lowest intraday level in six months amid continued widespread selling across commodity and equity markets after US President Donald Trump gave no indication over the weekend that higher import tariffs on goods into the country would be delayed or negotiated.

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has approved a €260 million loan for a Swedish energy company to build the country’s first large-scale bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) facility.

A global specialist in lifecycle management of refrigerants and fire suppressants, which develops offset projects that abate ozone-depleting substances (ODS), has acquired a Canadian company in the refrigerant sector.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has issued a memo aiming to reduce environmental safeguards across over 45 million hectares of forest, amid the administration's ongoing push to increase logging activities in the country.

The UK government has shortlisted more than two dozen clean hydrogen projects for a subsidy scheme aimed at helping to decarbonise heavy-emitting industries and driving economic growth in the country's industrial heartlands, it announced on Monday.

A new study found parts of Antartica could pass a tipping point for mass ice sheet losses as soon as 2050 – pushing sea levels 2 metres higher by 2300 than currently predicted. Chen Zhao, ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania Ben Galton-Fenzi, Principal Scientist, Australian Antarctic Division Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

A Tokyo-headquartered developer has tapped into India's biochar-based carbon removal market through a newly formed partnership with local companies.

We do not have the luxury of rejecting solutions before we have thoroughly investigated their risks, trade-offs and feasibility

As a lifelong scientist, I have always believed that if something is possible, we can find a way to achieve it. And yet, one of the starkest realities we now face is that the world is failing to meet its climate goals. Last year marked a historic and deeply troubling threshold: for the first time, global temperatures exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Without drastic and immediate climate action, this breach will not be temporary. The consequences – rising sea levels, extreme weather and devastating loss of biodiversity – are no longer projections for the distant future. They are happening now, affecting millions of lives, and likely to cause trillions in damages in decades to come.

But we must think beyond our immediate horizons. When I read The Iliad, I am reminded that it was written 2,800 years ago. I often wonder: in another 2,800 years, what will people – if humanity as we know it still exists – read about our time? Will they see us as the generation that failed to act or one that made the choices necessary to safeguard the planet for the future?

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Even the fossil fuel companies who pitched CCS as their get-out-of-jail-free card no longer believe in the economics.

The post The great carbon capture con: Too expensive, even for Woodside appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The price of Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) slipped lower on Monday after a week of steady gains, as the Labor party appears more likely to be returned to government on May 3.

The last of the 1,300 oversized parts for Andrew Forrest's biggest wind farm to date have been delivered to the site.

The post Final turbine blades delivered to Andrew Forrest’s biggest wind project to date appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A Singapore-based company has embarked on what it claims is the world's largest boreal reforestation project, aiming to restore 750,000 hectares of degraded forest land in northern Mongolia.