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The 25 endangered black-tailed godwits were hand-reared to ensure their survival.

UK leads trend away from coal, with use down 52.5%, while China continues to consume less of the dirtiest fossil fuel

Global demand for coal has fallen for the second consecutive year, according to a BP study, helped by the US and China burning less of the dirtiest fossil fuel.

The UK was described as the “most extreme example” of the trend away from coal, which has resulted in use of the fuel returning to levels not seen since the start of the industrial revolution.

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Competition for nesting sites could explain why some birds and bumblebees are declining faster than others.

Plans to install a solar, wind and battery microgrid on Lord Howe Island have hit a snag, after an objection to the wind turbines from the federal energy minister.

The owner of the vehicle said her family had all been stung by the 20,000 strong swarm.

Improvements aim to ensure the vault’s role as an impregnable deep freeze for the world’s most precious food seeds after a recent flooding by melting permafrost

The Global Seed Vault, built in the Arctic as an impregnable deep freeze for the world’s most precious food seeds, is to undergo a multi-million dollar upgrade after water from melting permafrost flooded its access tunnel.

No seeds were damaged but the incident undermined the original belief that the vault would be a “failsafe” facility, securing the world’s food supply forever. Now the Norwegian government, which owns the vault, has committed $4.4m (NOK37m) to improvements.

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This week delivered two reviews and one federal court decision... and a thought bubble on energy storage that will almost certainly increase consumer costs.

The Finkel blue-print needs stress testing with real climate targets, a recognition of the shift to distributed generation, a smarter way to think about storage, and an assurance that asset-protecting incumbents will keep their mitts off the mechanism. And it needs to deliver bigger savings on bills.

WA-based Stellata Energy and UK investment group Ingenious to build 120MW solar farm in Merredin, as first of $200m pipeline of big solar projects.

West Sussex The male calls three times, then segues into a short, complex phrase of tweets and whistles

The wind crashes through the tree tops, like the sea breaking on the shore, the great pines and silver birches that encircle the heathland swaying and shimmering. A red admiral butterfly rises from the heather, but it is snatched up by the wind and tumbles away too quickly for me to follow it.

I walk along the muddy track that threads between the trees. Where only last week the ground had been dry and parched, offering very little moisture to thirsty animals and birds, now all the pools are replenished with just one day’s heavy rain. I stop to watch three goldfinches drink from a puddle in front of me.

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Are electric bikes just an early adopter pipe dream? Are they decades away from dominance?

Energy minister Josh Frydenberg eventually offers a wry smile after opposition MP Mark Butler makes a joke about Labor’s strategy on the clean energy target during Q&A. Butler says the plan is “to get Josh to do all the hard work. Then lose [the election] and hand it over.” The pair were on ABC TV program to discuss Australia’s energy future.

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Distributed energy additions like to overtake centralised plant in 2018, with 320GW large scale fossil fuel plants now not likely to be built.

‘Defer, delay and pray’ appear to be the unspoken new watchwords for the company that would build the Carmichael Coal Project.

A short video to put recent climate change and carbon dioxide emissions into the context of the past 800,000 years.

The Finkel report offers glimpse of opportunity for consumers and businesses to play the electricity market

To illustrate the impact of battery storage on the electricity network in Australia, Prof Guoxiu Wang likes to compare it to the invention of refrigeration.

“Before people invented the fridge, we produced food, we consumed food immediately,” says Wang, director of the Centre for Clean Energy Technology at the University of Technology, Sydney. “With the development of appropriate electricity storage technology, the electricity is like our food – you can store it and whenever you need that electricity, you can use that immediately.”

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Since the start of the coalition government in 2010, coal’s role in the generation mix has fallen to historic lows.

India’s energy minister, Piyush Goyal, says the country would be self-sufficient in coal, except that power plants had been designed to run only on imports

India now has “sufficient coal capacity” to power itself without Queensland’s Carmichael mine project, thanks to the increased productivity of domestic mines, cheaper renewables and lower than expected energy demand, the country’s energy minister has said.

But Piyush Goyal said India would be forced to keep importing coal, including from the proposed Queensland mine, because too many Indian power plants had been designed to run on foreign coal.

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Thousands of dying and dead fish were found in a river leading to the Gulf of Mexico.

Interior secretary Ryan Zinke urges president to shrink 1.3m-acre national monument as administration continues push against federal public lands

Ryan Zinke, the US interior secretary, has recommended to Donald Trump that Bears Ears national monument in Utah be reduced in size to the “smallest area compatible” with its conservation.

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