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How should Australia deal with plastic waste?
AEMO pushes solar register as rooftop installations head to 56GW
AEMO sets out guidelines for solar register as it tries to capture detail of solar installations, which are heading to 56GW and will be biggest energy source in country.
The post AEMO pushes solar register as rooftop installations head to 56GW appeared first on RenewEconomy.
NA Markets: California allowances rise following auction results, RGGI continues to slide
Adani still needs further federal approval despite pre-election green light
Work related to groundwater research will need to be signed off as opponents say new government papers show mine is ‘not ready to go’
Adani will not be allowed to dig any coal from its Carmichael mine until it gets further federal government approval – despite the Coalition’s pre-election green light for parts of the project.
With Adani’s controversial project looming as a central issue in the federal election campaign, the Coalition made political capital in Queensland out of the decision in April by former environment minister Melissa Price to approve Adani’s groundwater management plans.
Continue reading...If the Adani mine gets built, it will be thanks to politicians, on two continents
Trees, the ancient Macedonians, and the world's first environmental disaster
EU Market: EUAs dip in holiday trade as market braces for supply surge
Philippines sends rotting exported waste back to Canada
Ignoring technical playbook, experts see more rangebound trade for EUAs
Walter Menzies obituary
My friend Walter Menzies, who has died of a brain tumour aged 69, made a profound contribution to the cause of sustainable development, driven by his fascination with people and places. He was a twinkly-eyed, mischievous, inspiring and determined doer. “Sustainable development is the only credible way of organising our environment, economy and society,” he stated uncompromisingly in a collection of 30 years of his writings.
He and I met when I was reporting for the Guardian in the north and he was chief executive of the Mersey Basin Campaign, a pioneering project set up by Michael Heseltine after the 1981 Toxteth riots. Heseltine wanted the river cleaned up. The campaign was so successful that fishermen caught cod across the river from Liverpool’s Pier Head and seals were seen lazing on sandbanks at Warrington.
Continue reading...Rosalind Franklin: Mars rover control centre opens
Renewable energy jobs in UK plunge by a third
Exclusive: report reveals investment in the sector has halved in recent years
The number of jobs in renewable energy in the UK has plunged by nearly a third in recent years, and the amount of new green generating capacity by a similar amount, causing havoc among companies in the sector, a new report has found.
Prospect, the union which covers much of the sector, has found a 30% drop in renewable energy jobs between 2014 and 2017, as government cuts to incentives and support schemes started to bite. It also found investment in renewables in the UK more than halved between 2015 and 2017.
Continue reading...Humans and volcanoes caused nearly all of global heating in past 140 years
New study confirms natural cycles play little role in global temperature trends and tackles discrepancies in previous models
Emissions from fossil fuels and volcanoes can explain nearly all of the changes in Earth’s surface temperatures over the past 140 years, a new study has found.
The research refutes the popular climate denial myth that recent global warming is merely a result of natural cycles.
Continue reading...How we could clock up one billion electric flying taxi flights by 2030
There could be more than 1 billion flights in electric air taxis by 2030, in an industry predicted to be worth more than $2 trillion.
The post How we could clock up one billion electric flying taxi flights by 2030 appeared first on RenewEconomy.
More Australian drivers looking to hybrid vehicles, young looking to ride-share
Roy Morgan suggests drivers increasingly want to buy hybrid cars, but overall sales will fall as people look to electric and car-sharing options.
The post More Australian drivers looking to hybrid vehicles, young looking to ride-share appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Mirvac taps Melbourne start-up for shared solar at new apartments
ASX-listed property developer inks deal with Allume Energy to use its solar sharing technology at new apartment complex – and potentially across all multi-occupant buildings.
The post Mirvac taps Melbourne start-up for shared solar at new apartments appeared first on RenewEconomy.
NZ budget puts carbon auctioning on track, but offers nothing new on FPO
Inmarsat lays big satellite order with Airbus
I’m the gutter gourmet: how I spent a month eating other people's leftovers
We don’t talk enough about the street food scandal – leftovers chucked away without a second thought
Every day for the past month complete strangers have bought me lunch. And breakfast. And dinner. And they don’t even know it.
I have been living high on the hog, and it hasn’t cost me a penny – because I have been dining out on the half-eaten fast food and takeaways thoughtfully abandoned by my fellow Britons on pavements and park benches and tube platforms all over the city. Sometimes they even leave them in bins.
Continue reading...The Anthropocene epoch: have we entered a new phase of planetary history?
Human activity has transformed the Earth – but scientists are divided about whether this is really a turning point in geological history. By Nicola Davison
It was February 2000 and the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen was sitting in a meeting room in Cuernavaca, Mexico, stewing quietly. Five years earlier, Crutzen and two colleagues had been awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry for proving that the ozone layer, which shields the planet from ultraviolet light, was thinning at the poles because of rising concentrations of industrial gas. Now he was attending a meeting of scientists who studied the planet’s oceans, land surfaces and atmosphere. As the scientists presented their findings, most of which described dramatic planetary changes, Crutzen shifted in his seat. “You could see he was getting agitated. He wasn’t happy,” Will Steffen, a chemist who organised the meeting, told me recently.
What finally tipped Crutzen over the edge was a presentation by a group of scientists that focused on the Holocene, the geological epoch that began around 11,700 years ago and continues to the present day. After Crutzen heard the word Holocene for the umpteenth time, he lost it. “He stopped everybody and said: ‘Stop saying the Holocene! We’re not in the Holocene any more,’” Steffen recalled. But then Crutzen stalled. The outburst had not been premeditated, but now all eyes were on him. So he blurted out a name for a new epoch. A combination of anthropos, the Greek for “human”, and “-cene”, the suffix used in names of geological epochs, “Anthropocene” at least sounded academic. Steffen made a note.
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