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BNEF report says poorly functioning gas market main cause of SA power price spike, blaming renewables "erroneous and simplistic."

Aberaeron, Ceredigion The route was almost deserted, so the sensation of being watched was unexpected

Even on the open slopes above the cliff, the air was hot and humid, making the steeper sections of the coast path seem more of a trudge than usual. South of Aberaeron, in west Wales, the route was almost deserted – so the sensation of being watched was unexpected.

As I struggled past a tangled mass of gorse, I realised that I was being observed by a stonechat perched on a bracken frond. My plodding approach hadn’t alarmed him enough to make him retreat and as I returned his gaze I realised that at least three others, perhaps a family, were nearby. They began to exchange the sharply characteristic calls that sound uncannily like two pebbles being tapped together, and which give the species its name.

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SA Power Networks proposal to charge rooftop solar customers up to $100 a year more for grid access has again been rejected by the Australian Energy Regulator.

Origin Energy bets that the solar market will be dominated by business demand in coming years, while households wait for battery storage costs to come down.

China's wind power capacity has reached 140GW, while total solar capacity has jumped by nearly half to 65GW.

Ross Garnaut says grid-scale battery storage ready to apply as "immediate answer" to Australia's energy network problems.

The New York Public Service Commission has approved the state’s Clean Energy Standard, which requires that utilities procure 50% of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030.

Emily Voigt devoted three years of her life and visited fifteen countries in search of the rare Asian arowana.

Two Amur snow leopards - believed to be the world's rarest big cat - are born at Twycross Zoo.

COOK'S CHOOKS: The first domestic chickens in New Zealand were likely set loose there by Captain James Cook and his crew.

Price rise in LGC market halted in July - less a result of the renewed anti-renewables campaign and more reflection of fact that spot market sitting within $7 of the scheme’s cap.

The estimated 1,273 GWh of power generated by solar during July was two-thirds higher than the 778 GWh output from coal in May 2016, highlighting the major changes going on in the UK electricity system.

JinkoSolar signs three PPAs with CFE for the three projects totaling 188MWac that was awarded in April 2016 under Mexico’s first long term electricity auction.

US study overturns perceptions about poorer homes by showing higher income houses host up to 200 different species of flies, spiders, beetles and ants

Homes in wealthier areas harbour more bugs, containing up to 200 different species of flies, spiders, beetles and ants, according to new research. The vast majority are not pests although dust mites and book lice were also common.

The finding is the latest demonstration of the “luxury effect” which has shown that richer neighbourhoods are more biologically diverse in plants, birds, bats and lizards, largely thanks to the greater number and variety of plants in gardens and parks. But it is the first time the effect has been shown for arthropods, either inside or outside homes.

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Australia is lagging far behind other rich countries in dealing with the growing mountain of “e-waste” from discarded electrical and electronic products.

My research, carried out with my student Ashleigh Morris, shows that in comparison with leading nations like Japan and Switzerland, Australia’s management of e-waste is ineffective and poorly implemented. This means that precious metals are not being recycled and hazardous materials are going into landfill instead of being properly dealt with.

E-waste is growing in Australia. Fewer than 1% of televisions and around 10% of computers and laptops are recycled, while the consumer-driven culture and planned obsolescence of many electronic products have resulted in millions of tonnes of e-waste entering the waste stream.

Computers, televisions, smartphones, washing machines, air-conditioners, freezers, hairdryers, electric toothbrushes, vacuum cleaners – the list is huge.

Lots of e-waste contains valuable (and finite) metals such as gold, indium and palladium, as well as hazardous ones like lead, arsenic and mercury. Sending it to landfill is not just a threat to the environment – it’s also a significant waste of valuable resources.

Despite this, many Australians still throw their e-waste into their general waste wheelie bin. Their local council then takes the bin’s contents to landfill.

Those who do make an effort to recycle their e-waste face the challenge of not knowing which products can be recycled and where. The services on offer vary greatly between different local governments, and not everyone is within reach of a drop-off point.

Contrast that with Switzerland, which recycles 16 times more e-waste per person than Australia, recouping 75% of recoverable material. Recycling and recovery targets have been subject to significant debate in Australia, yet the Swiss system doesn’t have targets.

Recycling targets are pointless without measures to ensure that e-waste is properly handled and audited. Both Switzerland and Japan (another nation that performs impressively on e-waste) have multiple levels of independent controls to ensure recycling companies maintain high environmental and quality standards, and to check for theft or “free-riding” – companies that refuse to comply with recycling regulations.

If we want Australian households and businesses to take e-waste seriously, we first have to put some serious systems in place to handle the problem.

Fixing the problem

My research has identified five key issues faced by the Australian system:

• recycling laws don’t cover the full scope of e-waste

• poor services and public engagement

• outdated recycling and recovery targets

• weak auditing and compliance measures

• neglect of key stakeholders such as local governments.

Local governments are crucial here: they manage the most e-waste and have the closest and most influential relationship with the public when it comes to recycling. But they are neglected in the system, receiving no direct funding for the collection, recycling, and recovery of e-waste.

Meanwhile, there is no responsibility on consumers to recycle their e-waste. This reinforces the “out of sight, out of mind” attitude that many Australians have to their rubbish.

Another key problem is that recycling legislation does not even mention many types of e-waste. Televisions and computers have a dedicated national recycling collection scheme, but millions of other items simply end up in landfill or are shipped illegally to developing countries.

Hazardous materials are some of the most attractive items to ship illegally, because they tend to have the highest recycling costs. This problem threatens to undermine Australia’s obligations under the Basel Convention, which outlaws the unauthorised international shipping of hazardous waste.

If Australia is to be effective in managing e-waste, it needs to expand its National Waste Policy to include the recovery and recycling of a much wider range of electrical products. It needs better compliance and auditing. Key players such as local governments must be given the power to manage e-waste much more responsibly.

That would be a good start. Of course, to get right to the heart of the issue, Australia ultimately needs to move away from the linear “take, make, dispose” economic model, and embrace the circular economy.

As you finish reading this article on your phone, tablet or laptop, have a look at it and ask yourself where it will be in a few years' time. Let’s hope it’s not in your local landfill.

This article was co-written by Ashleigh Morris, an honours student in environmental management at UNSW Australia.

Graciela Metternicht receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the NSW Environmental Trust

Since the 1960s, environmentalism in Australia has largely focused on defending "wilderness". yophotography/flickr, CC BY-SA

This is part of our Reimagining New South Wales (NSW) series. For this series, vice-chancellors in NSW asked a select group of early and mid-career researchers to envisage new ways to tackle old problems and identify emerging opportunities across the state.

NSW finds itself contemplating life after the mining boom.

It’s a moment of significant challenge but also an opportunity to reflect on the environmental impact of the industry at the heart of Australia’s recent economic growth – and how we can change our relationship with the land for the better.

We envisage a NSW where necessary industrial innovation is coordinated in ways that are environmentally sustainable and socially just. Critical here will be the state’s capacity to drive knowledge-led and low-carbon innovation.

But we also need to rethink the way humans relate to the environment.

The legacies of past mining enterprises and the impacts of mining waste will likely be felt for many years to come. The NSW landscape is now pockmarked by the environmental traces of the mining boom. Its social and economic effects in local communities live on – and that’s before we even get to the broader global impacts of the carbon emission from coal mines.

What values might guide our future relationship with the NSW environment?

Beyond ‘wilderness’

Since the 1960s, environmentalism in Australia has largely focused on defending “wilderness”. Conceptualising nature as a pristine place devoid of humans has underpinned the establishment of many protected areas in NSW and around the world.

While this worldview is being challenged in academia, the notion that we’ve done our bit to protect the environment and biodiversity by declaring a protected area persists in the political realm. And too often areas are declared protected without recognition of, or agreement by, the Aboriginal custodians of the land.

However, protected areas in themselves are not stemming the destruction of biodiversity, and cutting humans out of the picture altogether is not realistic nor helpful.

It is also important to remember that the majority of protected areas are marginal or “leftover areas” that were simply too hard to farm, mine or log. So congratulating ourselves on conserving one chunk of land, while intensively farming or developing another piece of land in environmentally unsustainable ways is not only unhelpful – it’s hypocritical.

A fresh approach

Instead of clinging to an old-fashioned view of “wilderness”, we should recognise that areas used intensively by humans can support significant biodiversity. We can also improve the design of these places to allow humans to better connect with their environment.

Recent work is re-valuating cities as sites of significant biodiversity. For example, studies on bee biodiversity suggest that cities may support more pollinators than was once thought.

And there is growing interest in the possibilities of urban agriculture as a source of local food production. The greening of cities brings with it huge possibilities: increased connection with nature, mental and physical health benefits and opportunities for engagement with food production.

At the same time, a move toward more sustainable agricultural practices can produce impressive yields while providing habitat for plants and animals. Production and biodiversity need to be treated in tandem in policy-making and practice, rather than presented as a binary choice.

Urban planning agencies could help by boosting the focus on creating green spaces that allow for humans to connect with nature in urban and rural environments – prioritising parks, green spaces and food production grounds close to homes and other buildings.

We could also consider a fresh approach to environmental impact assessments. Traditionally, these are written by consultants funded by developers; in the future, we could consider funding and even peer reviewing such assessments independently.

Inclusive and creative participation

We will need fresh ways to boost public participation in planning for the way humans relate to their environment.

After Hurricane Sandy hit the US in 2012, US Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Rebuild By Design coalition in Northeast United States forged a collaboration between designers, researchers, community members, and government officials.

Through a series of design competitions, participants helped rebuild disaster-struck areas in ways that best suited their needs and relationships with local environments.

Sydney is collaborating with other global cities in building urban resilience, but more could be done to foster social inclusion and community participation – particularly Indigenous participation – in shaping our environments. We need to include people in the early design stages of urban planning, rather than just asking for feedback on preconceived proposals.

It won’t always be easy, but we envisage a future NSW where community participation is regarded as a vital asset rather than a problem to be overcome.

Further reading:

Reimagining NSW: how the care economy could help unclog our cities

Reimagining NSW: four ways to boost community well-being and why it matters

Reimagining NSW: how good governance strengthens democracy

Pascal Scherrer chairs the Northern Rivers Region National Parks Advisory Committee and is a member of IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas.

Emily O'Gorman receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She works for Macquarie University.

Hannah Power has received funding from the NSW State Government under the NSW State Emergency Management Program Scheme.

Matthew Kearnes receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Sandie Suchet-Pearson receives funding from the ARC.

Tanya Latty receives funding the Branco Weiss Society in Science fellowship, the Australian Research Council, Commonwealth of Australia and the City of Sydney. She participates in the Australian Pollinator Think Tank.

The Kilauea volcano’s lava looked like a smiley face but stars, craters and spiders have also resembled the popular symbol for happiness

An erupting volcano in Hawaii was all smiles last week – and no, it wasn’t a Disney animation.

The lava of Kilauea, a shield volcano on Hawaii’s biggest island, appeared to form a smiley face as it erupted. The volcano has been active since 1983, with lava emerging from the Pu‘u ‘O‘o vent. As the smile appeared, lava from the volcano reached the Pacific Ocean for the first time in three years, according to CNN.

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Temperatures, sea levels and carbon dioxide all hit milestones amid extreme weather in 2015, major international ‘state of the climate’ report finds

The world is careening towards an environment never experienced before by humans, with the temperature of the air and oceans breaking records, sea levels reaching historic highs and carbon dioxide surpassing a key milestone, a major international report has found.

Related: Anthrax outbreak triggered by climate change sickens dozens in Arctic Circle

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Yale Environment 360: By linking together networks of energy-efficient buildings, solar installations, and batteries, a growing number of companies in the US and Europe are helping utilities reduce energy demand at peak hours and supply targeted areas with renewably generated electricity

The tens of thousands of tons of natural gas that surged into the Southern California sky late last year were supposed to have fueled the region’s power plants and heated its homes. Instead, the massive leak at the Aliso Canyon storage site left California electricity providers racing to replace the lost supplies to avoid blackouts and recurring outages in the coming months.

But Los Angeles area utilities aren’t solely seeking more fossil fuels to fill the gap in natural gas. They are also turning to “virtual power plants”: sprawling networks of independent batteries, solar panels, and energy-efficient buildings that are tied together and remotely controlled by software and data systems. The goal of these virtual power plants is to collectively reduce customers’ energy demand at peak hours and provide renewable energy supplies in targeted areas. This would allow utilities to offset some of the needs for power from conventional sources and avoid disruption on the grid.

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My father, Leslie Jesch, who has died aged 90, was a leading authority on the application of solar energy and a pioneer in the development of renewables internationally, and especially across Europe.

He was born László Jesch in Budapest, the son of László Jesch, an electrical engineer and college principal, and his wife Ilona (nee Láng), who before she married had supported her large family by making the popular Hungarian food tarhonya, a sort of egg-based pasta. From the Benedictine monks who educated him he developed a deep appreciation of European history and culture, and he learned several languages.

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