Feed aggregator

Australia is being urged to follow other countries and encourage smarter air con systems that can deliver savings to homes and the overall grid.

The post Australia needs smarter air con systems to save money for homes and the grid appeared first on RenewEconomy.

New international research reveals climate change increased the proportion of wildfire smoke-related human deaths tenfold between the 1960s and 2010s. Here’s what that means for Australia. Fay Johnston, Professor, Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

A new solar and battery project has escaped Victoria's VCAT process, but will still have to negotiate its way through federal approvals. green tick queue.

The post New solar and battery project in central Victoria gets state planning approval, joins EPBC queue appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The US Supreme Court has agreed to consider a set of cases questioning the proper venue for hearing challenges to recent regulatory actions by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the court said in an order issued Monday.

California diesel consumption reversed course, increasing year-on-year in July, as gasoline continued its steady YoY decline, state data published Monday showed.

A rush of retirements, including from two large French companies, failed to lift the market in the wake of fraud allegations directed at C-Quest Capital last week, after Verra said the cookstove project developer was issued millions of bogus carbon credits, keeping general buying interest at bay.

As nations meet in Colombia to confront species and ecosystem loss, the onus is on the global north to put science and collaboration at the heart of the issue

• Angela McLean is chief scientific adviser to the UK government

Biodiversity, the incredible variety of life on Earth, is the backbone of the ecosystems that allow life on this planet to flourish. From the rich soil that nurtures our food and stores our carbon, to the green spaces that improve our mental health, biodiversity is an unsung hero upon which our societies and economies thrive.

Despite the clear benefits of – and moral arguments for – protecting nature, human activities are accelerating biodiversity loss at unprecedented rates. We are destroying habitats, overexploiting natural resources and introducing invasive species, which put plant and animal species at risk of extinction. Human-induced climate change is intensifying biodiversity loss and altering ecosystems, reducing their ability to provide natural climate solutions. Right now, in South America, devastating drought and fires – exacerbated by climate change – are destroying millions of acres of forest habitats.

Continue reading...

Windstorms could significantly reduce the ability of forests to act as carbon sinks, posing a major threat to national climate mitigation strategies that rely on these ecosystems to absorb greenhouse gases, according to researchers.

The German government has opened its first online consultation to assess CO2 removal and storage methods as part of the country’s planned long-term negative emissions strategy, according to media sources.

Verra will restructure its organisation and cut its workforce by around a quarter, it announced Monday, as the voluntary carbon standard and registry deals with slowing market demand and mounting financial losses.

Global heating particularly increasing risk of death from smoke inhalation in Australia, South America, Europe and parts of Asia

Global heating is causing more of the planet to be burned from wildfires and probably killing an extra 12,000 people a year from breathing in smoke, according to new research.

Global heating was particularly increasing the risk of death from wildfire smoke in Australia, South America, Europe and the boreal forests of Asia, one modelling study found.

Continue reading...

A Brazilian jurisdictional REDD+ (J-REDD) saga continues to unfold, RenovaBio sees a mixed bag of outcomes, and the world prepares to descend on Cali, Colombia, for the COP16 UN biodiversity conference.

WWF on Monday released the conditions it requires for it to be able to potentially endorse the sale of voluntary biodiversity credits, including no offsetting.

Brazilian public prosecutors sent a letter last week to the environmental secretariat of Para, demanding transparency in information and public consultation with local stakeholders in the state’s $180-million jurisdictional REDD+ (J-REDD) deal announced last month.

The UK government’s recent £21.7 billion funding announcement for carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS) projects “is low on details and high on rhetoric”, and will likely result in “the waste of public money”, according to new analysis.

Indonesia will work to enhance its food and energy security with a place for coal in the energy mix, incoming President Prabowo Subianto said in his inauguration speech Sunday, after winning the election in February.

Hauliers’ group Transport in Nood BV launched judicial review earlier this year over fines issued in Ulez and Lez

Transport for London (TfL) could be forced to pay back millions of pounds in low emission zone fines issued to Dutch lorry drivers after agreeing they had been issued unlawfully.

The body said it had agreed to settle a claim regarding the Ulez fines after a company representing dozens of Dutch haulage companies launched a legal challenge into the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) and low emission zone (Lez) fines earlier this year.

Continue reading...

The cost and performance of an innovative type of direct air capture technology are heavily influenced by local environmental conditions, a new study has found.

European carbon allowances handed back gains of as much as 1.1% on Monday morning to reach midday marginally weaker on the day, as EUA prices broke away from their link to natural gas amid a resumption of the selling pressure that drove the market down last week.

Government-backed Taiwan Carbon Solution Exchange on Monday unveiled a platform exclusively for the trading of domestically issued carbon credits, as the island seeks to complement its carbon pricing framework.