Feed aggregator

It is time to say this privatisation zealotry has been a disaster. March with us and let ministers know – enough is enough

You’ve been lied to, you’ve been misled, you’ve being extorted, you’ve been cheated, and you’ve been abused. For the last 35 years, you have been subject to nothing more than possibly the greatest organised ripoff perpetrated on the British people, and you have had little in return apart from greed, profiteering, financial engineering, political failure and regulatory incompetency. You’ve been had.

Thirty-five years after we were promised a utopian, market-driven vision of greatness, a future in which we would glory in the delights of an unlimited supply of clean water; in which our sewage would be quietly, efficiently collected, treated and disposed of, while our rivers, lakes and seas would teem with an abundant, diverse array of flora and fauna; and to top it all off we would have the cheapest water bills on earth.

Feargal Sharkey is a campaigner and former lead singer of the Undertones

Continue reading...

Challenges facing the New Zealand emissions trading scheme in the near term that have yet to be resolved will have a direct impact on foresters, and those in the sector should not be afraid from having the difficult conversations, a conference heard Wednesday.

These new proteins could be our best hope of averting catastrophe. But governments are trying to have them banned

For many years, certain car manufacturers sought to obstruct the transition to electric vehicles. It’s not hard to see why: when you have invested heavily in an existing technology, you want to extract every last drop before disinvesting. But devious as in some cases these efforts were, they seem almost innocent in comparison with the concerted programme by a legacy industry and its tame politicians to suppress a far more important switch: the essential transition away from livestock farming.

Animal farming ranks alongside fossil fuel production as one of the two most destructive industries on Earth. It’s not just the vast greenhouse gas emissions and the water and air pollution it causes. Even more important is the amount of land it requires. Land use is a crucial environmental metric, because every hectare we occupy is a hectare that cannot support wild ecosystems.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

A US-headquartered low carbon cement developer with some 100 patents to its name and plans to grow to global scale has raised $85 million in Series C funding from a conglomerate of clean energy financiers.

Victoria lays out plan to reach its target of 95 pct renewables target by 2035, by which time it expects to close the last of its coal fired generators, relegated gas to a minor support role.

The post Victoria lays out plan for 95 pct renewables, with no coal, not much gas and a big lift in demand appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Listed Frontier Energy has revealed some surprising details about the costs and revenue options for its proposed solar and battery hybrid project.

The post Anatomy of one of Australia’s first big solar and battery hybrid projects: The costs and revenues appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Conservationists say the number of hunting licences granted is too high and condemn it as ‘pure trophy hunting’

Sweden has issued licences to kill 20% of its brown bear population in the country’s annual bear hunt, which begins today, despite concerns from conservationists.

Officials have granted licences for just under 500 brown bears to be culled by hunters. That equates to about 20% of the total population, according to official figures, and would bring the number of bears in Sweden down to approximately 2,000 – a drop of almost 40% since 2008.

Continue reading...

Battery start up says its solid state battery design can work with different cathodes and solves two of the key challenges that have held back the technology.

The post Has the solid-state battery riddle been solved? This start-up thinks so appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Wholesale electricity prices in New Zealand have soared over recent weeks, climbing as high as NZ$1,000 per megawatt hour and forcing pulp and paper mills to curb production. More rooftop solar would help.

The post NZ’s electricity market is a mess. Rolling out rooftop solar would change the game appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Go-ahead given for first stage of $30bn SunCable project, which minister says will be ‘transformational’ for Northern Territory

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates
• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

The Australian government has given the green light to the first stages of what it describes as the country’s “biggest renewable energy project ever” – an ambitious proposal to send energy from a solar farm in the Northern Territory outback to Singapore via subsea cables.

The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, said the approval under conservation law of SunCable’s $30bn-plus Australia-Asia Power Link was a “massive step towards making Australia a renewable energy superpower” and that the project would be “economically and socially transformational” for the NT.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

The New Zealand economy would have been torpedoed had agriculture been folded into the emissions trading scheme next year, the country’s climate minister told a conference Tuesday, despite a senior Nestle executive warning the sector is not doing enough to reduce emissions to remain internationally competitive.

Three years ago, Australia pledged to end deforestation by decade’s end. But land clearing continues due to legal exemptions and a lack of enforcement Hannah Thomas, PhD student in ecology, The University of Queensland Martine Maron, Professor of Environmental Management, The University of Queensland Martin Taylor, Adjunct senior lecturer, The University of Queensland Michelle Ward, Lecturer, School of Environment and Science, Griffith University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

CO2 utilisation can produce goods such as aviation fuels, pharmaceuticals, and concrete, but US federal agencies must develop systems that drive commercialisation and market demand, according to a report mandated by Congress and the Department of Energy (DOE).

RGGI compliance entities expanded their allowance holdings during the April-June period even as their surplus shrank, while futures and options trading also grew substantially as credit prices rose to new records, according to a report published Tuesday.

Sweden and Zambia have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for bilateral climate cooperation under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement, according to a statement by the Swedish Energy Agency (SEA) on Tuesday.

A Brazil-based nature-based solutions (NBS) industry group defended REDD+ projects on Monday in wake of recent recommendations by the public prosecutor of Amazonas state to halt all related activities affecting Indigenous and traditional communities.

Compliance-focused schemes that allow the use of offsets could shape the future of the voluntary carbon market (VCM) along with an increase in the usage of CO2 removal (CDR) credits, but quality concerns must be addressed to ensure growth, panellists told a webinar Tuesday.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has announced $291 million in grants from Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funds to projects that facilitate development and implementation of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF).

England’s controversial eradication scheme may have caused higher rates of disease in surrounding areas, research shows

England’s controversial badger cull may have increased the risk of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) among herds in neighbouring areas, according to new research.

Researchers at the University of Oxford found that although badger culling reduced incidences of tuberculosis in the areas where it took place, in neighbouring areas the risk of the disease in cattle increased by almost a third.

Continue reading...

Ørsted scraps its pioneering eMethanol project, because of slower-than-expected industrialisation of the technology and lacklustre demand.

The post Danish renewable giant scraps development of eMethanol project appeared first on RenewEconomy.