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From 1 July 2017, the Commercial Building Disclosure (CBD) Program will extend to commercial building spaces of 1,000 square metres and more, helping more businesses save on their energy costs.

Eight cargo vessels containing enormous blades, wind towers and more than 450 components for Queensland’s largest wind farm project, RATCH Australia’s Mount Emerald Wind Farm, will soon transit through the Port of Cairns in a boost to local economies.

Changes to maximum allowable reserves for NSW

Deloitte Access Economics has valued the Great Barrier Reef at A$56 billion, with an economic contribution of A$6.4 billion per year. Yet this figure grossly underestimates the value of the reef, as it mainly focuses on tourism and the reef’s role as an Australian icon.

When you include aspects of the reef that the report excludes, such as the ecosystem services provided by coral reefs, you find that the reef is priceless.

Putting a price on the Great Barrier Reef buys into the notion that a cost-benefit analysis is the right way to make decisions on policies and projects that may affect the reef. For example, the environmental cost of the extension to the Abbot Point coal terminal can be compared to any economic benefits.

But as the reef is both priceless and irreplaceable, this is the wrong approach. Instead, the precautionary principle should be used to make decisions regarding the reef. Policies and projects that may damage the reef cannot go ahead.

How do you value the Great Barrier Reef?

The Deloitte report uses what’s known as a “contingent valuation” approach. This is a survey-based methodology, and is commonly used to measure the value of non-market environmental assets such as endangered species and national parks – as well as to calculate the impact of events such as oil spills.

In valuing the reef, surveys were used to elicit people’s willingness to pay for it, such as through a tax or levy. This was found to be A$67.60 per person per year. The report also uses the travel-cost method, which estimates willingness to pay for the Great Barrier Reef, based on the time and money that people spend to visit it. Again, this is commonly used in environmental economics to value national parks and the recreational value of local lakes.

Of course, all methods of valuing environmental assets have limitations. For example, it is difficult to make sure that respondents are stating realistic amounts in their willingness to pay. Respondents may act strategically if they think they really will be slugged with a Great Barrier Reef levy. They may conflate this environmental issue with all environmental issues.

But more importantly, the methodology in the report leaves out the most important non-market value that the reef provides, which are called ecosystem services. For example, coral reefs provide storm protection and erosion protection, and they are the nurseries for 25% of all marine animals which themselves have commercial and existence value.

The Deloitte report even cites (but does not reference) a 2014 study that values the ecosystem services provided by coral reefs at US$352,249 per hectare per year. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park covers 35 million hectares with 2,900 individual reefs of varying sizes. This means the ecosystem services it provides are worth trillions of dollars per year.

That is, it is essentially priceless.

The problem with putting a value on the Reef

Valuing the environment at all is contentious in economics. Valuation is performed so that all impacts from, say, a new development, can be expressed in a common metric – in this case dollars. This allows a cost-benefit analysis to be performed.

But putting a price on the Great Barrier Reef hides the fact that it is irreplaceable, and as such its value is not commensurate with the values of other assets. For instance, using Deloitte’s figure, The Australian newspaper compared the reef to the value of 12 Sydney Opera Houses. But while they are both icons, the Opera House can be rebuilt. The Great Barrier Reef cannot. Any loss is irreversible.

When environmental assets are irreplaceable and their loss irreversible, a more appropriate decision-making framework is the Precautionary Principle.

The Precautionary Principle suggests that when there is uncertainty regarding the impacts of a new development on an environmental asset, decision makers should be cautious and minimise the maximum loss. For example, if it is even remotely possible that the extension to the Abbot Point coal terminal could lead to massive destruction of the reef, then precaution suggests that it shouldn’t go ahead.

Assigning a value to the reef might still be appropriate under the Precautionary Principle, to estimate the maximum loss. But it would require the pricing of all values and especially ecosystem services.

While the Precautionary Principle has been much maligned due to its perceived bias against development, it is a key element of the definition of Ecologically Sustainable Development in Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

For a priceless asset like the Great Barrier Reef, it is perhaps better to leave it as “priceless” and to act accordingly. After all, if the Precautionary Principle is ever going to be used when assessing Ecologically Sustainable Development, in contrast with cost-benefit analysis and valuations, it is surely for our main environmental icon.

Ultimately, the protection and prioritisation of the Great Barrier Reef is a political issue that requires political will, and not one that can be solved by pricing and economics.

Neil Perry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

The UK's biggest space company takes the next step in its project to boost wifi in planes over Europe.

Coal entrepreneur and RET critic Trevor St Baker chases technology to have sheets with solar on one side and storage on another "printed like newspapers."

For the first time, urban bats are being monitored in real time using smart sensors at a London park.

Household energy bills and carbon emissions will rise unless ministers devise new policies to save power, a report says.

A team of German designers has reinvented the tree to clean up urban air pollution. Using the natural power of moss, they hope to make city air safer to breathe.

BEAT OF LOVE: Just like a human drummer, male palm cockatoos uses drumsticks to beat out a steady rhythm.

Australia's first community-owned energy retailer says latest big price rises caused by "greed" of fossil fuel generators and "gaming" of markets.

Adélie penguin at the Mt Siple breeding colony, West Antarctica. Jasmine Lee, Author provided

When you think of Antarctica, you probably picture vast, continuous ice sheets and glaciers, with maybe a penguin or two thrown in. Yet most Antarctic plants and animals live in the permanently ice-free areas that cover about 1% of the continent. Our new research predicts that these areas could grow by a quarter during this century, with mixed prospects for the species that currently live there.

Besides everyone’s favourite Emperor and Adélie penguins, terrestrial Antarctic species also include beautiful mosses, lichens, two types of flowering plants, and a suite of hardy invertebrates such as nematodes, springtails, rotifers and tardigrades, many of which are found nowhere else on Earth. Tardigrades – tiny creatures sometimes nicknamed “waterbears” – are so tough they can survive in space.

Antarctica’s ice-free areas are currently limited to a scattering of rocky outcrops along the coastline, or cliff faces, or the tops of mountain ranges. They form small patches of suitable habitat in a huge sea of ice, much like islands.

As a result, the plants and animals that live there are often isolated from each other. But as Antarctica’s climate warms, we expect ice-free areas to get bigger and eventually start joining up. This would create more habitat for native species, but also new opportunities for non-native species to spread.

Our study, published today in Nature, forecasts that climate change will expand Antarctica’s ice-free areas over the course of this century. Under the most severe scenario that we modelled (which is also the one on which the globe is currently tracking), more than 17,000 square km of new ice-free area could emerge across the continent by 2100.

This would increase the current total ice-free area by nearly a quarter. The majority of this new ice-free land will be on the Antarctic Peninsula, which could have three times as much ice-free area as it does today.

Projected Antarctic ice melt this century. Lee et al. (2017) Nature Brave new world

As the ice-free areas expand, the distances between them will decrease, giving plants and animals more opportunity to spread through the landscape. On the Antarctic Peninsula, which has already warmed more than anywhere else in Antarctica, many of the ice-free patches will expand so much that they will start joining together.

Will this increase in habitat availability benefit the plants and animals that live there? It will definitely provide new opportunities for some native plants and animals to expand their range and colonise new areas. The warming climate may also give a boost to species that are currently hampered by the lack of warmth, nutrients and water. Some Antarctic mosses, for example, are expected to grow faster as temperatures rise, and Antarctica’s two flowering plant species are already expanding southward.

However, the potential benefits seem likely to be outweighed by the negatives. The joining-up of habitat patches could allow species that have been isolated for much of their evolutionary past to meet suddenly. If the newcomers to a particular area outcompete the native species, then it may lead to localised extinctions. Over the coming centuries this could lead to the loss of many plants and animals, and the homogenisation of Antarctica’s ecosystems.

Antarctic aliens

An even bigger concern is that Antarctica’s great thaw could provide new opportunities for species to invade. Antarctica’s best bulwark against non-native species is its harsh climate and extreme weather, to which native Antarctic species have spent many thousands of years adapting.

A native Frisea springtail. Melissa Houghton

We already know that many plants and invertebrates are reaching Antarctica, most often in food or cargo shipments. As the climate warms, some of these non-native species may be able to establish themselves on the Antarctic Peninsula, and the increasing connectivity will allow them to easily move through the landscape. Many of these animals and plants may become invasive, competing with the native species for space and resources.

We don’t know how Antarctica’s species will cope with the increasing competition. But if the sub-Antarctic islands provide any indication, the outlook is depressing. Australia’s World Heritage-listed Macquarie Island, for example, was severely impacted by invasive cats, rats, rabbits and mice (although it has since been declared free of these pests after an intensive eradication effort).

Several non-native species have already come to Antarctica, including the invasive annual meadowgrass Poa annua (a common weed around the world), which has colonised newly ice-free areas left behind by retreating glaciers. It is thought to outcompete Antarctica’s native plants, although we don’t yet know what the impact will be on animals.

Invasive meadowgrass on Macquarie Island. Laura Williams

Humans – both scientists and tourists – are key transporters of non-native species to the continent, and tourist numbers continue to grow (almost 37,000 visited in the 2016-17 summer).

Biosecurity is paramount for the ongoing protection of Antarctica. If bags, shoes, clothes and field equipment are not properly cleaned and inspected before arriving on the continent, then non-native seeds, microbes and insects could be transported to Antarctica and begin to spread.

We call for protection of ice-free areas that will remain intact in a changing climate, and for the Antarctic scientific and tourism communities to pinpoint key areas where greater biosecurity and monitoring for invasive species may be needed.

Jasmine Lee is also affiliated with CSIRO. She receives funding from from the Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment - Equity Trustees Charitable Foundation, the Ecological Society of Australia, and the Australian Antarctic Science Program (Project 4297).

Justine Shaw receives funding from Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Programme through the Threatened Species Recovery Hub

Richard Fuller receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Researchers have captured footage of cockatoos in North Queensland, Australia, playing drum solos with little sticks and pods in an attempt to attract the opposite sex

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Former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres among signatories of letter warning that the next three years will be crucial to stopping the worst effects of global warming

Avoiding dangerous levels of climate change is still just about possible, but will require unprecedented effort and coordination from governments, businesses, citizens and scientists in the next three years, a group of prominent experts has warned.

Warnings over global warming have picked up pace in recent months, even as the political environment has grown chilly with Donald Trump’s formal announcement of the US’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement. This year’s weather has beaten high temperature records in some regions, and 2014, 2015 and 2016 were the hottest years on record.

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The city is not just restricting sales but working to ensure people have access to safe high-quality tap water

Americans drink enough bottled water each week to circle the globe two times around. That was one of the many alarming facts that motivated politicians in San Francisco to pursue a progressive environmental regulation no other major US city had dared – a ban on bottled water.

The liberal California city had previously led the way on banning plastic shopping bags, but the 2014 proposal to restrict bottled water was more modest. Although the board of supervisors voted unanimously to phase out the sale of single-use plastic water bottles, the rule only applied to city property.

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On the seabed, where the water is as dark as ink, lies a vast treasure of untouched resources. Nautilus Minerals will use remote-controlled robots to steamroll the bottom of the Bismarck Sea off the coast of Papua New Guinea – but this emerging technology could forever scar the landscape of the sea

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Fear of nuclear energy runs deep but it may be the most efficient and clean energy source we have, albeit with complications

Of all the hazards facing humankind, climate change is the single greatest threat we have ever faced. In a few short decades, we have altered the climate more than we ever thought possible and now, in the midst of the greatest heatwave recorded in decades in the hottest year on record, we are finally beginning to countenance the scale of problem before us.

The poorest of the poor have been the first to suffer – droughts and food shortages are already imperilling the lives of countless millions, with ensuing conflicts threatening even more. We have rendered some areas uninhabitable, and the number of climate refugees will only increase. Even we privileged folk in the western world are no longer immune, with the dangers steadily encroaching.

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In the global rush for bottled water, China leads the way. But while cities lack official recycling schemes, some residents are turning the tide of plastic waste into cash and keeping it out of landfil in the process

In the great global rush for bottled water, nowhere is thirstier than Asia. Demand is predicted to surge by more than 140% across the region this decade, to account for one-third of the global total by 2020.

China leads the way. The country accounted for 28% of the global demand for polyethylene terephthalate (Pet) bottles in 2015. Consumers bought 73.8bn bottles of water in 2016, up more than five billion on the previous year.

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Exclusive: Annual consumption of plastic bottles is set to top half a trillion by 2021, far outstripping recycling efforts and jeopardising oceans, coastlines and other environments

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A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and the number will jump another 20% by 2021, creating an environmental crisis some campaigners predict will be as serious as climate change.

New figures obtained by the Guardian reveal the surge in usage of plastic bottles, more than half a trillion of which will be sold annually by the end of the decade.

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UK will not be bound by EU deal and opposition MPs say Tory government unlikely to have political will to develop equivalent system

The UK risks becoming the “dirty man of Europe” after Brexit with no plan to deal with the millions of plastic bottles dumped by consumers every week, according to politicians and leading environmental campaigners.

Related: A million bottles a minute: world's plastic binge 'as dangerous as climate change'

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