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A new study helps civil engineers account for ongoing climate change in infrastructure design

People who work on building infrastructure understand the risks of climate change. As the Earth warms, new stresses are applied to our buildings, bridges, roads, houses, and other structures. Some of the obvious threats to infrastructure are from extreme weather including heat waves, storms, and intense rainfalls. There are some other less obvious threats, and many of the threats vary by location.

Regardless, the planning for infrastructure relies upon a reasonable estimation of future climate changes. To help quantify such an estimate for the civil engineering community, a recent paper was published by the Institution of Civil Engineering Journal of Forensic Engineering (I was fortunate to be a coauthor). The article was prepared with the collaboration of Dr. Michael Mann from Penn State University and Dr. Lijing Cheng from the Chinese Institute of Atmospheric Physics.

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59% give thumbs down to state or federal assistance for Carmichael mine as state government faces factional fight over whether to give project a royalties holiday

Queensland voters have given the thumbs down to taxpayer support for the controversial Adani coalmine, with 59% saying they were opposed to state or federal assistance.

A new poll of 1,618 Queenslanders taken by ReachTel indicates 57% of the sample objected to a loan for a rail link between the mine and Abbot point, which is championed by the federal resources minister Matt Canavan.

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The first launch ever from New Zealand is a step towards sending small satellites into orbit for cheap.

Europe by night, Canada’s vanishing river and the Netherland’s tulip fields are among the images captured by European Space Agency and Nasa satellites last month

From space, the strait of Gibraltar appears tiny compared to the continents it separates. At the strait’s narrowest point, Africa stands just 14km (nine miles) from Europe. But the narrow waterway is a complex environment that gives rise to striking phytoplankton blooms when conditions are right. The intricate swirls of phytoplankton trace the patterns of water flow, which in this region can become quite turbulent. For example, water moving east from the North Atlantic into the Mediterranean has created turbulence in the form of internal waves. These waves – sometimes with heights up to 100 metres – occur primarily deep within the ocean, with just a mere crest poking through the surface. At the same time, water flowing west helps stir up water in the North Atlantic, including the Gulf of Cádiz. While most of the swirls of colour are phytoplankton, the ocean scientist Norman Kuring of Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center notes that some of the colour near coastal areas could be due to sediment suspended in the water, particularly near the mouths of rivers.

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It is now clear there are enough projects ready to go to sail past the 2020 renewable energy target. But just because we can doesn't mean that we will. There are still some major hurdles.

The plunging cost of solar and storage present a huge threat to the business models of incumbent utilities. But the biggest threat to their future is their own greed, and the invitation to consumers to look at alternatives.

Sandy, Bedfordshire The jingle-jangle of a corn bunting rings out as skylarks criss-cross the path, chasing each other

The car door opened in a farm layby and the fat bird sang. Described in ornithology books as sounding like the jangling of keys, the two-second salvo always seems higher and looser to my ears, and is more of a jingle than song. I find I can reproduce it best with four 10p coins shaken in a half-closed fist.

The jingle-jangle rang again and I spied the corn bunting – the “fat bird of the barley” – near the crown of a blossoming hawthorn bush, perched between two thorny sprays. Its slack-jawed beak moved, the lower mandible oddly placed as if it had been unhinged then badly refitted.

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Businesses across the Canberra region were today recognised for their commitment to making a change towards a more sustainable future at the annual Actsmart Business Sustainability Awards.

ARENA CEO tells federal government Senate Committee that new wind and solar power generation is already, on average, cheaper than existing fossil fuel generation on the NEM.

With the rising number of plug-in models available in the U.S., many at increasingly affordable prices, the climate benefits of electric cars are growing.

Report by the International Renewable Energy Agency shows large increase in number of people employed in renewable energy sectors.

The move to decarbonisation will benefit from the rising price of fossil fueled, grid delivered electricity because higher prices will encourage investment in efficiency and lower consumption ,and incentivise alternatives such as distributed renewables.

Is the rise of subsidized clean energy causing power markets to misfire?

Remote mining projects in farming areas could soon access baseload electricity from biomass plants powered by straw.

Missing Cosmic Vertigo? Well, check out this story about a telescope so powerful it listens to time..

There is no doubt that Victoria's renewable energy target will be good for consumers, industry and jobs. They should start the auctions soon.

The management of Australia’s looming energy crisis has so far focused almost exclusively on the supply side of the equation: exploiting new gas reserves, expanding the Snowy Mountains hydro scheme, and building new infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the huge potential of improving efficiency and demand management, which could save vast amounts of energy, has largely been ignored.

One promising development is the recent announcement of a trial of demand response incentives in Victoria and South Australia.

Next summer, households and businesses who sign up for the trial will be paid when they agree to be on standby to reduce their energy use during times of increased peak demand or natural disaster. They’ll be paid again if their electricity is actually reduced.

ClimateWorks Australia’s research shows that initiatives to better manage energy use could reduce peak demand on the national grid by more than 10% – or 3.8 gigawatts – the output of two Hazelwood power stations over peak times.

Harnessing the huge demand-side opportunities is critical to addressing the “energy trilemma”: ensuring energy security and affordability, while reducing emissions.

Ensuring security

Our electricity market struggles to handle energy demand in times of extreme stress, as we saw in the recent South Australian and New South Wales heatwaves. And the Australian energy market operator has forecast little change in overall or peak electricity demand over the next few years.

Demand response measures can reduce blackouts by significantly easing peak demand on these extreme days. For example, companies could be incentivised to turn off non-essential power during peak periods, freeing up more electricity for households, hospitals and emergency services.

This already occurs in Western Australia, where the electricity market regulator operates a “capacity market” allowing businesses to be paid to reduce or shift their electricity use out of peak times.

ClimateWorks’ research into the industrial sector found that demand response measures could reduce commercial electricity demand on Australia’s east coast by as much as 42% during peak periods, which would reduce the overall peak demand by 10%.

Mechanisms to unlock this potential could improve Australia’s energy security considerably, while avoiding building costly infrastructure that may only be needed on a handful of days a year.

Energy affordability

At the same time, we also need to ramp up energy efficiency measures to reduce the cost of energy for households and business. ClimateWorks’ modelling, as part of the Pathways to Deep Decarbonisation in 2050 report, shows that Australia can potentially halve the amount of final energy it uses per dollar of GDP by 2050.

ClimateWorks modelling shows the cost of making houses more energy efficient is offset by the money saved on energy and transport. ClimateWorks Australia, Pathways to Deep Decarbonisation Report

We won’t see single new technology or policy acting as a silver bullet. Instead, there are many different ways to improve our energy efficiency. Our research shows if all these opportunities are pursued, household net energy costs could be decreased by around 15% by 2030 (after taking into account capital costs).

If we used these savings to offset the cost of decarbonising the electricity sector and transitioning away from gas, household energy bills would still be reduced by about 8% by 2030.

There are huge savings to be made in industry as well, especially as gas prices continue to rise. We’ve identified a broad range of cost-effective efficiency options, and calculated that companies most exposed to energy prices could improve their overall performance by at least 5% if they adopted best-practice energy improvements.

But many of these opportunities are unlikely to be taken up under current policy and market settings. Our research shows that in particular, companies face significant financial barriers, such as the payback period and the opportunity cost of the investment, or the availability of internal capital.

Electric vehicles, which use less energy than traditional petrol cars, are another key component of cheaper – and more secure – power. Research from CSIRO argues that increased uptake of electric vehicles, combined with a proactive development of charging infrastructure, could deliver energy system cost savings large enough to offset the cost of decarbonising Australia’s electricity generation.

Reducing emissions

Energy use accounts for more than 65% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions; reducing energy use is a vital aspect of achieving our emissions reduction goals.

Our research shows that pursuing multiple avenues to energy efficiency could diminish our emissions by 130 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030.

That’s nearly half the reduction required to meet the government’s emissions reduction target, and one third of the reductions required to meet the Climate Change Authority’s recommended emissions trajectory.

On top of this, increased adoption of electric vehicles could deliver about 9 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent of abatement by 2030, while better using our energy capacity. Finally, demand-side measures can also support increasing renewable energy, reducing emissions by an additional 125 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030.

Policy makers need to ensure that the transformation of our energy system includes moving to renewable energy supply and managing demand.

If we improve energy efficiency, better manage commercial and domestic demand and actively encourage electric vehicles, we can avoid serious increases in energy prices, avoid building largely unproductive infrastructure and and address dangerous climate change.

Amandine Denis receives funding from the Department of Industry for research on energy efficiency and demand-side response.

Environmental lawyers say advice means reef might finally be listed as a ‘world heritage site in danger’

The central aim of the government’s plan to protect the Great Barrier Reef is no longer achievable due to the dramatic impacts of climate change, experts have told the government’s advisory committees for the plan.

Environmental lawyers said the revelation could mean the Great Barrier Reef might finally be listed as a “world heritage site in danger”, a move the federal and Queensland governments have strenuously fought.

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Antibiotics and vitamins helped the injured loggerhead sea turtle back to health in Marathon, in the Florida Keys.

The crashed European spacecraft Schiaparelli was ill-prepared for its attempt at landing on the surface of Mars, a report suggests.