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Australia’s electricity system is physically decentralising, but the regulatory response is to extend the current centralised operational and market model. That must change.

The post Rooftop solar and EVs will dominate our grids: How do we reform the energy system around them? appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Australia's bid to host UN climate talks for first time stalled at fractious Baku COP, and may not happen at all if Labor loses power. But at least the world is spared the prospect of Ted O'Brien as host.

The post Australia’s bid to host climate COP for first time on hold as fossil lobby ups the ante at fractious Baku talks appeared first on RenewEconomy.

EPA says proposed 70 gigawatt wind and solar project that straddles Nullarbor is a complex case, with potential impact on land, sea and subterranean systems.

The post Massive 70 GW wind and solar project that straddles Nullarbor given environmental criteria appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The hydrogen tax credit bill is being introduced to Parliament, with the Coalition opposed and support from Greens and the Teals still not clear.

The post Labor girds for tricky fight for green hydrogen tax credits in last week of parliament appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Commissioning has started on what will be the biggest battery in South Australia, with a first-of-its-kind contract to deliver a "baseload renewables" supply to the giant Olympic Dam mine.

The post South Australia’s biggest battery charges up as new wave of storage prepares to enter grid appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Nearly all observers believe Chris Bowen is strongly committed to action. Most agree that can’t be said for his party

Cop29 in Baku has concluded but its outcome is disappointing – in many dimensions. Its decisions on finance – agreeing that the developed world would provide US$300bn a year by 2035 – come nowhere close to what’s needed. Ultimately, it may even be poisonous because of its lack of ambition and muddled scope – it does not even cover loss and damage.

Baku saw little sense of urgency or increased climate action, despite the universal message from scientific studies, including the Climate Action Tracker. Our global update this year found that in the last three years there’s been virtually no improvement in either action on the ground, nor ambition to take action in the future. And this is despite a series of seemingly never-ending, global warming-linked deadly catastrophes unfolding around the world.

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Here are selected party, stakeholder, and expert reactions to the New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance (NCQG), dubbed the Baku Finance Goal, as well as the agreement on Article 6 reached at the COP29 climate summit, which wrapped up early Sunday.

New research examines the link between extreme weather and divorce in a small monogamous tropical songbird, the Seychelles warbler. Concerningly, extreme rain and dry spells increased divorce rates. Frigg Janne Daan Speelman, PhD Candidate in behavioural ecology, Macquarie University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

If New Zealand decided to use green hydrogen to decarbonise industries such as fertiliser and methanol production, it would need to triple the installed capacity of renewable power plants. Jannik Haas, Senior Lecturer of Sustainable Systems, University of Canterbury Aaron Marshall, Professor of Chemical Engineering, University of Canterbury Andy Nicol, Professor in Geosciences, University of Canterbury David Dempsey, Associate Professor in Natural Resources Engineering, University of Canterbury Ian Wright, Professor in Marine Geology, University of Canterbury Matthew J Watson, Professor in Chemical Engineering, University of Canterbury Rebecca Peer, Senior Lecturer in Natural Resources Engineering, University of Canterbury Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

A rushed final text in Baku strains trust between nations, as inadequate climate finance commitments leave vulnerable countries calling for justice

The hasty imposition of a deal at the UN climate conference, Cop29, in Azerbaijan, over the objections of poorer nations has fractured global trust and undermined recent progress. This was supposed to be the “finance Cop” when two dozen industrialised countries – including the US, Europe and Canada – promised to pay developing nations for the damage caused by their rise. Instead, developing nations – led by a group including India, Nigeria and Bolivia – say this weekend’s agreement for $300bn a year in 2035 is too little, too late. Worse, rich-world governments will be able to escape their obligations by being able to rely on cash from private companies and international lenders.

Independent experts say the developing world, excluding China, would need $1.3tn a year by 2035 to fund its green transition and keep temperature rises in line with the Paris agreement. The climate finance target, pushed through by the Azerbaijani chair, is described by poor nations as a death sentence for those already drowning under rising seas and facing devastating costs.

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Some countries say deal should not have been done and is ‘abysmally poor’ compared with what is needed

The climate finance deal agreed at Cop29 is a “travesty of justice” that should not have been adopted, some countries’ negotiators have said.

The climate conference came to a dramatic close early on Sunday morning when negotiators struck an agreement to triple the flow of climate finance to poorer countries.

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Fraught debate revealed the divide between rich and poor as the UN conference sealed a climate finance deal.

If Peter Dutton senses an opportunity in blocking bills in the lead-up to an election, he might just take it

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The final parliamentary sitting week of the year is here!

That odour you’re smelling is drip filter coffee to fuel late-night Senate votes and the faint whiff of desperation to pass as much of the government’s legislative agenda as possible.

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Rich and poor countries concluded a trillion-dollar deal on the climate crisis in the early hours of Sunday morning, after marathon talks and days of bitter recriminations ended in what campaigners said was a 'betrayal'.

• Cop29 agrees $1.3tn climate finance deal but campaigners brand it a ‘betrayal’

• Yes, there is a lot of greenwashing, but Cop summits are our best chance of averting climate breakdown

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Away from the brutal main negotiations, there were important strides forward. The science can – and must – rise above politics

The resolutions reached at Cop29 on tackling the climate crisis, in the early hours of Sunday morning, are gravely disappointing but much better than nothing. And “nothing” was almost the result of this climate conference in Baku.

The deal falls a long way short of hopes at the start of the climate summit, and even further behind what the world urgently needs. But coming after negotiations that frequently teetered on the very edge of collapse, the result does keep climate talks alive despite Donald Trump’s second coming, and has laid the first ever international foundation, however weak, on which the world could finally construct a system of financing poor countries’ transition away from fossil fuels.

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Countries agree on how to create, trade and register credits to meet climate commitments

It was once among the most promising ways to funnel climate finance to vulnerable communities and nature conservation. The trading of carbon credits, each equal to a tonne of CO2 that has been reduced or removed from the atmosphere, was meant to target quick, cost-effective wins on climate and biodiversity. In 2022, demand soared as companies made environmental commitments using offsets, with the market surpassing $2bn (£1.6bn) while experiencing exponential growth. But the excitement did not last.

Two years later, many carbon markets organisations are clinging on for survival, with several firms losing millions of dollars a year and cutting jobs. Scandals about environmentally worthless credits, an FBI charge against a leading project developer for a $100m fraud, and a lack of clarity about where money from offsets went has caused their market value to plunge by more than half. Predictions that standing rainforests and other carbon-rich ecosystems would become multibillion-dollar assets have not yet come to pass.

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The broadcaster thinks if he fires up his farming fanbase they can shield him from his obligation to contribute his fair share to society

I read Andrew Michael Hurley’s new novel, Barrowbeck, in preparation for co-hosting Tales of the Weird, a timely event on the folk horror genre at the British Library earlier this month. I’m not the most informed commentator on this literary subset by any means, but I am, after Mark Gatiss, one of the most famous, and so I am often asked to pontificate about it. That’s the way the world works, I’m afraid. That’s why Hugh Dennis and David Baddiel are presenting a new show for Channel 4 about cycling across France, instead of the cyclist who cycled across France earlier this year and won the Tour de France cycling race, whoever he was.

Barrowbeck follows the fortunes of a Yorkshire hamlet, from an itinerant tribe making a pact with their gods 2,000 years ago, in which they promise to honour the land, to the near future of 2041. There, climate change has seen that same land flooded, some inhabitants holding on in hope as a cycle of life that stretched back millennia indisputably ends, as it will for all of us, sooner, it seems, rather than later. And these are the doomed lands our wealthiest farmers are taking to the streets to inherit (at half the inheritance tax anyone else would pay).

Stewart Lee tours Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf next year, with a Royal Festival Hall run in July. He is also a guest of all-female Fall karaoke act the Fallen Women, at the Lexington, London on 28 December

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Countries must curb production now and tackle plastic’s full life cycle, says Norwegian minister Anne Beathe Tvinnereim ahead of key UN talks this week

The world will be “unable to cope” with the sheer volume of plastic waste a decade from now unless countries agree to curbs on production, the co-chair of a coalition of key countries has warned ahead of crunch talks on curbing global plastic pollution.

Speaking before the final, critical round of UN talks on the first global treaty to end plastic waste, in Busan, South Korea, this week, Norway’s minister for international development, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, acknowledged the split that had developed between plastic-producing countries and others. She represents more than 60 “high ambition” nations, led by Rwanda and Norway, who want plastic pollution tackled over its full life cycle. Crucially, this means clamping down heavily on production.

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A deal is salvaged at the UN summit as poorer nations are promised record funding for climate action.

Despite its imperfections the process of tackling the climate crisis will not be derailed, even in the face of US backtracking

It was never an indication of great things to come when the chief executive of Cop29, Elnur Soltanov, was filmed attempting to broker gas and oil deals for Azerbaijan in the slipstream of the past fortnight’s UN climate summit in Baku.

More than 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists have been operating in and around Cop29, outnumbering delegates from the 10 most climate-vulnerable countries combined. Many, including Greta Thunberg, now argue that the UN climate process has been entirely hijacked by corporate interests, reduced to a global stage for greenwash.

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