Feed aggregator

Emails show the journalist and businessman wrote to UK energy minister to tell him about a US company with ‘fascinating new technology’

An influential Conservative member of the House of Lords has been accused of lobbying the government for the benefit of the coal industry, despite previously saying he does not argue for the industry’s interests.

Viscount Matt Ridley, a journalist and businessman, benefits financially from coalmines on his estate and has used his column in the Times newspaper to downplay the seriousness of climate change.

Continue reading...

Bempton Cliffs, East Yorkshire Abundance is, however, an opportunity for egg-collecting ‘climmers’ or birds of prey

Abundance can seem a dry notion in ecology textbooks; the reality is mesmerising. The sky in front of me is thick with thousands of birds, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes; the sea, 100 metres below my feet, is smothered in them, the air filled with their cries.

Where the sheer chalk cliffs angle back a little to form broader ledges, northern gannets have made their home and I feast on the sight of them, the sky-blue ring around the steel-blue eye, the bill and head defined in black, like art deco, against the dusky mustard-yellow of the crown and neck.

Continue reading...

Turning leftovers into renewable power makes ecological and financial sense, says farmer, but is it the best way to recycle Britain’s huge amount of wasted food?

If electricity could be star-rated for quality, the 150 kilowatt hours going daily into the grid from Lodge Farm in north Wales would probably score five. Generated from the slurry of 300 brown Swiss and Norwegian red cattle, and topped up by chicken litter that cannot go to animal feed and by waste from the local Kellogg’s food factory, it is as good as it gets, says farmer Richard Tomlinson.

Since 2011, the gas from the organic farm’s £750,000 anaerobic co-digester (AD) has generated more than 4.5m kWh of electricity and heat for the farmhouse, an on-site engineering works and for 80-100 homes.

Continue reading...

Auction for 130MW large-scale solar in Rajasthan sees winning bids at extreme lows of (AUD) 8c/kWh (INR 4.35/kWh, USD 0.065) this week.

Coalition and Murdoch media continue attack on wind and solar, ignoring the soaring cost of gas and the actions of the energy market cartel. Meanwhile, fossil fuel generators seek to reinforce their market dominant position.

A new map of Eneropa sums up very well why campaigners for community energy are skeptical of designs to create an EU-wide renewable energy system.

Sydney-based energy data company Wattwatchers has appointed a 10-year veteran of world's biggest smart meter company as new managing director.

Qld-based Nano-Nouvelle's lithium-ion battery boosting Nanode technology to be trialled by two US battery manufacturers in new deal.

SPECIES LOSS: An analysis of global data suggests that biodiversity loss across more than half the world's surface is substantial enough to question the ability of many ecosystems to support human societies

The Threatened Species Scientific Committee is seeking comments on the assessment of Hypotaenidia sylvestris (Lord Howe woodhen). The public consultation period will be open until 2 September 2016.

Homes in Glenvill's new-build Melbourne development, YarraBend, will have rooftop solar and Tesla Powerwall battery storage as standard features. Is this the new normal for suburbs of the future?

When most Australians hear of Nauru they tend to think of immigration detention, or perhaps of the environmentally ruinous legacy of the island nation’s ill-fated phosphate mining boom.

Nauru’s troubled history has seen it fall from being one of the world’s richest nations, on a per capita basis, to a society plagued by financial mismanagement and corruption. Yet despite its tragic back story, this tiny country of just over 10,000 citizens may well be poised for a comeback.

During a recent visit to research possible sustainable development pathways, I became cautiously optimistic about the country’s trajectory. On July 9, Nauru held an election which delivered some old and new faces to its 19-member parliament, including re-elected president Baron Waqa and leading Nauruan entrepreneur Sean Oppenheimer. They now face the task of leading their battered nation’s recovery.

Environmental cleanup

Nauru’s unique geography has created threats and opportunities. Living on a raised coral atoll with a fairly high plateau, the island’s population is less vulnerable than those who live on low-lying coral atolls.

It is on this high plateau, known locally as “Topside”, where much of Nauru’s phosphate deposits formed, interspersed between calcium carbonate pinnacles.

Now, almost all of the available phosphate has been mined for use in fertiliser. The residual pinnacles have left a jagged landscape that cannot be used for agriculture or forestry.

A jagged legacy. US Department of Energy/Wikimedia Commons

Recovering from the mining boom and bust has been a slow process. In 1993, Nauru settled a landmark international legal case, in which Australia agreed to pay reparations for colonial-era mismanagement of the island’s assets. This provided substantial funds for environmental restoration through the Nauru Rehabilitation Corporation (NRC).

When the regional asylum processing centre on Nauru was reopened in 2012, it was suggested that immigration detainees might even help with the nearby Topside restoration work. This may currently seem implausible, but could be considered as a livelihood option for some who may be interested in ecological restoration skills development.

However, the only land that has thus far been rehabilitated is in an area known as “Pit 6”. Ironically, this is being developed as a local Nauruan correctional facility, with the prisoners possibly to assist with reclamation work. Thus far the NRC has not managed to achieve its reclamation objectives anywhere else.

New ideas

Despite the slow progress so far, some innovative ideas are now taking root, which could potentially offer economic and development boosts as well as helping to rehabilitate the environment.

One option is to mine the leftover limestone pinnacles, which contain several potentially useful minerals such as dolomite. The United Nations Development Program has championed these so-called “neglected development minerals” as a way of helping Pacific nations (and others) out of poverty.

Although these materials can be sourced more cheaply in China and elsewhere, Nauru could conceivably be branded as a “boutique” producer of tiles from these stones, potentially attracting consumers who are willing to pay an “origin premium” – much like Carrara marble or Vermont slate.

Sustainable growth

Ultimately, Nauru’s population is constrained by the island’s small size – just 21 square km. But there is still room to grow, as well as economic and environmental opportunities, particularly where essentials such as energy and water are concerned.

Nauru has just one brackish lake, called Buada Lagoon, and an underground lake called Moqua Well. But it has plenty of sunshine, which is being tapped for solar-powered water purification systems to deliver drinkable water.

The United Arab Emirates has also supported a pilot project to develop a solar farm on Topside. This could help wean Nauru from its reliance on diesel as a source of energy.

However, far greater investment from donors and the private sector would be required to scale up these efforts. This, in turn, could help other sectors to develop, including a modest boutique tourism sector related to the island’s location as an airline transit hub for the central Pacific.

A derelict phosphate plant. More sustainable industries are needed next time around. d-online/Flickr.com/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY Financial future

Of course, much of this depends on the international financial community maintaining its faith in Nauru after years of financial mismanagement. On this question, the signs are still mixed.

In April, Nauru was admitted to the International Monetary Fund – a mark of international confidence in its finances and a move that will ensure rigorous economic oversight. But within days of that decision Westpac severed its ties with the country, reportedly amid concerns over financial irregularity that it had been investigating over the preceding months.

In contrast, Bendigo Bank returned to Nauru in 2015 after a 15-year absence of any banking provisions in the country. The bank has registered more than 5,000 accounts since then.

Public finances are also being given some positive assurance through the recent establishment of an Intergenerational Trust Fund for the country. Seed funding has been provided by the Asian Development Bank, Australia and Taiwan. This fund has far more stringent safeguards and independent auditing requirements, in contrast to earlier sovereign wealth funds that became notorious for their mismanagement.

A critical next step will be to ensure that, this time around, unlike the previous boom, the country’s revenues from its relationship with Australia, and from its natural capital, are converted into lasting economic capital.

As the country gets ready to review its National Sustainable Development Strategy in 2017, these efforts will garner further attention. While there is no room to be sanguine about the development challenges facing Nauru, there is certainly ample reason for hope.

Nauruans are amazingly resilient people who have survived several brushes with oblivion during their history. Every year on October 26, Nauru celebrates Angam Day, which commemorates the two occasions on which the population has bounced back from near-extinction to reach 1,500, which is considered to be the threshold for their long-term survival.

With careful environmental and economic planning, Nauru has the potential to celebrate many more Angam Days to come.

Saleem will be online for an Author Q&A between 4 and 5pm on Friday, July 15, 2016. Post any questions you have in the comments below.

Professor Saleem H. Ali receives funding from from a wide variety of public and private organizations. However, this article's content has no conflict of interest with any of the funding sources that support his research.

Habitat destruction has reduced the variety of plants and animals to the point that ecological systems could become unable to function properly, with risks for agriculture and human health, say scientists

The variety of animals and plants has fallen to dangerous levels across more than half of the world’s landmass due to humanity destroying habitats to use as farmland, scientists have estimated.

The unchecked loss of biodiversity is akin to playing ecological roulette and will set back efforts to bring people out of poverty in the long term, they warned.

Continue reading...

Though it does not actually say so, the report of the Committee on Climate Change (Report, 12 July) is a salutary reminder that a capitalist economy based on infinite economic growth, as expressed in terms of consumption-led GDP, is unsustainable and, if allowed to continue in its present form, will ultimately devastate the entire planet. Moreover, unless we cease using fossil fuels for energy and replace them with renewables at the earliest possible opportunity, the voluntary agreement reached at last year’s COP 21 climate summit to limit increases in global temperatures to less than 2C will be little more than hot air.

For an energy union like the GMB with thousands of members in the gas industry, the priority must be to establish a viable, UK-based, publicly owned renewable energy industry, thus enabling a just transition for those whose jobs will cease to exist in the coming decades. For this to happen, the vested interests of the privately owned energy monopolies have to be challenged, a point eloquently made by climate activist Naomi Klein at a packed meeting during COP 21 in Paris, organised by the Trade Unions for Energy Democracy network, which GMB supports.

Continue reading...

The government has axed the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) in a major departmental shake-up.

Improved materials would encourage recycling and prevent single-use containers from entering the oceans and breaking into small pieces

Plastics should be better designed to encourage recycling and prevent wasteful single-use containers finding their way into our oceans, where they break up into small pieces and are swallowed by marine animals, scientists said on Thursday.

This could be as effective as a ban on microbeads, proposed by green campaigners as a way of dealing with the rising levels of microplastic waste - tiny pieces of near-indestructible plastic materials - that are harming marine life.

Continue reading...

The European Space Agency has signed a contract to build a prototype drill and chemistry lab that will be flown on a Russian mission to the Moon in 2021.

Richard and Cherry Kearton, working in the 1890s, were possibly the world’s first professional wildlife photographers. The brothers’ pioneering photos include the first shot of a bird’s nest with eggs and the first Masai lion hunt.

• These images are taken from a new book published by Uniformbooks about their lives and work
  

Continue reading...

A new meat-eating dinosaur has been discovered in Argentina that possessed stubby arms like Tyrannosaurus rex.

What does nature mean to each of us?  Why is nature so pure?  And how do we reconnect with the natural world in an age where our lives are connected to technology?