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Everyday Plastic calls supermarket takeback schemes a diversion and says there is too much plastic packaging

Seventy per cent of soft plastic collected in supermarket recycling schemes and tracked after collection ended up being burned, an investigation by campaigners has found.

By placing trackers inside packages of soft plastic that were collected by Sainsbury’s and Tesco in July 2023 and February 2024, campaigners found that most of them ended up being incinerated rather than recycled.

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The owner of one of Australia's biggest coal generators has shut down one of its units for six hours in a trial to see how the technology can dance around the huge and growing solar duck curve.

The post Coal generators are learning how to shut down for solar in significant boost to renewable switch appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Final bids for the biggest tender for wind and solar capacity closed last week, and it seems that those with big battery proposals may have the best chances.

The post Battery hybrids favoured as wind and solar shortlisted projects make final bids in biggest ever tender appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The market regulator overseeing Australia’s reef credit scheme has published a draft Cassowary Credit standard and Rainforest Replanting methodology for a 30-day consultation, it announced Tuesday.

Sufficiency is a new approach to solving humanity’s consumption problems. It’s about using less, ensuring wellbeing for all humans, and staying within planetary boundaries. David Angus Ness, Adjunct Professor, UniSA STEM, University of South Australia Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Kew study reveals areas with at least 100,000 undiscovered plant species – most likely to be under threat of extinction

Botanists have identified 33 “dark spots” around the world where thousands of plant species are probably waiting to be discovered, according to new research.

From a palm tree in Borneo that flowers underground to a Malagasy orchid that spends its life growing on other plants, researchers are still making dozens of new species discoveries every year.

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The StB Giga Factory has started making the equivalent of about 30,000 lithium iron phosphate home battery systems a year, with plans to scale that to 2GWh a year by 2030.

The post St Baker battery giga factory starts commercial production in the Philippines appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A scorecard ranking private equity firms on their climate impact paints a grim picture, with most major players receiving near-failing grades.

The proposed updates from RGGI states could divide the regional power market into trading zones each with a different emissions cap and separate allowance types, a panel of experts discussed at Climate Week NYC last week.

Wind farms proposed for development in Queensland will have to meet a number of new environmental, logistical and acoustic criteria, as part of an ongoing review of the state's renewable energy planning rules.

The post Nature, noise, rehab: Queensland tightens wind farm planning rules in renewables regulation overhaul appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The instantaneous share of renewable energy in Australia’s main grid has reached new highs for the second day in a row, steadily nudging out fossil fuels in preparation for the day that coal generation might be switched off completely, as occurred in the earlier today. As Joshua Hill writes here, the last coal-fired power generator […]

The post Renewable records tumble for second day in a row, pushing fossil fuels to new lows appeared first on RenewEconomy.

When compared to fossil fuel and nuclear options, solar PV’s global costs in 2023 were 56 per cent lower, while onshore wind’s costs were even lower.

The post Solar and wind less than half the cost of fossil fuels as price falls continue appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The New Zealand government has announced the next steps it intends to take on emissions trading, forestry, and agriculture-related measures, in its latest quarterly action plan published Monday.

The UK was the first country to build a coal fired power station and has now become the first major economy to exit coal power.

The post Last coal power station in UK shuts down, bring coal era to end after 143 years appeared first on RenewEconomy.

European carbon prices will continue to face bearish “headwinds” that will extend into next year, but will start to see a turnaround by 2026, analysts said Monday.

RGGI Allowances (RGAs) in the secondary market continued to slide through the week after the release last Monday of the long-awaited Third Program Review proposed changes, with traders expecting further pressure on prices.

The number of entities registered with active accounts in Washington’s cap-and-trade programme once again increased in an early look at Q3 data, despite the lack of clarification from the regulator regarding the worth of allowances if the scheme is repealed through the ballot initiative.

The US has a pathway to cut emissions by 65% from 2005 levels by 2035 and meet its climate goals under the Paris Agreement if there is an “all-of-society” approach, according to a new study.

It’s difficult to overstate how rapidly Australians have embraced solar power – there’s now more rooftop solar than coal-fired power. The key question is what policymakers can learn from its success

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Australia was a different place in 2011. Julia Gillard’s Labor government, the Greens and a couple of country independents were rewriting the country’s climate policies, including introducing a world-leading carbon pricing system and creating three agencies to back it up.

Those organisations – the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Climate Change Authority – have survived and help shape the investment and policy landscape. The carbon pricing system – falsely described as a tax – famously didn’t.

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Natural gas will remain important to bridge the gap in energy demand for "many decades" as the US grid expects greater additions of solar and wind power, but carbon capture technology is not yet commercially competitive, according to a study published Monday by a US public policy think tank.