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A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

We head to the Victorian goldfields town of Maldon to hear why it’s the perfect place for a community battery – and how grid-side energy storage is becoming a key network tool.

The post Solar Insiders Podcast: Small town, medium battery – big solar win appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The Australian government will conduct a full audit of environmental offsets to crack down on developers shirking their responsibilities to protect nature, it announced Thursday.

The World Bank-backed Carbon Opportunities Fund and Sumitomo Corporation of Americas (SCOA) have conducted one of the first transactions of tokenised carbon credits using the Climate Action Data Trust (CAD Trust), built on the Chia blockchain.

Astronomers may have picked up the first signals from giant black holes spiralling in on each other.

A boom in wind and solar energy in China may curb emissions faster than expected, a report says.

Global temperatures could increase by a further 0.2C by 2100 if all of the world’s remaining recoverable oil is burned, analysts have estimated.

The UK government on Thursday announced new investments and measures to preserve lowland peat, in an effort to combat climate change and protect the country's natural resources.

The global clean energy transition is supported by ambitious pledges from oil majors to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, but a new study suggests these corporate commitments may not result in a significant shift away from fossil fuels thanks to a heavy reliance on carbon offsetting.

Colombia's efforts to combat climate change through deforestation policies face a critical test, with a further 1.3 million hectares of forest at risk of being converted to agricultural land by 2040, warns a new report.

Courts worldwide have been facing more and more cases against companies accused of ‘climate-washing’, researchers revealed in a report published Thursday.

Human remains believed to be found in debris recovered from Titan submersible that imploded near Titanic wreck, US Coast Guard says

Labor begins roll-out of Capacity Investment Scheme, more than doubling size of auction in NSW to fill a gap created by planned coal plant closures.

The post Bowen kicks off capacity scheme with doubling of NSW battery tender to replace coal appeared first on RenewEconomy.

California Carbon Offset distributions increased over the past two weeks to climb closer towards 2022 levels at the halfway point of the year, as millions of credits lost their invalidation risk recently, according to government data published Wednesday.

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) can play an important role in decarbonising the US economy, but more incentives are needed as existing policies don’t sufficiently support accelerated deployment.

Nearly 400 new mines could open by 2035 to meet demand for the minerals used in global electrification. Better recycling can help with supply, but mining’s impacts will have to be better managed. Rusty Langdon, Senior Research Consultant, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney Elsa Dominish, Research Principal, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Companies should consign “carbon neutrality” claims to the dustbin, the Voluntary Carbon Markets Initiative (VCMI) advised on Wednesday as it launched guidelines for buying carbon credits that it hopes will inject heavy doses of confidence and capital into the voluntary carbon market and end accusations of greenwashing.

The EU is willing to join international talks to weigh whether climate geoengineering interventions could be viable in tackling climate change, the bloc's climate and foreign policy chiefs said on Wednesday while cautioning that such initiatives should not divert global efforts to cut emissions.

Water privatisation in England and Wales has achieved just one thing: the enrichment of executives and overseas shareholders

Thames Water is on the brink of collapse, with emergency plans being drawn up to take the company into temporary public ownership. It’s an extraordinary state of affairs: how could a business with a regional monopoly over an essential service not manage to maintain a financially sustainable footing? The answer: an extractive ownership model has seen the company loaded with debt, and returns for its investors prioritised over the needs of both people and the environment. As interest rates have risen sharply over recent months, this inherently precarious business model has come under acute and seemingly fatal pressure.

The story of Thames Water is emblematic of wider failures of privatisation. Since the late 1980s, water companies in England and Wales have paid out £72bn to shareholders. To help pay for this generosity, the water companies – which were sold off without debts – have borrowed on an exceptional scale, accumulating a debt pile of £53bn.

Mathew Lawrence is director of Common Wealth and co-author of Owning the Future with Adrienne Buller

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Japan’s J-Credit scheme regulator on Wednesday cleared a first project for generating credits from cutting methane emissions from rice paddy cultivation, with several market participants positioning themselves to utilise the methodology, which was approved in March.