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Government to offer £600m for green steel switch
Don’t kill the curl grubs in your garden – they could be native beetle babies
Exploding carp numbers are 'like a house of horrors' for our rivers. Is it time to unleash carp herpes?
What we learned at Davos: signs of hope emerge from the pessimism | Larry Elliott
Prospects for artificial intelligence and green transition fuel sense that the only way is up for the global economy
The world has become hard-wired for pessimism, and there was plenty of it on display in Davos last week.
Much has changed in the 52 years since the World Economic Forum was first held in the Swiss ski resort. At that original WEF summit the global economy was dominated by the rich nations of Europe and northern America, currencies were fixed under the Bretton Woods system, and oil was $2 a barrel. The cold war between the US and the Soviet Union was still raging. It was a pre-digital age; personal computers and smartphones were things of the future. Artificial intelligence (AI) was the stuff of science fiction.
Continue reading...Business minister boasted Britishvolt was Brexit success story months before collapse
Electric car battery firm planned to build large facility in Northumberland with government funds if it found investors
Ministers were using the electric car battery maker Britishvolt as a prime example of the government’s record for “securing business investment in the UK” just months before the scheme collapsed without any public investment.
The company, once heralded as Britain’s potential champion for battery making, fell into administration last week after the failure of last-ditch talks to find emergency funding to keep it afloat. Its demise has been criticised as showing the government’s lack of industrial strategy, the shortcomings of “levelling up” and Britain’s failure to grasp new manufacturing opportunities in the wake of Brexit.
Continue reading...The Observer view on the free market thinking that failed Britishvolt | Observer editorial
The government’s hands-off approach meant the odds were against the EV battery startup from the start
An essential pillar of Conservative party thinking has resulted in the collapse of Britishvolt, the electric vehicle battery maker and hoped-for saviour of the UK car industry. With a £3bn factory due to be built at Blyth, lighting up the Northumberland coast, the UK-owned and -run business would, in Boris Johnson’s words, “create thousands of jobs in our industrial heartlands” and boost electric vehicle production “as part of our green industrial revolution”.
Not for this government, nor any of its predecessors since 2010, the careful planning and collaboration with industry that propels investment in Japan, South Korea, China, Germany and the US. Ministers prefer to keep their hands by their sides and wallets firmly closed, in case they might be accused of a return to 1970s corporatism.
Continue reading...Australia’s biggest wind turbine erected at what will be largest wind farm in NSW
The first 6MW wind turbine - the largest to date in Australia - has been installed in what will be the biggest wind project in NSW.
The post Australia’s biggest wind turbine erected at what will be largest wind farm in NSW appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Motion capture tech from Avatar films used in disease research
How eating oysters could help protect the coast
Winchcombe meteorite: Is this the UK's most important fireball?
Thousands march across Dartmoor to demand right to wild camp
More than 3,000 people protest on estate of Alexander Darwall after his court victory ends right to wild camp in England
More than 3,000 people on Saturday joined one of the UK’s largest ever countryside access protests on the Dartmoor estate of a wealthy landowner who won a case ending the right to wild camp in England.
Groups of walkers, families, students and local people arrived by foot, shuttle bus and bike to the small Dartmoor village of Cornwood throughout the morning and then thronged for hours along moss- and ivy-draped lanes up on to the rugged, boulder-strewn moorland owned by the Conservative party donor and hedge fund manager Alexander Darwall.
Continue reading...Dartmoor protesters march over right to wild camp
App reveals most polluted London Underground routes to travel on
A young innovator has won a top award for developing software to map the tube routes with the cleanest air
Like most Londoners, Tanya Beri has mixed views of the city’s vast underground rail network that carries millions of passengers every day on its 11 lines and through its 272 stations. The tube keeps London moving, though often in cramped, uncomfortable and unhygienic conditions.
However, Beri believes she has found a way to improve travel for concerned commuters. She has developed a phone app that can direct passengers to routes that offer minimal air pollution.
Continue reading...Dartmoor landowner who won wild camping ban may be putting rare beetle at risk
Exclusive: Alexander Darwall, who said he brought case to improve conservation, is releasing pheasants near protected woodland
The landowner who took Dartmoor national park to court to ban wild camping may be putting a rare beetle at risk by releasing pheasants next to an ecologically important woodland, against the advice of environmental experts.
This is despite him having said he pushed for a wild camping ban in order to “improve conservation of the Dartmoor commons”, arguing that campers damage the national park with litter and disturbance.
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