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The recovery rate from construction and demolition waste has been rising steadily in Australia. However, the use of recycled materials is still not the norm across the construction industry. Salman Shooshtarian, Lecturer, School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University Tayyab Maqsood, Associate Dean and Head of of Project Management, RMIT University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from livestock is vital. But the politics is fraught

Until relatively recently, Dutch farming prowess was hailed as one of the wonders of the global economy. In 2017, a National Geographic article headlined “This tiny country feeds the world” encapsulated a sense of national pride at the Netherlands’ status as the second-biggest exporter of agricultural products by value behind the United States.

These days, Dutch farmers are in the headlines for less upbeat reasons. As the climate emergency and a related biodiversity crisis belatedly take centre stage in policymaking, the prime minister, Mark Rutte, has committed to halving the country’s overall nitrogen emissions by 2030. A large proportion of these are generated by the manure and urine produced by more than 100m cattle, pigs and chickens. To reach the target, and protect biodiversity in the polluted countryside, the government has announced plans to reduce livestock numbers by a third. Reluctant farmers have been warned they could be subject to compulsory buyouts.

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Rena Lee, the president of the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, announced at the UN headquarters that a treaty to protect the high seas had finally been agreed, saying: 'Ladies and gentlemen, the ship has reached the shore.' The treaty, which has been almost two decades in the making, is crucial for enforcing the 30x30 pledge made by countries at the UN biodiversity conference in December, to protect a third of the sea (and land) by 2030

• High seas treaty: historic deal to protect international waters finally reached at UN

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After a 36-hour marathon session to conclude negotiations in New York, UN member states on Saturday evening agreed a treaty that will pave the way for protecting 30% of the world’s oceans.

After almost 20 years of talks, United Nations member states agree on legal framework for parts of the ocean outside national boundaries

It has been almost two decades in the making but on Saturday night in New York, after days of gruelling round-the-clock talks, UN member states finally agreed on a treaty to protect the high seas.

The historic treaty, which will cover almost two-thirds of the ocean that lies outside national boundaries, will provide a legal framework for establishing vast marine protected areas (MPAs) to protect against the loss of wildlife and share out the genetic resources of the high seas. It will establish a conference of the parties (Cop) that will meet periodically and enable member states to be held to account on issues such as governance and biodiversity.

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The first international agreement to protect the world's oceans for 40 years has been reached.

Countries have reached a landmark agreement to put 30% of the world's oceans into protection.

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Neoen reveals how a big battery and a wind farm will provide "baseload renewables" to one of the world's biggest mines. It's a blueprint for the future grid.

The post How a wind farm and a big battery will deliver 24/7 power to one of world’s biggest mines appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Chip shortages and years of government neglect mean the country is lagging well behind China, Europe and North America

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Surging sales of electric vehicles show the automotive revolution is coming, but its arrival is being held up by a fundamental problem: a lack of charging stations. This was apparent over the Australian summer when long queues formed at public chargers on holiday travel routes.

There are about 3,700 public chargers, at just over 2,100 locations, across Australia, according to an Electric Vehicle Council report published in October – a fraction of the number in many comparable countries. In Canada, drivers have access to more than 16,000 public chargers at about 7,000 locations.

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Senior civil servants have issued the warning as government is way behind on net zero pledges, according to leaked documents

Cabinet ministers have been warned by senior civil servants that they face court action because of their catastrophic failure to develop policies for tackling climate change, according to secret documents obtained by the Observer.

The leaked briefings from senior mandarins – marked “official sensitive” and dated 20 February this year – make clear the government as a whole is way behind in spelling out how it will reach its net zero targets and comply with legal duties to save the planet.

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The British government committed to achieving net zero by the middle of the century but all that has followed is inaction

In 2019, the government passed legislation that committed the nation to achieving a goal of net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by the middle of the century. It was one of the most ambitious targets set by any country in the battle to halt the worst effects of climate change. This is a nation committed to limiting global temperature rises, claimed Conservative party leaders.

Sadly those proud battle cries and that Churchillian rhetoric have not been matched by action. For the past four years, government departments have failed to put in place any coherent policies that could help limit carbon emissions.

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More than a dozen counties declare state of emergency after heavy snowfalls, avalanches and freezing conditions

Back-to-back winter storms in California this week have brought strong winds and blizzard, and freeze warnings, causing a state of emergency to be declared across more than a dozen counties.

Palisades Tahoe ski resort in the Sierra Nevada mountain range received 3.6 metres (12 feet) of snow over the week, with 66 centimetres falling in a single day on Tuesday. This brings its cumulative total to 12.8 metres for this season, making it the snowiest since 1970.

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Henry Dimbleby says suppliers struggling with rising costs while locked into fixed-price contracts

The government’s food tsar has blamed Britain’s “weird supermarket culture” for recent food shortages, calling it a “market failure”.

Experts have criticised ministers for “leaving food policy to Tesco”, and meeting large food chains rather than suppliers, who have been struggling with rising costs while locked into contracts with supermarkets.

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An environmental group on Thursday highlighted findings of a new study that alleges California’s forest offset protocol overestimated the amount of carbon sequestered and made unsubstantiated additionality claims in one assessment area, resulting in the over-crediting of 100% of units issued at several sites.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Friday continued publishing delayed Commitments of Traders reports following a cyber attack on the agency’s third-party data provider several weeks ago, showing that compliance entities padded their net long California carbon positions and speculators picked up RGAs in early February. 

California electricity sector CO2 output ended 2022 just below year-earlier levels, while Jan. 2023 emissions were also slightly down year-on-year, according to data published Friday.

A summary of legislative, regulatory, and policy action on carbon, clean fuel standard, and clean energy markets at the US federal and subnational levels this week, including the Vermont Senate passing amended clean heat standard legislation, the referral of a voluntary carbon credit disclosure bill in California, and the announcement of a rulemaking process for Oregon’s cap-and-reduce system.

eAgronom is bringing additional benefits to sustainable farmers via several types of projects, the main one being the Carbon Program that generates Certified Carbon Credits at the farm level.

EU nations on Friday delayed a vote planned for next week to endorse a deal on CO2 car standards amid protests from Germany, complicating what had been seen as a mere formality in a busy month of work for legislators on the bloc's climate policy.