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NT government passes key legislation to pave way for $30 billion solar and battery storage project.

The post Sun Cable: New legislation paves way for world’s biggest solar and battery project appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The European Commission is considering selling 200-250 million EU carbon allowances currently held in the MSR as part of the bloc's RePowerEU initiative, the FT reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous EU officials and diplomats.

The budget will reveal some extra spending, but the Emissions Reduction Plan still treats climate change as merely a scientific, technical problem – when it has been a political problem all along. David Hall, Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences and Public Policy, Auckland University of Technology Melody Meng, Research Fellow, Auckland University of Technology Nina Ives, Climate change PhD student, Auckland University of Technology Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

A carbon credit marketplace and a global ratings agency for the voluntary carbon market (VCM) have teamed up with the aim of providing customers greater confidence in the quality of the units they buy.

A proposal for scaling up carbon contracts for difference (CCfD) is expected to feature in the European Commission's RePowerEU strategy this week, strengthening support for a powerful tool to spur investment in industrial decarbonisation but with lessons to remember from the UK’s experience using the mechanism in the power sector.

French utility Engie will keep buying Russian gas from Gazprom in light of new guidelines from the European Commission on how to avoid direct payments in rubles, it said in first-quarter results on Tuesday that also announced soaring profits and raised 2022 earnings targets.

Huge inflows of foreign investment will flood into green hydrogen projects in Egypt, noted analysts Tuesday, after the government announced it would unveil a national hydrogen plan in the coming months ahead of hosting COP27 in November.

Report tells of 20-hour shifts for £3.50 an hour, racism and sexual abuse under cover of transit visa loophole

A third of migrant workers on UK fishing vessels work 20-hour shifts, and 35% report regular physical violence, according to new research that concludes there is rampant exploitation and abuse on British ships.

“Leaving is not possible because I’m not allowed off the vessel to ask for help,” one migrant worker told researchers at the University of Nottingham Rights Lab, which focuses on modern slavery. They found fishers reported working excessive hours, with few breaks, on an average salary of £3.51 an hour.

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EUAs eased back from an early six-day high on Tuesday morning as traders braced themselves ahead of the European Parliament's environment committee vote on suggested amendments to the Fit for 55 EU ETS reform proposals.

The climate crisis is giving trees a bigger window to spread their pollen, but cleaner air and better early warning forecasts can help protect us

If you have sneezed your way through the last few days, you are not alone. About a quarter of the UK population are thought to suffer from hay fever, with numbers continuing to grow. And the latest research suggests that the climate crisis is going to make the hay fever season a whole lot longer and more intense, with up to three times as much pollen wafting around by the end of the century. Hold on to your antihistamines.

For people with lung conditions such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pollen bursts are a serious risk that can be deadly in the most extreme cases. In November 2016, a pollen outbreak caused by a thunderstorm fragmenting pollen into smaller pieces in Melbourne, Australia, overwhelmed the emergency services and resulted in at least nine deaths.

Kate Ravilious is a freelance science journalist based in York, UK; she writes on Earth, climate and weather-related issues

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Southeast Asia’s reliance on fossil fuels to meet its rapidly growing energy needs is a significant vulnerability given today’s energy crisis, but regional efforts to meet climate and energy security goals will need a sharp increase in investment, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned in a report released Tuesday.

The European Parliament's environment committee (ENVI) has voted for a 67% emissions reduction target for 2030 for the EU ETS, supporting an earlier compromise deal that goes beyond the European Commission's proposed 61%, according to a vote list seen by Carbon Pulse.

The European Parliament’s Environment Committee (ENVI) has voted on the amendments of a first batch of the Fit for 55 climate policy package, on aviation ETS, the Effort Sharing Regulation (ESR) and land use LULUCF Regulation covering non-ETS sectors, as well as a draft opinion on the Renewable Energy Directive (RED). 

Pascal Lamy to lead commission exploring how methods to tackle global heating could be governed

Countries must urgently agree a way of controlling and regulating attempts to geoengineer the climate, and consider whether to set a moratorium on such efforts, as the danger of global heating exceeding the 1.5C threshold increases, the former head of the World Trade Organisation has warned.

Pascal Lamy, a former director general of the WTO and a former EU trade commissioner, now president of the Paris Peace Forum, said governments were increasingly likely to explore the possibilities of geoengineering, as efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions have so far been inadequate.

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A New Zealand forestry group has argued that the country will be unable to meet net zero emissions by 2050 target if it removes exotic tree species from its ETS, based on figures in the government’s Emissions Reduction Plan.

The CEO of Australian offset project development firm Climate Positive has died.

A crypto company that sells carbon removal tokens on Tuesday launched a three-day auction in which interested parties can buy the right to help govern the firm.

Massive tractors and combine harvesters could be having a lasting impact on soil, a study suggests.

Exclusive: Nearly half existing facilities will need to close prematurely to limit heating to 1.5C, scientists say

Nearly half of existing fossil fuel production sites need to be shut down early if global heating is to be limited to 1.5C, the internationally agreed goal for avoiding climate catastrophe, according to a new scientific study.

The assessment goes beyond the call by the International Energy Agency in 2021 to stop all new fossil fuel development to avoid the worst impacts of global heating, a statement seen as radical at the time.

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Promises of jobs and investment are doing little to convince a remote Lincolnshire community to agree to hosting the country’s nuclear waste

On the unspoilt Lincolnshire coast, where dog walkers enjoy the five miles of golden sandy beach and families take holidays in the caravan parks beyond the dunes, the efforts of British politicians to persuade the public nuclear energy is green, safe and clean do not seem to be gaining traction.

A skull glowers down from the sand dunes on to Mablethorpe Beach, a portent of death and destruction, and a throwback to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament protests of the 1980s.

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