Feed aggregator

A UK study says record-breaking temperatures in NW India and Pakistan are now 100 times more likely.

Forrest resumes executive role at Fortescue, hires ex AGL boss Andy Vesey and names former head of GE Europe as new FFI CEO.

The post Forrest hires ex AGL boss Andy Vesey as part of big name changes at Fortescue appeared first on RenewEconomy.

An insolvent district heating plant in Romania has been fined for EU ETS non-compliance for a second straight year.

The Washington Department of Ecology (ECY) on Tuesday published its draft WCI-modelled cap-and-trade regulation, lowering the programme’s emissions baseline compared to the agency’s previous thinking and proposing the same allowance floor and ceiling prices as the California carbon market.

Toxic air, water and soil are ‘existential threat to human and planetary health’, says global review

Pollution is killing 9 million people a year, a review has found, making it responsible for one in six of all deaths.

Toxic air and contaminated water and soil “is an existential threat to human health and planetary health, and jeopardises the sustainability of modern societies”, the review concluded.

Continue reading...

A US-based soil carbon startup has raised $18 mln in Series A funding from investors including Bloomberg and Microsoft.

Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) has nominated four members to Virginia’s Air Pollution Control Board (APCB) in a move that sets the stage for plans to unravel the state’s RGGI linkage this summer.

Emitters in the RGGI cap-and-trade programme added carbon permits in between the Mar. 9 sale and the end of the month, as prices retreated on the secondary market, according to a report published Tuesday.

More countries are likely to follow the move by the Indonesia government, which has halted the issuance of carbon credits from projects in the country until it has finalised its new carbon policy, a major carbon credit company said in a conference call Tuesday for its quarterly results.

Ultra long-haul flights make it possible to go Sydney to London non-stop. But does the world need them, given they are more polluting and less efficient? Susanne Becken, Professor of Sustainable Tourism and Director, Griffith Institute for Tourism, Griffith University Paresh Pant, PhD Candidate and Sessional Academic, Griffith University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

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.

Continue reading...

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

Continue reading...