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How tunnel vision on switching to renewables is costing Australia dearly by ignoring the vital importance of energy efficiency and productivity.

The post Is Australia’s “clean energy” focus adding to its economic and climate problems?  appeared first on RenewEconomy.

EUAs climbed above €70 for the first time in over a week on Wednesday, though prices later fell back in thin trade as EU chief Ursula von der Leyen suggested boosting the size of the bloc’s REPowerEU initiative that is already set to be partly funded by carbon allowance sales.

Particles breathed by mothers pass to their vulnerable foetuses, with potentially lifelong consequences

Toxic air pollution particles have been found in the lungs, livers and brains of unborn babies, long before they have taken their first breath. Researchers said their “groundbreaking” discovery was “very worrying”, as the gestation period of foetuses is the most vulnerable stage of human development.

Thousands of black carbon particles were found in each cubic millimetre of tissue, which were breathed in by the mother during pregnancy and then passed through the bloodstream and placenta to the foetus.

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WCI emitters in the third quarter moved the largest number of allowances into compliance accounts since 2018, while the linked cap-and-trade system's compliance instrument glut continued to tick higher, according to programme data published Wednesday.

A shortfall of voluntary carbon offsets could become reality later this decade in a high demand, low supply scenario, analysts said Wednesday.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, Inc. (“RGGI, Inc.”) seeks to hire a Program Associate to be based in New York City.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday called for a boost to funding for the REPowerEU programme to exit Russian fossil fuels, arguing that the bloc otherwise risked fragmentation as member states roll out different levels of support to citizens and businesses.

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New research shows Australia experienced a number of megadroughts in the last 1,000 years, We may be underestimating the severity of drought in Australia’s future. Kathryn Allen, ARC Future Fellow, University of Tasmania Alison O'Donnell, Adjunct Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia Benjamin I. Cook, Climate Scientist, Columbia University Jonathan Palmer, Research Fellow, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences., UNSW Sydney Pauline Grierson, Director, West Australian Biogeochemistry Centre; Professor School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

A lack of rain on the western coasts saw 65,000 dead salmon wash up on the creek

Tens of thousands of dead wild salmon scattered along a creek bed are the latest casualty of a drought that has gripped the province of British Columbia for more than a month and left communities bracing for more devastation.

In a video clip posted to social media, the carcasses of pink and chum salmon are seen piled near the community of Bella Bella.

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Richer countries must do far more to help emerging nations cope with the destruction already wreaked by global heating

Speaking to the Guardian last month, Belize’s representative to the UN vividly described the havoc wreaked on his country by global heating. “Loss and damage is already occurring,” said Carlos Fuller. “Severe erosion is altering communities; drought and floods [are] affecting farmers and causing infrastructure damage; [there is] coral bleaching; salt water intrusion is affecting the water supply.” From the catastrophic recent floods in Pakistan to the ongoing drought emergency in Kenya, similarly disastrous impacts are blighting developing nations across the globe. Many lack the economic resources to cope with new climate threats, which are overwhelmingly the consequence of historic carbon emissions by the world’s richest countries.

As the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, stated this week, ahead of November’s Cop27 summit in Egypt, properly addressing this dimension of the climate crisis – the damage already being done – is a “moral imperative that can no longer be ignored”. In Copenhagen in 2009, developed countries pledged to deliver $100bn a year to vulnerable states hit by severe climate-linked impacts.

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Scientists say behaviour, filmed in South Africa, has never been seen in detail before – and never from the air

Scientists have published findings confirming that orcas hunt great white sharks, after the marine mammal was captured on camera killing one of the world’s largest sea predators.

A pod of killer whales is seen chasing sharks during an hour-long pursuit off Mossel Bay, a port town in the southern Western Cape province, in helicopter and drone footage that informed a scientific study released this week.

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Carbon markets will play an essential role in scaling engineered removals such as direct air capture (DAC), experts told an event on Wednesday, but initial government support is also key given the current cost of the technology.

‘It’s like putting in a transmission line over the Opera House,’ says National Parks Association of NSW

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About 10,000 hectares of Kosciuszko national park will be cleared for giant power transmission lines, visible for many kilometres, after New South Wales altered a park management plan to allow a link between the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project and the wider grid.

The revision to the 2006 park plan, which environmental groups say they only learned of weeks later, altered a provision requiring “all additional telecommunication and transmission lines to be located underground”. The state government inserted “except those constructed as part of the Snowy 2.0 Project”.

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American, Japanese and Russian astronauts blast their way to orbit in a SpaceX rocket and capsule.

The nascent direct air capture (DAC) industry needs supply chains to develop and coordination with the ramp up in renewable energy for the technology to move past proof-of-concept and start to scale, a conference heard Wednesday.

At Greenpeace, we’ve found manifesto-busting pledges on everything from the climate to workers’ rights

Liz Truss’s flagship quest for so-called growth has seen her pledge to take the country down an extreme new track, one for which she has no mandate and very little public support. Much of the public will be looking at the chaos unleashed over the past few weeks and asking: who voted for this?

That’s the question we stood up and asked the prime minster directly as we interrupted her speech in Birmingham today. Because surely it’s not right that barely a month into her premiership, Truss is already shredding the promises that got her party elected.

Greenpeace UK analysis has identified at least seven areas across environmental protection, climate action, workers’ rights and tackling inequality where policies either confirmed or being considered by Truss and her ministers are at odds with the 2019 Conservative manifesto.

People expect to get the government programme they voted for – and one that truly meets the moment of the environmental and cost of living crises we are all facing. This certainly isn’t it. The Conservative manifesto in 2019 was clear when it promised the “most ambitious environmental programme of any country on Earth”. But how does that tally with the Truss government’s moves to potentially abolish hundreds of EU laws protecting wild places and regulating water quality, pollution and the use of pesticides?

We were told this government would reform farming subsidies so that landowners “farm in a way that protects and enhances our natural environment”. And yet ministers have signalled they may be about to ditch these vital reforms, which have been years in the making.

If you’re a voter in Yorkshire or Lancashire, you’ll be livid that the moratorium on fracking you assumed was a done deal after 2019 is back on the table.

Rebecca Newsom is head of politics and Ami McCarthy is a political campaigner at Greenpeace UK

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com

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Alinta Energy's plan to plug a 1GW offshore wind farm into Victoria's Portland Aluminium Smelter win ARENA funding to kick off early development activities.

The post Offshore wind power plans for Portland Smelter get a federal boost appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Their work on linking molecules like in living cells can be used in cancer treatment drugs.

With gas prices set to remain elevated for at least five years, there is now a clear price signal for green hydrogen switching supported by a carbon price, experts told an event on Wednesday, noting that a lack of infrastructure is now a more significant bottleneck to decarbonising heavy industry and transport in the EU.