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Company will use bailiffs if those protesting against continuing raw sewage discharges continue to hold back payment of bills

Southern Water is threatening to use debt collection agencies against customers involved in a payment boycott in protest against continuing raw sewage discharges.

The water company, which was given the lowest one star rating for performance by the Environment Agency, has informed boycotters that it will be using bailiffs if they continue to hold back bill payments.

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Most striking feature of new PM’s strategy is how much has been filed under ‘to do’ or ‘details to follow’

After three days in office, Liz Truss’s administration could not be expected to have every detail of its big-bucks energy strategy nailed down. Even so, the striking feature – beyond the well-trailed two-year price cap for households – was how much has been filed under “to do” or “details to follow”. At least six areas of the canvas are virtually blank.

First, six months of “equivalent” support for businesses, public sector bodies and charities inevitably prompts the question of what happens in April. On what basis will deserving causes for ongoing help be selected?

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Giant ice sheets, ocean currents and permafrost regions may already have passed point of irreversible change

The climate crisis has driven the world to the brink of multiple “disastrous” tipping points, according to a major study.

It shows five dangerous tipping points may already have been passed due to the 1.1C of global heating caused by humanity to date.

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Preston New Road activists promise to regroup to fight Cuadrilla until fracking in UK is banned for good

Chris Holliday, 60, recalls the exact moment a 2.9-magnitude earth tremor brought a halt to fracking in the UK. It was 8.30am on August bank holiday Monday in 2019 and Holliday, a retired IT consultant, was with his wife, Susan, in their neat kitchen when all of a sudden the cups and saucers began to shake.

“The crockery and glasses were rattling. The windows were rattling,” he said on Thursday.

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New UK PM Liz Truss submitted details of her well-tracked energy price freeze to Parliament on Thursday, while also announcing a £40 billion energy market financing scheme and pointing towards more fundamental energy market reform.

The general manager of Australia’s Carbon Market Institute is departing to head up the Australia and Pacific business of an international carbon trading firm.

The EU’s current biomass policy is causing a ‘carbon bomb in the heart of Europe’ warns an environmental group ahead of an upcoming revision of the policy, encouraging a high CO2 polluting power company to burn more wood and escape the clutches of mitigation in the bloc’s Emission Trading System (ETS).

A US forestry project has been awarded a low chance of avoiding a tonne of CO2 by a rating agency because of a significant risk of additionality and over crediting.

Major oil companies are over-exaggerating their green credentials in a splurge of advertising because only around a tenth of their capital expenditure is spent on low-carbon activities, a new report has concluded. 

EUAs tumbled early in the day to a new six-month low as the market reacted to a proposal by the largest bloc in the European Parliament to fast-track sales of EUAs from the market stability reserve, while energy prices extended losses for a second day as ministers prepared to discuss emergency relief measures for consumers facing soaring power and gas costs.

Endangered animal caught by ZSL camera intended for hedgehogs in woodland in south-west of capital

A pine marten has been spotted in London for the first time in more than a century after being pictured on a camera trap installed to monitor hedgehogs.

The endangered mustelid was driven to extinction in England a hundred years ago and was only sighted again for the first time in the Shropshire hills in 2015, remaining an extremely rare animal.

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Fraudsters pretending to be staff or trading members at a carbon exchange in China have been seeking out people on social media to sell low-value carbon assets at extortionate prices, it emerged Thursday.

Heatwaves and a record drought drove record heat all over Europe this summer, according to satellite data.

The Australian parliament has formally adopted its first climate change legislation in over a decade with the Senate voting in favour of the Labor government’s climate bill on Thursday, which commits Australia to targeting a 43% cut in GHG emissions from 2005 levels by 2030 as well as net zero emissions by 2050.

Eggs from chickens kept indoors due to bird flu outbreaks could still be labelled free range, raising concerns among UK producers

Eggs produced in the EU could continue to be labelled as “free range”, even if the birds are not allowed outside, under new proposals.

The European Commission has put forward plans for scrapping the time limit on the marketing of eggs as free range if chickens are forced to be housed to reduce the risk of outbreaks of bird flu.

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The 1m lines from pots used to catch the crustaceans are one of the two main threats to the whales, of which fewer than 340 remain

Lobster nets and pots have become such a threat to the survival of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales that the crustaceans have been “red-listed” as seafood to avoid by a major fish sustainability guide.

Fewer than 340 of these whales exist today, including only 80 breeding females. The population is estimated to have dwindled by 28% over the past decade.

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Project proponents in Australia’s offset market increased their Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) holdings by almost 50% in the first half of the year even though new issuances fell slightly, data released on Thursday showed, though the Clean Energy Regulator was cautious to explain it with the fixed ERF delivery exit arrangement announced in March.

Japanese trading powerhouse Mitsui has signed a joint agreement with oil and gas major Shell to explore the technical and commercial feasibility of carbon capture and storage (CCS) development in the Asia-Pacific region, the two companies announced on Thursday.

Communities secretary also defends decision not to extend windfall tax as Liz Truss unveils support package

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Plans to increase shale gas supplies by ending the moratorium on fracking are not a “miracle solution”, the communities secretary has conceded before plans to curb spiralling energy bills this winter are announced.

Simon Clarke said the government had to be “pragmatic” but added that “community consent” would “lie at the heart of our energy policy”.

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How will she deal with the issue if a windfall tax is off the cards?