Feed aggregator

Carbon prices made a sharp recovery from Friday's sell-off along with other European energy markets, though EUA gains were capped by sustained selling above €62.

A London-based fund that focuses on compliance-grade carbon recorded a solid return in August, as it entered a fifth regional emissions market.

University of California, Davis study claims to be the first to document personality in golden-mantled ground squirrels

Animal researchers in California have discovered human-like personality traits in squirrels that anybody watching one raiding nuts from a bird table could probably have guessed: they are bold, aggressive, athletic and sociable.

Related: How a Tahoe refuge saved owls, coyotes and raccoons from wildfire

Continue reading...

Members of Insulate Britain caused major delays during protest calling for overhaul of home insulation

Environmental protesters have been arrested after they blocked junctions off London’s orbital motorway during the morning rush hour causing major delays.

Members of the protest group Insulate Britain, which calls for the UK government to fully fund an overhaul of insulation of all homes in Britain by 2030, blocked the M25 at a number of junctions, clashing with motorists.

Continue reading...

Some states have still been using versions of the welfare reform clause that imposes lifetime bans on assistance for the formerly incarcerated

When Eugene Glover was released from prison in the summer of 2017 he believed he was starting a new chapter in his life, and leaving an old one behind him. After serving more than 14 years behind bars for a drug felony conviction, Glover moved into a halfway house and applied for food assistance.

Continue reading...

AGL's head of future business strategy takes key role at a 5B, whose Maverick solar solution is marked for the world’s biggest solar project.

The post Solar start-up 5B nabs AGL’s future business strategist as new technology chief appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Climate scientists believe that if Greenland continues to rapidly melt, tens of millions of people around the world could face yearly flooding and displacement by 2030

Many people believed he couldn’t do it. Ski across the Greenland ice sheet, a vast, unmapped, high-elevation plateau of ice and snow? Madness.

But Fridtjof Nansen, a young Norwegian, proved them wrong. In 1888, he and his small party went light and fast, unlike two large expeditions a few years before. And unlike the others, Nansen traveled from east to west, giving himself no option of retreat to a safe base. It would be forward or die trying. He did it in seven weeks, man-hauling his supplies and ascending to 8,900ft (2,700 meters) elevation, where summertime temperatures dropped to -49F (-45C).

Continue reading...

Last year, there were a record 227 killings globally. It is our duty to keep resisting the insatiable forces that led to their deaths

Each year, we learn more about the climate crisis. The data flows: ever-rising heat, unprecedented deforestation, record rainfall. And once a year, we also learn more about the human impact of the crisis too, as data is released on the killings of land and environmental activists, the very people highlighting and protesting at the breakdown of our climate. In 2020, that number rose to a record 227 killings worldwide.

Every time, the data hits me like a blow to the face. I’ve spent much of my life as an environmental activist and journalist, and so if I haven’t actually met the people sadly on this list, I’ve met hundreds exactly like them. Strong local people, attached to place and community, seeing their role in defending terrain and ancestral territory. Every person like this around the world is at risk.

And they are at risk, in the end, not so much because of another local person who pulls the trigger or plunges the blade; they’re at risk because they find themselves living on or near something that some corporation is demanding. Like Fikile Ntshangase, the South African grandmother who led a spirited campaign against a coalmine in KwaZulu-Natal province and was shot dead in her home last year. Or Óscar Eyraud Adams, the indigenous activist who, during Mexico’s worst drought in 30 years, vocally advocated for his community’s right to water, as the authorities denied them and granted corporations ever more permits. Oscar was shot dead in Tecate last September.

The demand for the highest possible profit, the quickest possible timeline, the cheapest possible operation, seems to translate eventually into the understanding, somewhere, that the troublemaker must go. The blame rarely if ever makes its way back up to a corporation’s HQ. But it should. Especially since the people who inhabit these places never really share in the riches produced there: colonialism is still running strong, even if it’s dressed up with corporate logos or hidden with offshore bank accounts.

Continue reading...

A new fund launched on Monday that aims to invest in forest planting on marginal land in New Zealand to profit from the nation’s rapidly rising carbon price.

Rooftop solar sends operational demand to a record low in NSW, the state grid with the heaviest dependence on coal.

The post Rooftop solar sends minimum demand to record low in coal dependent NSW appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Water companies let raw sewage into English waters more than 400,000 times in 2020, Environment Agency data reveals

One of the first complaints lodged with the post-Brexit environmental watchdog accuses the government and Ofwat of failing to enforce the law to stop water companies from routinely discharging raw sewage into rivers.

The office for environmental protection (OEP) is being asked to investigate why water companies have been able to continually fail to meet duties placed on them by law to treat sewage. The secretary of state for the environment, George Eustice, and the financial regulator, Ofwat, had failed to enforce the law, the complaint said.

Continue reading...

Australian and global oil and gas companies continue to pour huge amount of investment growing their production, defying global climate targets, new report finds.

The post Australian and global fossil fuel giants make $1 trillion bet against global climate efforts appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Australian solar start-up founded in a garage and backed by billionaire investors included Mike Cannon-Brookes, claims new world solar efficiency record.

The post Australian solar innovator backed by Cannon-Brookes claims world efficiency record appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Tesla calls for storage target of 20GW to help ensure enough dispatchable capacity is build to support a grid dominated by wind and solar.

The post Tesla calls for a 20 gigawatt storage target for Australia appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Labor's coal contrarian Joel Fitzgibbon to leave parliament, just as Albanese promises to be in lockstep with the US on climate policy.

The post Fitzgibbon’s departure will free Albanese to take climate fight to Morrison appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A 'megapod' of about 150 humpback whales has been filmed feeding off the New South Wales coast near Bermagui. This is believed to be the second time a pod of this size has been filmed in Australian waters. Footage courtesy of Sapphire Coastal Adventures and David Rogers

► Subscribe to Guardian Australia on YouTube

Continue reading...

China will develop a futures market for carbon in a bid to establish more funding channels for emissions cuts, said an official statement from the nation’s Cabinet, which also indicated a potential expansion in the types of projects that could be eligible to generate offsets for the national emissions trading scheme.

Another carbon trader has left BP to join a recently established emissions desk in Singapore, operated by a major commodity trading house.

Epuron moves forward with what would be the biggest wind farm in northern Queensland, close to what was the state's only wind farm for nearly 20 years.

The post Epuron pushes forward with huge wind farm in north Queensland appeared first on RenewEconomy.

More than 220 environment and land rights activists were murdered last year, according to a report.