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Construction will begin within weeks on a 300 MWh big battery to be built in Queensland, alongside the country's biggest coal unit.

The post “Unsung hero:” New big battery next to Australia’s biggest coal unit gets go ahead appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A new study has shed new light on the intricate relationships between tree growth, mortality, and reproduction in global forests and how these factors interact to affect carbon absorption.

The first auction for renewable and storage projects to bid for a place on the grid in the first renewable energy zone in NSW has been delayed, frustrating developers.

The post Disappointment as tender for access rights to NSW renewable energy zones delayed appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) saw their third-highest quarterly net credit build during the April-June period, as volumes of renewable natural gas continued to push past decline in ethanol credits, growing the surplus bank to a new all-time high, according to state data published Tuesday.

Australian banks are in the box seat to develop and advocate for new, inventive measures that green up the nation’s single largest asset class, the housing market.

The post Big banks take on greening of Australia’s $10 trillion housing stock appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A Murdoch University deep dive into the CSIRO Beetaloo report found its emissions projections are underestimates of up to 84% in some cases.

The post Beetaloo gas field is a climate bomb. How did the modelling make it look otherwise? appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A bio-agricultural company announced the global launch of its Verra-certified carbon credits programme that utilises mycorrhizal fungi for carbon dioxide removal, the first of its kind.

An Indigenous group appealing Guyana's jurisdictional REDD+ programme said it was forced to give up on its appeal Friday, claiming the committee overseeing the complaint was stacked by the standard responsible for issuing the credits.

Wind and solar reached 100 per cent of demand on 282 days in last year in South Australia, and the state will average 100 per cent within a few years, grid owner says.

The post South Australia to reach 100 pct wind and solar within a few years, says network company appeared first on RenewEconomy.

New research published Monday concludes that deforestation in the Amazon has a more drastic and long-reaching warming effect on non-local land surfaces than previously known, suggesting an even greater importance for forestry projects located in the world's largest rainforest.

The EU should set binding soil health targets for member states, provide tailored government support for farmers, and do more to involve the private sector to ensure soil contributes to the growth of the bloc's carbon sink by the end of the decade, according to an NGO report compiling stakeholder views published on Tuesday. 

Storms are the greatest threat to beach erosion, not sea level rise, research reveals. This is the longest continuous beach monitoring survey in the Southern Hemisphere. Thomas Oliver, Senior lecturer, UNSW Canberra, Australian Defence Force Academy Bruce Thom, Emeritus Professor, University of Sydney Roger McLean, Emeritus Professor, UNSW Canberra, Australian Defence Force Academy Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

The troubled Kariba REDD project suffered another blow to its reputation on Tuesday after a rating agency downgraded its carbon credits to the lowest possible score, but also took the unusual step of delisting the project from further assessment in the future.

Researchers find the plants don’t use conventional processes to follow the sun across the sky

With their bright yellow manes and sturdy stems, sunflowers might seem like a simple summer delight. But researchers say the plants are surprisingly enigmatic after discovering they don’t use conventional processes to track the sun across the sky.

Over the course of a day, sunflowers follow the path of the sun overhead – a process known as heliotropism – with their heads tilting progressively westwards as a result of cells elongating on the east side of the stem.

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‘Nothing’s changed’ stance by Murray Auchincloss needs time despite sceptism of investors

• BP plays down takeover speculation after lower than expected profits

“We remain committed to executing our strategy,” said Murray Auchincloss, BP’s stand-in chief executive, for the umpteenth time since Bernard Looney was defenestrated as permanent boss seven weeks ago. Auchincloss’s problem is that repetition doesn’t make it more convincing in the eyes of a sceptical market. Investors were already wondering if Looney would bow to pressure to water down his green transition plans further. Now it’s open season for speculation about BP’s future. Takeover target? Breakup candidate? There is an air of instability.

That is partly because the two biggest US oil majors are seemingly more confident than ever in their hydrocarbons-for-longer strategies. ExxonMobil is buying the US shale group Pioneer for $60bn (£49bn) and Chevron is making a record purchase by paying $53bn for Hess, complete with access to Guyana’s offshore oil reserves. Both deals are a case of doubling down on fossil fuels, which naturally provokes a fresh round of muttering among a few BP investors about whether renewables will ever earn the same returns on capital as oil and gas. BP’s shares are persistently priced at a valuation discount to those of the US majors.

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The relevance of biodiversity was rated as “moderate” by the average financial institution board in the Netherlands, the Dutch Association of Investors for Sustainable Development (VBDO) said in a study.

A twice-weekly summary of our biodiversity news plus bite-sized updates from around the world. All articles in this edition are free to read (no subscription required).

The growing inclination for farmers to generate and sell carbon credits, rather than help their food and agricultural clients achieve their insetting objectives, could hinder supplier relationships in the agricultural sector, a global business association representative told a conference this week. 

When Rishi Sunak granted 27 new North Sea licences this week, he wasn’t thinking about the survival of the living world

Can you see it yet? The Earth systems horizon – the point at which our planetary systems tip into a new equilibrium, hostile to most lifeforms? I think we can. The sudden acceleration of environmental crises we have seen this year, coupled with the strategic uselessness of powerful governments, rushes us towards the point of no return.

We’re told we are living through the sixth mass extinction. But even this is a euphemism. We call such events mass extinctions because the most visible sign of the five previous catastrophes of the Phanerozoic era (since animals with hard body parts evolved) is the disappearance of fossils from the rocks. But their vanishing was a result of something even bigger. Mass extinction is a symptom of Earth systems collapse.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

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