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Government spending on clean energy would deliver 100,000 new jobs, EY assessment finds

Stimulus programs backing clean energy as a path out of recession would create nearly three times as many jobs for every dollar spent on fossil fuel developments, according to a financial consultancy analysis.

The assessment by professional services firm Ernst & Young (EY) says a government focus on renewable energy and climate-friendly projects to drive the economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic could create more than 100,000 direct jobs across the country while cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

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Round one winners of $50.4m Regional and Remote Communities Reliability Fund include microgrids for indigenous communities, farmers, regional towns and industrial parks.

The post Microgrid feasibility funding awarded to 17 projects in first round of federal scheme appeared first on RenewEconomy.

An expedition of top UK botanists into previously unexplored rainforest in Colombia found rare species.

A ban on constructing with timber is one of the more misguided responses to Grenfell

You don’t have to be an expert in construction to know that wood burns. You might also recall that parts of London were destroyed in the Great Fire because they were made largely of wood, after which they were rebuilt in brick and stone. So it will seem a reasonable reaction to the Grenfell disaster that the government banned timber (along with other combustible materials) from the exterior of residential buildings more than 18 metres high.

This ban started in 2018, with the promise to review it. Now it is proposing both to continue and extend it so that it covers buildings more than 11 metres high, and uses such as hotels as well as blocks of flats (in England only – Scotland and Wales have slightly different arrangements). Better, you will probably think, to be safe than sorry. But there’s a cost to this caution, which is that it will impede one of the most promising recent innovations in building.

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Pandemic hunting scientists warn of a 'perfect storm' for new diseases to emerge from wildlife.

Administration opening areas off New England coast up to commercial fishing, a move experts say will hurt the environment

Donald Trump is easing protections for a large marine monument off the coast of New England, opening it to commercial fishing.

But ocean experts caution that the rollback to the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine national monument will hurt the environment and won’t help fishermen who are struggling during the Covid-19 pandemic and economic downturn to find buyers for what they already catch. 

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Experts say abundance of both common and rare species cause for celebration and concern

Record-breaking sunshine has encouraged midsummer butterflies to emerge unusually early, with dozens of species appearing a month before their usual flight season.

Butterflies that usually fill meadows and woods in July, including the ringlet, the marbled white, dark green fritillary and the silver-washed fritillary have been widely spotted during the sunniest spring since records began in 1929.

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There are concerns coronavirus might be starting to spread in parts of England again.

Over $500bn is going to high-carbon industries undermining goals of Cop26 climate talks

The failure of governments and central banks to set out a green recovery from the coronavirus crisis is threatening to derail vital UN climate talks aimed at staving off global catastrophe, campaigners have warned.

On Friday, the UK and the UN attempted to revive the stalled Cop26 climate talks, with a coalition of businesses committing to a Race for Zero, signing up to reduce their emissions to net zero by mid-century. Close to 1,000 businesses have joined the campaign, including household names such as Rolls-Royce and the food and drink majors Nestlé and Diageo.

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US healthcare giant Cigna makes $45m investment in Brisbane-based EV fast charger maker Tritium.

The post US healthcare giant tips $45m into Australian EV charging company Tritium appeared first on RenewEconomy.

California regulator ARB opened an investigation on Friday into a Wisconsin-based livestock project for failing to meet regulatory compliance during its fourth reporting period, with nearly all the 15,000 credits under review used last year by an oil major.

A California budget proposal to amend the state's WCI-linked carbon market would likely not make any near-term changes to allowance prices, but is necessary to ensure the scheme helps the state reach its long-term climate goals, a state senator told Carbon Pulse on Friday.

WCI compliance entities cut California Carbon Allowance (CCA) holdings after the Q2 auction, while speculators’ kept their net long position roughly unchanged from the previous week, according to US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data released Friday.

Communities and advocates decry ‘backflip’ after years of planning for statewide framework to reduce toxic air

The Berejiklian government has abandoned a long-held commitment to adopt a statewide policy on air pollution after years of planning that included a state summit on the issue.

The decision to drop a standalone clean air strategy has sparked anger from communities living near major sources of pollution, such as coal-fired power stations, who say without an overarching strategy they can have no confidence their air quality will improve.

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The European Commission has toughened up its requirements to finance emission reduction projects under its yet-to-be-launched Innovation Fund, but some stakeholders pointed out inconsistencies after the EU's executive unveiled the mechanism's funding criteria on Friday.

The world cannot afford to let the coronavirus pandemic distract us from the destruction of the rainforest

A consensus that international cooperation is required to limit the danger from global heating has existed for decades. The success of the rearguard action against this knowledge, led by fossil fuel interests, is a catastrophe whose full extent is yet to unfold. Central bankers are now demanding that a “whole economy transition” must follow the pandemic if the world is to avoid the extreme disruption that temperature rises of 4C would bring.

Arguably, the chaos unleashed by coronavirus has made such a future seem less remote, and action to prevent it more necessary. The risk is that the virus will have the opposite effect: focusing minds on the threat right now rather than the one that can be ignored for a few more years.

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The pick of the world’s best flora and fauna photos, including hugging sloths and a lost whale

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Your new company is an asset manager with a significant investment in a new organisation developing green fuel and renewable energy through Biomass and Pyrolysis. 

The Q2 RGGI auction settled below the secondary market, results published Friday showed, with a subsidiary of Virginia-based Dominion Energy participating in the sale prior to the state’s official entrance in the Northeast US power sector ETS next year.