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Intensified by climate change, the current 20-year arid period is one of the worst on record, with wide-ranging effects

When Ken Pimlott began fighting US wildfires at the age of 17, they seemed to him to be a brutal but manageable natural phenomenon.

Related: Dust bowl conditions of 1930s US now more than twice as likely to reoccur

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Chinese companies will no longer be allowed to use the green bond market to finance efficient coal power plants, according to a proposal published Friday by the central bank, but the bonds can be used to back service providers for carbon credit and renewable energy credit trading.

Renewables technology already exists, it's getting cheaper and we will never go to war over sunshine. If you need to be convinced of the potential of wind and solar, read this. Andrew Blakers, Professor of Engineering, Australian National University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Taylor criticises other countries for setting ambitious emissions targets, while Australia bets on unspecified technology improvements to meet its own targets.

The post Angus Taylor says higher emissions targets ‘not necessarily good policy’ appeared first on RenewEconomy.

America's tumbling coal power consumption was surpassed by renewable energy in 2019, and wind power overtook hydro as the US biggest renewable power source.

The post Graph of the Day: US renewables beat coal in 2019, for first time in 134 years appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Lancaster Wildlife Trust has brought the species back to peatlands following a local extinction in the 19th century

Large heath butterflies are returning to peatlands in greater Manchester 150 years after they went locally extinct.

The acidic peat bogs and mosslands around Manchester and Liverpool were home to the country’s biggest colonies of large heath butterflies – known as the “Manchester argus” – but numbers plummeted as land was drained for agricultural land and peat extraction. 

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Australia is in the process of reforming its carbon market, but the government will not put in place new policies to drive private-sector demand, hoping instead for an increase in voluntary buy interest, Energy and Emission Reduction Minister Angus Taylor said Friday.

A few tweaks to an old idea could stimulate investment in renewable energy zones and the electric "highways" needed to transport wind and solar.

The post Time to tweak an old idea to stimulate investment in wind and solar “highways” appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Regional Queensland solar FiT gets marginal increase for 2020-21, driven by higher ancillary services fees and energy losses, which were mostly offset by a decline in wholesale energy costs.

The post Regional Queensland solar feed-in tariff raised by 0.2% for 2020–21 appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Zinc refinery and solar farm owner Sun Metals pans "system strength" rules, saying they are slow, ad hoc, lack transparency, add costs and discourage investment in large scale wind and solar.

The post The regulatory fail on “system strength”, and how it nobbles wind and solar projects appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Oil price crisis and its impact on US shale oil production is revealing where China and the US stand with their very different energy strategies.

The post Oil price wars, Covid-19 havoc, green energy tip the scales in US-China trade war appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The ACT is set to ban waste incineration to energy projects, concluding the potential impacts to public health could not be justified.

The post ACT set to ban waste incineration for energy, citing community concerns appeared first on RenewEconomy.

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

LEDs already light our houses but developments are making them even more powerful.

A "Dumbo" octopus is photographed at a depth of 7,000m in the Indian Ocean's Java Trench.

Denmark will not consider raising its domestic carbon tax until this autumn at the earliest due to the current economic uncertainty from the coronavirus outbreak, the country's climate minister said.

Date moved for Covid-19 travel reasons, but fears raised over delay to green recovery plans

Global talks aimed at staving off the threat of climate breakdown will be delayed by a year to November 2021 because of the coronavirus crisis, the UN has confirmed.

The summit, known as Cop26, which 196 nations are expected to attend, will now take place in Glasgow from November 1 to 12 next year, as reports had anticipated, with the UK government acting as host and president. They were originally set to take place from November 9 this year.

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The California-Quebec Q2 auction failed to sell out for the first time in over three years as entities purchased roughly 21 million current vintage allowances at the joint sale, according to results released Thursday afternoon.

To inner west Sydneysiders, the Cooks River is known to be particularly polluted. But after a storm, microplastic particles increased more than 40 fold. James Hitchcock, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, University of Canberra Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

*FREE READ* - Governments have agreed to move the COP26 UN climate summit to Nov. 2021 as environmental groups urged the UK hosts and other nations to use the extra time to enhance their climate action plans and to 'green' their post-coronavirus recovery efforts.