Around The Web

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.

Continue reading...

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.

The COP26 UN summit, which was postponed due to coronavirus, will now take place between 1 and 12 November 2021.

Rising temperatures, natural disasters and deforestation taking heavy toll, say scientists

Climate breakdown and the mass felling of trees has made the world’s forests significantly shorter and younger overall, an analysis shows. 

The trend is expected to continue, scientists say, with worrying consequences for the ability of forests to store carbon and mitigate the climate emergency and for the endangered wildlife that depends on rich, ancient forests. 

Continue reading...

Ambitious goal requires us to ‘get over the political roadblock’ says Malcolm Turnbull, who backed climate change thinktank’s report

A rapid expansion of renewable energy over the next five years could establish Australia as a home for new zero-emissions industries, cut electricity costs and create more than 100,000 jobs in the electricity industry alone, a new analysis suggests.

The briefing paper by Beyond Zero Emissions, a climate change thinktank, presents an alternative vision to the Morrison government’s gas-fired recovery plan, arguing the shift to a clean electricity grid is inevitable and there are opportunities in accelerating it, rather than slowing it down. Renewable energy investment in Australia fell 50% last year.

Continue reading...

California Carbon Allowance (CCA) prices gained this week as traders took a bullish outlook regarding a budget proposal to consider improvements to the state’s linked ETS, while RGGI allowances (RGA) pared back losses suffered over the past two weeks.

Three large business groups are opposing budget language that would require California regulator ARB to consider improvements to the US state's cap-and-trade scheme, saying the measure could increase costs on end consumers at an inopportune time.

EU Parliamentarians from major parties pushed back on efforts to raise the bloc’s 2030 emission reduction target to 65% on Thursday, despite that level being judged to be in line with the Paris Agreement and a smoother path towards reaching net zero by 2050.

Climate change: Go-ahead for controversial solar farm - the UK's biggest

A California agency on Wednesday approved the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) price ceiling and other amendments that will take effect this summer, as credit values continued to increase despite an auction taking place.

The University of Portsmouth identified it as a tapejarid, a flying pterosaur from the Cretaceous period.

EUAs eased to hover around €21 on Thursday, extending their retreat from this week's one-month high as energy markets also dipped.

Suntech's 9.47MW Robinvale solar farm – one of a growing number of 'small but smart' projects pitched at under 10MW – has been completed in Victoria's north west.

The post Suntech’s 9.4MW Robinvale solar farm completed in Victoria appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Latest quarterly emissions update shows emissions down thanks to renewables and drought, but increases from the gas sector are hindering faster progress.

The post Wind, solar and drought drive down emissions, but Australia’s progress on targets still lags appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Commission argues it can raise €150bn to fund greener transport, cleaner industry and renovated homes

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

Senior officials have pledged that the European Union’s recovery plan will “do no harm” to the bloc’s landmark goals to tackle the climate crisis and threats to the natural world.

Following the unveiling of a €750bn (£671bn) recovery plan to pull EU economies out of the deep economic downturn caused by coronavirus, the European commission announced further details of green spending on Thursday.

Continue reading...

There is no easy route to a greener global economy. But since coronavirus hit, politics and business are thinking again

Timing matters. Early 2020 saw an economic collapse the likes of which have not been seen in living memory. Growth has collapsed, unemployment has soared, poverty has increased.

Yet in different circumstances the past few months would have been dominated by calls for countries to do more to cut carbon emissions. As 2019 drew to an end, everybody from the managing director of the International Monetary Fund to the governor of the Bank of England was warning of the threat of global heating.

Continue reading...