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Renewables drive down wholesale prices in first quarter, but a massive coal outage and a heatwave drove prices up in two coal dependent states.

The post Renewables drive down prices in first quarter, but heatwaves and outages cause spikes in coal dominated grids appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Government support for green manufacturing is actually the easy part. To truly reduce emissions, we must stop digging up and burning fossil fuels

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Last week Anthony Albanese finally announced the government’s major plan for the transition to a renewable energy economy. The Future Made in Australia plan was quickly derided by critics as “picking winners”, in the misguided view that the market is better at deciding how to tackle climate change and that the market is in any way free or lacking distortions.

It’s an article of faith among many economists and commentators that governments should not try to “pick winners”, despite the fact that Australia has a long and glorious tradition of doing so.

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Westerners see elephants as pets, said Mokgweetsi Masisi, whose government threatened to send 30,000 elephants to Germany and the UK to demonstrate their dangers

Many Europeans value the lives of elephants more than those of the people who live around them, the president of Botswana has said, amid tensions over potential trophy hunting import bans.

Botswana recently threatened to send 30,000 elephants to the UK and Germany after both countries proposed stricter controls on hunting trophies. The country’s president, Mokgweetsi Masisi, said it would help people to understand human-wildlife conflict – which is among the primary threats to the species – including the experiences of subsistence farmers affected by crop-raiding by the animals.

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The European Commission will prioritise Article 6 and voluntary markets as part of its international outreach efforts, in addition to compliance carbon markets, a senior EU official said on Wednesday.

Implementing an EU-wide biodiversity monitoring platform could cost up to €40 billion over the next decade, with each euro invested estimated to pay off up to 10 times, a researcher involved in the project said Wednesday.

The Scottish government has set out exploratory plans for how it will create a flow of investable natural capital initiatives, including biodiversity credits.

An invesment management firm has launched a new energy transition exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracking several compliance carbon markets.

European carbon allowance prices retreated on Wednesday morning as gas prices weakened after four days of gains with the benchmark EUA contract giving up a big chunk of Tuesday's steep rally, while an inconclusive set of Commitment of Traders data saw some question the conviction of speculative traders in the bearish trend.

Notorious for drawing large crowds, Emerson was removed by officials who were surprised to find him back in Victoria in a week

Last week, gun-wielding conservation officers stuffed a 500-lb elephant seal in the back of a van, drove him along a winding highway in western Canada and left him on a remote beach “far from human habitation”.

The plan was to move the young seal far from British Columbia’s capital city, where over the last year, he has developed a reputation for ending up in “unusual locations”, including flower beds, city parks and busy roads.

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A direct air capture (DAC) company is expanding its remit to enable clients to purchase a range of different voluntary carbon removal credits, including from nature-based projects, as part of a portfolio service designed to complement its technology development provision. 

Corporations are still paying a premium for higher rated nature-based carbon credits, according to research by a rating agency ahead of the emergence of the first credits earning the ICVCM’s Core Carbon Principle (CCP) stamp of high integrity.

Carbon capture and storage has been passed by for better technologies to decarbonise the steel sector, according to analysis released this week.

Cars submerged in raging flood waters, planes taxiing on flooded runways and ankle-deep water at a metro station – this is what the United Arab Emirates and its desert city of Dubai look after a deluge. Dubai received about as much rain in 24 hours as it usually does in a year

• Desert city of Dubai floods as UAE hit by heaviest rainfall in 75 years

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A major scale-up in investment and policy support is required for Northwest Europe to meet its hydrogen targets, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report published on Wednesday. 

South Korea has cancelled this month's carbon allowance auction, as demand in the national carbon market remains weak amid a persisting glut of allowances.

Australian biodiversity credit developer Wilderlands has just passed 100,000 units sold, each of which protects one square metre of land, but wants to increase that ten-fold within the next year.

A recent entrant to the carbon insurance market is looking to meet demand from potentially “very big investments” in projects that would meaningfully move the market, but may need to corral capital from fellow insurers to support it.

UK researchers want to understand what triggers the Antarctic to kick out city-sized blocks of ice.

Temasek subsidiary GenZero and project developer South Pole on Wednesday launched the Asia Centre of Carbon Excellence (ACCE) to focus on what they called “novel” carbon solutions to improve Singapore’s carbon trading, policy, and project development, as well as the energy transition.

Graeme Samuel, who led 2020 review of environmental laws, says ‘I doubt that I’ll be red-faced when we do actually see the laws’

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The head of a review into Australia’s national environmental laws has accused Western Australia’s mining industry and media of spreading “misinformation” about the Albanese government’s nature reforms.

Graeme Samuel told a federal Senate hearing into the extinction crisis that “naysayers” in WA’s mining sector had run a campaign of “negative publicity” against improved environmental protections.

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