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IEA warns that Covid-19 could cause a slowdown in world’s clean energy transition

The coronavirus health crisis may lead to a slump in global carbon emissions this year but the outbreak poses a threat to long-term climate action by undermining investment in clean energy, according to the global energy watchdog.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects the economic fallout of Covid-19 to wipe out the world’s oil demand growth for the year ahead, which should cap the fossil fuel emissions that contribute to the climate crisis.

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A federal judge on Thursday ruled California’s ETS linkage with Quebec does not violate the US Constitution’s Treaty and Compact Clauses, but the court did not rule on two remaining legal challenges brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

New research from Australia’s national science agency shows a huge amount of ocean plastic ends up on land, where it gets trapped. Britta Denise Hardesty, Principal Research Scientist, Oceans and Atmosphere Flagship, CSIRO Chris Wilcox, Senior Research Scientist, CSIRO Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

EUAs suffered their biggest daily so far this year on Thursday, tumbling below €23 as markets reeled following US travel restrictions as part of a global scramble to limit the impact of the coronavirus.

The research, used to help avoid a ban, claimed ‘severe impacts’ on farming if glyphosate was outlawed

Monsanto secretly funded academic studies indicating “very severe impacts” on farming and the environment if its controversial glyphosate weedkiller were banned, an investigation has found.

The research was used by the National Farmers’ Union and others to successfully lobby against a European ban in 2017. As a result of the revelations, the NFU has now amended its glyphosate information to declare the source of the research.

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Proposed mining of seabed could destroy unstudied ecosystems and disrupt vital carbon-storing functions, says naturalist

Sir David Attenborough has urged governments to ban deep sea mining, following a study warning of “potentially disastrous” risks to the ocean’s life-support systems if it goes ahead.

The study, by Fauna and Flora International (FFI), warns proposed plans to mine the seabed could cause significant loss of biodiversity, disruption of the ocean’s “biological pump”, and the loss of microbes important for storing carbon. The process, requiring machines operating thousands of metres under the sea, could also create plumes of sediment that smother areas far from the mining sites and kill wildlife.

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US biofuel credit (RIN) prices under the Renewable Fuel Standard tumbled on Thursday as the global macroeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 coronavirus exerted bearish pressure on the market.

Sweden has cut short a carbon credit delivery contract with a controversial Uganda-based forestry project over legal issues, having bought fewer than a quarter of the intended offsets from the scheme.

It is cheaper to build new renewable sources of energy generation than coal plants, a report says.

Green corridor for wildlife will also help to meet carbon targets

It was hard, chilly work for nine-year-old Alfie Perry and his eight-year-old classmate Dempsey Owens.

But, after a bit of cajoling from their pals and teacher on a windswept hillside above the town of Neath, the pair succeeded in planting a sessile oak that could soon be part of a forest stretching continuously the length and breadth of Wales.

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Europe’s top emitter RWE slightly advanced its hedging rate for future generation over Q4 2019, extending EUA purchases to cover as far as 2030, even as its emissions collapsed 25% last year, the company said in financial results on Thursday.

Europe and Russia decide to postpone their mission to search for life on the Red Planet.

The Green Climate Fund board has agreed to co-finance a forest carbon venture initiated by Japan’s biggest bank in at least seven countries across Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.

The winners of the Mammal Society’s annual photographic competition have been announced and the first prize has been claimed by amateur photographer Roger Cox from East London.

All winning and highly commended photographs can be viewed at the MPOY2020 exhibition, which is this year taking place at Robinson College, University of Cambridge, at the start of the Mammal Society’s annual Spring Conference. Entry to the exhibition and the Cranbrook Lecture on 27 Friday March is free to the public. For more details, visit this site

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Charity says rise in catches putting strain on stocks, but brown crab is back on the menu

Consumers are being urged to avoid eating cuttlefish caught by trawlers in the Channel to help alleviate pressure on threatened stocks.

A rise in prices has fuelled an increase in catches of the molluscs over the last decade, with landings in the UK in 2018 worth a record £14.9m, the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) said. Declines in populations in the Channel have led the charity to add cuttlefish caught in the area to its red “fish to avoid” list.

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UNEP is hiring a specialized consultant for 12 months to lead on improving exposure of the projects and blended finance facilities in which UNEP’s Climate Finance Unit is involved, and contribute to the role of communications and knowledge management.

Britain and the EU are complicit in hundreds of deaths a year in their refusal to impose effective rules on commercial fishing

How many people want dolphins killed? Apart from the psychopath shooting them in Florida, and the Japanese hunters slaughtering them every year in Taiji cove, I would hazard a guess at none. They are perhaps the world’s most loved wild animals. Yet, every day, dolphin killers form an orderly queue, at supermarket checkouts in the UK and around the world. If you are buying fish, and there is no clear and watertight guarantee, you are likely to be complicit in something that would revolt you.

A horrifying report last week showed that dolphin numbers in the Indian Ocean have fallen by 87% since 1980, as they’ve been drowned in gill nets set for tuna. But the problem is not confined to distant seas, or to tuna fisheries. On average, two dolphins or porpoises are washed up on UK beaches every day. Many of them show the scrapes and indentations caused by fishing nets. Discoveries of dead dolphins around the Bay of Biscay this year are likely to beat the grisly record set in 2019, when 1,100 were found on the French coast. Large numbers are also turning up on the beaches of Ireland.

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The Earth's great ice sheets are losing mass six times faster today than they were in the 1990s.

AEMC Reliability Panel says climate change making reliable electricity supply more difficult, but that emerging technologies like battery storage will help address these challenges.

The post Climate change taking toll on reliable electricity supply, industry panel says appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Tesla ploughs ahead with plans to localise parts for Chinese Model 3 production, increasing production of certain parts in new lines at Shanghai Gigafactory.

The post Tesla ploughs ahead in China as stock slides on COVI-19, oil price plunge appeared first on RenewEconomy.