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Scientists are excavating one of the most important Jurassic sites ever discovered in the UK.

Odfjell Oceanwind is renting out its WindGrid technology – mobile offshore wind units of 11MW each that serve microgrids powering oil and gas rigs.

The post How floating wind microgrids are powering oil and gas rigs appeared first on RenewEconomy.

As Australians have been preoccupied by coronavirus, a wider environmental calamity has unfurled. The emergency isn’t over, it’s only just beginning

Build back better. In the early days of Covid-19, that slogan rang out everywhere: a pledge to harness disruption for positive change.

For a time, everything felt possible. There are no atheists in foxholes and, we discovered, no free marketeers in a pandemic, as even the most conservative governments pledged to spend on a scale previously unimaginable.

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Both spend similar amounts of money but men use cars much more, Swedish analysis shows

Men’s spending on goods causes 16% more climate-heating emissions than women’s, despite the sum of money being very similar, a study has found.

The biggest difference was men’s spending on petrol and diesel for their cars. The gender differences in emissions have been little studied, the researchers said, and should be recognised in action to beat the climate crisis.

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Water that should be crystal clear has become a green-brown slop of microscopic algae because of industrial farm waste

There’s more below the surface than we thought – something even worse than the water companies’ disgusting habit of filling our rivers with raw sewage. After a deep dive into the data, the team that made Rivercide last week discovered that while sewage now dominates our perceptions of river pollution, it’s not their major cause of death.

On the border between Wales and England, we found a great river dying before our eyes. The Wye is covered by every possible conservation law, but in just a few years it has spiralled towards complete ecological collapse. The vast beds of water crowfoot, the long fluttering weed whose white and yellow flowers once bedecked the surface of the river, and which – like mangroves around tropical seas – provide the nurseries in which young fish and other animals grow and adults hide and breed, have almost vanished in recent years. Our own mapping suggests a loss of between 90% and 97%.

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The McGowan Government has become a founding member of the Smart Energy Council's Zero Carbon Certification Scheme to boost the State's fledgling renewable hydrogen industry.

The post WA joins Zero Carbon Certification Scheme for hydrogen appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Australia had biggest increase in fossil fuel support of any G20 nation over last five years, at nearly $300 per person in 2019.

The post Australia lifted fossil fuel subsidies more than any G20 nation, says BNEF appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A two-hour battery storage systems on the Mornington Peninsula will be the biggest in the state if built on schedule by the end of 2022.

The post Plans unveiled for biggest battery storage system in Victoria appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Presenting CP Daily, Carbon Pulse’s free newsletter. It’s a daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world. Subscribe here TOP STORY Green hydrogen could get free allocation in EU carbon market reform -official The European Commission is considering broadening the scope of product benchmarks under the EU’s carbon market rules for industry […]

Offset registry Climate Action Reserve (CAR) on Monday announced it is developing an ex-ante crediting methodology for fuel treatments, including prescribed burns, in order to reduce the severity of wildfires in the western US.

Amid a global voluntary carbon market it says is hamstrung by profiteering, criminal activity, and a lack of regulation, a team of market veterans has launched a new carbon offset firm with the goal of providing for its customers a 'genuine, fair, and transparent' path to net zero.

There have been just six verified sightings of the pygmy blue whale off Sydney in 18 years. Rare sightings like these are crucial, because the giants are considered 'data deficient'. Vanessa Pirotta, Wildlife scientist, Macquarie University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Gas generation declined again in first half of 2021, including in NSW where renewables now supply 17 times more electricity.

The post Gas generation slumps in first half of 2021, as wind and solar continue to shine appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The European Commission is considering broadening the scope of product benchmarks under the EU’s carbon market rules for industry to include clean production methods - a measure that could grant free allowances for green hydrogen or clean steel production, a senior EU official said.

Exclusive: Diplomatic email suggests whirlwind lobbying trip by Sussan Ley has won over at least nine of 21 members on World Heritage Committee

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Australia’s global lobbying offensive to keep the Great Barrier Reef off the world heritage “in danger” list has secured support from at least nine of the 21-member committee that will make the decision, according to a diplomatic email seen by Guardian Australia.

Australia’s Paris-based ambassador to Unesco, Megan Anderson, said in the email she believed the government had won enough support to delay the decision on the “in danger” listing until at least 2023.

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Monitoring suggests toxic smoke in Yakutsk is one of world’s worst ever air pollution events

• ‘Everything is on fire’: Siberia hit by unprecedented burning

A heatwave in one of the world’s coldest regions has sparked forest fires and threatened the Siberian city of Yakutsk with an “airpocalypse” of thick toxic smoke, atmospheric monitoring services have reported.

High levels of particulate matter and possibly also chemicals including ozone, benzene and hydrogen cyanide are thought likely to make this one of the world’s worst ever air pollution events.

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The US climate envoy, appointed by Joe Biden to spearhead the country’s international efforts to tackle the climate emergency, urged all large economies to come forward with new plans to cut emissions before the Cop26 UN climate talks in Glasgow this November.

‘While it may be unfolding in slow motion to some,’ he said, ‘this test is as acute and as existential as any previous one. Time is running out.’

• John Kerry: world leaders must step up to avoid worst impacts of climate crisis

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US climate envoy John Kerry says help from China is needed to avoid a dangerous rise in heat.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned that current government spending on post-COVID recovery measures isn’t targeting sufficiently clean energy investment, and that carbon emissions may climb to record levels by 2023 as a result.

Reporting on the pandemic and global heating is an immense responsibility. More than ever we have to look to the possibility of positive change

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This time last year Victoria was enduring its long winter of Covid isolation. Other states were cautiously loosening restrictions. Most Australians were clinging to the assumption that the pandemic would end, sometime. Vaccines would be developed and, once we’d all got them, the threat would be over. We just had to hang in there until it was done.

Now the idea of a neat end point is far less certain because mutated versions of the virus keep slipping through our defences and closing down our lives again, just as we dare to make even the most modest of plans.

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