Continent is set for massive urbanisation but can avoid relying on fossil fuels, says IEA
Africa is poised to lead the world’s cleanest economic revolution by using renewable energy sources to power a massive spread of urbanisation, says an IEA report.
The IEA, or International Energy Agency, predicts that solar energy will play a big role in supporting the continent’s growing population and industrialisation over the next 20 years.
Continue reading...Continent is embarking on a huge expansion of power stations, most of which will burn coal
Last week the UN secretary general, António Guterres, called for an end to new coal-fired power plants. Many European countries including the UK and Germany are decreasing their dependence on coal, but this is not the case everywhere. Across Africa many people rely on standby diesel generators to supplement erratic electricity supplies, leading to local air pollution problems and high emissions of climate-heating carbon dioxide.
Although Africa is in a unique position to leapfrog dependence on fossil fuels and utilise abundant renewable sources such as wind and solar, the continent is embarking on a massive expansion of fossil fuel electricity. More than 200 new power stations are planned, the majority of which will burn coal. Power ships – vast floating power stations, some burning highly polluting bunker oil – are already moored in Ghana, Sierra Leone and Mozambique.
Continue reading...Victory for green groups follows damning scientific study and criticism from spending watchdog
The government has halted fracking in England with immediate effect in a watershed moment for environmentalists and community activists.
Ministers also warned shale gas companies it would not support future fracking projects, in a crushing blow to companies that had been hoping to capitalise on one of the new frontiers of growth in the fossil fuel industry.
Continue reading...Ausgrid hits out at council for widening Foundry Street and moving the kerb during the electricity distributor’s live work ban
Newcastle residents have been left confused after a series of events led to a power pole seemingly installed in the middle of a road.
Photos of the baffling pole – which sits in the middle of Foundry Street in Wickham – were shared widely on social media, as the City of Newcastle and electricity distributor Ausgrid traded blame for who was responsible.
Continue reading...Controversial energy scheme had been halted by European court
The UK’s largest fossil fuel generators may be back in line for almost £1bn in backup power subsidies this winter after the European commission approved the UK’s flagship energy scheme, which was ruled illegal last year.
A shock European court ruling brought the government’s “capacity market” to a standstill last November, triggering an in-depth investigation into whether the UK’s plan to pay power plants to stay open was compatible with EU state aid law.
Continue reading...Exclusive: public notice on proposal was placed in classifieds of paper in Queensland town of Emerald
A Clive Palmer-controlled company has applied for a mining lease and environmental authority to build a massive coalmine four times the size of Adani’s in the Queensland Galilee Basin.
The Galilee Coal project – formerly called China First – has not progressed since it gained federal environmental approval in late 2013.
Continue reading...NunaX car of Dutch team catches fire 250km before finish of 3,000km Darwin to Adelaide race
The leading car in the World Solar Challenge has caught fire and withdrawn from the race a little more than 250km from the Adelaide finish.
The NunaX car of Dutch team Vattenfall caught fire just before Mambray Creek on Thursday.
Continue reading...Anthony Albanese asks PM why he’s raising hopes on dam support. Plus Jacqui Lambie raises concerns over Turkish invasion. All the day’s events, live
Because it is only “radicals” who care about the climate, apparently.
#owningtheleft
Labor's declaration of a climate emergency is just a sop to the superglue protestors and radical greens. Labor remains desperate to receive the support of the radical activists despite what they've said since the election. Labor can't be trusted to fight for jobs.
Tony Burke jumps up to congratulate Tony Smith on the integrity award he received today (have a look a few posts down and check out Kenneth Hayne’s speech) and thanks him for some of the difficult decisions he took during the medevac debate (you may remember that Smith stuck to the parliament rules, and ensured the parliament had a vote, and also ordered the solicitor general advice Christian Porter was relying on to shut down the debate, be tabled – which revealed the advice was not iron-clad).
Scott Morrison then gets up to add his congratulations, and a few in Labor respond with “now you think about it” to which Morrison gets very upset and accuses Labor of politicising the moment.
Continue reading...Government says foreign ship appears to have caused the spill, in accusation likely to further strain Brazilian-Venezuelan relations
Thick crude oil that has stained hundreds of miles of pristine Brazilian beach in recent weeks probably originated in Venezuela, the Brazilian government has said, in an accusation likely to further strain relations between the two countries.
Related: 'Chaos, chaos, chaos': a journey through Bolsonaro's Amazon inferno
Continue reading...Residents say they will not be ousted by energy firm seeking to expand the Garzweiler mine
A group of villagers living on the edge of one of Germany’s biggest surface coalmines have vowed not sell their properties to the energy company RWE, and to mount a legal challenge against any attempt to oust them from their homes.
The protest alliance is the first coordinated effort in more than 10 years against the expansion of the Garzweiler mine in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which threatens the existence of 12 villages that are home to 7,600 residents. Demolition of the first four villages is scheduled to begin in 2023.
Continue reading...In many regards, China’s climate action is stronger than that of Australia or America, at much lower levels of development
Visiting the United States, Australia’s prime minister demanded of China “participation in addressing important global environmental challenges” in light of its “new status and responsibilities”. As part of a broad call to expect more of China, the comments on environment caught attention as they were made at the time of the UN climate summit.
Pointing to China’s emissions growth as an excuse for lack of climate action in Australia was in vogue a decade and longer ago. Then, China’s energy use and carbon emissions rose sharply with its investments in factories, infrastructure and housing. But things have changed in China, and there no longer is a formal distinction between climate pledges from developed and developing countries. In many regards, China’s climate action is stronger than that of Australia or America, at much lower levels of development.
Continue reading...Film by Swedish activist and Guardian journalist George Monbiot says nature must be used to repair broken climate
The protection and restoration of living ecosystems such as forests, mangroves and seagrass meadows can repair the planet’s broken climate but are being overlooked, Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot have warned in a new short film.
Natural climate solutions could remove huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as plants grow. But these methods receive only 2% of the funding spent on cutting emissions, say the climate activists.
Continue reading...Some Liberals are concerned about the power to break up big companies being extended economy-wide
The Morrison government’s backbench economics committee has signed off on the long telegraphed “big stick” package but MPs, already uncomfortable about the proposal, have expressed reservations about how it might be amended in the Senate.
The package, which contains a power to break up big energy companies if they engage in price gouging, will go to the Coalition party room for approval on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Worldwide commission aims to end energy poverty in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia by driving investment in new technology
Electricity could be delivered to more than a billion people currently living without it within a decade by linking up small-scale projects into a giant, environmentally-friendly network.
According to a new global commission, advances in micro energy grids and renewable energy technologies could “dramatically accelerate change” and transform lives in rural areas of sub-Saharan African and south Asia.
Continue reading...Shinjiro Koizumi says: ‘We will be doomed if we allow another accident to occur’
Japan’s new environment minister has called for the country’s nuclear reactors to be scrapped to prevent a repeat of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Shinjiro Koizumi’s comments, made hours after he became Japan’s third-youngest cabinet minister since the war, could set him on a collision course with Japan’s pro-nuclear prime minister, Shinzo Abe.
Continue reading...Corporate watchdog urges clean-up of supply chains as analysis finds weak regulation and enforcement has led to lack of scrutiny
Most of the world’s top companies extracting key minerals for electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines have been linked with human rights abuses in their mines, research has found.
Analysis published by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), an international corporate watchdog, revealed that 87% of the 23 largest companies mining cobalt, copper, lithium, manganese, nickel and zinc – the six minerals essential to the renewable energy industry – have faced allegations of abuse including land rights infringements, corruption, violence or death over the past 10 years.
Continue reading...Judge denies costs protection over injunction restricting protests at Lancashire site
An environmental group has been forced to withdraw its legal challenge to a wide-ranging injunction by the fracking firm Cuadrilla after being “priced out of court”.
Three fracking protesters are facing court action after the energy company obtained the injunction restricting protests at its shale gas exploration site in Lancashire.
Continue reading...The warmer it gets, the more we use air conditioning. The more we use air conditioning, the warmer it gets. Is there any way out of this trap?
On a sweltering Thursday evening in Manhattan last month, people across New York City were preparing for what meteorologists predicted would be the hottest weekend of the year. Over the past two decades, every record for peak electricity use in the city has occurred during a heatwave, as millions of people turn on their air conditioning units at the same time. And so, at the midtown headquarters of Con Edison, the company that supplies more than 10 million people in the New York area with electricity, employees were busy turning a conference room on the 19th floor into an emergency command centre.
Inside the conference room, close to 80 engineers and company executives, joined by representatives of the city’s emergency management department, monitored the status of the city power grid, directed ground crews and watched a set of dials displaying each borough’s electricity use tick upward. “It’s like the bridge in Star Trek in there,” Anthony Suozzo, a former senior system operator with the company, told me. “You’ve got all hands on deck, they’re telling Scotty to fix things, the system is running at max capacity.”
Continue reading...This invasive plant was reviled for clogging rivers but now it’s helping provide cleaner energy and protect health
It is 9am on the shores of Lake Victoria’s Winam Gulf in Kenya’s Kisumu county. Tourists are arriving on the beach in droves, preparing to spend the day sunbathing and taking boat rides. Behind them, enormous marabou storks on spindly grey legs are pacing the beach, waiting for scraps.
Nearby, a group of women scan the horizon, looking for the fishing boats that will soon arrive with their daily catch.
Continue reading...Jadestone CEO says it could cover the cost of cleaning up a major spill, even though company has never made a profit
The new operator of the site of Australia’s worst ever oil spill has dismissed concerns it might not have the financial capacity to clean up should disaster strike again.
Ten years ago on Wednesday an estimated 40 million litres of oil leaked from a faulty rig in the Montara field, in the Timor Sea, and for 10 weeks spread over tens of thousands of square kilometres of ocean.
Continue reading...