The Finnish electricity grid’s head of operations says sabotage can’t be ruled out
An undersea power cable linking Finland and Estonia broke down on Wednesday, Finland’s prime minister said, the latest in a series of incidents involving cables and energy pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
The Finnish electricity grid’s head of operations, Arto Pahkin, told the public broadcaster Yle that sabotage could not be ruled out.
Continue reading...Guardian Australia was told firm disclosed its private sector work, but it is not known which clients were listed
Consultancy firm McKinsey was paid $1.6m over 11 weeks to “inform” and “guide” Australian energy and climate policy, despite its work for the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies.
The firm, whose links to oil and gas giants are well known, conducted “detailed market, economic and policy analysis” and produced modelling that underpinned “internal energy and climate policy work”.
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Continue reading...The Victorian premier has defended the state’s business credentials saying there’s key data missing from the Business Council of Australia’s report. Follow today’s news headlines live
Weather check shows mixed conditions forecast across Australian cities
It’s a mixed, if warm, bag in capital cities today, with the Bureau of Meteorology forecasting storms in Melbourne, sunny skies in Brisbane and Adelaide and showers across all other major cities.
Continue reading...Move to exclude fossil fuel firms from investment portfolios follows years of campaigning by staff and students
More than three-quarters of UK universities have pledged to exclude fossil fuel companies from their investment portfolios, according to campaigners.
The move, which is part of a wider drive to limit investment in fossil fuels, follows years of campaigning by staff and students across the higher education sector.
Continue reading...Aemo says it does not want to ‘directly control people’s rooftop solar’ but it may be necessary to reduce or cut off power gleaned from the sun
The power grid in eastern Australia could experience “outage conditions” as soon as next spring unless states speed up actions to cope with surplus generation from solar panels on sunny days, the Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) has warned.
In a report released on Monday, Aemo called for an “emergency backstop” mechanism to ensure grid stability when households and other solar photovoltaic (PV) owners export excess electricity.
Continue reading...Dave Lewis says the near-constant stream of clean electricity could supply the grid as early as 2030
In the south-west of Morocco, a sprawl of wind and solar farms stretching across an area the size of Greater London could soon generate the green electricity powering more than 9m British homes.
This is the unflinching vision of Sir Dave Lewis, the former Tesco boss who is hoping to build the world’s longest subsea power cable in order to harness north Africa’s renewable energy sources and power Britain’s clean energy agenda.
Continue reading...Departmental analysis includes contentious measurements, but climate minister says government is cleaning up after ‘decade of denial, delay, dysfunction and utter neglect’
The Australian government will claim it is on track to meet its legislated 43% emissions reduction target by 2030 after a departmental analysis found it had improved its position over the past year.
The government said annual emissions projections, based on an assessment of government policies and other trends, suggest national climate pollution would be at least 42.6% less than 2005 levels by the end of the decade, compared with 37% last year. The forecast included the impact of an underwriting scheme for new large-scale renewable energy and batteries, and vehicle efficiency standards that from next year require auto companies to start selling more zero and low-emissions cars.
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Continue reading...Petrostate’s rebuke comes as Saudi Arabia and allies try to derail transition promise made at climate talks last year
The world must stand behind a historic resolution made last year to “transition away from fossil fuels”, the United Arab Emirates has said, in a powerful intervention into a damaging row over climate action.
The petrostate’s stance will be seen as as a sharp rebuke to its neighbour and close ally Saudi Arabia, which had been trying to unpick the global commitment at UN climate talks in Azerbaijan this week.
Continue reading...Consulting giant had said it engages with clients to help them transition to cleaner energy even as it knew they were in line to exceed climate targets
The world’s biggest consulting firm found that its clients were on a trajectory to bust global climate targets, details of internal forecasting in 2021 uncovered by the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR) and the Guardian reveal.
McKinsey & Company has worked with some of the world’s biggest emitters, including many of the largest fossil fuel producers. It has previously argued it is necessary to engage these clients to help them transition to cleaner forms of energy and hit the target of limiting global warming to less than 1.5C above preindustrial levels.
Continue reading...Jacinta Allan says project will be able to power more than 51,000 homes and include 119MW solar facility and 100MW two-hour battery
The Victorian government will spend $370m to build a massive solar and battery farm able to power more than 50,000 homes, which it says will be the first state government-owned energy project since the electricity grid was privatised in the 1990s.
Jacinta Allan announced the new project in Horsham, in Victoria’s west, which is the second investment made by the government-owned State Electricity Commission.
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Continue reading...Coming hot weather prompts Australian Energy Market Operator to predict shortfall in electricity supplies for NSW and Queensland
South-eastern Australia will endure its first big heatwave of the season in the coming days, elevating fire risks and potentially straining the power grid in some states.
Dean Narramore, a senior Bureau of Meteorology forecaster, said day and night temperatures would be as much as 8-14C hotter than usual for this time of year.
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Continue reading...Targeting of substations connected to three working nuclear plants risks nuclear catastrophe in Europe, says Greenpeace
Ukraine’s power network is at “heightened risk of catastrophic failure” after Russia’s missile and drone attack on Sunday, Greenpeace has warned, raising fears about the safety of the country’s three operational nuclear power stations.
The strikes by Moscow were aimed at electricity substations “critical to the operation of Ukraine’s nuclear plants” and there is a possibility that the reactors could lose power and become unsafe, according to a briefing note prepared for the Guardian.
Continue reading...Some experts liken tariffs to a game of whack-a-mole, with trade flows simply rerouted if the potential rewards are big enough
Businesses are bracing for the economic impact of a second Trump presidency, which, if his campaign promises are to be believed, will mean tariffs across nearly all imports to the US, especially those from China.
But amid the gloom over the spectre of a renewed global trade war, some manufacturers may be looking to those who already have a playbook on dealing with aggressive US levies, such as China’s solar companies.
Continue reading...Climate change minister’s effort to convince Ankara to drop out underlines push for ‘Pacific Cop’
The climate change minister, Chris Bowen, made a whistle-stop visit to Turkey on Friday night in an attempt to reach a deal for Australia to host tens of thousands of people at a major UN climate summit in 2026.
Bowen visited the Turkish capital, Ankara, on the way to the Cop29 climate conference in the Azerbaijan capital, Baku. The two countries are vying to host Cop31, and the Albanese government hopes Turkey will exit the race in time for an announcement before next week.
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Continue reading...Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility accuses Australian oil giant of misleading and false claims in closing arguments
Santos misled investors by positioning itself as a “clean fuels company” with a credible net zero plan, the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR) has alleged in closing remarks to a world-first greenwashing case.
Noel Hutley SC, representing ACCR, said the case was about protecting the public interest by “ensuring that commitments by Australian companies regarding climate change are reasonably based and not misleading”.
Continue reading...Ofgem gives green light to five interconnectors capable of powering millions of homes
Projects to lay five subsea power cables capable of powering millions of homes have been given the green light as Great Britain prepares to use its giant offshore windfarms to become a net exporter of green electricity in the 2030s.
The energy regulator, Ofgem, has approved three subsea cable projects linking Great Britain to power grids in Germany, Ireland and Northern Ireland to help share renewable electricity across borders.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Target is 81% emissions cut compared with 1990, but activists say it must be backed by plan of action
Keir Starmer will announce a stringent new climate goal for the UK on Tuesday, the Guardian can reveal, with a target in line with the advice given to the government by its scientists and independent advisers.
The UK will pledge to cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, a target in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Continue reading...Shadow cabinet secretary Claire Coutinho accepted donation from Lord Bamford while overseeing millions awarded to his family businesses in green grants
A Conservative former cabinet minister who took donations from the billionaire boss of the JCB digger dynasty – including a £7,000 trip on his VIP private helicopter – oversaw decisions to award his family’s business empire millions in taxpayer-funded green energy grants.
Claire Coutinho also posed for pictures promoting Lord Bamford’s personal £100m hydrogen engine project and accepted a £7,500 donation from JCB to her local election campaign while she was the energy secretary in Rishi Sunak’s government.
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Racism, colonialism ‘driving Indigenous self-harm’
Australia’s dark colonial past and ongoing racism are driving self-harm in Indigenous communities, according to a respected Aboriginal psychologist.
That whole process has left communities suffering from intergenerational trauma, disadvantage and ongoing racism, as well as the exclusion from the benefits of society and a lack of acknowledgment and respect for their different cultural values.
We still want clinical approaches but we want to see culture at the centre of that.
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
Continue reading...State-owned Neso says Britain could be net exporter of green electricity by end of decade at no extra cost
A plan to create a clean electricity system by 2030 promised by Labour before the election is “immensely challenging” but still “credible” if ministers take urgent action to fix Britain’s sluggish planning system, the energy system operator has said.
Britain could become a net exporter of green electricity by the end of the decade at no extra costs to the energy system under the plans and bills may even fall if ministers make the right policy changes, according to the operator.
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