Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Weather warnings across multiple states on Wednesday as Dirranbandi residents told to evacuate Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Forecasters have warned of heatwave conditions across much of Australia as a bushfire threatens a Queensland border town that was evacuated overnight. Early Wednesday morning, the Queensland Fire Department said a bushfire near Dirranbandi in south-west Queensland was still burning and travelling towards the township. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading...

As a new report makes clear, the timetable is dauntingly tight. But the potential rewards on offer are huge One of Labour’s first acts in government was to lift the de facto ban on new onshore windfarms introduced by the Conservatives in 2016, which closed off one of the key pathways to clean, cheap energy by the 2030s. This week, progress was resumed as plans were outlined for what would be the most productive onshore windfarm in England. According to developers, the Scout Moor scheme in Greater Manchester could meet 10% of the region’s energy needs by the end of the decade. As a major new report published on Tuesday makes clear, if Labour’s mission of a clean electricity system by 2030 is to be met, an avalanche of such projects will be required. The publicly owned National Energy System Operator (Neso) estimates that a doubling of onshore wind capacity will be necessary, along with a still bigger expansion of offshore wind and a tripling of solar power. When this is all considered alongside the need to transform the country’s power and transmission networks at an unprecedented pace, the daunting scale of the task becomes clear. Crucially, though, Neso’s analysis finds that the 2030 date is achievable if, to put it non-technically, the government, the energy industry and regulators truly go for it. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Christian Åslund was shocked at the difference between what he saw in 2002 and what confronted him this summer Standing in blinding sunlight on an archipelago above the Arctic Circle, the photographer Christian Åslund looked in shock at a glacier he had last visited in 2002. It had almost completely disappeared. Two decades ago Greenpeace asked Åslund to use photographs taken in the early 20th century, and photograph the same views in order to document how glaciers in Svalbard were melting due to global heating. The difference in ice density in those pictures, taken almost a century apart, was staggering. Continue reading...

Expert analysis backs our policy and its benefits for the country. Defeatist critics should take note Ed Milband is secretary of state for energy security and net zero Labour fought and won the last election on the argument that every family and business in the country was paying the price of the previous government’s failure to deliver clean, homegrown energy for Britain. Families and businesses know from the cost of living crisis that our dependence on fossil fuel markets controlled by dictators such as Vladimir Putin left the UK vulnerable and exposed to energy price spikes, as well as the escalating costs of climate breakdown. We also know that the drive to clean energy represents the greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century. That is why the prime minister has put delivering clean power by 2030 at the heart of one of his five missions for government. Ed Milband is secretary of state for energy security and net zero Continue reading...