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Climate Change And The Sustainability of the Dairy industry

There are a lot more problems with the dairy industry than the price of milk. The Australian dairy farming industry is in a state of crisis. Cheap dairy products and fluctuations in both the domestic and global markets have taken a financial toll on farmers. Consumers have rallied to help struggling dairy producers. But this is only half the problem. The true cost of dairy is also paid by dairy cows and the environment. With the meat and dairy industries as the leading cause of global warming, in 2010, the UN announced that a global shift towards a plant-based diet …

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Clean energy – current market trends

Marco Stella is Senior Broker, Environmental Markets, at TFS Green Australia. The TFS Green Australia team provides project and transactional environmental market brokerage and data services across all domestic and international renewable energy, energy efficiency and carbon markets. Here, Mr Stella outlines the current market trends. Large-scale Generation Certificate (LGC) market It has proven a mixed beginning to 2016 for the LGC market. A solid start across the first two months of the year saw the spot market climb into low $80 territory in February, only to soften back to a low of $75 by late March as buyers disappeared …

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Global warming milestone about to be passed and there’s no going back

Within the next couple of weeks, a remote part of north-western Tasmania is likely to grab headlines around the world as a major climate change marker is passed. The aptly named Cape Grim monitoring site jointly run by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology will witness the first baseline reading of 400 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, researchers predict. “Once it’s over [400 ppm], it won’t go back,” said Paul Fraser, dubbed by CSIRO as the Air Man of Cape Grim, and now a retired CSIRO fellow. “It could be within 10 days.” The most …

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Renewables Could Revitalise Australian Manufacturing says Shorten

Zero – that’s the number of times solar and renewable energy were mentioned in Treasurer Scott Morrison’s Budget speech on May 3. Opposition leader Bill Shorten fared better on that front in his Budget reply speech on Thursday evening. In the speech, Mr. Shorten said Labor views renewables as a means of giving new life to Australia’s manufacturing sector as reported by Energy Matters. “By 2030, there will be $2.5 trillion of investment in renewable energy in the Asia-Pacific. Australian workers should be collaborating with our universities and researchers to design, manufacture and export battery technology, solar panels and turbine …

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Australia large-scale renewable investment hits a low point

Australian investment in large-scale renewable energy projects fell sharply in the first quarter of 2016, more than six months after the Coalition government promised “certainty” after forcing Labor to agree to slash the renewable energy target to 33,000GWh. New data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance showed that investment in large-scale renewables – wind and solar – slumped to just $US69 million, falling back to levels seen in the midst of the investment freeze, when the then Abbott government sought to abolish the RET altogether, or seek bigger cuts. The impact in 2014 was so dramatic that large-scale investment actually dried up completely …

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Scientists use DNA to investigate cleaner energy sources

The key to unlocking cleaner energy might be in our DNA, according to a new study by Stanford scientists. By combining synthetic DNA with microscopic particles, Yuran Zhang and a team of geothermal energy researchers hope to tap into the widely available but often overlooked cleaner energy source all over the world. Geothermal energy is the heat of our Earth, and geothermal power is generated by extracting that heat and converting it to electricity. Effectively, the heat moves through irregular cracks or fractures deep underground, so geothermal engineers must have a detailed understanding of the underlying geology and the location …

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Renewable energy and the promise of nanotechnology

With the goal of bringing together experts from the fields of medicine, engineering, science, and technology, the Australian Institute of Nanoscale Science and Technology officially opens its doors today at the University of Sydney. The institute’s Founding Director, Thomas Maschmeyer, is the recent developer a nano-structured battery gel. He hopes the gel can help restructure the power grid, putting a focus on renewable energy while helping to cut carbon emissions. Could Nanotechnology save the human race? The Australian Institute of Nanoscale Science and Technology hopes to expedite the process. To listen to the podcast click here. Nanoscience and nanotechnology involve …

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With carbon trading conservation pays for itself

In a place like Tasmania we cannot escape nature because it’s all abound. Nature is a great provider. It gives us clean air, clean water and productive soils. It pollinates our crops, and gives us places to recreate and places for inspiration. People value nature for cultural connection to place, for the value it brings the community, for the value it brings our economy and for itself. The Tasmanian Land Conservancy has been working to make explicit some of those connections. In terms of the economic value, in 2010 TLC embarked on the New Leaf Project, acquiring 28,000ha of native …

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Zero waste living in a busy world

City-dwellers are embracing the trend of zero waste living to live more sustainably. Living a completely rubbish-free life is difficult but some are managing to reduce their waste so dramatically that two years worth of rubbish can fit into a mason jar. Melbourne resident Erin Rhoads is one of the growing number of people embracing the lifestyle, but you would never know it. “I work in the CBD, I still wear heels, go out for cocktails, nothing has really changed,” Rhoads told news.com.au. One of the things that has defined the modern zero waste movement is that it could not …

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Malcolm Turnbull defends renewable energy agency Abbott wanted scrapped

Malcolm Turnbull says the renewable energy agency that Tony Abbott wanted to scrap has been “very well run”, as he announces a $1 billion fund to spur investment in the sector. The funding will be spread over a decade and will draw on part of the borrowings meant to support the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, a $10 billion scheme that Mr Abbott vowed to scrap but which will be retained. The new statement will make it clear that a bill to dismantle the CEFC, which has been rejected twice and is a trigger for a double-dissolution election, will be abandoned …

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