Renewable energy developers are following tracks laid by the gas industry in the Western Downs – but they’re also making the same mistakes Sign up for the Rural Network email newsletter Join the Rural Network group on Facebook to be part of the community Agriculture was once king in Glen Beasley’s neighbourhood on Queensland’s Darling Downs, a vast agricultural area about 200km west of Brisbane. “It was all grain, beef, timber and a bit of coal,” he says. Then a high voltage power line was built through his family farm outside Chinchilla in 1984. The whispers of gas came with the turn of the ..read more

New EPA directive will cut pollution equivalent to the emissions of 328m cars, but industry group decries it as a ‘reckless plan’ Coal-fired power plants would be forced to capture smokestack emissions or shut down under a rule issued on Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). New limits on greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-fired electric plants are the Biden administration’s most ambitious effort yet to roll back planet-warming pollution from the power sector, the nation’s second-largest contributor to the climate crisis. The rules are a key part of Joe Biden’s pledge t ..read more

Energy watchdog warns pace must accelerate to hit targets after new batteries increased capacity by 130% The rollout of batteries across the global electricity industry more than doubled last year but will need to be six times faster if the world hopes to meet its renewable energy targets, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). A report from the global energy watchdog found that new batteries totalling 42 gigawatts (GW) were plugged into electricity systems around the world last year, increasing total capacity by more than 130% from the year before to 85GW ..read more

Broad terms of subpoenas a ‘chilling’ precedent that could undermine future climate litigation, legal experts say Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast A federal court judge has allowed Santos to subpoena paperwork held by three activist groups who were not directly involved in a lawsuit against the oil company. Justice Natalie Charlesworth ruled on Wednesday afternoon that Santos could pursue financial records and communications between activist groups – Sunrise, Jubilee Australia and the NT Environment Centre – and the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO ..read more

The divestment movement has a long history among US student activists, including in the overlapping movements of today Cameron Jones first learned about fossil fuel divestment as a 15-year-old climate organizer. When he enrolled at Columbia University in 2022, he joined the campus’s chapter of the youth-led climate justice group the Sunrise Movement and began pushing the school in New York to sever financial ties with coal, oil and gas companies. “The time for institutions like Columbia to be in the pocket of fossil fuel corporations has passed,” Jones wrote in an October 2023 op-ed in the stu ..read more

Chris Stark says populist response and culture war around the term is inhibiting environmental progress The concept of “net zero” has become a political slogan used to start a “dangerous” culture war over the climate, and may be better dropped, the outgoing head of the UK’s climate watchdog has warned. Chris Stark, the chief executive of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), said sensible improvements to the economy and people’s lives were being blocked by a populist response to the net zero label, and he would be “intensely relaxed” about losing the term ..read more

Results highlight the difficulties government faces in selling energy transition to sceptical public Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast Voters have backed Anthony Albanese’s Future Made in Australia plan but are under the misapprehension that renewables are the most expensive form of power. Those are the results of Guardian’s latest Essential poll of 1,145 voters, illustrating the difficulty for Labor of selling the energy transition to sceptical voters. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news ro ..read more

Funds will be targeted at disadvantaged areas to create 200,000 jobs, after last week’s oil and gas lease restrictions in Alaska Joe Biden will mark Monday’s Earth Day by announcing a $7bn investment in solar energy projects nationwide, focusing on disadvantaged communities, and unveiling a week-long series of what the White House say will be “historic climate actions”. The president is traveling to Virginia’s Prince William Forest Park to deliver a speech touting his environmental record, including measures to tackle the climate crisis and increase access to, and lower costs of, clean energy ..read more

Norway’s KLP and the UK’s LGIM among those who say they have concerns over energy giant’s carbon transition goals Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast Woodside Energy is facing the prospect of an overwhelming protest vote against its climate plans when shareholders meet on Wednesday, as global investors pick apart the emissions strategy of Australia’s biggest oil and gas company. Norway’s largest pension fund, KLP, and Britain’s biggest asset manager, LGIM, are the latest investors to disclose they wi ..read more

Resolution Foundation calls for fourfold increase in renewable power investment to reduce pressure on household bills A permanent shift to higher interest rates could add billions of pounds to the UK’s renewable energy transition, a leading thinktank has warned. Borrowing costs have soared since the easing of pandemic lockdowns and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the world’s leading central banks raised interest rates to tackle inflation – pushing up the costs of investment in infrastructure across advanced economies including for green power generation schemes ..read more