National Energy Guarantee will help cut power prices in most states and territories in the next decade, report finds

Households would save about $150 every year on their power bills under the Turnbull Government's flagship energy policy, a new report has found.

New research says the average household would
 make an additional saving of $150 under the NEG.

The research said the National Energy Guarantee (NEG) would help cut prices in most states and territories in the next decade.

Energy Ministers from across the country will decide the policy's fate at a crucial meeting on August 10 — a gathering that could end more than a decade of bickering over energy and climate change.

The average household would "save around $550 a year on their retail bill over the 2020s relative to 2017-18," the official report predicted.

Read the ABC News story - “National Energy Guarantee will help cut power prices in most states and territories in the next decade, report finds.”

Seas are rising too fast to save much of the Mississippi River Delta, scientists say

The state of Louisiana is proceeding with ambitious plans to redirect the Mississippi River and rebuild some of its rapidly vanishing wetlands — but even this massive intervention may not be enough to save the most threatened lands from fast rising seas, scientists concluded in a study published Wednesday.

This amplified color mosaic shows the Mississippi Delta in 2014. 

The study uses a methodology called “optical dating” to study how the river built an area called the Lafourche subdelta in coastal Louisiana, where the Mississippi dumped loads of sediment as much as 600 years ago, when it changed paths. The technology lets scientists identify the last time that long-buried sand was exposed to sunlight and, therefore, determine the rate at which the river naturally built up land by carrying sediment downstream.

“What we found was that, on average, it produced somewhere between 6 and 8 square kilometers of land per year, and the shoreline migrated seaward by somewhere between 100 and 150 meters per year,” said Torbjorn Tornqvist, a Tulane University geologist who was one of the study’s authors. “Those numbers in themselves I find pretty impressive.”

Read Chris Mooney’s story from The Washington Post - “Seas are rising too fast to save much of the Mississippi River Delta, scientists say.”

Chief Scientist Alan Finkel makes last ditch plea for clean energy target

Australia's Chief Scientist Alan Finkel has made a last-ditch plea to save the proposed clean energy target, even as the Turnbull government signalled it will reject the proposal by the end of the year.

Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel and South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill. 

South Australian premier Jay Weatherill responded on Monday to the apparent standstill, saying the states should "bypass the federal government and provide investment certainty for the electricity sector" by adopting their own target.

The Turnbull government asked Dr Finkel to review Australia's electricity market to set a policy path that would ensure reliability in the electricity system while also providing clear policy settings to drive investment in generation - something the business community has been demanding.

But in the face of strong opposition from sections of the Coalition backbench to the clean energy target, the Turnbull government delayed any decision on the target while adopting the other 49 recommendations in the Finkel review.

Read the story in today’s Melbourne Age by Cole Larimer and James Massola - “Chief Scientist Alan Finkel makes last ditch plea for clean energy target.”

Wealth won't make us safe from climate change, particularly if you are a woman

Should you imagine Australia’s underlying wealth makes it safe from the effects of climate change, think again!

The Thornbury-based Women's Health In the North – (WHIN) has looked at climate impacts in Melbourne and how they connect to gender, as well as to poverty and cultural and linguistic diversity.

Their report, “Women and Environmental Justice: a literature review” says environmental justice is realised by the fair and equitable distribution of

environmental burdens across the entire population, as well as equitable access to and involvement in the mechanisms used to address environmental issues.

This review reveals that women are likely to be disproportionately affected by

environmental injustice, even in wealthy, developed countries such as Australia.