Scotland Is Generating So Much Wind Energy It Could Power Two Scotlands

In the first six months of the year, wind turbines in Scotland generated nearly 10 million megawatt-hours of electricity which is almost twice the entire country’s domestic power requirements. In other words, enough energy was created by the country’s renewables to power two Scotlands!

Scotland is generating enough wind-energy to power two Scotlands.

Weather Energy figures show that between January and June wind turbines provided enough electricity to power the equivalent of 4.47million homes, which is nearly twice the number of homes in Scotland. March was the record-breaker month with nearly 2.2 million megawatt-hours produced but May was the low-water mark of the period with nearly half that.

Last year Scottish Power became the first major UK energy firm to completely drop fossil fuels in favor of wind power. Over the next four years, the company plans to invest £5.2 billion to more than double its renewable capacity. These are all steps to fulfill the United Kingdom’s pledged to be carbon neutral in 30 years.

Read the story from Intelligence Living by Andrea D. Steffen - “Scotland Is Generating So Much Wind Energy It Could Power Two Scotlands.”

A billion kilograms of recycling in need of a new home

The scale of Australia's recycling crisis is twice as bad as initially feared, with new figures showing that well over a million tonnes of metal, paper and plastics previously sent to China now has to be accommodated elsewhere.

Chris Philp, general manager of Wheelie Waste,  amongst a
day's worth of recycling from the Victorian town of
Kyneton, population approximately 7000.

Such a vast amount of rubbish is hard to wrap your head around, so we've converted the figures to regular household recycling items. The illustrations are indicative only, because the range of materials recycled in each category is much broader and includes building waste, industrial packaging and many other types.

But this should give you some indication of the amount of rubbish we're talking about. Remember, this is material that was once exported to China that is now, largely, piling up at Australian waste centres.

Read the story by Mark Solomon from The Age - “A billion kilograms of recycling in need of a new home.”

Documents shed light on BP’s failures in the Great Australian Bight

BP’s plans to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight were controversial from the outset. Even more so after the regulator twice rejected its environmental safety plan.

The coast of the Great Australian Bight. 

For the first time, Climate Home News can reveal why. Government documents have been released under freedom of information laws, nearly two years after they were requested. BP had tried to suppress the information.

A major oil spill in the sensitive seascape would pollute up to 750km of beaches and shoreline, according to BP’s own modelling, and the company thought drilling may disrupt migration of the endangered southern right whale.

Read the ClimateHome story by Karl Mathieson - “Documents shed light on BP’s failures in the Great Australian Bight.”

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch counts 1.8 trillion pieces of trash, mostly plastic

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is getting greater. Twice the size of Texas, the floating mass of about 79,000 metric tons of plastic is up to 16 times larger than previously thought, according to scientists who performed an aerial survey.

The results, published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, reveal that this plastic blight in the Pacific Ocean is still growing at what the researchers called an "exponential" pace.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or GPGP for short, is an accumulation of junk that has collected in the waters between California and Hawaii. The concentration of floating plastic in the patch ranges from tens to hundreds of kilograms per square kilometer. But much of it is hidden from the naked eye, partly because some of the plastic has been broken down into smaller and smaller bits over time. (It is not, as its name may suggest, an island.)

Read Amina Khan’s story from The Los Angeles Times - “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch counts 1.8 trillion pieces of trash, mostly plastic.”

(The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is analogous with climate change - we can’t see it and therefore we do nought about it, nor do we care - Robert McLean)

Miners receive twice as much in tax credits as Australia spends on environment

Mining companies will receive more than twice as much in fuel tax credits as the Turnbull government will spend on environment and biodiversity programs this financial year, an analysis has found.

Miners rake it in the cash while the environment wilts.

Coalmining companies alone are expected to get more back than the diminishing funding allocated to the federal environment department.

The analysis by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) found that, across commonwealth, state and territory governments, investment in environment and biodiversity programs was cut by 9% – from $6.95bn to $6.32bn – in the three years to 2016-17. Total budget spending rose by 10% in the same period, from $634.9bn to $701.5bn.

Read Adam Morton’s story in The Guardian - “Miners receive twice as much in tax credits as Australia spends on environment.”

Australia’s energy operator proposes 'fast change' scenario to cut emissions by 52 per cent by 2030

Greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector would be reduced at twice the rate proposed by the Turnbull government under a radical new plan outlined by the Australian Energy Market Operator.

Greens climate change spokesman Adam Bandt said the
 AEMO report was effectively bypassing the government.

The "fast change" model puts the public operator on a collision course with policymakers after AEMO outlined a potential cut of 52 per cent to all electricity emissions by 2030, double the rate required to meet our Paris climate change commitments.

Read Eryk Bagshaw’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Australia’s energy operator proposes 'fast change' scenario to cut emissions by 52 per cent by 2030.”