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Best and worst beaches in NSW: Coogee and Botany Bay rate poorly for pollution

Four ocean beaches – Terrigal, Avoca, Coogee and Malabar – found to be ‘not always suitable for swimming’, but 83% rated good or very good

Just four ocean beaches in all of New South Wales have been found to have poor water quality – but one is the very popular Coogee beach, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

According to an annual State of the Beaches report by the state government, 207 of the 248 sites assessed (83%) were graded as good or very good – stable since 2013, and up from 81% in 2012-13.

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Source: Guardian Environment

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Endangered eastern black rhino born in Iowa zoo – video

An endangered eastern black rhino has been born at Blank Park zoo in Des Moines, Iowa. The combined captive and wild population of black rhinos is less than 1,000, making the birth very significant. The calf was standing and walking within an hour of its birth and attempted to feed within two hours, both signs of a healthy baby rhino

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Source: Guardian Environment

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Cameron aide said government was ‘exposed on Heathrow’ over air quality

As Theresa May prepares for airport expansion decision, memo emerges in which former PM was told he did not ‘have an answer’ on pollution concerns

David Cameron’s No 10 policy chief warned him a year ago that he was “exposed on Heathrow” because the government did not have an answer to its impact on air quality, an internal Downing Street note has revealed.

The memo was written by Camilla Cavendish, a former Downing Street adviser, who was scathing about the first draft of a government air quality plan from the department of the then environment secretary, Liz Truss.

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Source: Guardian Environment

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The “Energy Internet”: Startups are bringing a new energy network to life

The United States wastes enough energy every year to power the UK for seven years. While there has been plenty of focus on the need to transition to an economy powered by renewable energy sources, rather than fossil fuels, the structural waste issues within the system itself should not be ignored. Indeed, a transition to a more effective way of delivering energy is almost as important as the energy source itself.

Incumbent large-scale, centralised energy production, controlled by a few main suppliers is reaching its limitations and is unlikely to be fit for purpose in the long-term. Building the power plants needed to meet the extra demand predicted to emerge by 2050 is unlikely to be economically feasible even before considering the negative consequences on the environment.

A number of energy trends suggest an alternative way forward. Renewables are becoming increasingly economically viable and provide an energy marketplace that is ripe for technological innovations. The potential of distributed energy is being explored in trial micro grids, for example LO3 Energy in Brooklyn, while machine learning and AI could potentially pave the way for intelligent systems.

Pixabay
Pixabay

Individually, these trends are unlikely to disrupt the lock-in of the current energy landscape, but promising innovations in software that can utilise data  from solar energy systems, smart thermostats, battery storage systems and other distributed energy resources (DERs) will be critical for transitioning to an alternative system – the “Energy Internet” — powered by renewables, distributed in production and ultimately more effective and efficient in terms of not wasting what is produced.

It’s an opportunity that is being exploited by innovative startups, like Californian-based AutoGrid, who provide an: “Integrated suite of flexibility management software applications that allow utilities, electricity retailers and renewable energy project developers and energy service providers to deliver cheap, clean and reliable energy by managing networked DERs in real time and at scale”. In fact, AutoGrid believes its applications deliver such significant benefits that flexibility management will prove to be the “killer app” of the Energy Internet.

Data has long been viewed as a way of optimising effective energy use within buildings. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that more than 30% of all energy used inside buildings is wasted through lighting, heating and cooling empty rooms. Intelligent, data-enabled software systems, combined with sensors can help to control energy use more effectively, while similar systems can be used to make energy use by current utility providers more efficient.

Pixabay
Pixabay

However, the opportunities are arguably even greater when it comes to integrating renewable and other distributed energy resources into these types of systems. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) wind power is the cheapest form of electricity to produce in Germany and the UK, while costs of solar are predicted to decrease by 25-50% by 2025. “However, while costs for renewable energy keep dropping, their intermittent nature can prove challenging for utilities, who must keep the grid’s energy supply and consumption in constant balance”, Amit Narayan, CEO of AutoGrid told Circulate. “This is what makes the software developed by AutoGrid important – it enables utilities and electricity retailers to harness the petabytes of data streaming from solar panels, wind farms, EVs, and millions of other connected energy resources so that they can predict and optimise across their energy networks in real time and at scale”.

The potential for Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to enable an energy system consistent with the principles of a circular economy was explored in-depth, including case studies, as part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Intelligent Assets report. Clearly, finding a harmony between developing energy provision that is effective and works for businesses and people, and the controlled and efficient production is critical.

Worldwide installed capacity of distributed energy systems is predicted to more than double in the next decade, according to the latest research from Navigant. A different kind of energy system is well under-development; Narayan argues that this new paradigm requires three main features:

– Self-learning, with the intelligence to continuously improve DER forecasting and optimization to cope with rapidly changing circumstances and conditions.

– Sophisticated and modern big data technologies will need to be employed effectively so that the system can be managed and optimised in real time, at scale with thousands of DERs and millions of customers.

– Modularity will be essential, allowing the different kinds of resources to be dealt with individually, and also so that new resources and devices can be added into the network.

Energy production enabled by smart data may not be far away, and there are at least positive signs that it could be a direction that allows for a more effective, less wasteful and cheaper system, as Narayan puts it, “data has the potential to help us to power wisely and proactively”.

The post The “Energy Internet”: Startups are bringing a new energy network to life appeared first on Circulate.

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Going Dutch on recycling pays off | Letter

Michael Marks (Letters, 17 October) said that the plastic bag charge needs to be followed by one for plastic bottles in order to cut the huge number not recycled. We lived for six years in the Netherlands, where people are much more oriented towards recycling. Plastic drinks bottles had a tax on them which was refunded when they were returned to the store. This was on soft drinks as well as alcohol bottles.

Related: Crazy paving: Rotterdam to consider trialling plastic roads

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Source: Guardian Environment

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Chimpanzee seen smoking at North Korea's reopened zoo

Spectacle seemed to delight visitors but zoo has been criticised in the past for keeping animals in ‘woefully inadequate’ conditions

Visitors to a newly reopened zoo in North Korea have been flocking to a new attraction: a smoking chimpanzee.

According to officials at the Central zoo in Pyongyang, which has been criticised for animal cruelty in the past, the 19-year-old female chimpanzee Azalea, Dallae in Korean, smokes a pack a day.

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Source: Guardian Environment

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Innovative startups listed for European circular economy award

From utilising bacteria to create light, a new approach to packaging waste to apps to re-utilise food and DIY waste, six innovative European startups have been named as finalists for the third Green Alley Awards.

Taken from royalty free Pixabay.
Taken from royalty free Pixabay.

The Green Alley Award is a prize that rewards business model ideas that contribute to a range of topics around conserving resources, including circular economy approaches. Originally launched in 2014, the competition has a number of partners including, German crowdfunding platform Seedmatch, London-based accelerator programme Bethnal Green Ventures and the European Recycling Platform in Finland.

The finalists

Das Tiffin Projekt – a returnable lending system that enables registered restaurants to cut down on packaging waste, based in Berlin.

Design by Sol – a UK startup that has fitted a food expiry label with gelatin to enable customers to understand the freshness of their food.

Glowee – a French startup that leverages light generating bacteria on its own or through symbiosis, replicating processes from the natural world.

Green City Solutions – an installation made of moss culture and powered autonomously through solar panels, rainwater and IoT tech, which absorbs CO2 cleaning the air.

ResQ Club –an app in Finland that gives restaurants a chance to sell their leftover food at a lower price to customers in local neighbourhoods.

Restado – aiming to bring digitisation to DIY construction, where a marketplace is created for leftover materials on a user-to-user level. 

The six finalists have been selected from 200 business ideas from across Europe, and the six teams will pitch their concepts to an international audience on 27 October.

The continued interest and success of the reward reflects general interest and excitement in the startup space for the potential of the circular economy as a business opportunity. Of course, many of the innovative examples coming out are still more heavily focused on dealing with the challenges in existing waste streams, rather than designing out system issues from the start.

 

Source: Six new innovative startups shortlisted for European circular award

More information about the Green Alley Award can be found on the award’s website.

The post Innovative startups listed for European circular economy award appeared first on Circulate.

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Where is climate change in the Trump v Clinton presidential debates?

While we rake over Clinton’s emails and Trump’s late-night tweets, climate has been the elephant in the room, leaving scientists and campaigners asking why there hasn’t been a single direct question about the crisis

Climate change has been the elephant in the room during the past two US presidential debates. Ignoring this issue would be more understandable if this metaphorical pachyderm weren’t about to rampage through the lives of Americans, causing upheaval on a scale not seen since the start of human civilization.

“I’ve been shocked at the lack of questions on climate change. It really is fiddling while the world burns,” said Kerry Emanuel, a leading climate scientist. “This is the great issue of our time and we are skirting around it. I’m just baffled by it.”

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Source: Guardian Environment

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Conventional thinking will not solve the climate crisis | Andrew Simms

Choosing the best possible future means considering radical scenarios that align energy use and industry with climate action

The good news – according to the World Energy Council (WEC) – is that, per person, our energy demand is set to peak before 2030. Of course, there will be more of us around by then too, so that total demand will only slow, rather than level out. A heady whiff of technological optimism accompanies the explanation that this will happen because of “unprecedented efficiencies created by new technologies and more stringent energy policies”.

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Source: Guardian Environment

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Scientists investigate death of 10,000 endangered 'scrotum' frogs in Peru

Researchers and campaigners suspect pollution killed the rare Titicaca water frogs that are endemic to the famous lake and derive their nickname from their wrinkly skin

Scientists are investigating the mysterious deaths of at least 10,000 endangered frogs, in a river which leads into South America’s most famous lake on Peru’s border with Bolivia.

The dead Titicaca water frogs were found along a 50km (30 mile) stretch of the Coata river, a tributary which flows into the 8,372 sq km Lake Titicaca, according to Peru’s wildlife and forestry service Serfor.

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Source: Guardian Environment

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