Archived News for Green Sector Professionals

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has praised the Federal Government’s Energy Efficiency Opportunities (EEIO Program, describing it as a successful example of how government policy can work with industry to reduce energy use.

The Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Mark Dreyfus, has released a statement on how the carbon price will apply to pollution from local landfill sites and the potential impact this might have on rates for local communities.

The volume of logs harvested in Australia increased by 3.6 per cent in 2010–11, the first increase in three years, taking the total value of logs harvested in 2010-11 to over $1.8 billion.

The Queensland Government has announced it has withdrawn financial support for the Cloncurry Solar Farm as part of the state’s ongoing cost cutting.

The Federal Government has officiated the formation of the new Yanyuwa Indigenous Protected Area in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

The Victorian Government has announced an agreement that will stop the last discharge of industrial wastewater into the Yarra River.

The Western Australian Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced it has granted approval to Toro Energy to construct the state’s first uranium mine, after the proposal was ‘meticulously examined by the board.’

The Queensland Coordinator-General has declared the $2.2 billion coal terminal at Yarwun in the Port of Gladstone a ‘significant project’, meaning the project will now undergo an environmental assessment.

The Victorian Government has released modelling that it says shows that the health of the Murray River can be secured using significantly less water for environmental flow.

Black carbon aerosols and ozone, both man-made pollutants emitted predominantly in the Northern Hemisphere’s low- to mid-latitudes, are most likely pushing the boundary of the tropics further poleward in that hemisphere, new research has shown.

Research and demonstration grants totalling $72.5 million have been awarded as part of the first round of the Federal Government’s  Filling the Research Gap and Action on the Ground programs that are part of the $429 million Carbon Farming Futures program.

A record La Niña event coupled with tropical cyclone Tasha generated most of the record deluge of rain that devastated much of Queensland in December 2010, but a new study has found that record high sea-surface temperatures off northern Australia was also a significant contributor.

While it was thought that the twin impacts of the La Niña and the cyclone alone could explain why Queensland’s December rainfall was an all-time high at 154% above normal, the new calculations by climate researchers have revealed that evaporation from the warmer seas to the north and north-west of Australia probably contributed about a quarter of the total.

Sea-surface temperatures off northern Australia in the Indian Ocean, Arafura Sea and Coral Sea  were unusually warm at the time, in places as much as 2 degrees C, the study notes: analysing 30 years of historic measurements, the study identified a general warming trend there of at least 0.2 degrees C per decade.

“If the observed warming trend in the sea-surface temperatures continues, this result suggests that future La Niña events are more likely to produce extreme precipitation and flooding than is present in the historical record,” says Dr Jason Evans, of the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre. Dr Evans led the study, to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, with a French co-author, Dr Irène Boyer-Souchet.

“If the sea-surface temperature increases can be attributed to global warming, then the probability of La Niña events producing extreme precipitation responses similar to December 2010 will increase in the future.”

The researchers caution, however, that this was the strongest La Niña event during the satellite record and that equally extreme events may have occurred before the satellite record began.

The extreme December rains – coming after a wet spring - produced nine floods that affected almost 1,300,000 square kilometres of land, caused billions of dollars in damage, led to the evacuation of thousands of people, and resulted in 35 deaths.

La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean are well known to enhance Queensland’s rainfall. The heaviest falls occurred between December 23 and 28, 2010, when a moist easterly airflow covered most of Queensland and Cyclone Tasha made landfall south of Cairns. Large parts of eastern Queensland received more than 100 mm of rain and several stations set all-time daily records, with some receiving around 300 mm in one day.

Modelling reconstructions showed that on December 14, a low-pressure centre formed off the north-west coast of Australia and moisture-laden air was carried east to New Guinea then south into Queensland, contributing directly to heavy rain between December 23 and 26.

In the first study of its kind in Australasia, scientists have used 27 natural climate records to create the first large-scale temperature reconstruction for the region over the last 1000 years.

The Federal Government has announced $20 million in grants to improve the energy efficiency at small and medium businesses and community groups.

The Federal Government will start paying out its new Household Assistance Payments, paying a total of $35 million to over 1.6 million Australian families over the coming months.

The Victorian Government has announced five new appointments to the Victorian Environment Assessment Council (VEAC).

Scientists have developed a new diagnostic tool that will enable better understanding of global climate patterns.

The development, by researchers from The University of Queensland, University of Canterbury (New Zealand) and Monash University, distinguishes between the causes of particles in glacial deposits – whether climactic or caused by rock avalanche – allowing for more accurate data to inform climate models.

Co-author of the study, UQ Professor James Shulmeister, says the development represents a breakthrough in the way climate change research is approached.

He says that while glaciers have been used as an early indicator of the extent and rate of global warming, there was previously an assumption that they always reflected climatic change.

“But there has been some debate on how much of the mountain glacier record represents climate change and how much relates to changes in glaciers resulting from rock avalanches onto the glaciers,” he said.

“Being able to determine whether a glacial advance is caused by a rock avalanche or by purely climatic factors enables us to ensure the climatic record from glacial deposits is accurate.

“Using this information we will be able to better understand our changing climate and inform the creation of climate models.”

The research, published in the April issue of the prestigious journal Geology, represents a major breakthrough in the fields of both landslide (rock avalanche) research and climate change from glaciers.

Lead researcher Dr Natalya Reznichenko says the cause of glacial deposits is more complex than originally thought and that some deposits that were previously identified as being of climatic origin are in fact the products of readvances triggered by the deposition of rock avalanche debris on glaciers.

“We discovered that during rock avalanches, intense fragmentation of rock generates extremely fine particles – much less than a thousandth of a millimetre across - that cluster together to form agglomerates,” she said.

“These agglomerates are completely absent from glacial deposits known to lack rock avalanche material.

The Victorian Government has appointed three members to the Sustainability Victoria (SV) Board. The new members are Mr Ron Lovett and Mr Tony Hinton. An existing member, Ms Suzanne Evans, has been reappointed to the board.

Curtin University researchers have used computational fluid dynamics and powerful supercomputers to create new models for understanding and predicting coral bleaching.

A new research cluster called the Methane Research Cluster has been formed to focus on reduction of livestock methane emissions in Australia, which accounts for  10 per cent of the country’s overall greenhouse gas emissions.