Australia’s rich deposits of minerals used for green energy technologies and military hardware are increasingly prized, especially because of rising anxiety about China’s stranglehold on the global supply chain. That anxiety escalated after Beijing imposed new restrictions on rare earths exports, prompting a furious rebuke from Donald Trump and a warning from his treasury secretary that western allies would need to “decouple” from China if it proved an unreliable supplier. The timing of the latest US-China trade conflict could be good for Anthony Albanese, who will arrive at next week’s…
Tag: Renewable energy
The Guardian view on the climate crisis: green energy is booming – but fossil fuels need to shrink too | Editorial
All is not lost, Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, told the Guardian last week. But the latest planetary health check from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research is a brutal reminder of how close the Earth is being pushed beyond repair. Seven of the nine planetary boundaries are now breached, with ocean acidification added to the danger list. Yet the world has proved that cooperation works: the ozone layer is healing, air pollution controls are working. A decisive test looms at the end of the month, when governments…
Countries failing to act on UN climate pledge to triple renewables, thinktank finds
Most global governments have failed to act on the 2023 UN pledge to triple the world’s renewable energy capacity by the end of the decade, according to climate analysts. The failure to act means that on current forecasts the world will fall far short of its clean energy goals, leading to a continued reliance on fossil fuels that is incompatible with the target of limiting global heating to below 1.5C. A report by the climate thinktank Ember found that only 22 countries, most within the EU, have increased their renewable…
China starts building world’s biggest hydropower dam
Construction of the world’s biggest hydropower megadam has begun, China’s premier has said, calling it the “project of the century”. The huge structure is being built on the Yarlung Tsangpo river, in Tibetan territory. Li Qiang made the comments on Saturday, at a ceremony in the region to mark the start of the build, leading Chinese markets to rise on the expectation of the long-planned megaproject, first announced in 2020 as part of China’s 14th five-year plan. The dam has drawn criticism from India and Bangladesh, through which the river…
Caught between a fossil fuel past and a green future, China’s coal miners chart an uncertain path
Gazing over the remains of his home, Wang Bingbing surveys a decades-old jujube tree flowering through the rubble, and the yard where he and his wife once raised pigs, now a pile of crumbled brick. In the valley below, a sprawling coalmine is the source of their dislocation: years of digging heightened the risk of landslides, forcing Wang and his family out. To prevent the family from returning, local authorities later demolished their home. “We really didn’t want to leave,” Wang’s wife, Wang Weizhen, says ruefully. Wang’s life is the…
China breaks more records with surge in solar and wind power
China’s installations of wind and solar in May are enough to generate as much electricity as Poland, as the world’s second-biggest economy breaks further records with its rapid buildup of renewable energy infrastructure. China installed 93 GW of solar capacity last month – almost 100 solar panels every second, according to an analysis by Lauri Myllyvirta, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute. Wind power installations reached 26 GW, the equivalent of about 5,300 turbines. While estimates for the amount of power generated by solar panels and wind…
Potential role for Chinese firm in key UK windfarm attracts government scrutiny
Ministers are weighing up proposals for a Chinese company to supply wind turbines for a major offshore windfarm in the North Sea. The government is in discussions with Green Volt North Sea over whether Mingyang, China’s biggest offshore wind company, should supply the wind turbines. Mingyang has emerged as the preferred manufacturer, but the company has sought advice from ministers on whether to proceed. Green Volt, which is jointly owned by Flotation Energy, a Scottish company and Vårgrønn, a Norwegian one, is constructing the first commercial-scale floating offshore windfarm in…
Xi contrasts China’s clean energy promises with Trump turmoil
China will continue to push forward on the climate crisis, Xi Jinping has said while appearing to criticise the “protectionism” of Donald Trump’s tariff policies. The Chinese president was attending a closed-door virtual meeting with the UN secretary general, António Guterres, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and about a dozen other heads of state and government to discuss the climate crisis. Xi told the meeting that China would “not slow down its climate actions”, according a draft of his remarks.…
Ed Miliband bows to pressure with ban on solar panels linked to Chinese slavery
Ed Miliband will ban the UK’s national energy company from investing in projects that use solar panels linked to Chinese slave labour after bowing to pressure from Labour and Conservative MPs. The energy secretary has dropped his previous resistance to rewriting the bill establishing Great British Energy and will now introduce an amendment that forces the company to make sure there is no slavery or human trafficking in its supply chain. The decision, which was first reported by the Times, was welcomed by MPs and campaigners seeking to highlight Chinese…
British Steel must now join the modern economy, not be a prisoner of the old | Will Hutton
The fate of incoming Labour business and industry secretaries seems to be to launch emergency rescue packages for industries that would otherwise face imminent closure. Witness Jonathan Reynolds at last Saturday’s extraordinary parliamentary recall arguing for the legal right to take over the running of British Steel from its Chinese owner, Jingye, in order to save up to 3,500 jobs and Britain’s strategic capacity to make steel. And witness Tony Benn, in 1974, offering a financial lifeline to 3,000 workers forming a cooperative to save motorcycle manufacture at the failed…