The UK’s current total wind energy generating capacity of about 4GW could be significantly boosted, with up to 400 turbines approved for construction 120kms off the Yorkshire coast on the Dogger Bank.

Costing between 6-8 billion pounds, the proposed 2,400MW wind farm will be twice the size of the UK’s current largest wind farm, and could supply the UK with 2.5% of its electricity needs.

The scheme’s developers have yet to take a final investment decision and the project will almost certainly have to secure backing under the government’s renewable energy subsidy system, meaning that construction of the first turbine could potentially be a couple years away.

Press link for more: Sam Parkinson | reneweconomy.com.au

Earlier this week, during a disappointing Tesla earnings call, Elon Musk mentioned in passing that he’d be producing a stationary battery for powering the home in the next few months. It sounded like a throwaway side project from someone who’s never seen a side project he doesn’t like. But it’s a very smart move, and one that’s more central to Musk’s ambitions than it might seem.

To understand why, it helps to look not at Tesla, but at SolarCity, a company chaired by Musk and run by his cousin Lyndon Rive. SolarCity installs panels on people’s roofs, leases them for less than they’d be paying in energy bills, and sells surplus energy back to the local utility. It’s proven a tremendously successful model. Founded in 2006, the company now has 168,000 customers and controls 39 percent of the rapidly expanding residential solar market.

WHEN YOU HAVE A LOT OF SOLAR…

Wednesday marks the first day of Lent, and though some Catholics will be giving up sugar or coffee or junk food, others will be taking the 40-day test of self control one step further. They’ll be giving up food (or at least one meal) for at least one day during Lent, and will be doing so as a call for action on climate change.
During the Lenten Fast for Climate Justice, participating Catholics from 45 countries will abstain from food for one day, with the date of the fast depending on what country the participant is from. Americans will be fasting on March 16. This fast will be held in addition to the two other traditional fasting days during Lent: Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
The group organizing the fast, the Global Catholic Climate Movement, is also encouraging participants to abstain from activities that produce carbon emissions or waste during…

Can marine scientists in Indonesia save the world’s oceans with a 3D map of the most biodiverse region on earth?

Millions of years ago, one area of reefs managed to survive a major coral extinction.

The Coral Triangle in the Western Pacific is still the most biodiverse region in the world. And that is why leading marine scientists are deploying the latest in 3D mapping technology to uncover the secrets of what allowed the coral in this unique area to survive.

But it is a race against time.

Seventy-five percent of reefs globally are under threat due to climate change, pollution and destructive fishing practices.

Press link for more: aljazeera.com

BALI ISLAND, India (AP) – The tiny hut sculpted out of mud at the edge of the sea is barely large enough for Bokul Mondol and his family to lie down. The water has taken everything else from them, and one day it almost certainly will take this, too.

Saltwater long ago engulfed the 5 acres where Mondol once grew rice and tended fish ponds, as his ancestors had on Bali Island for some 200 years. His thatch-covered hut, built on public land, is the fifth he has had to build in the last five years as the sea creeps in.

“Every year we have to move a little further inland,” he said.

Seas are rising more than twice as fast as the global average here in the Sundarbans, a low-lying delta region of about 200 islands in the Bay of Bengal where some 13 million impoverished Indians and Bangladeshis…