Call for means-tested grants or loans to cover upfront costs that prevent poorer households from benefiting
Poorer households could cut their energy bills by a quarter if solar panels were installed on their rooftops, a report has found.
However, the upfront costs mean that those who stand to benefit most from decreased energy bills are prevented from getting panels installed, according to the Resolution Foundation thinktank.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
02/13/2025 - 01:00
02/13/2025 - 01:00
Bogs and swamps are a colossal carbon store but their continued destruction would blow climate change targets
The world’s peatlands are “dangerously underprotected” despite the colossal amount of climate-heating carbon dioxide already being emitted due to their destruction, a study has warned.
Peatlands occupy just 3% of all land, but contain more carbon than all of the world’s forests. However, farmers and miners are draining the peatlands, releasing so much CO2 that if they were a country, they would be the fourth biggest polluter in the world after China, the US and India.
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02/13/2025 - 00:04
The technology is new, chargers are expensive and regulations hard to navigate – but all that could soon change
Our cars sit unused most of the time. If you have an electric vehicle, you might leave it charging at home or work after driving it. But there’s another step you could take. If you have a bidirectional charger, you can set it to sell power back to the grid when demand is high.
Fewer than 10 people across Australia actually do this, because the technology – known as vehicle-to-grid (V2G) – is very new. To date, it only works with a single car model (Nissan Leaf) and a single charger (Wallbox Quasar 1). We’ve estimated the number of users based on sales of this charger. The chargers are expensive and there’s a thicket of regulations to navigate.
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You originally think of it as a car you can also use to power your house. [But actually] it’s a house battery you can drive around.
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02/12/2025 - 17:01
Researchers took a deep dive to understand why certain locations are more susceptible and attractive to invasions by non-native plants or animals, making them prime targets for these species to spread.
02/12/2025 - 15:46
Kathleen Sgamma to oversee Bureau of Land Management, agency that manages quarter-billion acres of public land
Donald Trump has nominated a longtime oil and gas industry representative to oversee an agency that manages a quarter-billion acres of public land concentrated in western states.
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Colorado-based oil industry trade group Western Energy Alliance, was named Bureau of Land Management director, a position with wide influence over lands used for energy production, grazing, recreation and other purposes. An MIT graduate, Sgamma has been a leading voice for the fossil fuel industry, calling for fewer drilling restrictions on public lands that produce about 10% of US oil and gas.
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02/12/2025 - 15:15
Global warming is producing a rapid loss of plant species -- according to estimates, roughly 600 plant species have died out since 1750 -- twice the number of animal species lost. But which species are hit hardest? And how does altered biodiversity actually affect interactions between plants? Experts have tackled these questions and, in two recent studies, presented the answers they found buried in the past: using fragments of plant genetic material (DNA) deposited in lake sediments, they were able to gain new insights into how the composition of flora changed 15,000 to 11,000 years ago during the warming at the end of the last ice age, which is considered to be the last major mass extinction event before today. This comparison can offer an inkling of what might await us in the future.
02/12/2025 - 13:49
Planting fast-growing crops, burning them, capturing the released CO2 and storing it: this is being discussed as a way to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and limit global heating to 1.5 degrees in the long term. But if this is done on land beyond existing agriculture, it endangers the stability of the biosphere. A study puts a figure on the potential of such novel 'climate plantations', also known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). The study considered not only the carbon balance but also other planetary boundaries.
02/12/2025 - 11:53
Program is meant to help the endangered northern spotted owl – and it’s only C$5! – but rat lovers are not amused
Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold. And for an endangered owl breeding program in Canada, it’s also a dish best served dead.
For the price of a coffee, spurned and disgruntled lovers can revel in the satisfaction of having a dead rat named after an ex, before it is fed to a northern spotted owl.
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02/11/2025 - 00:00
npj Ocean Sustainability, Published online: 11 February 2025; doi:10.1038/s44183-025-00106-9
A framework for just seascape restoration
World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | [email protected] +12077011069
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