Zero emissions

SYDNEY — Australia has plans to build the biggest wind farm in the southern hemisphere by 2013, part of its scramble to fight climate change and harness its abundance of clean energy sources — wind, solar, waves, geothermal energy and bioenergy.

Renewable energy now supplies just 6 percent of power in Australia because the country has historically lacked the political and commercial will to pursue big renewable energy projects. And the very sources of Australia’s clean energy — its vast outback and nearly 60,000 kilometers, or 37,000 miles, of coast — are major obstacles to linking new, remote power sources into the grid.

AUSTRALIA could switch completely to renewable energy within a decade by building a dozen vast, new solar power stations and about 6500 wind turbines, according to a major new study.

The Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan - a collaboration between Melbourne University's Energy Research Institute, the environment group Beyond Zero Emissions and engineers Sinclair Knight Merz, puts the cost at $37 billion in private funding and public investment every year for the next decade.

The price tag may make it sound like a pipedream but the scheme earned the endorsement of the federal Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull who added his support at a forum at Sydney Town Hall last night.

With the advent of high-speed trains, rail travel in Europe has become so popular that some intercity flight routes are being cancelled.

Why would you fly from London to Paris, for example, and tackle Heathrow and Charles de Gaulle airport check ins plus security when you can catch a high-speed train that lands you right in the centre of town?

Now about 90 per cent of people travel by Eurostar between these two cities.

With the world's oceans absorbing six million tonnes of carbon a day, a leading oceanographer warns of eco disaster

Carbon-dioxide emissions are turning the waters of the Arctic Ocean into acid at an unprecedented rate, scientists have discovered. Research carried out in the archipelago of Svalbard has shown in many regions around the north pole seawater is likely to reach corrosive levels within 10 years. The water will then start to dissolve the shells of mussels and other shellfish and cause major disruption to the food chain. By the end of the century, the entire Arctic Ocean will be corrosively acidic.