News

8th February 2010
LINK TO GET 2009 MILDURA REGION ECONOMIC PROFILE
http://www.smedb.com.au/regionaldata/economic_profile.asp
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4th February 2010
LINKS TO HANDY WEBSITES
Latest climate science collated prior to Copenhagen summit. http://www.ccrc.unsw.edu.au/Copenhagen/Copenhagen_Diagnosis_HIGH.pdf Northern Region Sustainable Water Strategy http://www.ourwater.vic.gov.au/programs/sws/northern/final www.milduraregion.com.au To find the weekly greenhouse emissions for Victoria http://www.theclimategroup.org/programs/greenhouse-indicator/ ABARE publication Australian Commodities Dec 09 http://www.abareconomics.com/publications_html/ac/ac_08/ac_08.html
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1st February 2010
VICTORIA AIMS FOR SMART GRID
Australian Financial Review Mathew Dunckley A supermarket car park, complete with electric car recharging points, and solar panel banks in suburban streets to handle peak energy demand are two of the landmark ideas in Victoria\'s bid for a $100 million slice of a federal government energy efficiency fund. Under the federal government\'s National Energy Efficiency Initiative, $100 million will be granted to one demonstration project to develop a commercial-scale smart grid. Victoria\'s Smart
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31st January 2010
AGRICULTURE, GREENHOUSE & EMISSIONS TRADING CONFERENCE, 2009 PROCEEDINGS.
The 2009 AGET conference saw almost 150 agriculture sector leaders, policy-makers and scientists gather in Queensland on the 6th and the 7th of May 2009 to discuss the role of agriculture in Australian climate change policies. The set of proceedings of that conference has now been published. This set of proceedings, accessible here (AFI members can download a copy for free from the library),
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31st January 2010
WILL EATING LESS MEAT (AND ICE-CREAM) COOL THE WORLD?
Mick Keogh, Executive Director, Australian Farm Institute Dr Rajendra Pachauri, vegetarian head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is doing it. Sir Paul McCartney is doing it. Lord Stern of Brentford (author of the Stern Report on climate change) says we should all do it. Al Gore agrees but hasn’t quite got around to it yet, and Professor Peter Singer, Australian philosopher, vegetarian and animal rights advocate thinks we should all do it. The ‘it’ they are all advocating is to reduce or stop eating meat, and the reason (amongst others) is because they claim meat production is a major source of greenhouse gases
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11th January 2010
BABY STEPS TAKEN ON CLEAN ENERGY
Australian Financial Review Federal money is helping to bridge the funding gap in commercialising clean technology initiatives, write Angus Grigg and Emma Connors. AJOI& lean technology may be creating as much buzz as the internet boom of the 1990s, but it is yet to attract big institutional dollars in Australia. Despite multibillion-dollar support from federal and state governments for the development of renewable energy technologies, there is only a handful of dedicated funds and a small listed sector. But expectations are high that this is about
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11th January 2010
CAP CRISIS
Sunraysia Daily Council certain to join calls to abandon 4% limit IBy Graeme O\'Neill MILDURA Rural City Council is almost certain to reverse its support for the Victorian Government\'s four per cent cap on out-ofarea water sales next month. Five councillors contacted yesterday, including Mildura Mayor Glenn Milne, expressed concerns that the cap is now a threat to the livelihoods of many Sunraysia growers - particularly wine grape growers. Councillors could meet as early as today
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9th January 2010
AUSTRALIANS DELIVER GREEN STUFF STATESIDE
The Age Solar start-ups are heading to the US to find investors, reports Anne Davies. THREE years ago Danny Kennedy was a campaigner for Greenpeace in Sydney. Now he\'s one of the founders of a California start-up, Sungevity, putting solar panels on the roofs of houses in northern California. Co-founded with former BP Solar executive Andrew Birch with \"angel funding\" from fancily and friends, including
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6th January 2010
CLIMATE STATEMENT STOKES ETS DEBATE
Australian Financial Review article Australia experienced the second hottest year on record in 2009, according to new data the Bureau of Meteorology says is consistent with global warming. The bureau\'s 2009 annual climate statement, released yesterday, showed the annual mean temperature across Australia was 0.9 degrees Celsius higher than the 1961-90 average. NSW, Victoria and South Australia
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6th January 2010
THE FUTURE OF DROUGHT ASSISTANCE
Weekly times article Battling on all fronts Politics, prices and pollution reduction schemes: PETER HUNT looks at the big issues facing farmers in 2010. The future of drought assistance FEDERAL Agriculture Minister Tony Burke seems hell-bent on dumping interest rate subsidies and income support for drought-stricken farmers. The lawyer holding the inner Sydney seat of Watson has repeatedly stated he wants to wean farmers off direct support and encourage them to adapt to climate change and drought-proof their farms. The current proposal
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6th January 2010
MOKOAN'S END DRAWS NEAR
Weekly Times article By PETER HUNT THE last act in the Victorian Government\'s nine-year battle to pull the plug on Lake Mokoan is about to end. Goulburn Murray Water will soon award the contract to bulldoze the lake\'s embankment. But work still hasn\'t started on the $20 million reversion of the lake to an 8000ha wetland, which the Government hopes to turn into a world-
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5th January 2010
AUSTRALIAN CLIMATE STATEMENT 2009 RELEASED
The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has released the Annual Australian Climate Statement 2009 (5 January 2010), which illustrates that \"Australia\'s annual mean temperature for 2009 was 0.90°C above the 1961-90 average, making it the nation\'s second warmest year since high-quality records began in 1910\". According to Environment Minister Peter Garrett, the statement confirms that: • \"[i]n the last six months of 2009 South Australia, Victoria and NSW all experienced their hottest July to December period on record; • 2009 was the second hottest year in Australia on record and finished off the hottest decade in Australian history; • 2009 is expected to be the fifth hottest year globally and finished off the hottest decade globally in recorded history; [and] • [a] cooler-than-average global mean temperature has now not been recorded since 1985\". Mr Garrett also noted that the statement indicated that the patterns of the last year and the decade are
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4th January 2010
DSE LAND AND BIODIVERSITY WHITE PAPER

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4th January 2010
DRAFT ADVICE ON AMENDMENTS TO THE WATER MARKET RULES 2009 AND THE WATER CHARGE (TERMINATION FEES) RULE 2009
The ACCC has released its draft advice and proposed draft amendments on the Water Market Rules 2009 and Water Charge (Termination Fees) Rules 2009 for public consultation. This follows a request for advice from the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Penny Wong.
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31st December 2009
COMMENTS SOUGHT ON MARKET MECHANISMS FOR RECOVERING WATER IN THE MURRAY-DARLING BASIN
The Productivity Commission has released the Productivity Commission Draft Research Report: Market Mechanisms for Recovering Water in the Murray-Darling Basin (December 2009) for public comment. The Productivity Commission has endorsed the use of market mechanisms to recover water for the environment, finding that the federal government\'s buyback of permanent water entitlements through a tender process has largely been cost effective, but \"could be complemented by direct purchasing from the market, and adoption of a portfolio approach that includes other water products, such as seasonal allocations\".
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22nd December 2009
AUSTRALIAN CARBON OFFSET MARKET MATURING
22 December 2009 The latest update of the Carbon Offset Guide shows Australia’s voluntary carbon offset market is becoming more transparent as the market matures and responds to consumer demand. This advice was provided by the two organisations behind the development of the Guide, Global Sustainability at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and EPA Victoria. EPA acting director business development Krista Milne said the Guide had played a leading role in requiring transparency, particularly on issues of quality.
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19th December 2009
THE CPRS AND AGRICULTURE:
The CPRS and agriculture: What we know, what we don‟t know, and what it might mean for farmers. Mick Keogh, Australian Farm Institute
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18th December 2009
WATER PLANNING GUIDELINES 18 DEC 09 CONSULTATION DRAFT

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16th December 2009
ENGINE DEVELOPED TO SLASH EMISSIONS
The Australian AUSTRALIAN researchers say they have found a way to slash carbon emissions from coal-tired power stations by doubling their efficiency, opening the way for the long-term survival of the coal industry. They have developed a new type of engine that generates energy using heat already produced in power stations but lost into the atmosphere, allowing a coal-fired power station to halve its emissions. Former mining
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16th December 2009
FARMERS FIND A LIGHT UNDER THE BUSHEL
Herald Sun Nigel Austin THE prosperity of Victorian and South Australian farms is finally looking up after several years of drought due to a sharp improvement in grain crops. However, total earnings from Australia\'s commodity exports are forecast to drop by 18 per cent to $163 billion in 2009-10, following a rise of 33 per cent to $197 billion in 2008-09. Releasing its December issue of Australian Commodities
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16th December 2009
GREEN POWER FEASIBLE
The Australian THE federal government has the opportunityto switch the nation\'s power to renewable energy but favours attempts to make \"dirty coal clean\", according to the Australian Academy of Science. Next month the academy
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15th December 2009
NEW ABS STATISTICS
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released Environment and Energy News, Dec 2009 (15 December 2009), which \"highlights developments in environment and energy statistics particularly at the ABS\". (Source: ABS)
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13th December 2009
GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCES $35 MILLION BOOST FOR GEOTHERMAL PROJECTS
Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson has announced that five geothermal energy projects around Australia are to receive a total of $35 million in funding from round two of the federal government\'s $50 million Geothermal Drilling Program.
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