One argument often used to quell concerns about the rising energy and resource demand of data centres is that artificial intelligence (AI) models will need less in the future as they improve and become more efficient.

But this seemingly logical thinking is a trap, according to a new United Nations report that quantifies the environmental costs of AI.

The report estimates that by 2030, AI’s energy use could double to consume 3% of the world’s electricity, produce emissions to equal the UK and deplete more water for cooling than the annual drinking water need of the global population.

It also anticipates the use of AI will follow an economic principle known as the “Jevons paradox”, which predicts that when technological improvements increase the efficiency of a resource, it leads to a rise, rather than a fall, in the total consumption of that resource.

The paradox is named after economist William Stanley Jevons who observed this effect with the use of coal in 19th-century England. Efficiency gains did not reduce overall consumption. Instead, the lower costs resulted in expanded use and higher overall demand.

As AI models become cheaper and more attractive, the report expects this to encourage new uses and higher volumes of use, eroding and possibly erasing any savings from efficiency advances.

To avoid falling into this trap, it lays out a roadmap for responsible AI use based on guiding principles of transparency, efficiency by design, equity and justice, lifecycle responsibility, global cooperation and sustainable use.

The scale of the problem

Last year, data centres already consumed as much electricity as Saudi Arabia, which ranks as the world’s 11th largest electricity consumer.

If electricity use doubles as projected by 2030, the associated carbon footprint would require 6.7 billion trees grown over ten years to offset this demand.

Data centres would also require 9.3 trillion litres of water and land nearly ten times the size of Mexico City.

Beyond resource use, the report also underscores the structural inequity at the heart of the AI boom, with only 32 nations hosting AI-specific cloud infrastructure and 90% of that capacity located in the US and China.

It warns of a widening digital divide between nations that build and control AI systems and those that consume them, with the latter often bearing a disproportionate environmental burden caused by mineral extraction and e-waste.

Responsible AI use

Two main forces shape AI’s operational footprint: how much we use it and how we use it.

This involves all tasks AI models perform, from text and code generation to image and video. Each of these tasks requires different levels of computational effort.

The model choice also matters as each AI system performs these task with distinct energy and environmental costs.

The report argues responsible AI requires full value-chain governance, from mineral sourcing to recycling and safe disposal.

It calls for a twinning of capability and environmental stewardship – thinking about both what AI can do for us and the protection of the natural environment.

This would mean making environmental disclosures a routine part of AI development, at both the model and task level, and incorporating projected AI demand in climate and energy planning.

Responsible AI is crucial as countries are promoting and adopting AI across government and the public sector.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, the government has launched a national AI strategy and a public service AI framework.

While the framework was informed by the OECD’s values-based AI principles, including inclusive and sustainable development, there is no requirement for environmental disclosures and no regulator compiling energy use or emissions.

Likewise in Australia, improving public services is part of the national AI plan. For example, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia has created Bowerbird, a machine learning-enabled mass audio and video transcription engine, to document material. The Department of Veteran’s Affairs has developed a proof-of-concept tool to see whether AI can help speed up the processing of claims.

Both countries take a deliberate “light touch” and principles-based regulatory approach to AI. But this approach risks overlooking the growing environmental cost of AI that can’t be solved by improving it.

The natural environment is foundational to the economy, culture and wellbeing. It should be at the centre of our thinking. It’s time to rethink the AI innovation playbook and shift focus toward a sustainable tech future.

Amanda Turnbull-McRae, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Waikato

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia’s data centre rush now rivals the mining boom. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman last week said Australia could become a “data centre capital of the world”.

This would come at an environmental cost. Water use is a common concern. One report estimates AI centres could use billions of litres of water a year.

But what do the numbers say? Based on the value derived per megalitre, data centres look less threatening and more likely to be a highly economically productive use of water.

The bigger problems are energy and location. As a new report suggests, electricity demand from data centres could outstrip clean power from renewables and lead to new gas plants.

Before committing fully, we need granular detail on how much water and energy these centres use.

What value do we get from water?

In the 2023–24 financial year, Australian industries consumed about 17.6 million megalitres of water – about 30 times the water in Sydney Harbour.

Of this, agriculture, forestry and fishing consumed about two-thirds of the total – nearly 11.8 million ML. This water was used to produce goods valued at A$54.6 billion – roughly $4,600 for every megalitre consumed.

Compare this to “other industries”, the category covering data centres. A megalitre of water in this sector was valued at $2.3 million – 500 times more value than if used on a farm.

How much water do data centres use?

We can only make a rough estimate on water use due to a lack of clear data.

Research shows data centres need about 25ML of water per megawatt of capacity. Australia has about 300 data centres with about 1.3 gigawatts of operating capacity. Using these figures, Australia’s current data centres would use 15,000–35,000ML a year. That would be a fraction of 1% of the water used nationwide – close to a rounding error.

There are three caveats.

First, credible estimates of water use vary widely.

Second, most estimates – including this article – only count water used directly for cooling. Data centres can be remarkably frugal with this water and getting more efficient.

But data centres indirectly use substantially more in the water used to produce the electricity powering them. Coal, gas and hydro plants all need water.

Third, proposed new data centres are much, much larger than existing ones. Some are seeking between 5ML and 40ML a day.

Sydney is set for huge growth in AI data centres.

If all 41 in the pipeline or under assessment are built, they would directly use 15–20% of Sydney’s water supply within a decade.

Sydney would bear the strain on water supplies in return for an upfront economic benefit from construction and some ongoing jobs. But the economy wide $116 billion boost to GDP from AI adoption by all industries over the next ten years would be spread nationally.

It would make sense to locate data centres where water is more abundant and cheaper.

Energy is a bigger concern than water

At present, data centres use just over 2% of the electricity on the National Electricity Market.

This would almost triple to 6% within four years, according to Australian Energy Market Operator forecasts. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation estimates the figure could be 11% within a decade.

Energy use isn’t inherently bad. What matters is whether increasing demand will be met by renewables – or gas.

We need better data – on data centres

We can’t manage what we don’t measure. Data centres are a textbook example of a data gap impeding good policy.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics rolls data centres into a broader category.

This means we can’t access detailed statistics on how much water or energy data centres use. Nor how much they add to the national accounts.

The federal government has introduced new expectations on water use and efficiency for data centre operators. That’s something. But it’s not the same as a national picture that fits with existing official statistics. Only one data centre meets the new national water-efficiency rating.

Surprisingly, Australia’s National AI Plan has little focus on water and energy. State and federal water ministers have named data centres as an emerging threat to water security. A Senate inquiry is in progress.

We need to track water use better

Australia’s water accounts measure how much water every industry uses. But they don’t track how much water is lost to evaporation or value all water used. Water supply and sewerage are bundled together in even the most detailed view of the national accounts, meaning neither can be seen clearly.

So while data centres appear to be a high-value use of water, we can’t confirm it.

There are signs of change. Australia uses the international System of Environmental-Economic Accounting to track water use. This is being rewritten now, in part to address these issues. The national accounts have also begun treating damage to nature as a cost of production. Both shifts matter, no longer treating the environment as free lunch.

To finish the job, authorities will have to properly value all the water used by industries and disentangle data centre data from other industries. This would turn a noisy debate into a measurable one.

Time to keep tabs on AI

Based on the data we do have, we can say Australia’s data centre boom is neither the water villain some fear nor the cost-free miracle its promoters describe.

Instead, it looks like a high-value industry arriving at record speed which is relatively light on water use and fairly heavy on energy.

With better data in hand, the numbers – not the headlines – should decide where the next megalitre and the next megawatt should go.

Michael Vardon, Associate Professor of Environmental Accounting, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

New polling this week put One Nation ahead of Labor in the primary vote for the first time, as the party’s latest policy announcements signal greater political ambition.

One Nation recently unveiled its new oil and gas policy at the Australian Energy Producers Conference in Adelaide. It promises “vastly greater returns” to an electorate “rightly unhappy” with the distribution of Australia’s natural resources.

While One Nation’s gas policy is not entirely new, the party’s growing prominence means announcements will attract greater scrutiny.

So, what is the party proposing?

Embracing government intervention

The Norway-style gas proposal is One Nation’s first substantial intervention in current tax and energy policy debates. It’s a marked shift away from the social and migration issues that have long defined the party.

Norway heavily taxes its oil and gas extraction profits. It reinvests the wealth into the world’s largest sovereign fund to spent on social initiatives.

Echoing the Trump administration’s willingness to buy into resource and technology companies, One Nation’s announcement reflects a broader embrace of economic interventionism: where a government actively modifies a free-market economy.

The announcement shows a stark differentiation between One Nation and The Liberal Party on the economy. And it comes at a time when the parties have increasingly overlapped on issues like migration.

Liberal frontbencher James Paterson attacked the policy as socialist. He described it as “borrowed from Venezuela and Hugo Chávez”.

One Nation’s policy

Despite the splashy announcement, One Nation’s gas policy was not entirely new.

Hanson has pointed to a Norway-style sovereign wealth fund as a model for gas revenue policy since at least 2017. Senator Hanson has also frequently attacked parliament for being “hostage” to multinationals resource companies operating in Australia.

In announcing the policy, Senator Hanson committed One Nation to encouraging more gas and oil exploration and production. Hanson also said taxpayers should get a “fair share” on profits from Australian resources.

Key elements of the policy include replacing the current Petroleum Resource Rent Tax, which places a 40% tax on the profits related to the extraction of petroleum, gas and condensate.

Instead, One Nation would give the government the option to take a 30% stake in future drilling projects, with profits directed into a new sovereign wealth fund.

It’s not the first time this has been suggested. Back in May 2017, Hanson proposed One Nation adopt a system of royalties paid on production, saying such a scheme would raise up to $10 billion per year.

Tapping into public grievance

One Nation’s position sets it apart from both major parties.

Labor and the Coalition hold sharply differing views on energy and Net Zero.

But the two parties share common ground on one point: neither supports increased taxation measures on the gas industry, particularly amid global uncertainty caused by the US-Israel war with Iran.

With its policy, One Nation is tapping into real public grievance. Others, such as The Australia Institute, the Greens, and Independent senator David Pocock have spent years pointing out the same basic unfairness: Australia exports vast quantities of gas, companies profit enormously, and the taxpayer gets very little in return.

But the timing of One Nation’s announcement deserves closer scrutiny. It was not made to a general audience but a gathering of energy industry heavyweights. Reports suggest the announced version was softened after consultations with industry representatives.

Pushing back at the ‘green agenda’

Far-right parties have a distinctive approach to energy policy – they simultaneously cast multinationals as “elites” who take wealth from ordinary people, while advocating for gas drilling expansion themselves.

Hanson has adopted US President Donald Trump’s slogan – “drill, baby, drill” – to spruik her party’s approach to fossil fuels. And she has called on the Labor government to push their “climate change bedwetters” to the side, and expand oil and gas exploration in the interest of energy security.

One Nation blames environmental reforms for triggering an energy crisis, which it claims has cost everyday Australians. Ending net zero is, accordingly, a “massive part” of One Nation’s gas policy, which they claim will safeguard fuel security.

Hanson has described One Nation’s policy as “partnering with the oil and gas industry, rather than treating it as the enemy”.

Internal tensions

This policy debate risks exposing potential tensions between the federal and state branches of One Nation.

Efforts by the South Australian Labor government to repeal a ten-year moratorium on fracking in the south east of the state were blocked by the newly elected One Nation MPs and Liberal Opposition.

The inconsistency between the federal party’s pledge to expand gas exploration and the state branch’s efforts to block it have created headaches for their leader. Hanson distanced herself, dismissing it as a decision for the state branch.

Heading into the next election, One Nation wants contrast with the Liberals on economic interventionism, while setting itself apart from Labor, the Greens and the independents on climate and environmental policy. It is calculated decision from a party that senses its moment.

Emily Foley, Postdoctoral research fellow, Flinders University; University of Canberra; Jordan McSwiney, Senior research fellow, University of Canberra, and Kurt Sengul, Research fellow, Far-Right Communication, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When most people imagine scientists discovering new species, they probably still picture an expedition into the unknown.

A naturalist travels somewhere remote, perhaps on a wooden ship, and traipses through the jungle to encounter an animal or plant never before described by science. The intrepid explorer brings back specimens or observations to a museum, where they can be compared, named and described.

There is some truth to this stereotype. Between 1854 and 1862, scientist Alfred Russel Wallace travelled through the Malay Archipelago, discovering animals and insects unknown to Western science. This led him to the theory of evolution by natural selection, contemporaneously with Charles Darwin.

Antarctica had its own era of discovery. In 1840, scientists on a French expedition encountered what we now know as Adélie penguins. Imagine seeing penguins for the first time: strange black-and-white birds waddling over the ice, sliding on their bellies, leaping from freezing seas.

Of course, “discovery” is a loaded word. Many animals and plants described by Western science were already known to Indigenous peoples and local communities. What changed was their entry into the formal scientific naming system – the global process by which species are compared, classified and recognised.

Today, scientists are still finding new life in remote places and hidden inside the DNA of animals we thought we already knew.

We still explore unknown worlds

Scientists still discover species this way: by probing Earth’s nooks and crannies and travelling to remote places to study what lives there.

Last year, I was onboard the scientific vessel R/V Falkor (too) in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea, where one scientific team was searching for seafloor methane seeps.

These are not just geological curiosities. Methane seeps create unusual habitats that harbour strange communities of life fuelled not by sunlight, but by chemicals rising from below. Scientists have already found new microbial diversity at Antarctica’s first known active methane seep.

Not all hard-to-reach worlds are underwater. In Papua New Guinea’s Southern Fold Mountains, camera traps captured a shy, ground-dwelling bird slipping through rugged limestone forest. Scientists described it as a new species in 2025, the hooded jewel-babbler.

But there is another kind of discovery happening too.

Hidden species in familiar animals

Some species are not hidden because they live at the bottom of the sea or deep in a mountain forest. They are hiding in plain sight.

Gentoo penguins are a good example. With their bright orange bills and comic waddle, they are familiar to anyone who has visited Antarctica. To most observers, they are simply “gentoos”.

But our new research shows gentoo penguins are not one widespread species, but four. Our 2020 study first showed major genetic and physical differences between gentoo penguins from different islands.

Now, using whole genomes – the complete set of genetic instructions inside an animal – and ecological modelling, we found these penguins are not just separated by distance, but have adapted to different Southern Ocean worlds.

Learning to see in higher resolution

Discoveries like this are often called “hidden” species. They look very similar to their relatives, but if we study their DNA, body measurements, behaviour and ecology, it’s clear they are separate species.

Species discovery has always depended on the tools available. Early naturalists relied on what they could collect: feathers, skins, eggs and bones. These museum collections are like time machines and remain incredibly important.

Today, whole genomes tell us if animals have different coding. Ecological models show whether animals live in different environmental conditions. Mathematical approaches test whether groups are evolving independently.

In other words, we are learning to see biodiversity in higher resolution.

This sharper view is changing how we understand familiar animals. For a long time, giraffes were considered one species, but genetics suggests they are four. My own work on forest birds in Madagascar found a new species of Newtonia bird.

The Tapanuli orangutan is a powerful example. This Indonesian great ape from Sumatra was described as a new species in 2017, based on genomic, anatomical and behavioural evidence. It was extraordinary to recognise a new great ape in the 21st century, and sobering to realise fewer than 800 may remain.

Again and again, the message is the same. The natural world is more complex than we know. And sometimes, by the time we recognise that complexity, a species may already be in deep trouble.

Why names matter

Taxonomy – the science of naming and classifying life – can sound like an old-fashioned labelling exercise. But it’s how we map life on Earth.

Conservation laws, threatened species lists and monitoring programs usually work at the species level. If several species are mistakenly treated as one, a declining species can be hidden inside a larger group that looks secure.

As we stand at the precipice of Earth’s sixth mass extinction, this has never been more important.

Recognising hidden biodiversity does not solve conservation problems by itself. But it helps us ask better questions. Which species are increasing? Which are declining? Which have not been counted for decades?

These questions are urgent, because we are racing to understand biodiversity while climate change and habitat loss reshape life on Earth.

Even now, in an age of satellites and genome sequencing, Earth still has secrets. Not only in the most remote places, but in the first animals we learn to recognise as children: penguins, giraffes, orangutans.

The closer we look, the more life reveals itself. Our task now is to keep looking and protect the richness that was there all along.

Jane Younger, Senior Lecturer in Southern Ocean Vertebrate Ecology, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Everyone has a storm story – whether it’s that time you just escaped a downpour, or the hailstorm that wrote off your car. Even though hailstorms are relatively rare, they cause significant damages. Two new studies shed light on how hail might change as the world warms.

In our study, published today in Nature Climate Change, we show that hail conditions may move towards the poles with global warming and shift a bit from summer to winter. This could lead to more hailstorms in places such as northern Europe, Canada, southeastern Australia and New Zealand’s South Island.

Another new study led by Shiyi Zhang at Peking University shows that hail may also become more damaging.

Hailstorms are costly. In Australia in 2025, hail in New South Wales and Queensland caused A$1.9b in insurance claims, and in recent years severe storms have caused enormous losses globally.

Severe storm costs are increasing. Much of this increase is because people and assets are more exposed to storms as populations increase and cities expand.

But is climate change also playing a role?

How does hail form?

To get hail you need a thunderstorm, and to get a thunderstorm you need an updraught. Updraughts form when buoyant air rises in a localised area. They bring up water vapour, which condenses into clouds made of tiny water droplets.

Inside a storm those drops hit each other, and if it’s cold enough, liquid drops freeze onto ice particles, growing them into hailstones.

For hail to affect us at ground level, a strong updraught needs to keep hailstones aloft for long enough to grow, and the hailstones must then survive melting as they fall to Earth’s surface.

Wind shear, or shifts in wind with height, increases storm severity by moving falling rain and hail away from the updraught, so the updraught is not inhibited and can grow stronger.

Buoyancy and wind shear form the basic atmospheric “ingredients” required for hail.

How might climate change affect hailstorms?

Climate change is warming the atmosphere and adding moisture to it. Moisture is the fuel for storms, and a warmer atmosphere is more likely to make strong updraughts that can support larger hail.

A warmer atmosphere also melts falling hail faster, which might make hailstones shrink or melt away before they reach the ground. So, these two changes work against each other.

According to past research, the broad expectation of climate change’s impact on hail is that it will bring less frequent hail, but the hailstones will be larger when hail does happen. That’s because more melting would mean smaller hail reaches the ground less often, but stronger updraughts would enable larger hailstones.

However, these changes vary regionally, depending on variations in the delicate balance between hailstorm ingredient changes.

Global climate models generally can’t tell us about individual storms, let alone hailstones – think of a low-resolution image that only shows the broad picture but no details.

So, instead of looking at hail directly, our study examined how the ingredients for hailstorms change. Because the exact relationships between ingredients and hail risk remain unclear, we used several so-called “proxy” relationships, including one that we previously developed for Australia and the wide range of weather regimes here.

New global projections for hail frequency

We applied three proxies to outputs from eight climate models to look at a range of possible future warming scenarios.

First, the proxies and models agree that in the warming scenarios hail-prone conditions are shifting toward the poles – decreasing across mid-latitudes in the southern hemisphere, and increasing in mid-high latitudes, particularly in the northern hemisphere.

We project more frequent hail conditions in northern Europe, Canada and the northwestern US, southeastern Australia, and the South Island of New Zealand; and less frequent hail conditions in northern Australia, most of Africa, southern India and southeastern China.

Second, our results predict less frequent hail conditions in summer and more in winter. That means winter crops like wheat may see increasing risk, while risk may decrease for summer crops like maize. If climate change shifts arable regions closer to the poles, these crops may be subjected to increased hail frequency there.

Third, the different proxies don’t always agree, particularly in the tropics where some show increases and others decreases. These disagreements highlight the difficulties in estimating changes in hail environments and how that connects to whether hail happens.

Less frequent, but more damaging

What about the severity of hail when it occurs? Zhang and colleagues took a different approach to ours. They applied a model of hailstone growth and melting to climate simulations, to examine possible hail sizes and changes in potential damage they might cause.

Their new global simulations overall predict more large hailstones and fewer small ones. This result is in line with previous reasoning – a warmer atmosphere can melt smaller hailstones away but produce larger hail through stronger updraughts.

Like ours, their study shows regional differences in changes. Both studies show increasing hail risk with increased frequency and hail damage potential in the mid-high latitude northern hemisphere and southeastern South America.

In sub-tropical regions of Africa and northern South America, both studies show decreasing hail risk. In southeast US, mid-northern Africa, southern India, and northeastern Australia, we project decreasing frequency while Zhang and colleagues project increasing damage potential.

These two studies point to increasing risk from hail damage in a warming world, even though the details of where this will be experienced are still not clear. The more warming occurs, the more this risk will increase.

Quickly reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the surest way to blunt the most damaging effects of climate change.

Timothy H. Raupach, Scientia Senior Lecturer, Institute for Climate Risk and Response, UNSW Sydney and Steven Sherwood, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When you picture a cave, you probably think of an environment devoid of life. But for most caves on Earth, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Caves are remarkably good at supporting life. Underground air temperature and humidity levels are usually consistent. For vulnerable species unable to tolerate fluctuations above ground, caves are a haven. This is why ecologists think of caves as evolutionary time capsules. They preserve troglofauna – small animals living mostly or entirely within caves – that might have otherwise died out during ancient climate change events.

Australian caves are home to many such species, ranging from blind fishes, to blind eels, and even blind wasps.

Perhaps the weirdest are cave crickets. Cave crickets are spindly, spider-like insects very different to your average backyard cricket. They can’t chirp and are flightless. Because they can’t travel long distances, all of Australia’s species are endemic – that is, they’re found nowhere else.

When the pioneering entomologist Aola Richards retired in the 1980s, it was thought Australia only harboured 23 cave cricket species and knowledge of these creatures languished. But in our recent research, we found three new species – with more to come. One was named to honour Richards, and another uses Gundungurra language in a first for Western scientific naming.

Underground room service

The long legs and antennae of cave crickets mean that some people mistake them for spiders, but these animals are harmless.

As their common name suggests, cave crickets thrive in cool, dark and humid environments such as caves.

These crickets also play a critical ecological role in cave ecosystems – by leaving them. When night falls, these savvy scavengers leave the cave entrance and venture above ground to forage for food, chomping on vegetation, other insects and whatever they can get their six legs on.

Food is in short supply in caves. This is why cave crickets are so vital – they can be prey for other species, while the nutrients they bring back and poo out act as a crucial top-up for other species, such as bats. They’re essentially cave room service.

How we found and named three new species

Despite the uniqueness of Australia’s cave crickets, research has been minimal since the late Aola Richards retired. Richards was responsible for naming almost all cave cricket species in Australia and New Zealand.

We had a hunch there were more to find which hadn’t yet been described, based on our fieldwork and observations by citizen scientists.

We worked with experienced cavers to collect crickets from the entrances of caves and abandoned mineshafts in Victoria and New South Wales.

In the lab, we examined dozens of specimens in detail. By comparing their physical characteristics with species already known to science, we were able to find three different types of cave cricket in the Speleotettix genus.

To make sure our identification was correct, we sequenced their DNA and compared it to known species. All three were distinct. Tiny differences in the base pairs of their DNA – often referred to as the building blocks of life – provide a reliable way of determining when one species is distinct from another.

Finding a name

Naming a species might sound simple. In reality, it’s a long and complicated process with important implications for conserving our native species. Without a formal name, species aren’t eligible for protection under Australia’s environmental laws - effectively rendering them invisible.

We chose the names Speleotettix aolae, S. binoomea, and S. palaga.

The first species was named to acknowledge Richards’ huge contribution to our knowledge of cave crickets. In fact, several specimens of S. aolae were collected by Richards more than 60 years ago. These museum specimens proved essential in understanding where the new species were found.

Speleotettix aolae and S. palaga were collected from caves and mineshafts in Victoria, while S. binoomea is from the World Heritage-listed Jenolan Caves and surrounding cave systems in NSW.

First Gundungurra word in a species name

The Gundungurra people are the Traditional Custodians of the Jenolan Caves.

We named the species found in these and surrounding caves Speleotettix binoomea. Binoomea means “dark places” in Gundungurra, and is used by the Gundungurra people to refer to the Jenolan Caves. To select the name, we worked with Gundungurra Elder Aunty Sharyn Halls and the Jenolan Caves Reserve Trust.

The choice of name recognises the deep cultural link between this species, the Jenolan Caves, and their Traditional Custodians.

To our knowledge, this is the first time a Gundungurra word has been used in the the Western scientific naming process.

Thousands of Australian species still without names

Australia and New Zealand are home to an estimated 225,000 species of insects.

Most of these are sorely understudied. In fact, only a third of our insect fauna has been formally named, and many are entirely unknown to science. That is, we estimate they should exist but a lack of study means they’ve never even been collected, let alone named.

Today, fewer than 30 Australian cave cricket species have been formally described. Our field collections and genetic analyses suggest the true number is at least double this amount.

The first step to protect a species is to describe it and name it. Once a species has a formal name, scientists and authorities can assess their risk of extinction and work to protect them.

Caves have long been a refuge, but this isn’t guaranteed. As the climate changes, drier, hotter conditions will intrude into caves. That could pose an existential threat to cave crickets and other cave dwellers, many of which can quickly dry out.

We hope this research will revive interest in Australia’s cave crickets and represents a crucial first step towards protecting these strange animals.

Perry G. Beasley-Hall, Postdoctoral Fellow in Entomology, Adelaide University and Brock A. Hedges, Research Affiliate in Ecology, Adelaide University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The most destructive wildfire season on record in Europe was in 2025, with more than one million hectares burned and tens of thousands of people displaced by fires across the continent.

For people in Ireland and Britain, the type of destructive wildfires that ravage southern Europe each summer can seem like a distant problem. But these fires are not confined to the dry Mediterranean landscapes of Spain, Portugal and Greece. In recent years, they have started to extend into regions more commonly associated with rain-soaked hills and bogs.

In 2026, this trend has continued with major wildfires breaking out across Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland.

As fires spread across the Highlands and Moray in Scotland this April, public warnings focused heavily on dry weather, campfires and accidental ignitions. In Northern Ireland, cautions were issued as firefighters battled several large gorse fires across the Mourne Mountains and other upland ares.

Similar warnings were issued nationally in Ireland over the Easter bank holiday weekend, when the public was urged to avoid lighting fires or bringing barbecues into the countryside. The threat of wildfires is only expected to ramp up this summer as temperatures rise further.

These are important messages. But focusing only on how fires start risks missing a slower and less visible transformation already unfolding across many upland landscapes. The real wildfire story in places like Ireland and Scotland is not just about climate or how fires start. It is also about how rural upland landscapes themselves are changing.

Changing farming styles

Recent research explores how decades of agricultural policy reform under the EU’s common agricultural policy, alongside falling farming populations and declining active land management, are reshaping vegetation patterns across Ireland’s uplands.

Historically, many upland landscapes were actively managed through livestock grazing, cutting and controlled patch burning. These practices helped maintain open landscapes and reduced the build-up of highly flammable vegetation.

But that balance has shifted. Reduced grazing pressure and changing land management practices are contributing to the expansion of highly flammable vegetation such as gorse, heather and purple moor grass.

While lower grazing pressure can bring biodiversity benefits and support natural regeneration, it can also increase the amount and proliferation of flammable vegetation across the landscape, known as fuel loads and fuel continuity. In practice, this means larger and more connected stretches of vegetation that allow fires to spread more rapidly and across greater distances.

This is especially concerning in upland areas where the average age of people working on farms is rising, and active land management is declining. Rural depopulation and labour shortages mean fewer people are available to manage what is known as commonages in Ireland and common grazing in Scotland. That means less maintenance of grazing systems and a reduction in the small, controlled vegetation burns that historically decreased wildfire risk by clearing vegetation and creating firebreaks. As one upland farmer in County Kerry recently described it to me: “It’s a bomb waiting to go off.”

Increasing flammability

Climate change is intensifying these risks. Hotter, drier conditions increase the likelihood that vegetation will dry out, increasing flammability. But climate alone does not explain why some landscapes burn more severely than others.

Wildfire risk is also shaped by what is growing on the land, how landscapes are managed, and whether fuel loads are reduced or allowed to accumulate over time. Experts responding to the recent Scottish fires also highlighted the role of vegetation build-up, prolonged dry conditions and changing land management in shaping fire behaviour, warning that historically wetter regions may face increasing wildfire risks in the future.

Similar patterns have already emerged across parts of southern Europe, where rural depopulation and land abandonment have contributed to increasingly severe wildfire regimes.

Recent research from Italy has shown abandoned land, declining grazing and reduced active land management have contributed to fuel accumulation, and to the build-up of dense, continuous vegetation – conditions associated with increasingly large and severe wildfires. While the climates and landscapes of Ireland and Scotland differ from the Mediterranean, similar long-term changes are beginning to emerge here.

This creates a difficult tension for policymakers and conservationists. Reduced grazing pressure and natural regeneration can support biodiversity recovery in upland systems. Yet these same changes may also increase wildfire risk where vegetation becomes dense, continuous and unmanaged. The challenge is therefore not choosing between farming or conservation, but finding ways to support landscapes that can sustain biodiversity, rural livelihoods and wildfire resilience together.

Wildfire risk in Ireland and Scotland can no longer be understood simply as a problem of careless ignitions or extreme weather. It runs much deeper than that. It is increasingly tied to long-term changes in how upland landscapes are farmed, governed and managed.

If future policy is serious about reducing wildfire risk, it must look beyond seasonal warnings and begin addressing the deeper forces reshaping our uplands.

Will Hayes, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Fire Governance, Royal Holloway, University of London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In December 2025, Indonesia quietly abandoned plans to close the Cirebon-1 coal power plant.

This was no ordinary power plant. Cirebon-1 was supposed to be the centrepiece of a US$21.4 billion (£16.5bn) international deal backed by the US, UK, Japan and the EU to help Indonesia end coal use.

Indonesia’s so-called Just Energy Transition Partnership, or Jet-P, was launched at a G20 summit in Bali in 2022. Similar deals have been struck with South Africa, Vietnam and Senegal. They are widely regarded as the most ambitious attempt at getting international climate finance to end coal use in populous, coal-dependent middle-income countries.

The UK government once touted the Jet-Ps as “a template on how to support just transition around the world”. This refers to efforts to ensure that the phase-out of fossil fuels and phase-in of low-carbon technologies is fair, inclusive and reflects the demands of workers and affected communities.

But if this approach cannot retire a single plant in Indonesia, the world’s fourth largest coal consumer, there is reason to question whether the model itself works. Our research suggests these partnerships are better understood as a cautionary tale.

Investors needed

The idea underpinning the Jet-Ps is elegant in theory: use public money from rich countries to attract private investment for renewable energy projects and closing down coal plants.

Grants from governments and low-cost loans supposedly reduce the risk enough to bring in billions more from banks and asset managers. The public money “unlocks” the private money, and together they fund an energy transition that benefits the public through cleaner air, reliable energy and reduced climate risk. Win, win.

But across all four Jet-P countries, the private money has yet to materialise at the scale envisioned. In Indonesia, as of early 2025, only around US$1.1 billion of public money had been disbursed. But the country’s plan for decarbonising electricity estimates it needs US$97 billion in investment by 2030 – a cavernous gap.

More troubling still is the lack of consolidated financial reporting for the Jet-P funds. Fifty separate funding packages within the Indonesian Jet-P, all with their own financial instruments and accounting frameworks, make it all but impossible to track how much money has been spent.

As international climate law expert Lukas Bogner has argued, this kind of finance creates complex bureaucratic layers that recipient countries must navigate.

Why investors haven’t shut coal plants

Decommissioning a coal plant is not like building a new one. It means buying out existing contracts, compensating investors for lost future profits, and renegotiating complex legal agreements.

Even then, the electricity the plant provided still needs to be replaced. This requires further investment in generation systems that may not yet exist. Investors have little appetite for any of this, and the costs fall primarily on the state.

In fact, the supposed unlocking of private investment with public money raises a perennial tendency: private capital moves where returns are highest and risks lowest.

Investors in London and New York, for example, demand high returns from middle-income economies like Indonesia, yet baulk at complex regulatory environments, state-owned electricity companies, powerful coal interests and mounting sovereign debt burdens. Public money can make some projects more attractive, but will not remove the supposed political and economic risks investors see in countries like Indonesia.

The Jet-P also means loading Indonesia with more debt. Of the US$21.4 billion now pledged, only 2.6% comes in the form of interest-free grants. Most Jet-P finance would arrive as commercially-priced loans which Indonesia must eventually repay.

In other words, Indonesia is being asked to borrow more to decommission coal assets that currently generate government revenue and employment. At the same time, it will have to purchase renewable electricity from the privatised companies that would replace them.

In the words of one of our interviewees, the Indonesian state is expected to “pay twice” – once to close the old system, and again to buy power from the new one. Trade unions in Indonesia have been blunt about what this means in practice. Under the Jet-P model, they warn electricity will no longer be treated as a public good, but as a commodity that ordinary Indonesians will pay more for.

The Jet-P model can also weaken the same state institutions needed to manage the energy transition. Countries that have managed rapid clean-energy booms, from China to Vietnam, have done so through strong state-owned enterprises, clear industrial strategies, and the ability to direct investment and discipline business.

The Jet-Ps, by contrast, are designed around a diminished role for the state and a central role for private capital. This happens through regulatory reform, the creation of new private markets, or through investor-friendly technologies.

In the case of Indonesia, this “de-risking” agenda explains the pressure to break up the national electricity company and sell off its assets – a prospect fiercely resisted by trade unions, civil society, and even wealthy groups who profit from the existing system.

A broken model?

International climate finance remains important. Rich countries must still fund energy transitions in the global south. But the Indonesian Jet-P suggests that relying on private investors to deliver coal phase-outs may be the wrong model.

Alternatives do exist, from proposals for much larger grant-based financing to the Bridgetown Initiative proposed by Barbados’s prime minister, Mia Mottley, which would use International Monetary Fund resources to support climate investment. More radical proposals call for publicly-owned, worker-led transitions. But so far, these ideas have made little progress.

Our research suggests just transitions are more likely when governments receive direct grants that help them retain the capacity to shape their own energy systems, and to support domestic industries through green industrialisation.

The failure to decommission Cirebon-1 matters beyond Indonesia. It suggests the world’s flagship model for financing the end of fossil fuels isn’t working. And the longer it takes to admit that, the harder the transition becomes – for Indonesia, and for everyone.

Freddie Daley, Research Associate, Centre for Global Political Economy, University of Sussex and Charlie Lawrie, Postdoctoral associate, University of Sussex

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When you think of Antarctica, you might imagine a stark, other-worldly continent of endless, white ice. The only sound being the wind, punctuated by the crack of a glacier calving in the distance.

This image may have been true more than 30 years ago but is certainly not the case anymore. In January, I met online with colleagues who are working on a science project at the UK’s Rothera research station. Rothera is on the West Antarctic peninsula, one of the many front lines of climate change. It had been raining. Again. I carried out my PhD research at Rothera, spending three southern hemisphere summers there from 2004-06, and I don’t remember it ever raining properly while I was there. Certainly not for days on end. Now it’s becoming a regular occurrence.

Over the past few years, Antarctica has been experiencing more extreme warm weather, often triggered by “atmospheric rivers” of warm air from nearer the equator. These extreme environmental events are associated with anomalies in precipitation (rainfall and snow) as well as melting at the surface of the ice sheet and floating ice shelves. These changes have knock-on effects for marine ecosystems, from shifting the timing and nature of algal blooms that support food webs to the disruption of breeding cycles of zooplankton, seabirds and marine mammals.

Extreme events can be short and sharp, or – more concerningly – could result in persistent or irreversible changes to a system that is already under stress. Those distant glaciers that calved, booming into the sea could retreat so far that they form rivers, fundamentally and irreversibly changing the interaction between ice and ocean. And they are now breaking records: in March 2022, the French-Italian station at Concordia, near the South Pole, recorded temperatures of -11.5°C; cold, yes, but almost 40°C warmer than expected.

There’s a greater need than ever to understand how climate change in Antarctica will have global consequences. We urgently need more data with better coverage in order to make more robust predictions of sea-level rise and risks to natural resources, which will impact societies globally.

On the plus side, there are ongoing international efforts to bring together polar scientists over the next few years to decide how best to work together to help protect Antarctica.

However, as a new paper published by my colleagues and I in Nature Communications Earth & Environment discusses, the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather makes Antarctic research more important but also more challenging.

The impact of extreme environmental events in Antarctica is leading to severe consequences for those who are trying to carry out and support the scientific studies we need. It’s only going to get harder to transport people and equipment to Antarctica, as warming and surface melt cause airstrips to collapse or subside, and shifting ice dynamics will play havoc with shipping routes.

Research stations will also increasingly suffer from subsidence, putting both peoples lives and laboratories at risk.

Remote stations and camps out on the ice sheet will be challenging and potentially dangerous to access, because rainfall and melting ice will get harder to predict. Access issues will affect the health and safety of Antarctic scientists, as medical evacuations will take longer. Extreme weather will add pressure to the wellbeing and mental health of scientists and support staff.

Looking to the future

Where will this leave us in the scientific research community? One fortunate and timely aspect is that emerging technologies will be able to support research into the future. We have new autonomous systems such as gliders, floats and submarines that operate underwater, plus uncrewed aerial vehicles and drones on the surface of the ocean and in the air.

These robots are not only safer in uncertain and changing conditions but also lower carbon, because they are light and can run on batteries. They can provide us with the measurements and samples needed for us to address key scientific questions ahead of us.

We are also experiencing a revolution in how we combine together our observations, large-scale information from satellites, and models. Near real-time models of the ocean, called digital twins, allow us to upscale observations to the global scale as well as support more efficient field observations.

Antarctica remains a fundamental component of Earth’s system. Scientists need to work together internationally to unlock its secrets to understand how and when it will change in the future.

Katharine Hendry, Honorary Associate Professor, School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol; British Antarctic Survey

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

After another spell of wet weather along Australia’s east coast, with storms, heavy rain and flash flooding across Sydney and parts of New South Wales, it is natural to ask whether our cities are shaping the rainfall that descends upon them.

This matters because most people now live in cities. If urbanisation changes rainfall, even slightly, the effects can reach large populations through flooding, stormwater design, water supply and infrastructure planning.

Satellite data have consistently shown that many cities experience more rain events than the countryside around them. The usual explanation is that cities themselves are involved: urban heat, rougher surfaces, aerosols and changed land cover can all affect how storms develop and where rain falls.

Our new study, published in Environmental Research Letters, asks a related question: how much of this data reflects real changes in rainfall, and how much depends on how we observe it?

Why we need satellites

Understanding rainfall over cities is hard.

Rain gauges accurately measure rainfall at a specific location, but are irregularly distributed and cannot fully capture how rain varies across a large city. Climate models can simulate urban weather in detail, but kilometre-scale simulations across many cities and decades remain computationally expensive.

Satellite observations help fill this gap.

NASA’s Integrated Multi satellite Retrievals for GPM, known as IMERG, provides near-global rainfall estimates at high resolution, and is now widely used for studying rainfall over cities.

What the satellite data shows

We examined IMERG rainfall data across 15 of the world’s largest cities, including Sydney and Melbourne. The cities span different climates and geographic settings, including both coastal and inland regions.

A clear pattern emerged. Rain events occurred more often over urban areas than over nearby rural ones. The strongest signal was not that every storm became stronger, but that satellites counted more hours in which it was raining over cities. Individual events over urban centres often dropped less water than those in surrounding areas.

In other words, the main urban signal in IMERG is more frequent rain, not heavier rain.

Different sensors, different stories

Modern satellite rainfall data combines both infrared and microwave observations.

Infrared sensors estimate rainfall indirectly from the temperature at the top of clouds. They provide broad coverage, but can miss light, shallow or warm rain because these can occur even when the tops of the clouds are not very cold.

Microwave satellites fly in low orbit and detect signals more directly linked to raindrops and ice inside clouds, making them particularly useful for identifying whether rain is actually occurring.

When we separated the IMERG data by observation type, the urban signal mainly came from microwave observations, while infrared estimates showed no urban pattern.

This does not mean the microwave signal is wrong, but it raises a potential problem for long-term studies: microwave observations have changed over time. New satellites have been launched and older ones retired, and across the cities we studied, microwave sampling frequency happened almost twice as often by 2023 as it had in 2001.

This matters because the more often a microwave sensor passes overhead, the more rain events it can detect. A light shower missed in 2002 could now be caught by one of several satellites passing within the hour.

Testing the artefact

To test whether this changing sampling affects observed rainfall trends, we compared the microwave and non-microwave with long-term averages. This meant we could separate out the result of changing satellite sampling from the actual changes in weather.

Changes in microwave sampling explained up to about 20% of the long-term rainfall trends across the 15 cities. For rainfall frequency, cities such as Lagos, London, Melbourne, Beijing, Berlin, Mexico City and Paris showed areas where more than 40% of the apparent trend could be linked to the changing observing system.

The satellites did not create the whole urban rainfall pattern. After accounting for sampling effects, the urban signal remained, but the long-term trend became smaller. So we think it really is raining more often over cities, but perhaps not as much as we thought.

Moving forward

For Sydney, we also compared IMERG with CMORPH, another satellite product, and with Bureau of Meteorology rain gauges. CMORPH showed a similar urban pattern, though the two products are not fully independent because they use overlapping microwave observations.

The gauges are a more independent check, but with too few stations outside the urban core, in Sydney and most cities, the true magnitude cannot yet be confirmed on the ground.

Satellite rainfall data is now used everywhere, in climate science, flood risk, agriculture, insurance and water planning. In many regions it is the only consistent rainfall record over large areas. Our results are a caution: part of an apparent trend can come from the changing observing system rather than real change.

As for why cities get more frequent rain, the likeliest explanations are familiar: urban heat that lifts air, rougher surfaces that nudge winds upward, and aerosols that alter cloud droplets. The signal is real. The task now is measuring it properly.

Shankar Sharma, PhD student, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney; Andy Pitman, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, UNSW Sydney, and Jason Evans, Professor, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Cities around the world are planting more trees to cope with rising urban heat. But our research shows trees alone are often not enough. In some cases, the wrong kind of greening can even make streets feel less comfortable on a hot day.

We compared field measurements from Melbourne, Munich and Hong Kong to test how different kinds of urban planting changed the heat people experience outdoors.

The results showed layered vegetation – where trees are combined with shrubs and ground cover – often cooled cities more effectively than trees alone. We also found local climate and street design strongly shaped whether greening worked well.

These findings matter because urban greening is no longer just about aesthetics. As cities spend billions adapting to extreme heat, planting design may matter as much as planting quantity.

Cities are getting hotter

Cities trap heat. Roads, buildings and asphalt absorb solar energy during the day and slowly release it back into the air, especially at night.

This “urban heat island” effect, combined with climate change, is making heatwaves more intense and more dangerous in our cities.

Trees are one of the most popular responses because they provide shade and reduce the amount of heat absorbed by surrounding surfaces. But outdoor comfort depends on more than air temperature alone.

People experience heat through sunlight, reflected heat, humidity and airflow. A shaded street can still feel uncomfortable if humidity is high or if wind cannot move through the space.

That is why a “one-size fits all” greening strategy can fail. A planting design that works well in Melbourne may behave very differently in Hong Kong or Munich.

What we found

To better understand how urban vegetation affects heat stress, we did field measurements in three cities with different climates: temperate Melbourne, cooler Munich and humid subtropical Hong Kong.

Rather than relying only on computer models, we measured real conditions in streets and green spaces during summer.

We compared open urban spaces (with no plantings), sites with trees only, and layered planting (which means trees, shrubs and ground cover together).

Importantly, we did not just measure air temperature. We also measured “mean radiant temperature”, which captures the heat radiating from roads, walls and other surfaces onto the human body.

In Melbourne, street trees reduced radiant heat absorbed by pedestrians by more than 18°C, compared with open streets. Even where air temperatures changed only slightly, shaded streets felt substantially cooler.

Munich showed the strongest benefits from layered planting. There, streets and green spaces containing trees, shrubs and ground cover reduced afternoon heat stress by almost 8°C compared with more open spaces.

Hong Kong also benefited from vegetation, especially through shade created by overlapping tree canopies. But the results there were more mixed because the humid climate changed how cooling worked (more on that later).

Across all three cities, one finding stood out: vegetation structure matters.

Combining trees with shrubs and ground cover often performed better than trees alone, but the benefits depended on how the planting interacted with the local environment.

Why some greening can fail

The study showed that more vegetation is not automatically better.

In Hong Kong, dense vegetation sometimes increased humidity enough to reduce some of the cooling benefit. Plants release water vapour into the air through transpiration, which can help to cool dry climates. But in already humid cities, extra moisture can make outdoor spaces feel sticky and uncomfortable because sweat evaporates less efficiently.

In some Munich streets, dense vegetation reduced airflow through narrow urban corridors, trapping warm air and slowing the movement of vehicle pollution away from pedestrians.

These findings highlight why cities cannot rely on generic canopy targets copied from elsewhere. Climate, street width and airflow all shape whether vegetation improves comfort or creates unintended side effects.

Designing cooler cities

The solution is not to stop planting trees. It is to design urban greening more carefully.

Cities need planting strategies tailored to local conditions rather than universal greening formulas. In parks and open green spaces, layered vegetation can provide strong cooling while also supporting biodiversity. In dense streets, planners may need to balance shade with ventilation.

The findings also suggest cities should move beyond measuring success through tree numbers alone. The arrangement, density and type of vegetation matter just as much as canopy cover.

Designing for local conditions

Our research shows urban vegetation can reduce heat stress, but the benefits depend on how and where cities plant it.

Melbourne demonstrated the strong cooling effect of street trees on radiant heat, Munich showed the added value of layered vegetation, and Hong Kong revealed how dense planting can sometimes backfire in humid conditions.

Cities need climate-smart green spaces designed for local conditions, airflow and human comfort to remain liveable as temperatures rise.

Mohammad A Rahman, Senior Lecturer in Urban Horticulture, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate change is exacerbating rainfall, flooding and sea-level rises in coastal and low lying areas. During the past few years, disastrous floods have swept through Lismore in New South Wales, Northern Queensland, and the Great Ocean Road in Victoria. Large waves have pounded beaches, causing erosion in Byron Bay and Wamberal Beach in NSW and Lancelin, Western Australia.

With climate change likely to accelerate extreme weather in Australia, planned or managed retreat – moving people and infrastructure away from these areas – will grow only more important.

But planned retreat often provokes intense backlash from Australian communities on the front line of climate change. Councils and state governments are generally reticent to have this conversation with communities.

My research, published earlier this year, shows why planned retreat can become emotional – and divisive and how planners and communities can tackle it.

The take-home message? Talking to people from both sides of the debate can help a lot.

What does planned retreat involve?

Planned or managed retreat can involve relocation of people, houses and infrastructure. It can also mean restricting development in risky areas.

A successful example of relocation occurred after an “inland tsunami” flash flood destroyed homes and lives in Grantham, Queensland, in 2011. After the disaster, the town was moved out of harm’s way in a collaboration between state, local governments and communities.

However, planned retreat often provokes fear and anger – especially among residents in vulnerable areas – over the effect on private property.

There was community backlash in the NSW Lake Macquarie City Council area in 2012, when the council included “retreat” among a suite of options it was considering to manage rising seas and flooding in low lying areas.

Fearful and angry property owners voiced concern this would drive down property prices and drive up insurance.

Another example involved a recent draft plan by the Commonwealth and Western Australian governments, which included eventual relocation for residents of Home Island and West Island in the remote Cocos Keeling Islands, about 2,750 kilometres northwest of Perth.

Residents of this low-lying island community were angry at what they saw as a threat to their culture and human rights.

Similarly, Torres Strait Islanders find being forced to abandon their home a painful injustice.

Community frustration

If communities want to relocate out of harm’s way, they need somewhere to live.

After catastrophic flooding in the NSW town of Lismore in 2022, thousands of people were left homeless. Over 1,700 homes were damaged.

Two years after the flood, the NSW state government purchased 497 damaged properties in Lismore, as part of an effort to move residents from these areas.

But many in the community expressed frustration with the slow pace of the process, and lack of affordable housing in the region.

If retreat becomes a taboo topic, planners and residents have limited options.

Residents of Lancelin, Western Australia, have lost coastal walkways due to erosion, which has also threatened a popular hotel.

Yet more than 900 people signed a petition against planned retreat.

In NSW’s Wamberal Beach, retreat has become so politically unpalatable, state and local governments agreed to progress designs for a multi-million dollar seawall to protect waterfront properties from erosion. (It is yet to be built.)

Lessons from research

My research looked at planned retreat in the context of climate change.

In 2019, after the NSW Central Coast Council proposed retreat in coastal areas (in areas such Gosford and Woy Woy) for public consultation, I interviewed residents; climate, environmental and property activists; and council and state adaptation planners.

I found similar resistance to planned retreat from homeowners, property investors, real estate agents and residents.

Many people were worried a planned retreat would make insurance more expensive and drive down property values. They also feared planned retreat would threaten the entire existence of their community.

However, climate activists were afraid people would be stuck with properties they could no longer live in. One person joked about being able to go fishing from his lounge room by 2050. These people wanted a public discussion about planned retreat.

Groups on both sides expressed fear and outrage to get their point across. Faced with hostility, the council became reticent to talk to the community.

Not surprisingly, the discussion about planned retreat soon collapsed.

Talking to warring factions

Once the shouting dies down, my research shows both sides of the debate share common views.

People told me the community should talk about what was fair, and the pros and cons of buybacks and relocation.

Overall, during interviews they voiced hope for collaboration, belonging and survival.

This can help provide a road map for planned retreat in Australia. My research shows we need to:

• air grievances

• find areas of agreement between warring factions

• allow affected people and planners to debate what’s fair for individuals and communities

• acknowledge emotions are part of the process.

For decades, researchers have argued climate change adaptation is a collaborative and community-driven project.

However, recent cases suggest that planned retreat is becoming a divisive issue affecting vulnerable residents. Even the Australian government’s recent National Climate Risk Assessment acknowledged the growing risk sea level rises pose to social cohesion.

We can look to communities for answers. Planned retreat can be tense and emotional – but it can also represent a reset and an opportunity for hope.

Anne Maree Kreller, Research, Australian Centre for Culture, Environment, Society and Space, University of Wollongong

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

From July 1, many Australians can choose something that once sounded absurd: free electricity in the middle of the day. The federal government’s opt-in Solar Sharer Offer will give three hours of free power to households with smart meters in New South Wales, South Australia and southeast Queensland. Victoria’s separate scheme will launch in October.

Free power sounds like a giveaway. It isn’t. It’s meant to encourage people to use more electricity during the hours when solar power flows into the grid. The real aim is to get people to shift the use of water heaters, pool pumps, air-conditioning and electric vehicle charging to the middle of the day. At other times, power prices will be slightly more expensive.

The main challenge for Australia’s power systems is no longer how to meet peak demand in the evening. We now have to use or manage the floods of very cheap solar during the sunniest hours when there’s more supply than demand. If this imbalance isn’t managed, electricity voltage and frequency can move outside safe limits, equipment can trip, and the risk of outages rises.

The scheme makes sense. But there are still questions about its fairness. Electrified households will benefit most, while renters and other groups may benefit less.

The challenge of solar abundance

About one in three Australian homes now has solar. At times, this power source can supply 50% of total demand on Australia’s biggest power grid, the National Energy Market. Wholesale prices have regularly gone negative in recent quarters.

In big solar states such as South Australia, solar can supply more power than the state can use. Surplus power is exported, stored in batteries or curtailed – wasted.

The Solar Sharer Offer is meant to make better use of these floods of solar power.

This financial year, the three hours of free power will be 11am to 2pm daily in NSW and southeast Queensland and 12 to 3pm in South Australia. Australia’s energy regulator chose these times to match when solar output is highest, and network and wholesale costs are lowest. This may change year by year.

The reason the scheme isn’t national is because it’s tied to the Default Market Offer — a regulated safety net plan for electricity customers – which only applies in NSW, SA and southeast Queensland.

Who will benefit most?

Ensuring fair access has been a constant challenge for household clean-energy schemes. People who own their homes and have access to capital are usually better placed to benefit. This scheme has the same issue.

It’s easy to picture the ideal customer for three hours of free power – a homeowner with a smart meter, flexible hot water, electric vehicle, home battery and the ability to choose when power-hungry appliances run.

That’s great for them. But what about everyone else? For instance, you have to have a smart meter to be eligible. Only about 60% of households have one.

The harder question is whether this offer is fair for other households.

Renters, apartment residents and people on embedded networks in retirement villages, caravan parks or shopping centres face another barrier. If they opt in without being able to make good use of the free power, they could actually be worse off due to the higher prices at other times. These concerns were raised during the consultation process.

Making it fairer

The government is aware of these issues. The free power period is capped at 24 kilowatt hours a day, enough to cover several large daytime loads such as hot water, dishwashing, laundry, air-conditioning or part-charging of an EV.

The cap matters because offering electricity for free still incurs costs for energy retailers. To recover the missed revenue during the free window, retailers will boost other usage charges. Capping free power at 24 kWh a day limits how much high-consumption households can use at zero price, which limits how much revenue has to be recovered from usage at other times of day.

More needs to be done to ensure it’s fair. A key step is unglamorous but effective: helping households heat water during the day. Heating water takes a lot of power. Electric hot-water systems are often on controlled-load tariffs designed for overnight operation. A South Australian trial moved close to 50% of water heating from night to day with little reported inconvenience.

Where safe and practical, retailers and network businesses could shift the time these systems charge to the middle of the day. Governments could help rentals and apartment residents by supporting the use of timers, smart controllers and efficient heat-pump hot-water systems. The same logic applies to other flexible loads.

The free lunch is real. The question is who gets a seat at the table.

Saman Gorji, Associate Professor, Renewable Energy and Electrical Engineering, Deakin University and Alireza Ganjovi, Researcher, Energy Systems and Applied Physics, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia’s biggest industrial gas users pump out about 5% of our greenhouse gas emissions. To have any chance of reaching our emissions targets, Australia need to reduce its heavy reliance on fossil gas.

But to make this possible, we need to produce supplies of green hydrogen – made with renewable energy – and biomethane. On current trends, we won’t have enough.

Despite allocating billions of dollars to support green hydrogen, Australia’s policies don’t seem to be working.

The risk is many large factories will either miss their emissions reduction targets by huge margins, or shut down. To prevent this, the federal government needs to foster these crucial green gas industries.

What’s the problem?

The use of gas in Australia has already peaked in all sectors. In our new report, my co-authors and I show:

• the use of gas for electricity generation has fallen 11% since 2014
• gas use in manufacturing has been falling since the early 2000s
• LNG exports also likely peaked in 2022.

As Australia continues its transition towards a “net zero” energy system by 2050, all of its gas emissions will need to cease.

Industrial gas users burn gas as a fuel for high-heat processes, such as refining alumina or manufacturing, as well as using the gas molecules to manufacture chemical products, like ammonia.

Food processors, beer brewers and other industrial gas users who need less intense heat can avoid emissions by electrifying. As the technology improves, a growing share of high-heat industrial users, such as mineral processors, will also be able to take this route.

But a small and critical group of industrial gas users will not be able to easily reduce their gas use. For now, the very high-temperature heat they rely on still needs a burnable fuel. And chemical producers who use gas as a feedstock for its molecules need a renewable substitute.

What is ‘green’ gas?

This is where renewable gases – green hydrogen and biomethane – come in.

Green hydrogen is made by running zero-emissions electricity through water. It can replace gas for high-temperature heat or as a feedstock to make ammonia, which is needed for fertilisers and explosives.

Biomethane is chemically the same as natural gas, but made from waste, such as landfill, sewage and agricultural waste. Because its carbon was only recently absorbed from the atmosphere by plants, it counts as near-zero emissions.

The government has set big targets for renewable gas production – 60 petajoules of green hydrogen and 10 petajoules of biomethane by 2030. But across Australia, as of 2025 we only make 0.1 petajoules of green hydrogen and 0.1 petajoules of biomethane.

To reach the targets, green hydrogen production would need to grow six hundredfold and biomethane one hundredfold in the next four years.

We’re not on track

Other countries have rapidly grown their renewable gas industries from a small base.

Italy had no biomethane industry in 2018. It now produces more than 28 petajoules a year. But Australia’s policies don’t seem to be working.

Australia has allocated A$2.25 billion to help support green hydrogen production, but only two projects have been funded and neither are operational. Several other major projects have been cancelled.

Part of the problem is that the government has tried to skip too many steps. The government has poured money into large projects and offered ongoing revenue support before any large buyers exist.

Biomethane has not received as much support, with only $60 million in grants for three projects. More funding has been announced, but it is still not proportionate to the level of ambition.

Support green gas producers

In our report, we set out the steps the federal government could take to bring Australia’s renewable gas policies up to speed.

Australia needs to improve support for producers and give them certainty that they will have paying customers. For hydrogen, funding should begin by supporting existing users of hydrogen to switch to green hydrogen, because they already have the equipment and the know-how to use hydrogen.

Currently the funding is in the form of tax credits, which only benefit companies profitably selling hydrogen. Instead, support should be restructured to make up the difference between the cost of using green hydrogen and the cost of using carbon-heavy methods of production.

For biomethane, the government should assess whether the sector should be given strategic priority support as part of the Future Made in Australia scheme.

Drive up demand

Australia should introduce a national renewable gas “obligation”, under which large gas users would have to purchase certificates proving a portion of the gas they were using was zero-emissions.

This would drive up demand and prices, creating a revenue stream for renewable gas producers. New South Wales and Victoria already plan to implement renewable gas targets. Instead of state-based approaches, the federal government should introduce a national target and obligation.

In the short term, requiring big gas users to consume a collective 1 petajoule of biomethane would only cost about $15 million.

It would be a small impost if it were spread across all large gas users, and it would be transformational for renewable gas producers.

There’s not a moment to waste. If we’re serious about both our emissions reduction targets and our manufacturing capacity, we need far more renewable gases than Australia is on track to produce. And we need them very soon.

Ben Jefferson, Associate, Grattan Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Last year, we noted early signs of recovery in Australia’s high country, following the reduction of feral horse numbers.

These had dropped from 17,000 in 2023 to around 3,000 in 2024 across Kosciuszko National Park, thanks to the management efforts of NSW National Parks staff and contractors.

But horse numbers are already bouncing back. The latest survey data estimate between 6,476 and 16,411 horses now roam the national park.

So, what happened?

A mild summer

The answer is simple. If feral horse eradication is impossible — or politically and legally off the table — then continuous management of horse numbers is essential.

With no aerial culling within the national park in 2025, two factors likely contributed to this rapid rebound.

First, horses move. Control efforts have largely focused on remote parts of Kosciuszko National Park, away from people, trails and roads. Once resident herds in these areas have been culled, horses from surrounding regions – particularly adjacent state forests – likely moved in.

Second, horses breed. After a mild summer with significant rainfall across the high country, most mares will have bred. During Autumn fieldwork, we observed large numbers of foals accompanying herds throughout the region.

A numbers game

If numbers aren’t rapidly reduced again, things will only get worse, both for the fragile alpine environment and the horses themselves. With winter conditions imminent, many horses will struggle to maintain condition as snow covers grazing areas and energy reserves are depleted.

Ironically, some of the strongest opposition to culling overlooks these very real animal welfare consequences. Leaving horse populations unmanaged may ultimately result in prolonged suffering from starvation and exposure, compared with humane control conducted by trained professionals.

Forecast El Niño conditions may further compound these pressures, with drought likely to persist through spring and summer. As water and food become scarce, horses will likely concentrate around creeks, wetlands, alpine bogs, fens and meadows. These are precisely the alpine ecosystems most vulnerable to trampling, grazing and erosion.

And this is where hard-fought gains will be rapidly lost. Banks will become eroded, clear waters fouled and our fabled high plains replaced by overgrazed paddocks.

A long-term effort

We don’t need to look far to see what happens when a population of feral animals goes unchecked. Great Keppel Island, for example, is overrun with a thousand or more feral goats, denuding dune and forcing increasingly exasperated locals to erect fences around their properties

As with horses in Kosciuszko, political hesitancy and delayed action on Great Keppel have allowed ecological damage to escalate while management becomes increasingly difficult and expensive.

New South Wales Environment Minister, Penny Sharpe, recently said the latest Kosciuszko feral horse numbers confirmed the need for “continued management”, required to meet the target of reducing feral horse numbers to 3,000 by mid-2027.

But where did that target come from? It’s a holdover from the repealed Kosciuszko Wild Horse Heritage Act and, when even basic population growth models are applied, the implications become clear. Maintaining a population of 3,000 horses would still require the removal of well over 1,000 animals every two years — indefinitely.

In other words, there is no “set and forget” solution. If horse populations are to remain capped, ongoing culling will be necessary in perpetuity.

Alternative solutions?

Some have suggested that instead of culling, rehoming and fertility control should be used. While many Australians might like the idea of a “brumby” or two grazing in the back paddock, the number of landholders willing and able to care for these animals is far smaller.

Even retired racehorses struggle to find suitable long-term homes once their racing careers end, highlighting the practical limitations of large-scale rehoming programs.

Likewise, although various fertility control options have been suggested, vaccines, intra-uterine devices or surgical sterilisation are all invasive procedures for which horses need to be caught and sedated. These may be effective to maintain a small herd in an easily accessible area. But previous assessments have warned such an approach must be carried out in concert with large scale culling efforts.

Population dynamics vs politics

We don’t have to look far to find other examples of how invasive species management could be improved. In 2016, then New Zealand Prime Minister John Key introduced a bold plan to rid Aotearoa of all introduced predators in the next 30 years.

Predator Free 2050 is the first national-scale initiative to reduce the impacts of introduced predators, capitalising on the invention of new technologies including real-time automated species identification to trap targeted species and mobilising neighbourhoods across the country to join the effort.

Australia faces a different set of challenges — larger landscapes, divided jurisdictions and deeply entrenched cultural and political debates around invasive species management.

But the broader lesson remains the same: meaningful conservation outcomes require long-term commitment, clear targets and the willingness to act before ecological problems become too difficult to reverse.

David M Watson, Professor in Ecology, Charles Sturt University and Patrick Finnerty, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Conservation and Wildlife Management, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.