Renewables will overtake gas and coal globally in 2024, IEA predicts

The San Marcos City Council introduced an ordinance banning single-use plastic utensils and containers and Styrofoam products during its Oct. 12 meeting, becoming the latest in a string of San Diego County cities to implement such a ban. The council vote unanimously in favor of the ordinance, which will be officially adopted at an upcoming council meeting and phased in over two years. According to the staff report, the ordinance will “establish standards and procedures for the protection of the City’s environment, its economy, and the health of its residents and visitors by promoting environmentally sustainable practices throughout the City by controlling the use and distribution and disposal of certain non-recyclable single-use plastic products by City departments, City contractors, food servicers, and grocery stores within the City of San Marcos.”

To say it has been a busy week for green policy announcements in the UK would be an understatement. Here, edie recaps the key changes from the Net-Zero Strategy, Heat and Buildings Strategy, Environment Bill and HM Treasury. Thousands of pages of green policy updates have been published this week. Back in June, the Government was accused by its own climate advisors of having “no coherent plans” to lay the foundations for its commitment to net-zero by 2050. A string of important policy packages promised ahead of COP26 in November remained outstanding, while “climate contradictions” including the Cumbria deep coal mine and Cambo oilfield were making headlines. Fast-forward to this week, and several metaphorical buses have come along at once. In the space of 72 hours, the Government published 21 net-zero-related documents, including consultations, policy packages and roadmaps, totalling thousands of pages.

The Aluminium Association of India (AAI) on Monday sought intervention of state-owned CIL to normalise the precarious situation arisen due to stoppage of coal supplies and rakes for captive power plants, resulting in situation of crunch of dry-fuel for the aluminium sector. This ”ad hoc decision” without any advance notice has brought down the industry to a standstill and the industry has been left out with no time to devise any mitigation plan to continue sustainable operations, the AAI said in a letter to Coal India (CIL) Chairman and Managing Director. ”This has reference to the crisis situation developed for the entire aluminium sector due to the recent ad hoc decision for stopping/drastically curtailing the coal supplies and rakes for captive power plants (CPPs) resulting in coal crunch situation for aluminium sector,” the letter said.