Construction due to begin in 2027 on what is expected to be UK’s largest publicly owned windfarm
Every islander on Orkney is expected to benefit from a major windfarm being built by the local council after it won £62m in financing from the UK’s national wealth fund.
All the profits from the project to build up to 18 turbines across three islands on Orkney will be spent on local services, council officials said, in what is expected to become the UK’s largest publicly owned windfarm.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/21/2025 - 08:25
10/21/2025 - 07:00
New rule would prohibit states from banning dangerous chemicals, and could invalidate hundreds of protections
A new rule proposed by the Trump administration would dramatically weaken safety reviews for some of the nation’s most toxic chemicals that are already on the market, public health advocates and an EPA employee warn.
Many of the chemicals that would receive less scrutiny are among the nation’s most dangerous substances, including PFAS, formaldehyde, asbestos and dioxins. Each poses serious health risks in consumer goods, or for workers handling the substances, advocates say.
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10/21/2025 - 07:00
Most vulnerable families could be without critical energy assistance, experts warn, as electricity and gas bills surge
Millions of Americans face having to ration heating this winter as the US federal government shutdown and mass layoffs by the Trump administration cause unprecedented delays in getting energy assistance aid to low-income households, a group that helps people pay energy bills has warned.
Congress approved about $4bn for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (Liheap), after Trump’s proposal to cancel the life-saving heating and cooling scheme in this year’s budget was ultimately unsuccessful.
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10/21/2025 - 05:41
Three specimens discovered in what was previously one of the only places in the world without the insects
Mosquitoes have been found in Iceland for the first time as global heating makes the country more hospitable for insects.
The country was until this month one of the only places in the world that did not have a mosquito population. The other is Antarctica.
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10/21/2025 - 04:11
Air breathed by people in the city categorised as ‘severe’ in quality after fireworks contribute to thick smog
Delhi awoke to a thick haze on Tuesday, a day after millions of people celebrated the Hindu festival of Diwali with fireworks, marking the beginning of the pollution season that has become an annual blight on India’s capital.
Those in the most polluted city in the world once again found themselves breathing dangerously toxic air that fell into the “severe” category on Tuesday morning.
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10/21/2025 - 04:00
Guano, a fertiliser derived from seabird excrement, enriched Peru in the 19th century and was shipped around the world in huge quantities. On Santa Island, north of Lima, workers still mine it in the toughest of conditions
Photographs by Ernesto Benavides/AFP/Getty Images
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Ed Miliband’s new green jobs will bring Britain hope. I dare Reform to denounce them | Polly Toynbee
10/21/2025 - 00:00
While Nigel Farage promotes retro plans to reopen coalmines, will he really tell thousands of clean energy workers to leave their well-paid, local jobs?
This government is bad at proclaiming what it’s for. But to find out, follow the money. Its boldest investment is in green energy, designed to create prodigious returns in economic growth, employment, training, climate action and more. So far it has been hard to sell. Wafty talk of greenness passes most people by, and “whose growth is it, anyway?” is a realistic question in a country of stagnant pay and public decay. But, this week, Ed Miliband put flesh on the green words, making jobs and projects concrete. A very big number of green jobs – 400,000 by 2030 – are set to be created in 31 “priority occupations”, from welders to production managers, plumbers and joiners, everywhere from Centrica’s £35m state-of-the-art training academy in Lutterworth to Teesside’s net-zero decarbonisation cluster.
This is what a Labour industrial strategy should look like. Nigel Farage’s retro campaign for this week’s Caerphilly byelection promises to reopen Welsh coalmines. But well-paid, clean, green-energy jobs within their home districts are what Miliband’s Doncaster North constituents want, the minister tells me, not sending young people down reopened mines. Government figures show wind, nuclear and electricity jobs pay more than most – the average advertised salary in the wind sector is £51,000 a year, against an average £37,000. Unions, once sceptical and fearful of losing jobs in unionised industries, now sign up with guarantees that any new plant getting grants must “support greater trade union recognition” and a fair work charter.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
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10/21/2025 - 00:00
Iida Turpeinen’s novel has been a sensation in her native Finland. On the eve of its UK publication, she talks about her compulsion to tell of the sociable giant’s plight
Iida Turpeinen is the author of Beasts of the Sea, a Finnish novel tracing the fate of a now-extinct species: the sea cow. Similar to dugongs and manatees, the sea cow was only discovered in 1741 by the shipwrecked German-born naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller but by 1768 it had already become the first marine species to be eradicated by humans.
Translated into 28 languages and shortlisted for the country’s most prestigious literary award, the Finlandia Prize, Beasts of the Sea was described by the Helsinki Literacy Agency as the most internationally successful Finnish debut novel ever. Turpeinen, 38, a PhD student of comparative literature, is now a resident novelist at Finland’s Natural History Museum. Her book will be published in the UK on 23 October.
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10/20/2025 - 18:01
Homeowners urged to use more robust planting and permeable materials to help mitigate flood risk
Nearly half of the UK’s garden space is paved over, a new study has found.
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has conducted the largest ever audit of the UK’s gardens, and found that they are an untapped – and until now, mostly unmeasured – potential resource for nature.
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10/20/2025 - 12:36
Conservationists argue president’s oil expansion plans clash with his image as a global leader on climate change
Brazil’s Petrobras has been given permission to drill for oil near the mouth of the Amazon River, casting a shadow over the country’s green ambitions as it prepares to host UN climate talks.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the president, has come under fire from conservationists who argue his oil expansion plans clash with his image as a global leader on climate change.
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