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The reason your weekly grocery store is becoming so much more expensive has been revealed because the cost of living crisis continues to hit shoppers at the checkout. The weekly staple, which saw its biggest price increase in a year, was mentioned in the data behind this week’s announcement that inflation was at its highest level in two decades. Vegetables, fruit, breakfast cereals, breads, eggs, oil, butter and margarine all spiked in price last year according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Smile and hold on: The reason your weekly grocery store is getting so much more expensive has been revealed as the cost of living crisis continues to hit shoppers at checkout The opposite graph has depicted an alarming rise in the cost of basic foodstuffs, with vegetables, cereals and other household staples topping the list of sharp price increases. The ABS released its quarterly Consumer Price Index (CPI) figures – a key measure of inflation – on Wednesday morning, show

“The apple trees are starting to bloom, but no bees are buzzing among the flowers,” wrote Rachel Carson, 60 years ago, in the opening chapter Silent spring . He imagined a future city without birds, without insects, without flowers, only disease and death. The reason? Whole life has been poisoned by pesticides. But what if, instead of babbling bees, there were hundreds of babbling drones in place – using artificial intelligence to do the job of pollinating apple trees? Renowned US conservationist and author’s hunch on pesticide-induced climate damage where pollinators no longer roam is getting closer and closer. Can technology offer a solution to our growing biodiversity crisis? Oftentimes headlines will scream about the arrival of robo-bees, with visions of a dystopian future where drones, not insects, ‘buzz’ from flower to flower. In 2018 the University of West Virginia in the US developed the BrambleBee, which pollinates plants using a robotic arm. Israeli technology company

The former federal minister who oversaw the introduction of carbon prices in Australia has backed calls for policies such as insurance to help fix the crisis plaguing the country’s largest power grid. Key points: Former climate change minister Greg Combet has backed plans for capacity markets to help repair networks The proposal was pursued in the midst of skyrocketing prices and warnings of blackouts in the national electricity market Mr Combet said the policy was needed to help Australia transition to 100 per cent renewable energy Greg Combet, a former union leader who served as climate change minister in the Gillard government, said ideology needed to be removed from debates about how to solve problems affecting national electricity markets. Mr Combet said businesses and households – especially the vulnerable – were suffering amid skyrocketing prices and rolling blackout warnings as the system struggled to cope with demand. While he blamed the “chaos” at the feet of the previous Coa

On Wednesday, Queensland Energy Minister Mick de Brenni claimed his country had done the heavy lifting in the national energy market. Load “We send 300 terajoules of gas per day to the southern states, enough to power hundreds of thousands of homes,” de Brenni said. “We are providing these supplies to help Victorians and NSW residents through one of their toughest winters on record.” Australia’s energy market remains in disarray. Professor Bruce Mountain, director of the Victorian Center for Energy Policy, said coal-fired power generation was now “past its prime” and there was a shortage of wind and solar power available to offset the decline in coal. “As a result, gas has been forced to enter the market to produce much more electricity than usual,” he said. “We have a gas generation that is not efficient for power, the goal is purely to fill the peak, but it doesn’t just fill the peak, it runs very often, so it drains a lot of gas out of the system.” Mountain said Victoria was produ

When gas levels in storage drop too low, pressures may drop below the optimal range, air bubbles may form and customers may not receive their gas in a steady stream or at the right pressure for their plant and equipment. AEMO had to intervene to order two gas-fired power plants to limit operations which it said was “in line with previous communications issued for Iona storage depletion threats to system security events”. Snowy Hydro declined to comment. AEMO said the directive would remain in effect until the threat to the security of the system expires or market participants indicate that it can be a source of gas to meet electricity demand, potentially through October 1. A spokesman for AGL Energy, which operates gas-fired power plants in Victoria and South Australia, said it was monitoring the situation closely. “We note that AEMO has not imposed any withdrawal restrictions from Iona’s storage facilities,” he said. “We believe that there is unlikely to be a significant impact on our

Usually, with rising energy prices, a country like Russia will increase its natural gas sales to its main customer, Europe, above the minimum contract volume. Instead, it sticks to its contract, even though it could make a lot more. At the time, it seemed that Russia was trying to force prices up. But, on the other hand, the Kremlin may have been preparing for war. Since Europe depends on Russia for 35-40 percent of its oil and natural gas, Russian President Vladimir Putin assumed that the Europeans would protest the invasion but backed out in the end. Fixated on his self-appointed mission to restore what he sees as Russia’s historic empire, he doesn’t anticipate how they will respond to the unwarranted war next door. Going forward, five factors could exacerbate the current energy crisis. 1. Putin has cut down on natural gas Putin has opened a second front in the conflict by reducing the volume of natural gas contracts Russia supplies to Europe. The aim was to prevent Europeans fro

The crisis has been driven by a wave of blackouts at the coal-fired power station in the National Electricity Market; high international prices for coal and gas exacerbated by the war in Ukraine; and rising energy demand amid cold winter weather just when the contribution of solar power is at its weakest. Clean energy ‘the greatest peace plan of all’ US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the high cost of traditional fuels – including $US5 per gallon ($1.96 per liter) for gasoline in the US – underscores the need to move more quickly to renewable energy. No country has ever been held hostage for access to the sun or the wind, he told the forum – “therefore, our move to clean energy globally could be the greatest peace plan of all”. Attending the Sydney Energy Forum were (from left) Andrew Forrest of FMG, Masatsugu Asakawa of the Asian Development Bank, US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, and Dr Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. Oscar Colma