Australia's most authoritative magazine on sustainability in the environment, industry and community. ECOS and is published bi-monthly by CSIRO PUBLISHING both in print and online.

The formation of an international Working Group of electricity energy experts was announced last week at the conclusion of the Inaugural Symposium on Electrical Energy Evolution in China and Australia, in Palm Cove, Queensland.

VIA Announces July Sales Results

Researchers have developed a direct solvent extraction (DSX) that uses multiple commercial reagents in a synergistic solution which gives greater selectivity and more efficient metal recovery than traditional solvent extraction techniques.

Dr Andrew Warden is researching methods to improve pretreatment, fractionation and conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into biofuels.

Just weeks out from the Olympics, the CSIRO and its Chinese partners have officially launched a post-combustion capture (PCC) pilot plant in Beijing that strips carbon dioxide from power station flue gases in an effort to stem climate change.

World-class mining research and technological developments with far reaching implications for Australia’s future will be featured tomorrow, 1 August, in Brisbane during the Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies’ (QCAT’s) fourth annual Innovation and Excellence Day.

The release of the Garnaut Review and the government’s Green Paper have highlighted the need for further research into safe and economical technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage.

VIA Contracts Harald Welte as Open Source Liaison

Dr Jennifer Stauber helps assess the impacts of human-made chemicals on organisms in the environment, and assists regulatory authorities and industry to help protect Australian ecosystems.

The Tasmanian ICT Centre is developing a world-class ICT research capacity and conducting innovative applied research in the areas of sensor networks and data management.

This map provides a new geological interpretation of the Bowen Basin, Queensland’s richest source of coal and coal seam gas.

This map provides a new geological interpretation of the Bowen Basin, Queensland’s richest source of coal and coal seam gas. Download the GIS data.

CSIRO research is helping Australia's government, industries and consumers use resources more sustainably.

An industry and research collaboration has resulted in a new in-situ repair technique for resurfacing worn power station turbine blades, without the need for the turbine to be dismantled.

The conference is aimed at gathering together the experts in Asia-Pacific and Australasia who are contributing to the impact of embedded generation, energy efficiency and small scale Renewables from both a technology and policy viewpoint.

The federal government has released a green paper outlining its approach to an emissions trading scheme. As expected, emissions-intensive trade-exposed businesses such as aluminium, steel and cement industries will get free permits to pollute, and motorists will not carry any extra burden for at least 3 years, during which excise will be adjusted to offset a carbon price. The coal-fired generators will also be compensated with a special package to help offset the cost of carbon. This will be provided through a new mechanism called the Electricity Sector Adjustment Scheme (ESAS). The paper also argues that it is not practical at this stage to include agriculture emissions in the trading scheme at startup, so the government has decided that the earliest that agriculture should enter the scheme would be 2015, with a final decision on inclusion or exclusion to be made in 2013. For scheme caps, its preferred position is to provide a rolling five year cap trajectory, with gateways ten years further out, providing a range of possible trajectories with upper and lower bounds.

To celebrate National Science Week 2008 CSIRO brings together boffins from Canberra's major academic and research organisations.

A better understanding of the physiochemical workings at play in the often murky depths of a thickener’s feedwell has helped one of the world’s leading thickener suppliers make what could be the first significant design change to these crucial units in more than a decade.

A CSIRO report, Fuel for thought – The future of transport fuels: challenges and opportunities, predicts Australia will be forced to manage its response to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the risk of increasing costly and scarce oil supply simultaneously rather than sequentially. Modelling projected that if international oil supply continues to grow steadily, petrol and diesel prices will experience only a slight rise on present levels. However, if there is a near-term peak in international oil production resulting in declining future oil supplies, petrol prices could increase to between A$2 and as much as A$8 per litre by 2018.