Report says humans may be on brink of cutting fossil fuel generation, even as demand for electricity rises

Renewable energy accounted for more than 30% of the world’s electricity for the first time last year following a rapid rise in wind and solar power, according to new figures.

A report on the global power system has found that the world may be on the brink of driving down fossil fuel generation, even as overall demand for electricity continues to rise.

Although chief executive Murray Auchincloss has left himself room to pump more oil and gas, renewables should start generating greater returns

• BP to cut $2bn in costs as profits miss forecasts

The market’s guessing game at BP is waiting for Murray Auchincloss, the chief executive who has been in post permanently only since January, to blink. That is to say, waiting for him to tone down climate targets and decide to pump more oil and gas than planned.

Tuesday was not the day. BP’s first-quarter numbers were slightly weaker than the market had expected – profits of $2.7bn versus City forecasts of $2.9bn – but there wasn’t a twitch on the strategic tiller. Auchincloss trotted out his refrain about going from “IOC to IEC” – from international oil company to integrated energy company. The only fresh news was the promise of $2bn of cost savings over the next couple of years, but that’s the sort of thing energy firms announce routinely.

‘Some negative projects will get up, but we have to keep our eyes on the broader goals’, says WWF Australia

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A map of operating windfarms in Queensland does not take too long to survey – of the 100 or so across Australia, only six of them are in the sunshine state.

But this is about to change in a very big way. According to state government data, there are 46 separate proposals for windfarms in Queensland with four more already under construction.

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Exclusive: decision to grant licences condemned by critics as a stunt that shows Tories are ‘playing politics with climate’

Fossil fuel companies will be allowed to explore for oil and gas under offshore wind-power sites for the first time, the government will announce on Friday, in a move that campaigners said is further proof that ministers are abandoning the climate agenda.

The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), which regulates North Sea oil and gas production, will confirm that it is granting licences to about 30 companies to look for hydrocarbons on sites earmarked for future offshore windfarms.

Renewable energy developers are following tracks laid by the gas industry in the Western Downs – but they’re also making the same mistakes

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Agriculture was once king in Glen Beasley’s neighbourhood on Queensland’s Darling Downs, a vast agricultural area about 200km west of Brisbane. “It was all grain, beef, timber and a bit of coal,” he says.

Then a high voltage power line was built through his family farm outside Chinchilla in 1984. The whispers of gas came with the turn of the millennium, and by the early 2010s, the coal seam gas industry was booming. Gas company Arrow Energy now holds a tenement over his property and a few doors down, there’s a coal seam gas waste facility.

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