The rare white-letter hairstreak butterfly was spotted in Scotland for the first time since 1884. Ian Kirk / Wikipedia
By Lucy Goodchild van Hilten
A towering elm tree stands 30 meters (approximately 98 feet) tall, somewhere near the border between England and Scotland, defying the fate that so many of its cousins met when Dutch elm disease ravaged the species in the 1970s. One of relatively few elm trees left, it is a haven for wildlife. Look closely and you can see the erratic fluttering of a small brown butterfly, with a W-shaped white streak across its wing.
An ambulance crashed into a fallen tree from Storm Ali in Newcastle on Sept. 19. Owen Humphreys / PA Images via Getty Images
Storm Ali, the first named storm of the UK storm season, killed two and sent several to the hospital as winds of more than 100 miles per hour walloped Ireland, Scotland and Northern England Wednesday, The Guardian reported.
More than 250,000 homes and businesses in Ireland lost power and 30,000 lost power in southwest Scotland.
A revolutionary
battery has been successfully installed at the Hywind Scotland, the world's first floating offshore wind farm located about 15 miles off the Aberdeenshire coast.
With the 1.2-megawatt storage system known as "Batwind" in operation, it will be possible for the first time to store energy produced from an offshore wind farm, developers Masdar and Equinor touted in a
press release Wednesday.
Scotland's Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham confirmed that
single-use coffee cups will be banned from canteens in government buildings starting June 4.
Although the disposable cups are mostly made of paper, the vast majority have an inner
plastic lining that most recycling facilities are unable to separate and process.
The final turbine was installed on Saturday just nine weeks after the first foundation for the 11-turbine offshore wind farm was deployed, according to the developers Vattenfall.
The Whitelee Wind Farm in Scotland is the largest onshore wind farm in the United Kingdom.
Scotland, which is fast on track to get 100 percent of its electricity via renewable energy by 2020, has broken another wind power record.
The country's onshore wind turbines provided more than 5.3 million megawatt hours of electricity to the National Grid during the first three months of 2018, an impressive 44 percent increase compared to the same period last year, according to an analysis of
WWF Scotland wind power data by WeatherEnergy.
The world's first floating wind farm only switched on three months ago but it's already performing better than expected—and that's despite a hurricane, a powerful winter storm and waves as high as 8.2 meters (27 feet).
The 30-megawatt Hywind Scotland, located about 15 miles off the Aberdeenshire coast, churned out 65 percent of its maximum theoretical capacity during November, December and January, according to its operator, Statoil.
Scottish wind turbines, propelled by Hurricane Ophelia's strong winds, sent more than 1.7 million megawatt hours of electricity to the National Grid in October, according to WWF Scotland, citing data collected from WeatherEnergy.
"Hywind will provide clean energy to over twenty thousand homes and will help us meet our ambitious
climate change targets," First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said.
The Scottish government has said fracking is set to be permanently banned following "overwhelming" public support for outlawing the controversial process, it was announced Tuesday.
Unlike in England, fracking has been under a temporary halt in Scotland since 2015, and an extensive public consultation on its long-term future was carried out earlier this year.
Speaking to members of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, the Scottish Environment Minister Paul Wheelhouse said the ban should be extended "indefinitely" and that "the Scottish government will not support the development of unconventional oil and gas in Scotland."
