Blue & Green Daily: Thursday 17 April headlines

Blue & Green Daily finds and summarises the top sustainability stories around the web every morning. We start with our own picks from Blue & Green Tomorrow.

Connected lighting: the smart revolution

EU vote on non-financial reporting ‘historic’ for sustainable investment

Limiting global warming to 2C not enough to avoid dramatic changes in Europe

Food bank usage up by a ‘shocking’ 51% – now serving almost 1m Britons

McKinsey: ‘cleantech sector is gaining steam’

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17 April headlines

Pope Francis urged to back fossil fuel divestment campaign

Religious groups have urged Pope Francis to back a campaign to encourage millions of people, organisations and investors to pull their money out of the fossil fuel industry. Multi-faith groups in Australia and North America have sent a letter to the pope saying it is “immoral” to profit from fossil fuels. Guardian.

EU’s first Sentinel satellite images Earth

The European Union’s new Sentinel-1a radar satellite has returned its first images of Earth. The spacecraft is monitoring the state of the planet, with the date being particularly useful for urban planning purposes, making maps following natural disasters and monitoring remote regions such as polar ice fields. BBC.

UK carbon capture scheme wins €300m from EU

Brussels is to grant €300 million to a pioneering carbon capture and storage project in the UK. The move comes as the EU seeks to regain its lead in a technology seen as crucial in the fight against climate change. Financial Times.

One-third of Beijing pollution comes from outside the city, figure show

Around one-third of pollution in China’s smog-hit capital comes from outside the city, according to the pollution watchdog. The central government has identified the heavily industrialised Beijing – Hebei – Tianjin region as one of the main fronts in its war against pollution and has come under pressure to cut coal consumption and industrial capacity. Guardian.

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Interesting picks

Caroline Lucas deserves a medal, not a criminal record, for opposing fracking – Guardian

Methane hydrate: dirty fuel or energy saver? – BBC

Canada becoming launch-pad of a global tar sand and oil shale frenzy – Guardian

Making clean energy attractive to investors – Telegraph

Photo: Sanja gjenero via Freeimages