Record growth over the last year pushed the UK green goods and services market past the £122bn mark, according to new government figures that reveal the low carbon economy now employs almost one million people.

The sector grew 4.7 per cent against the 2009/10 figure of £116.8bn, providing an additional £5.4bn of economic activity as green industries continued to defy the sluggish progress made by the rest of the economy.

The UK is in danger of building too many waste treatment plants and could reach over-capacity by 2015, new research warns.

A study from Eunomia Research & Consulting claims that if all of the facilities which have been granted planning consent are built and if waste arisings remain flat, then the country will have 5m tonnes more capacity than it requires.

The situation will be exacerbated if any plants which are currently in planning or unannounced are also built, or if waste arisings continue to fall, as they have for the past five years.

NI Water has installed a new wastewater treatment unit at a housing development near Rathfriland in a bid to improve the quality of treated effluent.

The work forms part of NI Water's multi-million pound Rural Wastewater Investment project, which aims to ensure the treated effluent meets the latest EU Directives.

The new infrastructure at the Knock Terrace housing estate includes an enclosed hi-tech tank with advanced treatment processes.

In the current issue of Science, researchers at the University of York report that the brown argus butterfly has spread its reach in England northward by about 50 miles over 20 years as a warmer climate allow its caterpillars to feed off wild geranium plants, which are widespread in the countryside.

“There was something unusual about the degree to which it was spreading its range,” said an author of the study, Jane K. Hill, a biologist at York. “It was turning up in places that were unexpected.”

Talks between Iran and six world powers on its disputed nuclear program failed to produce a breakthrough on Thursday, in an apparent diplomatic setback for both sides.

The six wanted a freeze on Iranian production of uranium enriched to 20 percent purity, which is considered a short step from bomb grade. The Iranians wanted an easing of the onerous economic sanctions imposed by the West and recognition of what they call their right to enrich.

Glenmark Pharmaceuticals is set to enter the final stage of clinical trials for its new drug, Revamilast, across several countries this year. It is meant for treatment of inflammatory disorders like asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. Glenmark may soon seek approval for Phase-III trials in the US, UK and India.

“Glenmark plans to file an IND (Investigational New Drug application) for Revamilast in the US in the third quarter of the current financial year. The company intends to initiate Phase-III trials for at least one indication by the end of FY13,” chairman and managing director Glenn Saldanha told Business Standard.

Scotland's University of Edinburgh on Wednesday opened a centre to research the use of carbon to retrieve oil otherwise hard to extract from reservoirs, a method which could unlock three billion barrels of trapped North Sea oil worth 190 billion pounds ($300 billion).

A number of developers of carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects have already suggested using the method, also known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR) that has been used in North America for decades, to enhance the economic viability of their plants which are expensive to finance.

Two large overseas investors in the UK energy market have joined the chorus of criticism of the government's new energy bill.

The German-based E.ON, one of the big six electricity providers in Britain, said national subsidy schemes for renewables such as Britain's contracts for difference had helped "bust" key European carbon reduction initiatives.

And Norway's Statkraft, said on Wednesday it would not be able to press the button on a giant £30bn offshore wind farm on the Dogger Bank until ongoing "uncertainty" was lifted.

The UK consumes an astonishing 165 million cups of tea every day, but most of the teabags that go to making the nation's favourite hot drink still end up unnecessarily in landfill.

Now manufacturing giant Unilever has teamed up with two Essex councils, Brentwood and Chelmsford, together with Wrap the government's advisory body on waste, to encourage people to compost their teabags with their food waste.

Unilever UK is the manufacturer of tea brand PG Tips, while the group is the largest tea buyer in the world, buying about 12% of the world's tea supply of black tea.

Small, busy and overcrowded, England might seem the last place in the world to have room for one of the planet's largest inhabited areas of unspoiled, natural darkness when night falls.

But if plans by Kielder Forest and the adjacent Northumberland national park are realised, the country will be home to an official "dark sky preserve" equalled only by two lonely areas in Quebec and Texas.