The Victorian Minister for Energy and Resources, Russell Northe, was this week sworn into his new portfolio. One of his first tasks will be the consideration of the government’s review of the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target (VEET) scheme. [ + ]

Researchers at Michigan State University have invented the environmental photobioreactor (ePBR) - a system to grow and test algae for potential use as biofuel. [ + ]

Rio Tinto has opened its global Processing Excellence Centre (PEC), located in Brisbane. The state-of-the-art facility enhances monitoring and operational performance by examining, in real-time, processing data from seven Rio Tinto operations spread across the globe. [ + ]

Engineer Andrew Tanner has been awarded the 2014 Advance Global Australian of the Year Award for Clean Technology. [ + ]

The Bürkert Academy, which operates as a separate department of Bürkert Fluid Control Systems, has expanded its range of process industry courses and released its training calendar for 2014. [ + ]

Australians waste an estimated 20% of the food they buy. Sydney's Leichhardt Council is attempting to change this, implementing a program to extract the energy embedded in food waste. [ + ]

US Department of Agriculture (USDA) research has shown that fumigating honeycombs with ozone gas can reduce pests, pathogens and pesticide levels. [ + ]

IDTechEx's sixth annual Energy Harvesting & Storage event will be held from 1-2 April in Berlin. The event will provide insight into energy harvesting technologies, case studies and markets. [ + ]

Postgraduate students Daniel Akinyele and Hatem Alzaanin from New Zealand's Victoria University are researching the potential of wind power in the windy city of Wellington. [ + ]

Energy management specialist Schneider Electric has unveiled the top 100 teams that qualified for the semifinals of Go Green in the City 2014 - a global student challenge focused on developing innovative energy solutions for cities. [ + ]

MobileMuster, the Australian mobile phone industry's official product stewardship program, is calling on local councils who have helped promote and collect mobile phones for recycling over the last year to nominate for the 2014 MobileMuster Local Government Awards. [ + ]

Good Environmental Choice Australia is seeking feedback from developers, manufacturers and infrastructure project teams on which additional standards it should develop to help projects earn points under the Infrastructure Sustainability Council of Australia's IS rating scheme. [ + ]

Green Cities 2014, a conference on sustainability in the built environment, will be held from 18-19 March at the Grand Hyatt Melbourne. It will continue on 20 March with site tours of some of Melbourne's most sustainable buildings. [ + ]

Telstra has released the report 'Connecting with a Low-Carbon Future', which quantifies the potential benefits of seven key ICT opportunities to Australian businesses and consumers in 2014. [ + ]

Tetra Pak, a food processing and packaging company, has announced the progress made during 2013 towards its 2020 environmental targets. [ + ]