Nestle, Pepsi and Coke face their Waterloo: When Robert Rheaume met with retail buyers last year, his $20 Sigg aluminum water bottles were a tough sell. After all, the market was limited mainly to hikers and campers, many of whom were already devoted to Nalgene’s $10 plastic version. But after this summer’s deluge of headlines about the environmental impact of plastic water bottles, he’s got more buyers than he even wants. Advertising Age

Aussies to plant $1.8B wind farm in outback: Australian renewable energy firm Epuron, a division of German Conenergy, plans to build what may be the world’s largest wind farm in the outback of Australia, the company announced Monday. With plans for between 400 and 500 turbines, the A$2 billion (US$1.8 billion) project in New South Wales could deliver 1,000 megawatts of clean renewable energy, providing enough power for about 400,000 homes and roughly 4.5% of the region’s electricity consumption in a typical year. Tech News World

Greenhouse gas levels ‘dangerously high’: Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have already exceeded worst-case scenario projections, a leading scientist says. Acclaimed author and scientist Tim Flannery said results of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) synthesis report, due for release next month, show that since 2005 Australia has already been producing the amount of greenhouse gases expected a decade away. SMH

Nuclear power primed for comeback: Two decades ago, after Duke Energy abandoned its partly built nuclear power reactors here, the site was sold and turned into a movie set. Director James Cameron used it to film “The Abyss,” a 1989 movie about civilian divers who encounter aliens while trying to rescue a stricken nuclear submarine. Cameron filled the unused nuclear containment building with water and hauled a section of an oil rig, a tiny submarine and fiberglass rocks inside to make convincing underwater scenes. Now there’s a new twist in the plot: The nuclear power industry is trying to come back from its own abyss. Washington Post

Egypt plan to green Sahara desert stirs controversy: It looks like a mirage but the lush fields of cauliflower, apricot trees and melon growing among a vast stretch of sand north of Cairo’s pyramids is all too real — proof of Egypt’s determination to turn its deserts green. While climate change and land over-use help many deserts across the world advance, Egypt is slowly greening the sand that covers almost all of its territory as it seeks to create more space for its growing population. Reuters