Scientists have identified willow trees that yield five times as much sugar as ordinary varieties, "drastically reducing" the impact of biofuels.

UK researchers found that if the trees grew at an angle, they produced a special kind of wood that resulted in the higher sugar content.

Willow, a short rotation coppice crop, is widely grown as a source for the biofuel and biomass industries.

The findings appear in the Biotechnology for Biofuels journal.

Solar companies are planning to sue the government for £140m in damages, because of the cuts to subsidies in 2011 that were subsequently ruled "legally flawed" in the high court.

The 17 companies said the way in which the changes to the feed-in tariff were handled was disastrous for their businesses, because it led to a sudden and dramatic fall in the number of people installing solar panels, and companies had to lay off thousands of workers.

AQE 2013, the Air Quality & Emissions Show (formerly ‘MCERTS’) has announced a partnership with The Institute of Air Quality Management (IAQM), which organiser Marcus Pattison says “will make a major contribution to the new expanded remit for the event, which now includes all aspects of ambient air quality in addition to its traditional focus on industrial emissions.”

Roger Barrowcliffe, Chairman of the IAQM, believes that air quality is an environmental issue which concerns many members of the public and represents an outstanding problem for government at all levels. He says: “Despite consistent progress in reducing emissions from industry and road transport, we have not yet achieved universal compliance with the standards and guidelines we use to protect the health of humans and ecosystems.  To make more progress we need to increase our understanding of the problems and to utilise even better techniques in our management of air quality.

Scientists are attempting to mimic the way plants harness energy from the sun in order to make a more efficient renewable fuel.

Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) are embarking on an £800,000 project to replicate photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert sunlight into sugars to help them grow.