Welcome ! As a young French Marketing professional with a Master's in International Management I have been selecting since January 2007 the latest headlines and best researches on sustainable development, climate change, cleantech and the world energy sector. Sounds great ? Don't hesitate to subscribe now !
To Cleantechies : ” Renewable energy investments in India increased by more than 52 percent in 2011, the fastest growth among major global economies, according to a new report.”
“More than $10.3 billion was invested in renewable energy projects in India last year, with about $4.6 billion targeting wind energy projects and another $4.2 billion going toward solar projects. “
This could be just the beginning as the New Scientist gives many reasons why renewable energy sources – and especially solar – are due to keep growing and growing. Continue »
To Reuters quoting a local scientific report : ” Global warming threatens China’s march to prosperity by cutting crops, shrinking rivers and unleashing more droughts and floods. “
“China faces extremely grim ecological and environmental conditions under the impact of continued global warming and changes to China’s regional environment,”
Given how the situation is dire already, one can wonder how it could be even worse… This sure explains why the People’s Republic is acting so massively on cleantech. Continue »
Here are some great news for climate and quite bad news for America and Europe : China unveiled last week massive wind energy plans. The People’s Republic is willing to seriously expand the renewable energy industry.
Indeed from the current 40 GW of capacity, it is planning to reach ” 200 GW, 400 GW and 1,000 GW by 2020, 2030 and 2050, respectively, making wind one of the five major sources of electricity across the country.. “ as Reuters notes.
Then this low carbon energy source would account for 17 percent of the energy demand. The cleantech arms race is on and China is determined to win.
Yes, you read that right : twelve (12!) billion trees have been planted within the UNEP Billion Tree Campaign. The landmark was reached in November in Kenya. (Was it an homage to Wangari Maathai ?) To the official website :
” China is the leading participating country, having planted a total of 2.8 billion trees under the campaign. India is currently in second place with 2.1 billion trees, followed by Ethiopia, Mexico and Turkey. “
I am starting to wonder how all these trees will impact climate change ? In any case, their effect can’t be negative. Now, let’s plant even more trees. The campaign is willing to reach 14 billion !
Incandescent light bulbs are a relic of the past, a vastly inefficient past. Modern alternatives like CFLs and LEDs consume five to ten times less energy. For these reasons, the European Union or Australia have already phased them out.
More countries will be doing the same, namingly the United States and China. The latter will start banning 100-watt bulbs in October 2012. Last year over a billion of these bulbs were sold in the People’s Republic.
To Grist : ” The ban will save China 48 billion kilowatt hours of power per year. Which, if I’m doing my math right, is the equivalent of almost 100 nuclear reactors or large coal-fired power plants. “
As TreeHugger reports : ” emissions must peak by 2020 and be reduced “well below” 1990 levels by 2050, if we are to have a “likely” (greater than 66%) chance of keeping temperature rise below 2°C by 2100. “
” If emissions peak at 2030, we may be able to hold temperature rise to 3°C. Should emissions continue on a business-as-usual trajectory, sometime between 2040-2060 we will cross the 2°C threshold. “
I had read once that they needed to peak by 2015. I also noted previously that even a mere 2°C might be too much for all of us as carbon sinks are becoming less efficient. Continue »
To new research carried out and recently released by Maplecroft, many booming megalopolis around the world are at extreme risk because of rising sea levels and other consequences of climate change.
Manila, Jakarta and Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta) would be threatened the most. Others cities, including Mumbai (Bombay), Delhi, Chennai, Karachi, Lagos and Guangdong, would also be in danger.
This reminds me of a series of posts I had published here as early as 2008 on that very subject. This time, the research had been carried out by the OECD and the World Bank. Continue »
It seems global weirding is indeed taking place. While there are huge droughts in Texas, Thailand and its capital city, Bangkok are witnessing their largest floods in decades. As the Guardian reports :
” Thailand is used to floods in monsoon season, but this year’s are the worst for more than half a century. They have killed at least 366 people since July and affected almost 2.5 million. More than 113,000 are living in shelters. “
The floods have been ongoing ever since. To local authorities, the damages so far have exceeded five billion US dollars. (3.5 billion euros)
According to Reuters : ” China will invest 2 trillion yuan (about $313 billion or 230 billion euros) to promote a green, low-carbon economy in the next five years, a senior economic planning official was quoted on Sunday as saying. ”
The article goes on : ” (…) The green economy plan includes setting up 100 bases for demonstrating resource utilisation and launching low-carbon pilot programmes in five provinces and eight cities “
I guess all this money will help China become the first economic power even quicker thanks to cleantech. Meanwhile both the United States and the European Union are doing a track-stand on these issues…
While reading the tweets of the people I follow, one from Andrew Revkin got my attention : “ H. sapiens, innovator: Solar “light bulbs” from water-filled soda bottles brighten tin-roofed slums. “
This was how I got introduced to Isang Litrong Liwanag ( “A Liter of Light” ), one of the most brilliant ideas I came across while writing for this blog. The tweet was followed by a link to a Youtube video – watch it below.
This is so great CleanTechnica and Ecopreneurist wrote about it and the project got featured on Reuters (see below as well for another video). Continue »
