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 !
Now having to commute by car to get to my new job I can’t wait for having an electric car. But current prices are way to high for me to afford one. Luckily, this might change quite quickly. To AutoBlog Green :
” U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu estimates that plug-in vehicle battery costs will have dropped 70 percent between 2008 and 2015 and will fall another 58 percent between 2015 and 2020 “
I have already stressed how electric vehicles are critical in our quest for energy efficiency and more sustainability as they consume five time less energy than their counterparts.
To the New York Times green blog : ” The European Union is overestimating the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions achieved through reliance on biofuels as a result of a “serious accounting error”
Here is further evidence that biofuels aren’t really the answer we are looking for. If you have been reading this blog for some time now, you perhaps remember this post : Biofuels aren’t a sustainable solution.
Of course, second generation biofuels might offer us better solutions. But we will have to be checked. Meanwhile, I keep on betting on electric vehicles as they are much more efficient than internal combustion engines…
Do you remember Better Place, the great electric car project ? To Ecogeek : “Better Place has entered into an agreement with Chinese utility China Southern Power Grid to bring their battery swap stations to the Asian country.”
“(…) Better Place founder Shai Aggasi sees this partnership leading to a shift in Chinese EV manufacturing to switchable-battery cars for both the Chinese and international markets “
I believe that this will enable the company to truly change scale. Indeed, until now, they were working on small countries like Israel, Portugal or Denmark…
The State of the Union speech given yesterday by President Barack Obama might well stay in the History books like John Fitzgerald Kennedy moon shot speech that sent Americans on the moon in less than a decade.
Indeed President Obama asked for 80% of America’s electricity from ‘clean energy’ by 2035 (including clean coal and natural gas, nobody’s perfect) and for more than one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.
Even more, he called for the suppression of the billions worth of subsidies to Big Oil companies. Let’s hope Congress will give him the means to do all this. Continue »
Thomas L Friedman is one of the op-ed columnist of the New York Times. I really liked the vision he is offering in his latest book, Hot, Flat and Crowded. I have to admit I feel the same about his latest column, Their Moon Shot and Ours.
There, Mr. Friedman shows how China is going full speed ahead on electric cars and vehicles, a technology he calls ” the next industrial growth engine “. Indeed, they could revolutionize tomorrow’s world.
Cars produced locally powered by electricity also produced locally may indeed bring a complete paradigm shift with peak oil, the worst economic crisis in decades and climate change. Continue »
Iceland pledged in 1998 to become the first decarbonized economy. And despite having been hit very hard by the recent economic crises, Iceland may prove to be the ultimate proving grounds for electric cars.
Indeed its tiny population – 320,000 people – are all pretty much close to the capital city Reykjavik and the country enjoys a virtually 100% clean electricity production as it has massive geothermal capacity.
These two advantages are the perfect combination for a real country-wide experiment on this promising cleantech. A similar venture may soon start in Israel, with the Better Place Project.
This is not news as we have seen it in Sustainable energy – without the hot air but some facts need reminders. The internal combustion engine – like incandescent light bulbs – is extremely inefficient. To GOOD :
If you had to invent an efficient way to move (…), you could hardly do worse than the modern automobile. After more than a century of refinement, (a car) wastes 85 percent of the energy in the fuel we put into it.
Hence the importance of developing alternatives. And from electric vehicles – cars, trucks and scooters – to biking, walking or simple public transportation, it is not as we lacked options. Continue »
I have been committed since January 2007 to bring you each month a selection of the latest headlines and best researches on sustainable development, climate change and the world energy sector.
But many more news are worth reading. This is why I use Twitter to share more news that are worth your time. I believe it offers a good complement to this website. This is even truer as this month was special since I couldn’t blog much.
Here is a selection of the most interesting ones. An impportant part of this month’s tweets are on the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, THE environmental catastrophe of the decade. Continue »
I believe fossil fuels will be replaced sooner or later by electricity. This might prove to be a good thing as heat pumps and electric vehicles are two excellent energy efficient solutions.
Thus, electric consumption is rising and is due to keep rising in the next decades. Having low carbon sources to generate electricity is very thus important for a country.
This is the occasion for me to propose you data on the carbon intensity and origin of electricity generation in some affluent countries. Continue »
I am committed since January 2007 to bring you each month a selection of thelatest headlines and best researches on sustainable development, climate change and the world energy sector.
However, I don’t blog as much as I would like to and generally write around 25 posts per month. However, many more great news are worth reading and blogging about so I had to find a way to share them with you.
This solution came last year with my use of Twitter as I use my account to share with my followers news that are worth your time. Here is a selection of the most interesting ones. Continue »
