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 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…
While the decisions of both Germany and Switzerland to stop using nuclear made headlines, little has been written about Poland ‘s thinking about building two nuclear reactors, which would be build by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy.
The reactors could go online in 2020 if an agreement was signed in 2014. The capacity would reach 3,000 MW. The country relies on highly polluting coal for 94 percent of its electricity to date. (source)
As its electricity consumption is due to increase over the next decades significantly, and as something has to be done on climate change, it is willing to diversify its energy sources. Continue »
According to Terra Daily : ” Europe’s forests have expanded over the past 20 years and are thus absorbing more carbon dioxide, a report published in Oslo Tuesday showed, offering some good news in the battle to limit climate change. ”
” According to the report published during a ministerial conference on the protection of Europe’s forests, the continent, including Russian territory, today counts 1.02 billion hectares of forest, accounting for about a quarter of the world’s woods. ”
“Over the last 20 years, the forest area has expanded in all European regions and has gained 0.8 million hectares each year,” reads the report, entitled “State of Europe’s Forests 2011″. Continue »
This is nothing less but historical. According to the WWF : ” The United Kingdom, the first to enshrine reductions in climate change causing emissions into law, today announced a 2025 target of a 50 per cent emissions cut from 1990 levels. “
The UK previously announced that it would cut by 34 percent its greenhouse gases emissions by 2020 from 1990 levels. Here is a country that understood that fighting climate change makes sense, economically and environmentally.
Meanwhile, the rest of the European Union is lagging with plans to cut emissions by only 20 percent by 2020 (when we have seen time and again that 30 percent was highly feasible….)
To CleanTechies : ” Worldwide installed wind capacity grew by 38.3 GW in 2010, according to the Global Wind Energy Council. That’s an increase of 24% in global wind capacity “. This is as much as what was installed in 2009.
China alone installed nearly half of it alone with 18.9 GW. The United States installed half of what they installed in 2009 with only 5 GW in 2010. The country could get twenty percent of their electricity by offshore wind by 2030.
To Reuters, the global wind power capacity thus reached a massive 197 GW. I wonder by how much it will grow in 2011…
Despite its recent economic harshness, Iceland is rich as it is located on one of the world’s best geothermal hot spots. The potential is so large they are thinking about exporting electricity to neighboring European nations. As Ecogeek noted:
“Iceland’s biggest utility, Landsvirkjun, has announced a plan to build the world’s longest undersea cable at 1,180 miles long to carry up to five billion kWh of electricity a year to European countries – enough to power 1.25 million homes”
This looks a lot but with over 500 million people in the EU, Iceland would provide only one or two percent of the total electricity needed by the European Union. Anyway, this still would be much better than coal…
We have previously seen here that the European Union could easily achieve a 30 percent reduction of greenhouse gases emissions by 2020 (compared to 1990 levels). This would make a lot of sense both environmentally and economically.
Yet the European Commission kept earlier this month on clinging to the 20 percent reduction targets by 2020 when going beyond that is all too feasible. Some news are truly enraging…
We won’t lead, or even partake in the cleantech arms race with goals that can be reached easily. Major achievements in History took courageous decisions. Continue »
According to Reuters : ” The world added about 16 gigawatts of new solar photovoltaic (PV) power in 2010, double the growth seen a year earlier, the European Photovoltaic Industry Association told Reuters on Monday.”
Out of these 16 gigawatts, Europe is behind the vast majority of the growth with an impressive 13 gigawatts. Out of these, Germany account for seven GW and Italy three (and not six as I wrote there…)
Still to Reuters : ” Estimates for the other major European players included the Czech Republic (1.3 GW), France (0.5 GW), Spain (0.4), Belgium (0.25) and Greece (0.2). “ Continue »
This isn’t surprising as I already noted that America could cut its coal consumption by 62 % by 2020 just by increasing its energy efficiency. Now comes a new study that shows that the USA could be completely coal-free by 2030.
If it can be done in America, it sure can be done in the European Union. Indeed, the group of countries relies almost as much on coal as the USA. Both get nearly 50 percent of the electricity from thermal sources.
For more on this study please check out the article on Ecogeek or the full study in the latest issue of Environmental Science and Technology,
This is the message published today in three leading European newspapers by the Environment Ministers of the United Kingdom, Germany and France, respectively Mr. Chris Huhne, Dr Norbert Röttgen and Mr. Jean-Louis Borloo.
This bold call for action changes from the traditional European Union’s message which clings to cutting emissions by 20 percent by 2020. To them, sticking to such a target would leave the cleantech market to China, Japan or the US.
I am very glad that some people in the highest positions finally understand that the more we will act on climate change, the better it will be for our economies, our societies and our planet. Continue »
