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 !
Remember my post on how a trillion had been invested in cleantech ? Well, the trend is accelerating as $260 billion (approx. 200 billion euros) were invested in 2011 alone as Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported.
So, everything wasn’t so bad last year and especially not for the United States, which reclaimed their leadership from China in this sector. This was a first since 2008. What would happen if the US Governement was backing cleantech ?
America invested $56 billion and China $47 billion. Global investments in solar grew by 36 percent to reach $137 billion in 2011. Continue »
Could Hawaii be entirely powered by geothermal, just like Iceland ? To Industry Intelligence : ” Hawaii Island has geothermal potential of 500 to 700 MW, enough to easily exceed its energy demand of 90 to 185 MW “
You think this would be a senseless move ? Think again, to the report carried out by the local Geothermal Working Group, this would save over a billion dollar in oil annually ! Currently, geothermal accounts for 25 to 30 percent of the capacity.
Now what if even cars were powered by geothermal too ? Examples like this clearly show we got to stop our ridiculous addiction to oil and embrace renewables. All the time, everywhere…
I have recently noted that cleantech is booming globally, but what does it mean for Africa ? In today’s post I will try to give a few answers to this crucial question as still 600 million Africans have no access to electricity.
To a study titled Mega Trends in Africa: A bright vision for the growing continent ” Investment in renewable power in Africa is set to grow from a total of US$3.6-billion in 2010 to $57-billion by 2020. “
I have found several other articles on cleantech in Africa in the past few weeks. Let’s review the main ones. 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.
However, I don’t blog as much as I would like to and generally write around 25 posts per month. But many more news are worth reading. This is why I use Twitter to share dozens of news that are worth your time.
I believe it offers a good complement to this website. So if you are on Twitter and like this selection, don’t hesitate to start following me. 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.
However, I don’t blog as much as I would like to and generally write around 25 posts per month. But many more news are worth reading. This is why I use Twitter to share dozens of news that are worth your time.
I believe it offers a good complement to this website. So if you are on Twitter and like this selection, don’t hesitate to start following me. Continue »
A post on TreeHugger got my attention last week. It was about how the President of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, stated that further to the economic downturn in 2007 he putted people before banks and cleantech before fossil fuels.
As the OECD notes, the economic situation is improving quickly and now the country is powered a 100% by low carbon sources. (To be fair, it was nearly the case before as the country benefits from huge geothermal capacities.)
Of course, what was done there couldn’t be completely replicated here in Europe or in America. But I think there are some lessons we could learn… See this article from Time Magazine for more.
To Bloomberg : ” Japan approved a bill today to subsidize electricity from renewable sources, joining European nations in shifting away from nuclear power after the Fukushima reactor meltdowns in March.”
” (…) The bill allows for incentives that guarantee above-market rates for wind, solar and geothermal energy. The so-called feed- in tariff created a race to install solar panels when implemented in Germany and Spain.”
” (…) Solar panels had capacity to produce about 3.68 gigawatts of power at the end of last year in Japan, and the government is targeting 28 gigawatts by 2020.”
To the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century and their latest Global Status Report : ” In 2010, renewable energy supplied an estimated 16% of global final energy consumption and delivered close to 20% of global electricity.”
” Renewable capacity now comprises about a quarter of total global power-generating capacity. (…) Global solar PV production and markets more than doubled in comparison with 2009. Germany installed more PV in 2010 than the entire world”
To learn out more about these interesting findings, please check out the full report here (PDF) and their Renewables Interactive Map. You may as well as read EcoGeek and Sustainable Business.
Here is another renewable energy we little hear about… According to a new publication from the IEA, geothermal could provide about 3.5% of annual global electricity production, 3.9% of energy for heat by 2050.
As the press release notes : ” there is potential to achieve at least a tenfold increase in the global production of heat and electricity from geothermal energy – heat emitted from within the earth’s crust – between now and 2050. “
Currently, geothermal represents 0.3% and 0.2% of electricity and heat, respectively. It is worth noting that Indonesia believes this could bring up to a third of its electricity by 2025.
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…
