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 GreenTech Media : “ Germany installed more than 2 gigawatts of solar in the month of December alone. (…) Installations for the full year will be nearly 7 gigawatts according to the German Solar Industry Association (BSW).”
The article goes further : “ According to the BSW, solar power contributes approximately three percent of the German electricity supply, with a goal of 10 percent by 2020. “
The European leader in renewables installed in a single month more solar photovoltaic capacity than the whole United States of America installed in a whole year ! Continue »
Just as Grist is asking if Germany did the right move on nuclear – here is as a reminder my opinion piece on Cleantechies – several bad news for the industry of this energy source got my attention this week.
First and foremost, the reactor number 2 of Fukushima ” had probably experienced “spontaneous” fission “ according to an official quoted by the Agence France Presse.
Furthermore, it has been estimated that fully decommissioning Fukushima could take no less than 30 years. All this could have terrible consequences for the whole industry. Continue »
To the Huffington Post : ” Defying growing global skepticism over the use of atomic energy, (the Czech Republic) is planning to dramatically increase the country’s nuclear power production.
” (…) Other former Soviet bloc nations, now in the European Union, are following the Czechs’ lead on nuclear power – reflecting diverging economic needs between east and west. ”
” Slovakia is currently building more nuclear facilities. And Poland has engaged in talks with firms about know-how and technology for its first nuclear installation to be completed by 2030. ” Continue »
This has made quite the headlines on environmental blogs and newspapers. As TreeHugger puts it : ” Germany now produces 20.8% of its electricity from renewable sources. That’s an increase of 15 percentage points since 2000 “
Now, let’s congratulate the main European economic powerhouse for that. The Germans truly deserve it and we got to give credit where credit is due. But, to me their decision to ditch nuclear – and doing it so fast – is a bad decision.
This is the case for two reasons : 1. the country will have to build new coal and gas fired plants ; 2. Its electricity is already much dirtier than the European average. Continue »
This is not surprising as I was blogging about it two months ago. To TreeHugger : ” After several months of reporting near-record or record monthly levels of Arctic sea ice melting, German researchers now report that a new yearly record low has been set.”
” The area covered by Arctic sea ice has declined to its lowest point since satellite measurements began in 1972. ” It’s also probably lower than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the researchers say. ”
” (…) One day before the German measurement was made, the US National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that the average ice extent for August was 28% below the average for 1979-2000 “
Is this the car of tomorrow ? Gas 2.0 published an article on an electric car that did more than 1,600 kilometers (a thousand miles) with a single charge. The top speed was less than 50 kilometers per hour. As they note :
” The record for longest drive ever in a battery-powered vehicle (no recharge) was broken last weekend by a new, experimental electric vehicle called “Schluckspecht” (“heavy drinker” in colloquial German). “
Of course, at these speeds and with only one passenger, this could be used for the daily commutes of millions of people in hundreds of cities around the world…
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 »
To GOOD : ” One German physicist, Harald Haas, has come up with a solution he calls “data through illumination” (…) by sending data through an LED lightbulb that varies in intensity faster than the human eye can follow.”
” It’s the same idea behind infrared remote controls, but far more powerful. Haas says his invention, which he calls D-Light, can produce data rates faster than (…) your average broadband connection. ”
” He envisions a future where data for laptops and smartphones is transmitted through the light in a room. And security would be a snap—if you can’t see the light, you can’t access the data. “ Continue »
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.
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 »
