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, 36 years after the construction began, Iran finally opened its first nuclear reactor. The plant has a capacity of one gigawatt (compared to the 1,650 MW of an EPR).
Many around the world are fearing for the region’s peace as the uranium used in the plant could also be used for bombs and missiles. The Iranian government promised to give the spent fuel rods to Russia – who helped building this plant.
This would prevent proliferation. The Bushehr plant will begin producing electricity later this year , once the 82 tonnes of low-enriched uranium will have been delivered by Russia. Continue »
According to an article from The Economist, Iraq has plans to quadruple its oil production by the next seven years. This would increase the production from the current 2.5 million barrels per day to 12 million barrels.
This would bring Iraq as the world’s first oil producer, putting Saudi Arabia in the second place. The country is willing to benefit more from its ample oil reserves (one of the world’s largest).
Besides the obvious technical difficulties, the problems on the geopolitical scale will be important. For more, please refer to the full article.
The latest UNEP publication is stressing the importance of water issues in South Asia (from Iran to India and Bangladesh), a region accounting for a fourth of human population but only a twentieth of the planet’s freshwater resources.
Among the main threats are over-exploitation, pollution, high population growth and the lack of cooperation between neighboring countries. All this could become even worse with climate change (see this previous article)
Solutions – like a better management of resources – to prevent such worsening exist and here again political will is needed to apply them. Continue »
