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 !
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 was mentioning last week a documentary called The Thorium Dream, produced by Motherboard.tv. Lasting less than half an hour it is an absolute must-watch to grab the potential of this technology.
I know we shouldn’t cringe to just one solution. But I now believe that nuclear risk and waste free is one day possible. Thorium is already being used in India, and I believe it will be used more and more.
While we are waiting for thorium to be ready for commercialization and its mass use, we should work massively on efficiency and renewables. Continue »
The French magazine Science & Vie [Fr] published this month a lengthy series of articles on thorium-based nuclear, and how it could solve the various issues encountered with uranium-based energy generation.
Much more safer, without the need to be enriched, Thorium is also four times more abundant than Uranium. Molten salt reactors could also recycle the waste of current reactors.
In today’s post we will have a look at the various other advantages of this still not commercially developped technology. Continue »
Incandescent light bulbs are a relic of the past, a vastly inefficient past. Modern alternatives like CFLs and LEDs consume five to ten times less energy. For these reasons, the European Union or Australia have already phased them out.
More countries will be doing the same, namingly the United States and China. The latter will start banning 100-watt bulbs in October 2012. Last year over a billion of these bulbs were sold in the People’s Republic.
To Grist : ” The ban will save China 48 billion kilowatt hours of power per year. Which, if I’m doing my math right, is the equivalent of almost 100 nuclear reactors or large coal-fired power plants. “
To the AFP : ” Harmful carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels made their biggest ever annual jump in 2010, according to the US Department of Energy’s latest world data released this week. “
Global greenhouse gases emissions rose by SIX percent compared to 2009. This represents no less than 564 million more tons of carbon. Out of this, China is responsible for almost half of it alone. US emissions kept rising too…
Such an increase – when we have to stabilize our emissions and even slash them by a factor three by 2050 – is a really bad omen for our common future… 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 »
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 more 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 »
CleanTechies gives us some data on something absolutely terrible for a global future : ” Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) increased by 45 % between 1990 and 2010, and reached an all-time high of 33 billion tons in 2010. “
” Increased energy efficiency, nuclear energy and the growing contribution of renewable energy are not compensating for the globally increasing demand for power and transport, which is strongest in developing countries.”
(…) After a 1% decline in 2009, global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions increased by more than 5% in 2010, which is unprecedented in the last two decades (…) “ 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 »
