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 !
While browsing old articles on Sustainablog, I found one that I particularly liked on successful huge reforestation projects. I learned many cool things and thought that was well worth a post.
” Governments, NGOs, and even for-profit companies recognize the environmental and economic losses caused by deforestation, and are working to restore the health of these important ecosystems.”
This reminds me of an old post I published in 2009 about afforestation projects. Meanwhile, the Billion Tree Campaign is nearing 12 billion planted trees. This is absolutely stunning ! Continue »
Further to the catastrophe in Fukushima, Japan, the Christian Science Monitor wrote an interesting article on the ten countries relying for more than 30 percent on nuclear for their electricity. As they put it :
” As dependent as Japan is on nuclear power, 12 nations are even more reliant it, according to the World Nuclear Association. Using 2007 data, here are the Top 10 most nuclear-dependent nations. ”
As you may perhaps remember I believe this energy source could provide 40 percent of the electricity of the United States and the European Union. This would enable both to cut their emissions. Continue »
To CleanTechnica : ” A new national 10-year plan from Brazil shows that the country will triple its use of renewable energy by 2020 and that a lot of that energy will be wind energy. ”
” Going from 9 GW of wind, biomass and small hydropower in 2010, the country intends to hit 27 GW by 2020. It wants to have 16% of its electricity supply coming from renewables in 10 years. “
South Korea is also moving forward : “The South Korean government and businesses aim to bolster their share in the world’s renewable energy market to 18 percent by 2030, (…)” Bloomberg News reported. “
To CleanTechies : ” The South Korean government will help fund construction of a massive offshore wind farm that proponents say would generate about 2,500 megawatts of electricity (…)”
“The $8.2 billion project (six billion euros), which proponents hope to complete by 2019. (…) In South Korea, Asia’s fourth-biggest oil importer, officials see the initiative as a step toward reducing the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels. “
Local companies like Hyundai and Daewoo will build the 500 wind turbines. It seems I was quite right when I was writing we should prepare for a wind energy century.
” The South Korean government has announced that it intends to invest $35.4 billion in the renewable energy sector over the next five years as it aims at reducing its dependence on fossil fuels and build a green economy for the future.”
“The South Korean government announced the ‘Green Korea’ plan in September 2008 which identified nine key areas for green investment : solar and wind power,(…) and energy storage.”
It seems China is not the only Asian country to have understood that cleantech is literally the next frontier in terms of employment and business. For more, please read the full article at Ecopolitology.org
We all know it : coal is by far the most greenhouse gases emitting energy source. It is also a major air pollutant. For these two reasons it is the environmental enemy #1. (cf The Economist’s cover, back to 2002)
However, many countries like China, India, Germany or the United States are still relying importantly on this solution to generate their electricity, and some of them to astronomic proportions.
TreeHugger recently published a list of the ten countries that burn coal the most according to the data provided by the US Department of Energy (DoE). Continue »
Earlier this year I was wondering if cleantech is the new arms race. I noted at the time that America, Europe and China are beginning to compete in such an important economic sector.
A US study released last month shows that not only there is an arms race between the United States and Asian nations, but that America ‘s government invests much less than China, Japan and South Korea.
If nothing was done this could become an important problem for America as it would have to import its cleantech equipments. As a matter of fact, it already has been the case. Continue »
Many are working on extending the range of electric cars. Here are three of them. Firstly TreeHugger believes that replacing the graphite electrodes in lithium-ion batteries with silicon nanotube electrodes,would multiply the range by ten.
ArsTechnica notes that carbon nanotubes in ultracapacitors ” may make sense in electric cars, even if it can’t store as much as a battery.” Thirdly, IBM is launching a project to enable electric cars to have a range of 500 miles (800 km).
Extending the current range of electric vehicles and cutting the costs of batteries are the two necessary steps to allow mass market commercialization. Continue »
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has been advocating for a global green New Deal to restart our economies and I reported that they are not the only ones to think the same.
It seems that there is at least one country so far that listened to their voices and started to implement such a bold move. Indeed South Korea plans to invest 38 billion USD (28 billion €) over the next four years.
These investments are due to create a million jobs (to be compared with a total population of 50 million) in renewable energies, efficiency and other environmentally friendly solutions. Continue »
