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 seldom write about social or economic issues on this blog as I am more prone to tackle environmental ones, and this even if they are part of the sustainable development triptych.
But each time I blog about social topics it seems I am watching Rom burn and collapse. My last post here was on youth unemployment. And the situation on this front haven’t changed for the good but for the worse.
One of the latest issues of Courrier International [Fr] (see the cover above) is on youth unemployment and the massive precarity. Continue »
According to Reuters : ” The world added about 16 gigawatts of new solar photovoltaic (PV) power in 2010, double the growth seen a year earlier, the European Photovoltaic Industry Association told Reuters on Monday.”
Out of these 16 gigawatts, Europe is behind the vast majority of the growth with an impressive 13 gigawatts. Out of these, Germany account for seven GW and Italy three (and not six as I wrote there…)
Still to Reuters : ” Estimates for the other major European players included the Czech Republic (1.3 GW), France (0.5 GW), Spain (0.4), Belgium (0.25) and Greece (0.2). “ Continue »
According to Enerzine [Fr] and other sources the Desertec Project is getting international support as several companies from Europe, America and Africa are joining the Desertec Industrial Initiative (Dii).
The US company First Solar was the first to join in and five more companies from Morocco, Tunisia, France, Spain and Italy followed suit. Desertec is due to bring 15 percent of Europe’s energy by 2050.
For a closer look at this most interesting project, please refer to my first post on this topic. Be sure that I will keep you updated on Desertec, so stay tuned !
The city of Barcelona and Spanish utility Endesa have been installing smart LED lightning systems that automatically switch themselves off when no one is around. This enables the city to cut by 30 percent its electricity consumption.
I really would like this idea to spread across Europe and even the entire world. Indeed, how many plants are used only to light streets unnecessarily? This would drastically cut costs and would go far beyond the Earth Hour…
Last but not least, this would also improve the night sky quality drastically. As we have seen previoulsy, darker skies would benefit Nature and astronomers alike. Continue »
If you think 2009 was a rotten year for all businesses, read on. To the Global Wind Energy Council 37.5 GW of wind energy capacity was installed in 2009 alone. This represents a 31 percent increase over 2008.
In Europe, capacity grew up by 10 GW and investors pumped 13 billion euros into the industry. Spain is the first with 2.5 GW, then comes Germany with 1.9 GW. The United Kingdom, Italy and France follow with around a gigawatt each.
China doubled its capacity with 12 GW plugged to the grids and the capacity in the United States also grew by ten gigawatts. I find all these figures impressive and look forward to see what will happen in 2010.
According to Reuters Spain will add up to 8.8 GW of renewable energies by 2012. As GreenUnivers [Fr] points out this would increase by 37 percent the current renewable electricity capacity in just three years.
This occurs as now wind energy has more installed capacity than nuclear in Spain and even supplied the country more than half of its electricity needs for several hours. (source: The Guardian)
For more on this event, please check out the official press release in Spanish. Some interesting stuff there including a table of the development of renewables.
By reading the French daily Le Monde, I came across an interesting interview [Fr] of the Spanish Prime Minister, M. Zapatero. There he stated that one of the solutions to get his country out of economic trouble is green growth.
Several other countries including the United States, China and South Korea already did so and as much 430 billion dollars have been already allocated to green New Deals worldwide.
Well advanced in biotechnologies, the country is willing to work much more on energy efficiency and conservation, renewables and high speed trains. Continue »
The capital city of Catalonia and one of my favorite European places is facing an increasing water scarcity due to a severe drought as El Pais notes.
This might lead to a total lack of water by October and there are no really good solution to solve this problem as Barcelona doesn’t have any water source nearby.
A really scary thought for an agglomeration that comprises more than five million inhabitants and is the second largest in Spain. Continue »
