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 !
Oh the irony ! As you know, fossil fuels are heavily subsided. I have written a few articles here on how ending those subsidies would be a major boost to renewables. Well it seems they don’t quite need it.
As Bloomberg notes : “Wind in some cases already is, or can in coming years, be fully cost-competitive with fossil fuels,” (…) “Fossil-fuel prices will continue to rise, and that increases the competitiveness of new technologies.”
” We are preparing the whole industry for getting off the subsidy-need.” So, are we just keep on giving money to dirty filthy solutions just so they can keep on polluting our air, soil and water ? Continue »
These are great news, just in time for the current climate talks taking place in Durban as to a new report from Bloomberg, global investments in renewables are surpassing for the first time ever the amounts invested in fossil fuels.
With economies of scale and scope, both solar energy and wind power are getting cheaper and cheaper, making them already seriously compete with much dirtier energy sources.
As a result, last year over $187 billion (141 billion euros) were invested in renewables and only $157 billion (118 billion euros) in fossil fuels. This is only the beginning. Continue »
Do you remember Annie Leonard’s great documentaries The Story of Stuff and the Story of Cosmetics ? Well, she did a few other more, including the latest : The Story of Broke.
In this eight-minute animated clip, she tackles the huge problem of subsidies of all kinds that are given to what she calls ” the Dinosaur Economy “. (Big Ag, Big Food and of course Big Oil…)
Stating that we are not broke but that our economy is broken, she urges us to take back the power and start fighting those subsidies to get a healthier economy and a more enjoyable environment. Continue »
According to the IEA’s annual report, the situation is getting bleaker and bleaker. Confirming that we have five years to start decreasing our global emissions – cf. my previous post on that very matter – it is also providing several other findings.
As you can sure imagine, several websites published lengthy articles on the very matter. In today’s article we will review the main findings and the most essential parts of the World Energy Outlook 2011.
World leaders will meet again very soon in Durban, South Africa, to discuss about the future of the Kyoto Protocol. It’s time they, we, step up and heed the calls for serious actions. Continue »
To Bloomberg : ” Japan approved a bill today to subsidize electricity from renewable sources, joining European nations in shifting away from nuclear power after the Fukushima reactor meltdowns in March.”
” (…) The bill allows for incentives that guarantee above-market rates for wind, solar and geothermal energy. The so-called feed- in tariff created a race to install solar panels when implemented in Germany and Spain.”
” (…) Solar panels had capacity to produce about 3.68 gigawatts of power at the end of last year in Japan, and the government is targeting 28 gigawatts by 2020.”
To TreeHugger : “A measure that would remove roughly $6 billion in annual ethanol subsidies just passed the U.S. Senate, signaling, among other things, a shift in public attitude towards the once-heralded alternative fuel.
” It wasn’t so long ago that corn ethanol was considered a plausible replacement for oil – but that was before further scientific inquiry revealed it to be nearly as environmentally damaging as black gold. ”
” Today, the Senate has cleared the way towards ending the ethanol industry’s generous federal funding.” I hope that other rich nations will understand that biofuels aren’t the sustainable solution they promised to be…
You know probably know it : America – and to be fair, many other countires - is giving a lot of subsidies to Big Oil and companies that are making billions of profits. This doesn’t make sense economically nor environmentally.
You might also remember that I have been advocating changing this for years and have been thinking that this money should rather go to energy efficiency projets and / or renewables.
Similarly, looking for shale oil and gas and offshore drilling is just keeping us on the headlong rush. 350.org proposes us a nice infographics full of facts on these very matters. Please go and check it out !
… but fossil fuels are progressing even faster. This is in a nutshell the message from the International Energy Agency’s (IEA, the OECD energy office) latest report, the Clean Energy Progress Report. As GreenTechMedia noted :
” Renewable energy generation has grown, on average, by 2.7 percent a year since 1990. Electricity generation, however, has grown by 3 percent, meaning that the steps forward have been eclipsed by the overall market.”
Indeed, coal, despite being dozens of times dirtier than renewables, has fulfilled 47 percent of the new electricity demand in the past decade. Continue »
Coal and oil are the two most polluting fossil fuels and energy sources to date. Despite this, both are receiving huge subsidies from the United States federal and local governments.
To Climate Progress, the coal industry received around $3 billion (2.2 billion euros) per year between 2002 and 2008 and to the New York Times, the oil industry gets even more, $4 billion (3 billion euros).
Giving around $7 billion each year to industries that pollute our air, our water and our soil so they just can keep polluting is just insane. Continue »
The State of the Union speech given yesterday by President Barack Obama might well stay in the History books like John Fitzgerald Kennedy moon shot speech that sent Americans on the moon in less than a decade.
Indeed President Obama asked for 80% of America’s electricity from ‘clean energy’ by 2035 (including clean coal and natural gas, nobody’s perfect) and for more than one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.
Even more, he called for the suppression of the billions worth of subsidies to Big Oil companies. Let’s hope Congress will give him the means to do all this. Continue »
