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 Enerzine [Fr] the world largest offshore wind farm has gone online in the Irish sea. Walney 2 has a capacity of 367,2 MW, enough to power 320,000 British households. It was also the fastest ever installation.
The farm will however quickly lose its title to other projects set to come online in the United Kingdom as well. Indeed, both the Greater Gabbard (500MW) and the London Array (630MW) fams will come online in 2012.
On a global scale, REVE notes that :” Global wind farm capacity accounted for approximately 197 GW in 2010 and will rise to 1,750 GW by 2030, finds a new report from Transparency Market Research. “
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 »
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 »
Here is my latest post on CleanTechies, this time on wave and tidal energies : “According to a new study by the Carbon Trust up to 240 GW of capacity of marine energy could be installed worldwide by 2050.“
” Out of these, 75 percent could be coming from wave, and the remainder by tidal energy. The total market for both wave and tidal energies could in a high scenario amount to up 520 billion euros (740 billion USD) over the next decades. “
To keep reading, please check out the full article there. I look forward to reading your comments. If you liked it, please share it !
According to Cleantechies : “A new study finds that animal and plant species are responding to the effects of climate change at a rate two to three times faster than previously believed.
Researchers in the Department of Biology at the University of York in the United Kingdom found that in more than 2,000 instances, species are changing their habitats to adapt to warming temperatures.
On average, they found that species are moving toward higher elevations at 12.2 meters (40 feet) per decade and toward the poles at 17.6 kilometers (11 miles) per decade.”
This is nothing less but historical. According to the WWF : ” The United Kingdom, the first to enshrine reductions in climate change causing emissions into law, today announced a 2025 target of a 50 per cent emissions cut from 1990 levels. “
The UK previously announced that it would cut by 34 percent its greenhouse gases emissions by 2020 from 1990 levels. Here is a country that understood that fighting climate change makes sense, economically and environmentally.
Meanwhile, the rest of the European Union is lagging with plans to cut emissions by only 20 percent by 2020 (when we have seen time and again that 30 percent was highly feasible….)
This is the title of the first article published on a new blog dedicated to energy issues launched Friday by the UK newspaper The Independent. Titled New Energy Future, it is already in my RSS aggregator and should be in yours too.
The blog begins with a great albeit short video introduction by David JC McKay (left), Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge and author of Sustainable energy – without the hot air.
” Twice the energy, half the emissions “ sums up perfectly what we should be working on in the next four decades. The task seems daunting but we can do it. Continue »
This is the message published today in three leading European newspapers by the Environment Ministers of the United Kingdom, Germany and France, respectively Mr. Chris Huhne, Dr Norbert Röttgen and Mr. Jean-Louis Borloo.
This bold call for action changes from the traditional European Union’s message which clings to cutting emissions by 20 percent by 2020. To them, sticking to such a target would leave the cleantech market to China, Japan or the US.
I am very glad that some people in the highest positions finally understand that the more we will act on climate change, the better it will be for our economies, our societies and our planet. Continue »
The PEW environment group published a fantastic study on the cleantech investment in the G20 in 2009. The largest economies, both developped and developping are very different in this economic sector.
China overtook the United States in cleantech investments with more than $34 billion while the latter dedicated less than $19 billion. The European Union as a group of 27 countries is leading with more than $40 billion.
It seems this is only the beginning as PEW notes that ” Clean energy investments are forecast to grow by 25 percent to $200 billion in 2010.” Continue »
Scotland announced last week that 1.2 GW of tidal and wave energy capacity would be built there by 2020. To achieve this, 10 projects will be started and will be the first commercial applications of these energy sources.
Scotts are determine to have 31 percent of their electricity coming from renewables by 2011 and are willing to cut their greenhouse gases emissions by 42 percent by 2020.
Both tidal and wave energies have a huge potential and would prove very convenient as more and more people are living in large cities near the coasts. Continue »
