Year: 2010

The triple crisis : why we need green jobs

I believe we are beginning this decade with a triple crisis as our economies are crumbling, our climate is warming and our energy supplies are getting scarcer. This assessment of our situation seems pessimistic but it couldn’t be more accurate as it is based on the +700 articles I published here over the past three years. …

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The critical issue of back up power

20 percent of America’s – and perhaps the world’s – electricity could soon come from wind and solar. Our societies thus need reliable, cheap and sustainable energy storage solutions. Concentrated solar could benefit from molten salts, yet wind energy doesn’t have yet its own solution. German and Swiss utilities are working on Compressed Air Energy Storage …

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An offshore wind energy boom in Europe

The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) published its annual report and the results are encouraging as the offshore wind energy capacity grew by 54 percent in 2009 with 577 MW. The United Kingdom appears to be leading the sector as it installed more than half of the added capacity of the European Union. And this …

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Are we heading toward global cooling ?

With the wave of cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere (America, Europe, Asia) of the previous weeks, some skeptical people believe Earth is heading toward a global cooling or more simply that there is no global warming. Don’t rejoice to fast. As I noted previously weather forecasts and climate are totally different. See why here. There …

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Germany to cut its emissions by 40 percent

To Reuters, ” Germany will stick to a more ambitious goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020 even though the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen fell short of expectations, a government adviser said on Monday. “ Details of how the country will achieve such drastic cuts still remain to be defined. …

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Solar energy, a panacea for Africa

Solar energy is to me the panacea for Africa, a continent where 550 million people still lack electricity. With molten salts, concentrating solar could bring light to these populations during important parts of the night. Solar cookers could also help fighting deforestation by removing the need for fuelwood. Now an experiment run in Benin (West Africa) shows …

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Brazil and Indonesia committed to slow down deforestation

The year is beginning with many good news. After the huge wind energy plan in the UK, another good sign that climate change mitigation slowly but surely surfaces as a key preoccupation at a global scale. Indeed the Brazilian goverment signed a National Policy on Climate Change bill which is due to help the country …

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2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity

The huge variety of all living species on our Planet is a key element to life as we know it. However, too many species – including a fourth of mammals – are at risk of extinction. This has to be changed and real protection has to increase. This is why ” The United Nations declared 2010 …

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A massive wind energy plan for UK

The United Kingdom has a most ambitious climate change mitigation plan as it is willing to cuts its emissions by 34 percent by 2020. This is further than the European Union which is willing to go as far as 30 percent. This week, Gordon Brown is due to unveil a £100 billion (110 billion euros …

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Oil prices went up by 78 percent in 2009

During the financial crisis in late 2008, oil prices went down from $147 to $33 in just a few months. However, oil prices soon went up as they increased by 78 percent last year. This is the largest yearly increase in a decade. There are more and more concerns that either peak oil already occurred or …

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