Month: July 2013

Latest news from China

I originally wanted to write a post only on how the People’s Republic of China is willing to quadruple its solar PV capacity by 2015.  But given other news from there got my attention, I thought it would be better to present them all. First thing first : the Chinese government is not messing around …

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Peru to provide solar panels to two million inhabitants

I seldom blog about Latin America besides the occasional post on the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. So when I read about Peru’s efforts to give access to its poorest population, I just knew I had to share this. The Peruvian National Photovoltaic Household Electrification Program will benefit more than 2 million people by providing …

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The beginning of the end for coal

Carl Pope, the former executive director and chairman of the Sierra Club published an article on the very topic last week as the World Bank and the US government announced they wouldn’t fund coal anymore. But this week, there was another third blow on financing coal. As The Guardian reported : ” The European Investment …

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Desertec abandons Sahara solar energy export dream

The Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII) have been been the subject of many articles here. The huge project was due to generate large amounts of renewable energy from solar and wind farms in Northern Africa and bring it to Europe. Criticism had been important as the feasability of generating up to 100 gigawatts of electricity in …

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Worth an article – my May and June 2013 tweets

uh oh ! I totally forgot to publish a review of my most interesting news on Twitter for both May and June ! Lucky you, here is this long awaited for selection. As usual, each tweet could have been the subject of a full article. Given this selection I believe it is safe to say …

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An innovative idea to push for building retrofits.

Houses and building energy efficiency is a hot topic for me since I wrote my Master’s thesis on it back to 2006. Then I discovered that France had no less than 20 million buildings to insulate ( not bad for a country with 65 million inhabitants ) Now according to the Guardian, the UK Green …

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Could we really reverse climate change ?

Given how we are on our way to warming global average temperatures by no less than 4 to 6 °C by the end of the century, stopping climate change seems already a huge ordeal and a tall order. It’s not a question of solutions, but of political courage. Now according to Grist, a team of …

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Book review : Cradle to cradle

Inspiring : that’s the adjective that comes to mind as I have just finished reading Cradle to Cradle, by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. I had heard about that book for quite some time and I understand now why. The book  was written  in 2002 –with a 2008 reedition – and is replete with enlightening …

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Late June – early July selection of news

During my two weeks away in Southern France I didn’t read much news except the ones I had on the Facebook pages of I love climate scientists and 350.org. This allowed me to find some quite interesting stuff. Each article below could have been the topic of a full post here, but given the fact …

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Random vacation thoughts

My time out for the past two weeks in southern France was the occasion for me to think a bit about energy and environmental issues as I was experiencing stuff I have been writing about on this blog. Exemplifying with day-to-day and real-life examples is a fantastic opportunity to see how stuff just works.  From …

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