The Billion Tree Campaign is a huge success

The UNEP Billion Tree Campaign‘s goal was to plant seven billion trees before the Copenhagen meeting in December. To today’s news the goal was reached as China planted 2.6 billion trees to support the campaign. This shows at least two things : when China starts on something, it is unstoppable. The country’s efforts on climate […]

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A global renewable energies boom

Thanks to GreenUnivers, a great French blog on green business, I came across the latest report from the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21). It presents various figures worth mentioning. Between 2004 and 2008, solar PV capacity increased sixfold to more than 16 GW, wind power capacity increased 250 percent to 121

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Investors demand strong climate change action

While many governments are slow to action, nearly 200 investors from around the world – led by Sir Nicholas Stern – are demanding strong climate change action as they see warming temperatures as a threat to the global economy. As the United Nations Environment Program notes : ” The world’s largest global investors issued a

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France seeks alternatives to GDP

Gross Domestic Product, also know as GDP, is not a sustainable indicator. Indeed it only focuses on the economy and makes no mention of societies and environment. So we need alternatives that would take that into account. This is even more urgent with the current economic downturn. Indeed, even if things are slowly and difficultly

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An interesting geoengineering idea

I was previously noting that  the Sahara desert is slowly turning green. To a new study hurrying the process and extending it to the Australian outback by planting eucalyptus trees (left) could absorb our global CO2 emissions. Indeed this geoengineering idea would absorb eight billion tons of carbon a year. But we shouldn’t forget that

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The USA and China cooperate on climate change

Last week two different news about how the two countries responsible for more than 40 percent of the global greenhouse gases emissions could sign an agreement in November and work together on greentech. To the New York Times a deal on climate change could be signed in November when President Obama will visit China. No

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Australian per capita emissions larger than US

It is a well known fact : American per capita greenhouse gases emissions are among the world’s highest because of massive consumption of both oil and coal. But to a new study Australian per capita emissions are exceeding the US. One of the main reason is the country’s electricity production which mostly comes from the

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Book Review: Sustainable energy – without the hot air

I finished reading this weekend a book I strongly recommend to anyone interested by sustainable development and energy as it is packed with figures and findings that are due to start discussions among CleanTechies. One of the main findings of this book is that electrifying our cars and installing heat pumps in our buildings would

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Japan to cut GHG emissions by 25 percent

To the Financial Times, Yukio Hatoyama – the incoming Japanese prime minister – announced that his country will cut by 25 percent its greenhouse gases emissions by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. Even if this still below the IPCC’s recommendations – rich countries must cut their emissions between 30 and 40 percent by 2020 –

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Romania builds largest onshore wind farm in EU

This just broke in : Romania will have in 2011 the largest onshore wind farm in the European Union with 240 wind turbines accounting for no less than 600 MW of installed capacity. This 1.1 billion Euro ($1.6 billion) project is done in order to offset the emissions of the dirty coal fired plants of

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