The energy transition has reached the French countryside

While I was away for a few days in the Lorraine village where my mom’s family comes from, I noticed a few hints that the energy transition is already taking place and has reached even this quite secluded place. The first one was both solar thermal and photovoltaic panels sprouting on roofs. While I counted […]

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Worth an article : My February 2014 tweets

Here we go again : my selection of article-worthy tweets is here. Albeit I slightly increased my amount of articles published per week, I still haven’t enough time to write about all noteworthy news. Lucky for you all, Twitter is here. In today’s article you will find – just as every month – a selection

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Energy, the European Union and Russia

The ongoing tensions between Ukraine and Russia is an excellent occasion for the European Union to assess its dependence from foreign fossil fuels, especially oil and natural gas from the Russian Federation. As Kees van der Leun noted on his Twitter last week, the EU buys to Russia over half a billion euros of oil

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Global Forest Watch to fight deforestation

Deforestation is a large driver of increasing greenhouse gases emissions and an important environmental issue as every minute of every day the equivalent of 50 football fields of trees are being cut down. But this could change soon. The World Resources Institute, Google, USAid, and UNEP, and many more institutions and companies have teamed up

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Flood costs and risks to soar in Europe

It seems the huge floods in the United Kingdom could become the new normal because of climate change. The frequency of such destructive events could almost double by mid century as a new study published in Nature Climate Change reports. According to the Guardian :” The huge cost of flood damage is set to soar

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King Coal is dying in China and the USA

While coal might still be the first source of energy for electricity generation in the world, the tides may be turning in two of its largest markets, the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America. Several facts are pointing to that conclusion.While China consumes now as much of the black dirty stuff

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The European union already benefits from renewables

Here is another opinion piece I wrote for Cleantechies : ” There is a question that currently puzzles me : why is the European Union so unambitious on climate and energy goals ? “ ” We have seen recently that the European Commission unveiled plans to cut carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2020 and

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Big Oil is getting smaller

According to PeakOil.com, the seven largest oil companies of the Western world — ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, Total, ConocoPhillips and Eni —have seen their oil output decline by 12.4 percent between 2009 and 2013. According to the IEA, if total world oil supply has risen from 85.66 million barrels per day in 2009 to 91.53

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Five famous buildings with solar

What the common point between famous buildings around the world such as the White House in the United States, the Vatican, the Taj Mahal in India, the Burj Khalifa in the United Arab Emirates and the Eiffel Tower in France ? You give up ? They are all at least partly powered by solar. This

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Chinese coal consumption is slowing

This could be world-changing news. According to Xinhua, the Chinese State media agency : ” China’s coal consumption growth slowed in 2013, with the price of coal declining, according to the China National Coal Association “ Several factors are explaining this : old inefficient coal-fired plants are being closed and replaced by more efficient ones,

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