Mexico passes ambitious climate law

Yesterday the Mexican Lower House (Chamber of Deputies) passed a most ambitious law to fight climate change.  As the local newspapers report, this was a landslide as there was 280 votes for and only ten against. As Kees van der Leun noted on Twitter, the country would slash by 50 percent its greenhouse gases by […]

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It is time for a global price on carbon

It seems more and more countries around the world are willing to put a price on carbon as the evidence of carbon dioxide fueled climate change is more than overwhelming. Indeed, extreme weather events are heating all continents, all countries, all regions. France thought about it in 2009 and retracted. The Emission Trading Scheme in Europe

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United Kingdom slashed its emissions in 2011

As EcoFriend notes, thanks to a warmer climate and a massive push in low carbon energy sources, the United Kingdom slashed by SEVEN PERCENT its greenhouse gases emissions between 2011 and 2010. Cleantech boomed as the share of renewables went from 7.5 percent to 9.5 percent in a single year. Electricity production from renewable sources

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Bad climate news from the Amazon and the Arctic

I recently wrote about positive feedback mechanisms that would increase climate change as temperatures increase. It seems we are already seeing the very first tragic examples. The first one comes from Peru, where climate change led to a warming Atlantic Ocean, which itself led to a drying Amazon rainforest, which in their turn led to

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Six facts on the value of renewables

Last week Climate Progress presented a list of six facts on why renewables are absolutely great. Here it is : 1. Clean energy is competitive with other types of energy ; 2. Clean energy creates three times more jobs than fossil fuels; 3. Clean energy improves grid reliability ; 4. Clean energy investment has surpassed

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Towards sustainability, reloaded : water

For the third installment of the series – see the previous articles on heating and electricity – I would like to propose you a selection of the best tips to help you to decrease your water consumption. Water scarcity is a major problem today as many countries and regions of the globe (South Asia, China,

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Hiriko, the folding electric car

Here is a new article I wrote for Cleantechies : ” Cities are facing many problems, including the lack of parking spaces and air pollution. Regular electric vehicles would solve the air pollution issue, but not the parking one.” ” This is probably why the (MIT worked on a folding electric car codenamed CityCar. The

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A year after Fukushima, and the future of nuclear

A year after the catastrophic events in Fukushima, Japan is planning to be nuclear free by May 5. It is I believe a good opportunity to focus on the future of the industry. Opinions diverge on this critical issue. Some believe nuclear is bound to disappear as it has a negative learning curve and that

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Global warming close to becoming irreversible

To Reuters : ” The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists warned on Monday. (…) As emissions grow, scientists say the world is close to reaching thresholds beyond which the effects on the global climate will be

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Offshore natural gas exploitation isn’t safe either

We have seen in 2010 with the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico that offshore oil exploitation could lead to dramatic pollutions. Now, we are learning the hard way that offshore natural gas exploitation can be foolhardy. As The Guardian noted : ” Oil giant Total has confirmed that a major gas leak on one

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