France

Claude Allegre, the French climate imposter

In France, climate change deniers are few. As a matter of fact, I can think about only one name : Claude Allègre, a former scientist who now is a politician.  His latest book – L’imposture climatique – is a model for climate deniers. Real Climate proposes a compelling article on the many mistakes written there. As […]

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Who’s winning the clean energy race ?

The PEW environment group published a fantastic study on the cleantech investment in the G20 in 2009. The largest economies, both developped and developping are very different in this economic sector. China overtook the United States in cleantech investments with more than $34 billion while the latter dedicated less than $19 billion. The European Union

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Desertec gets international support

According to Enerzine [Fr] and other sources the Desertec Project is getting international support as several companies from Europe, America and Africa are joining the Desertec Industrial Initiative (Dii). The US company First Solar was the first to join in and five more companies from Morocco, Tunisia, France, Spain and Italy followed suit. Desertec is

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A swimming pool heated by waste energy

I really like swimming. So, twice to thrice a week I go swimming at the Lons-Le-Saunier Aqua’ReL center (pictured left). Opened in 2007 it was built with sustainable development in mind and comes with plenty green features. Energy efficient, it is heated by the local waste-to-energy plant. Additionally, part of its electricity comes from 30

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An official visit from Mr. Borloo at Ravoyard SA

Yesterday the French Minister for Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Town and Country Planning, Mr. Jean-Louis Borloo visited a company in Vaudrey, less than 20 kilometers from my hometown. Ravoyard SA manufactures since its origins metallic structures. Dynamic, it recently diversified its activity to add photovoltaïc films to its existing products. As the market is currently

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Italy to build four nuclear reactors by 2020

There is something I totally overlooked while writing earlier this week my article on how Europe goes forward on energy. Indeed, last month Italy announced its intention to build nuclear reactors this decade. Italian electricity is both heavily reliant on foreign fossil sources (70 percent) and on imports (ten percent comes from France’s own reactors). Building

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Xynthia, another extreme weather event

As climate warms, extreme weather events are more and more frequent and more and more violent. Indeed, after the blizzards on the East coast of the United States, Europe was hit this weekend by an important storm. Xynthia claimed more than fifty lives this weekend in France alone and the costs are due to exceed

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A global wind energy boom

If you think 2009 was a rotten year for all businesses, read on. To the Global Wind Energy Council 37.5 GW of wind energy capacity was installed in 2009 alone. This represents a 31 percent increase over 2008. In Europe, capacity grew up by 10 GW and investors pumped 13 billion euros into the industry.

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Green economy: 90,000 new green jobs in France

Here is my latest post for CleanTechies : According to a new report [Fr] from the ADEME ( the French Environment and Energy Management Agency ) 90,000 jobs have been created in the French green growth sectors between 2006 and 2008. These jobs have been created mostly in energy conservation and the development of renewable

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Forum des Emplois Verts

As I am still looking for a job in the cleantech sector I am attending today the Forum des Emplois Verts (French Green Jobs forum) in Paris where up to 2,000 jobs positions are proposed. This is a fantastic opportunity since as I noted earlier the Boston Consulting Group believes the Grenelle de l’Environnement could

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