Biodiversity is a vital issue to us all as to the United Nations the disappearance of both fauna and floral species costs six percent of the world GDP, or more than $3,100 billion (2,000 billion euros) per year. The Mother Nature Network published recently a splendid infographic with the Top 20 countries with most endangered species. …
Things are slowly but irresistibly changing in the United States. Wind power added ten gigawatts of capacity to the grids last year alone and coal is less and less used to generate electricity. Meanwhile, a nuclear renaissance may be under way in America as last month President Obama announced a $8.3 billion (6 billion euros) …
This was the question I had on my mind as I read that for the first time in 60 years, the US car fleet decreased by four million in 2009. Is this a limited phenomenon or will it continue ? The Earth Policy Insitute believes this trend could last until at least 2020. This makes …
We have seen previously that electric cars and vehicles are an interesting alternative to traditional cars with internal combustion engines. But another solution exist : electric bicycles. There are already 65 million e-bikes on Chinese roads and the market size is fastly increasing Such bicycles compete with cars in large cities like Shanghai as they …
E-bikes : a growing sustainable alternative to cars Read More »
The UNEP and the World Glacier Monitoring Service published a report showing how glaciers all around the world are melting faster and faster, thus threatening the water supplies of hundred of millions of people. The report then noted that “the average annual melting rate of glaciers doubled after the turn of the millennium.” This scary …
20 percent of America’s – and perhaps the world’s – electricity could soon come from wind and solar. Our societies thus need reliable, cheap and sustainable energy storage solutions. Concentrated solar could benefit from molten salts, yet wind energy doesn’t have yet its own solution. German and Swiss utilities are working on Compressed Air Energy Storage …
Earlier this year I was wondering if cleantech is the new arms race. I noted at the time that America, Europe and China are beginning to compete in such an important economic sector. A US study released last month shows that not only there is an arms race between the United States and Asian nations, …
For my latest post for CleanTechies I propose a reflection further to an interesting op ed Thomas L. Friedman wrote on the New York Times on why America should tax more gasoline. As I noted earlier US drivers pay less than ten euro cents per liter of tax when their German, British, Italian, Turkish or …
Some believe that with the current economic crises we can’t afford to spend extra money on climate change mitigation or on the protection of the environment. However various recent studies show exactly the opposite. In today’s article will see how and why this is possible. This occurs just a few days after I wrote on …
America is the world’s second largest greenhouse gases emitter and thus needs to act. It seems it is the case as the local Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may cut emissions from the energy and industry sectors as early as 2011. This is good news as 70 percent of US emissions come from them. Additionally, the …
