Asia

Quick climate fix : tackling black carbon

While browsing my tweets to prepare my selection of Twitter for June I found several articles pointing out to a quick climate fix : tackling black carbon (also known as soot) might prove to bring exceptional greenhouse gases emissions cuts. The work was carried out jointly by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the World […]

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A million solar homes… in Bangladesh

At first I couldn’t possibly believe it, it had to be a sinister joke : there would be a million solar homes in Bangladesh…  I was wondering : How could such a poor country such as Bangladesh could afford to have a million houses with solar panels ? Indeed, the country has a GDP per

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More efficiency, wind power and nuclear for China

As the world’s first energy consumer and greenhouse gases emitter, the People’s Republic of China is under closed scrutiny from energy analysts. Last week, not one or two but three different news caught my attention on this country. The climate situation there is dreadful as according to CNN massive floods forced 1.6 million people to

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Scary climate stories from Asia

While writing my selection of tweets for May, I found three really scary stories about how global warming is already dramatically affecting the most populated continent in the world, Asia as well as its two most populated nations. From the 1,400 dry water reservoirs in central China caused by a five-month drought to the absolutely

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Forests at the heart of World Environment Day

I generally try to stick to current topics and news but couldn’t blog about this year’s World Environment Day, which took place on Sunday. This year the UNEP wanted to emphasize the importance of forests. As I read on the UNEP Facebook page :  “The theme of World Environment Day this year, “Forests: Nature at

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Hydropower strikes back, with a controversy

To the New York Times : ” Hydropower, a renewable energy source often overshadowed by excitement about wind and solar power, is enjoying something of a global resurgence.” ” Huge, controversial dam projects have recently made headlines in Brazil, Chile and Laos. Many developing countries, hungry for energy to supply their growing economies (…) are

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India to add 17 GW of renewables by 2017

According to Cleantechnica : ” India plans to invest $37 billion (26 billion euros) to create 17,000 MW of renewable energy generation by 2017, the ministry for new & renewable energy has said. ” ” The present installed renewable energy capacity in India is 20,000 MW which accounts for 11% of the total installed power

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The developing world needs clean cookstoves

What do you get when Hillary Clinton and Julia Roberts work together? An article on clean cookstoves : “Some 3 billion people live in homes where food is cooked on stoves or over fires burning fuels like wood, dung, charcoal, or  waste.” ” According to the World Health Organization, smoke from dirty stoves and fires

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Better Place going to China

Do you remember Better Place, the great electric car project ? To Ecogeek : “Better Place has entered into an agreement with Chinese utility China Southern Power Grid to bring their battery swap stations to the Asian country.” “(…) Better Place founder Shai Aggasi sees this partnership leading to a shift in Chinese EV manufacturing

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Book review : The Plundered Planet

Here is a review of a book I finished in February. After reading Crossing The Energy Divide, I started right away  The Plundered Planet by Paul Collier, a professor of Economics at Oxford who worked for the World Bank. This is the sequel of The Bottom Billion, which was published in 2007 and explained why

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