21 countries from Austria to the United States have cut their greenhouse gases emissions while growing their economies in the past 15 years. This proves that decoupling economic growth and greenhouse gases emissions is feasible.
While the European Union officials – not ” leaders ” – keep on clinging to 20 % emissions reductions by 2020, the Union has already slashed its emissions by 23 percent. This is taking place ahead of the Paris Climate Conference later this year.
While reading Richard Branson’s latest book, Screw Business As Usual, I came across an interesting concept : the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. The term refers to the basic goods and services to sell to the poorest people. To a report from the World Resources Institute quoted in Branson’s book, the Bottom of …
Here comes another article for Cleantechies, this time focusing on a problem plaguing many nations, coal. This fossil fuels does indeed provides a large part of the electricity there. Here is the introduction : ” Poland – as many East European nations – relies very heavily on coal as 90 percent of its electricity comes …
Carl Pope, the former executive director and chairman of the Sierra Club published an article on the very topic last week as the World Bank and the US government announced they wouldn’t fund coal anymore. But this week, there was another third blow on financing coal. As The Guardian reported : ” The European Investment …
Yesterday Alice Stollmeyer asked on Twitter “ What should the European Commission do to improve air quality ? ” as she is participating today to a EU chat session dedicated to green topics. My answer was quite simple: Ban new coal projects and phase out the existing capacity. Replace by efficiency and renewables. This would …
When Germany announced after the Fukushima disaster that it was willing to stop all its nuclear reactors, I published a piece on Cleantechies on how this was premature and dangerous for climate. I guess I was quite right as this week the same Cleantechies published an article stating that coal consumption of the first European …
To the Huffington Post : ” Defying growing global skepticism over the use of atomic energy, (the Czech Republic) is planning to dramatically increase the country’s nuclear power production. ” (…) Other former Soviet bloc nations, now in the European Union, are following the Czechs’ lead on nuclear power – reflecting diverging economic needs between …
While the decisions of both Germany and Switzerland to stop using nuclear made headlines, little has been written about Poland ‘s thinking about building two nuclear reactors, which would be build by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy. The reactors could go online in 2020 if an agreement was signed in 2014. The capacity would reach 3,000 …
Energy efficiency is the very basis of a more sustainable society and Russia seems to have understood that. This is a great news as the country is one of the largest coal consumers. As I note in my latest article for CleanTechies : “Some interesting news recently went unnoticed. Indeed, last month, Russia unveiled a …
Russia to invest $300 billion in energy efficiency Read More »
