Energy

Whatever concerns energy and the ways to produce it goes here

China’s electricity will be 35% clean by 2020

It seems the arms race is continuing as the People’s Republic of China is willing to get 35 percent of its electricity by renewable energy sources by 2020. This will represent 570 gigawatts of capacity. It is worth noting that the country’s electricity demand is due to double by then and will reach 1,600 GW […]

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The energy cost of our electronic devices

The International Energy Agency issued a study – Gadgets and Gigawatts – on the energy consumption of the numerous mobile phones, mp3 players and other electronic devices. By 2030, they are due to consume up to three times more and thus burn up to 700 terawatt-hours of electricity. All this energy would cost up to

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European energy official: oil may have peaked

Thanks to the Oil Drum, I read about an interesting fact. Andris Piebalgs, the European Energy Commissioner published this month an interesting post on his blog stating that oil production may have already peaked. This is no big surprise as we have already seen that to the Oil Drum, global production peaked in 2008. Additionally,

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Two massive renewable energies projects

I never write about renewable energy projects who will bring only a few megawatts to the grids.  I prefer to focus on huge plants that will bring at least several hundreds megawatts which are more interesting in a global scope. This is the case of two projects I heard about this week. One will bring

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Could peak coal occur as soon as 2025 ?

I wrote recently that  global coal reserves may be overestimated. At the time, the data I was quoting noted that coal reserves could be overestimated by 23 %. Now a new study show that coal supply could start decreasing by as early as 2025. With peak oil also due to occur in the very next

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Pro-Natura International: green charcoal for developing countries

Thanks to Pro-Natura International, an interesting project is beginning in Africa with the use of green waste as a new source of charcoal. This alternative to solar cookers is another solution to stop deforestation in tropical countries. This project started in 2007 with a single plant in Senegal which products already benefit to 20,000 people.

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Are we making earthquakes worse ?

Last month the French magazine Science et Vie [Fr] dedicated a series of articles to the earthquake risks induced by dams, mines, oil drilling and geothermal power. You might think that these activities are without seismic risk. But to their findings, around 200 earthquakes have been triggered by human activities so far. This can be

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Solutions to cut US dependance on foreign oil

I came across interesting data last week : Americans consume more than two times more oil per capita than Europeans. As we will see, this can be explained by three factors. Bringing oil consumption per capita to European levels would enable the USA to be independent from foreign oil, save a lot of money, create

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More energy efficiency in the European Union

I have been an advocate of energy efficiency for years and believe it is the best solution to solve the energy and climate equation. So when the European Union plans to ban importing energy inefficient goods I can only applaud the initiative. This is done to enable the 27 countries and their 500 million inhabitants

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Think CFLs are great ? Read on…

CFLs consume up to five time less energy than traditional incandescent and halogen bulbs. This convinced several countries including the European Union and India to increasingly use them. Now LEDs are slowly reaching the markets. Consuming up to half the energy of CFLs they come in all shapes and colors. Even if they are still

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