Last week Jean-Louis Borloo, the French energy and environment Minister, launched a plan that will quadruple the amount of electricity provided by solar photovoltaïc in order to reach 300 MW by 2011. This is great news as investing 1.5 billion euros ($2 billion) in solar PV is the right move for France to enable local […]
Solar PV to provide 300 MW to France by 2011 Read More »
For the fifth part of these series – see the previous articles on heating, electricity, water and transport – I would like to tackle food in general. This is an important issue for both the health and the environment. At a time where weight issues keep on increasing – to the World Health Organization, there
Towards sustainability: food Read More »
According to a new study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) climate change may reach 7°C by the end of this century. This doubles the previous estimates by the IPCC. As climate models become more and more complex and contain more and more data, the results are increasingly worrying. I hope this study will
Temperatures could rise by 7°C by 2100 Read More »
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
China’s electricity will be 35% clean by 2020 Read More »
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
The energy cost of our electronic devices Read More »
Yesterday were announced by President Obama the new mileage requirements for US vehicles. This is important as they hadn’t changed for decades. The average mileage will reach 35.5 MPG by 2016 compared to roughly 25 nowadays. This seems to be a lot but it isn’t when one knows that European cars will be required to
Mixed feelings about the new US mileage Read More »
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,
European energy official: oil may have peaked Read More »
I recently read a couple of interesting facts on bike sharing around the world. Since this transportation mean is the epitome of sustainable development I thought I might share them with you. Montreal launched last week Bixi, the largest program of its kind in North America with 3,000 bikes for 300 stations. In the United
Bike sharing around the world Read More »
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
Two massive renewable energies projects Read More »
According to a new report published by the University College London and The Lancet medical journal climate change is the biggest health threat of our century. As an author of the report said to the Daily Mail: ‘The big message of this report is that climate change is a health issue affecting billions of people,
Climate change is the biggest health threat Read More »
