Energy

India rejects carbon reduction plans

According to the Financial Times : ” India on Sunday night rebuffed an appeal (…) to embrace a low-carbon future in which the two countries would work together to devise new ways of consuming and producing energy. “ This puzzles me as I am sure the world’s largest democracy could with the proper government incentives […]

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Is Peak Oil real ?

This is the question asked last week in a most interesting article on The Oil Drum. One of their contributors, Praveen Ghanta, compiled the oil production data provided by the BP statistical review country by country. The conclusion is that out of 54 oil producing countries, only 14 of them haven’t peaked already. The author

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Future fuels: forget about oil

I came across interesting articles on what could be the fuels for our cars and planes in the future. This is for the moment just research, but there is no doubt that with peak oil approaching, alternatives are being sought. Even if most if not all cars nowadays run on gas, they could well soon

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Can IGCC clean up coal ?

I was wondering if we as Mankind could clean up coal and if it was worth the hassle. Indeed, Carbon Capture and Storage seems promising but is too little too late to solve our climate change problems. To an article on the New York Times, an alternative to CCS could drastically cut greenhouse gases emissions

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A renewed interest for energy efficiency

According to the International Energy Agency many developing countries like India or China are increasing their energy efficiency efforts to slow down their oil consumption. This is great news for peak oil and climate change mitigation. Meanwhile, the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair believes that energy efficiency is a faster solution than trading carbon-dioxide

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Can China increase tenfold its nuclear capacity ?

According to China Daily quoted by the Twitter page of the Green Leap Forward, China wants to increase tenfold its nuclear power capacity by 2020, from the current 9 GW to 86 GW by 2020. Is this feasible ? Such a move makes me wonder. Indeed, nuclear power plants require to operate safely specialized engineers

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USA: The high cost of fossil fuels

According to a recent report published by a US environmental organization, fossil fuels are due to cost the United States up to $23 trillion between 2010 and 2030. To TreeHugger, these energy sources cost one trillion in 2008 alone. 85 percent of US energy comes from coal, oil and natural gas. This leaves only 15

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Is Desertec a sound idea ?

The fact has been known for years:  harvesting the energy provided by the sun to a tiny fraction of the Earth could supply all the energy Humankind needs without greenhouse gases emissions or pollution due to operation. This week many blogs and websites published articles on Desertec, a foundation that would like to install many

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Renewables due to boom in South America

Recently two Latin America countries unveiled large renewable energies plans. If those projects were to become reality, they would bring several gigawatts of clean energy to the continent. Argentina is very ambitious as it plans to build a wind farm that will amount for 600 to 900 MW as well as an impressive solar park that

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The world is about to get a whole lot smaller

Recently I read two articles on a book about Peak Oil that seems most interesting. Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller by Jeff Rubin explores the consequences of the end of cheap oil and how it will affect us. The author – a former chief economist for CIBC World Markets

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