Obama’s second inaugural speech is a new hope

President Barack Obama delivered his second Inaugural Address this Monday in Washington DC. Climate change got quite a few mentions and it looks like the second term might be the time where the climate crisis is tackled as it should. However, this was supposed to be the case in his first term. And many analysts […]

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Food waste : a HUGE issue

According to a new study by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers “Between 30 and 50 percent of all the food that’s produced on the planet is lost and wasted without ever reaching human stomachs.” Treehugger wrote a compelling article on how this is such a huge and awful waste as there are still hundred of

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Cleantech investments fell in 2012

According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, investements in clean technologies fell by 11 percent in 2012 compared to their 2011 levels. They still amounted to 268.7 billion USD or over 200 billion euros. These news aren’t all that bad even if this decrease marks the end of a seeminlgy unstoppable increase but i has to

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Australia is getting hotter, Beijing more irrespirable

Last week two events caught my attention in the Asia Pacific region as they show that our climate is warming and our air is deteriorating. Both events look unrelated at first but aren’t as fossil fuels are in both cases the culprit. The first one was the horrendous fires and temperatures witnessed in Australia. The

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Worth an article – my December 2012 tweets

Oops, I did it again ! I totally forgot to publish the selection of my best tweets of November. Luckily for you all, I just did, so please don’t hesitate to go and read this article. In today’s post you will find the informations on climate or environmental issues, sustainability and the world energy sector

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Solar PV efficiency new record hit : 44%

To Treehugger : “ The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and their industry partner Solar Junction, have just set the bar even higher in the race for ultra-high-effiency PV cells by achieving another world record of 44% efficiency. “ But wait, there is more as to another article solar PV panels could soon be 50

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The Carbon tax works : the Irish example

We have seen quite a few times that a carbon tax makes a lot of sense as it could literally help solve our most pressing problems : our warming climate and our broken economy. Well, it already does in Ireland. As the New York Times reports – who else could get such great news ?

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The triple crisis, an update of the situation

Here is my first Cleantechies post of 2013. It is about how 2012 was interesting in terms of global effort on climate change. I believe it is a good complement to the post I published last Wednesday. Here is the introduction : ” As a close observer of the energy and climate global scene since

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Start-stop systems are simple, yet brilliant

A great innovation I have seen on French cars recently is called Stop and start. Peugeot Citroen (PSA) started selling this anti-idling technology as early as 2006. The gains in urban driving are no less than ten percent… Indeed, thanks to start-stop systems, the internal combustion engine is automatically shut down while you are stuck

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The importance of good insulation

My current apartment in Valenciennes – Northern France – is located in a recent building (2000). And far from me the idea of bragging, but until temperatures dropped below zero (Celcius) I almost didn’t not use my electric heaters. My flat has double glazing windows and quite well insulated thick walls. The thermometer located in

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