Europe

Seven years left to reverse the CO2 emissions trend

Carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases emissions have been increasing continuously since the beginning of the industrial revolution at the end of the 18th century. According to the IPCC experts who met the EU environment ministries today, this trend have to be reversed and emissions have to start decreasing within the next seven years. To these […]

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The United Kingdom’s renewable energies plan

After India’s plan on climate change last week, the United Kingdom announced  a plan due expand in an important way the use of renewable energies. Up to 7,000 wind turbines – including 3,000 offshore – will be installed by 2020 in order to multiply by a factor ten the importance of these energies in the

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Together.com iniative launched in the USA

You perhaps remember my enthusiastic post on the launch of the WE campaign, by the former US Vice President Al Gore and the Alliance for Climate Protection. This time, a UK initiative that has the same goal (to enable us to decrease our daily CO2 emissions) is going global as it is being launched in

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Switzerland is considering building a new nuclear plant

After Russia, the United Kingdom and Italy, Switzerland is the fourth European country in just a few months to seriously think about building new nuclear reactors. This occurs as current Swiss nuclear reactors are due to close around 2020 and the energy demand is increasing in an important way and this is due to continue.

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G8 countries to cut oil consumption

Yesterday, the eight leading economies met in Japan, alongside with China, India and South Korea. One of the main topics of discussion was the soaring prices of oil and energy. To counter this, they pledged to invest massively in energy efficiency and low carbon technologies such as renewable energies, nuclear and carbon capture and storage

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Germany, a climate change mitigation example ?

Germany is often quoted as the definite example in climate change mitigation. However, as with all black and white fallacies, it is not really the case and the situation is not that simple. Indeed, even if our neighboring country gets far more energy from renewables than we are, it relies much too heavily on coal,

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How we throw away tons of food

By reading La Marguerite I came across a very disturbing fact : we throw each month a lot of food. And when I write we, I mean both Americans and Europeans. This most disturbing fact – it concerns between a quarter and a third of the food we buy -occurs as in many less affluent

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Coal strikes back… globally

I once wrote that peak oil might push countries to get back to coal. It is already the case as the International Herald Tribune states it in a recent article. Indeed in Japan and the UK, old coal mines are reopening or see their activity increase. This albeit the fact that coal is by far

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Italy to build nuclear power plants

Italy has been since the Chernobyl catastrophe a huge opponent of nuclear. However, the newly elected government is planning to get back to using this energy source. This happens as the country depends on 60 percent on natural gas for its electricity, which is a huge problem as prices are soaring. This happens as some

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Barcelona is facing important water scarcity

The capital city of Catalonia and one of my favorite European places is facing an increasing water scarcity due to a severe drought as El Pais notes. This might lead to a total lack of water by October and there are no really good solution to solve this problem as Barcelona doesn’t have any water

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