The Economist noted as early as 2002 that coal is the environmental enemy number one. Yet, it is still used a lot to generate electricity at cheap prices. But this doesn’t even make economic sense. To Grist : ” Electricity from coal imposes more damages on the U.S. economy than the electricity is worth. That’s …
Currently, the world is relying massively on coal to generate electricity as it is cheap, awfully cheap – if you don’t take into account the negative externalities as it is polluting our air, our soil and is one of the main factors to climate change. But what if solar became even cheaper than coal ? …
This has made quite the headlines on environmental blogs and newspapers. As TreeHugger puts it : ” Germany now produces 20.8% of its electricity from renewable sources. That’s an increase of 15 percentage points since 2000 “ Now, let’s congratulate the main European economic powerhouse for that. The Germans truly deserve it and we got …
What if the answer to all the economic and financial woes Greece is witnessing came from solar ? This is the bet the local government is willing to place as more than 16 percent of the population is unemployed. To Ecogeek : ” Greece has laid out a plan to get out of a recession …
To Bloomberg : ” Japan approved a bill today to subsidize electricity from renewable sources, joining European nations in shifting away from nuclear power after the Fukushima reactor meltdowns in March.” ” (…) The bill allows for incentives that guarantee above-market rates for wind, solar and geothermal energy. The so-called feed- in tariff created a …
According to the ACEEE * : ” Changes in fossil fuel markets and updates to environmental regulations may result in the retirement of existing coal-fired plants, putting on the order of 40 GW of generation at risk of retirement.” ” The investments required for replacing or upgrading these plants would raise electricity rates for all …
Replacing old coal plants with energy efficiency Read More »
While the decisions of both Germany and Switzerland to stop using nuclear made headlines, little has been written about Poland ‘s thinking about building two nuclear reactors, which would be build by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy. The reactors could go online in 2020 if an agreement was signed in 2014. The capacity would reach 3,000 …
According to the NRDC : ” ten northeastern and mid-Atlantic states are working together to shift their energy dollars to cleaner, local, job-creating resources “ through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). ” RGGI is a “cap-and-invest” program whereby the states set a regional limit on carbon pollution, sell pollution permits, and invest most of the …
RGGI : A great American initiative on efficiency Read More »
The idea might seem a bit far-fetched but recovering the heat produced by data centers could heat buildings. However we have seen similar ideas are extremely cost efficient and environmentally friendly. To ExtremeTech : ” With a temperature of around 40-50°C, the exhaust from a rack of cloud servers could be a very cost-effective way …
I have been committed since January 2007 to bring you each month a selection of the latest headlines and best researches on sustainable development, climate change and the world energy sector. However, I don’t blog as much as I would like to and generally write around 25 posts per month. But many more news are …
