Solar energy is to me the panacea for Africa, a continent where 550 million people still lack electricity. With molten salts, concentrating solar could bring light to these populations during important parts of the night. Solar cookers could also help fighting deforestation by removing the need for fuelwood. Now an experiment run in Benin (West Africa) shows …
The World Bank via its Clean Technology Fund is investing $750 million (522 million euros) in eleven concentrating solar plants in the Middle East and North Africa region. This is due to spur additional investments worth $4.85 billion. These projects are due to add nearly a gigawatt of capacity to local grids within three to …
Here is my latest post for CleanTechies : According to a new report [Fr] from the ADEME ( the French Environment and Energy Management Agency ) 90,000 jobs have been created in the French green growth sectors between 2006 and 2008. These jobs have been created mostly in energy conservation and the development of renewable …
Earlier this year I was wondering if cleantech is the new arms race. I noted at the time that America, Europe and China are beginning to compete in such an important economic sector. A US study released last month shows that not only there is an arms race between the United States and Asian nations, …
Scientific American published in this month’s issue an article on how the world could completely stop relying on fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear) by 2030 and use only solar, wind and water energies. To make a long story short and after reading the various critics this is completely impossible. We can go …
One of the main hindrances of solar energy is that when there is no more sun, there is no more electricity as well. This problem is being solved with the molten salt technology which stores energy for seven hours. A Californian company is willing to build a 150 Megawatt plant – The Rice Solar Energy …
Concentrating Solar Thermal is a fantastic energy source and some experts estimate that it could answer a quarter of the global electricity needs by 2050 if large plants were installed in sunny deserts. However the New York Times notes that this energy source use significant amounts of water. Since this resource is already scarce in …
The European Union will give over the next decade up to 50 billion Euros to research on low carbon energy. Solar energies will receive 16 billion euros, wind power 6 billion, nuclear 7 and energy from waste and biomass 9 billion. This is due to enable the 27 members to compete on cleantech with the …
Thanks to GreenUnivers, a great French blog on green business, I came across the latest report from the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21). It presents various figures worth mentioning. Between 2004 and 2008, solar PV capacity increased sixfold to more than 16 GW, wind power capacity increased 250 percent to 121 …
Last week two different news about how the two countries responsible for more than 40 percent of the global greenhouse gases emissions could sign an agreement in November and work together on greentech. To the New York Times a deal on climate change could be signed in November when President Obama will visit China. No …
