Energy

My review of Promised Land

I don’t publish movie reviews here anymore as I generally do that elsewhere. But tonight I watched a movie with a strong energy / environment connotation, so here is my review of Promised Land. Featuring Matt Damon in the main role, Promised Land is about a fossil fuel company trying to buy drilling rights from farmers and land …

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Could the European Union ban coal ? When ?

Yesterday Alice Stollmeyer asked on Twitter “ What should the European Commission do to improve air quality ? ” as she is participating today to a EU chat session dedicated to green topics. My answer was quite simple: Ban new coal projects and phase out the existing capacity. Replace by efficiency and renewables. This would …

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Grid parity for solar PV is already here in 105 countries

I have already noted quite a few times in the past month that grid parity is slowly but surely approaching. What if it were already the case ? To the Applied Materials blog and REneweconomy it is already here in over a hundred countries. Yes, solar photovoltaic installed on rooftops is now cheaper than electricity …

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Efficiency gains momentum, decrease emissions

Ever since I started to delve into energy and environmental issues, I have been advocating energy efficiency. It is the cheapest solution, and also the best one. This is why I have called it the panacea to all our energy and climate problems. It seems I wasn’t the only one to call for more efficiency …

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United States on an energy conservation quest

President Obama is willing to save his country a lot of money : $40 billion, or around 30 billion euros, annually. These huge sums of money equal to reducing energy use in commercial buildings 20 percent by 2020. As Elisa Wood wrote on Cleantechies : ” To achieve the goal, the Obama administration in 2011 …

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A primer on our current energy predicament

Years ago I was often reading The Oil Drum, a great website dedicated to oil and other energy issues. Years later, the website still provides great content and I am glad to have read one of their latest posts : Our Energy Predicament in Charts. This post is an excellent introduction to energy issues for …

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Portugal : Renewables supplied 70 percent of electricity

According to the Portuguese utility REN, renewable energies supplied a massive 70% of domestic consumption of electricity in the first quarter of 2013. As the press release notes, this is due to particularly favorable conditions. Hydro supplied 37 percent of the total while wind provided 27 percent. Last year, both energy sources only accounted for …

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A renewable energy boom in Japan

In the wake of the tragic catastrophe and the nuclear incident that shook Japan in 2011, we have seen that the local government is willing to push renewable energy sources forward. Among them, solar energy and wind power. This has led to the installation of 1,12 GW of solar PV capacity in only nine months …

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Teen boost efficiency of algae-based biofuels

What were you doing when you were 17-year old ? Sara Volz, A Colorado, USA, teen created a biofuel lab in her bedroom. Even better, she developed more efficient algae that produce higher oil content just by selecting them artificially. This is seen as an important boost to algae based biofuels. It was done with …

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