Fast action on certain pollutants such as black carbon, ground-level ozone and methane may help limit near term global temperature rise and significantly increase the chances of keeping temperature rise below 3.6 degrees F. Protecting the near-term climate is central to significantly cutting the risk
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Climate Change
Andrew Weaver is a notable Canadian climate scientist. He’s recently written a short book for the general reader to give an easily understandable account of the science of human-caused climate change, to explain its impacts and to suggest solutions. The book is published as one of the Rapid Reads series
Heavy sigh. I just read an article that dampened my day – and that’s saying something considering the rainy Vancouver weather we’ve been experiencing this spring. I read that the carbon dioxide emitted by energy use hit a record high globally in 2010. After a slight dip caused by the global financial crisis in
Humanity is facing an extreme risk from unabated climate change. The science is widely understood and accepted. Yet we seem paralyzed when it comes to reducing the threat: in spite of 20 years of international talk emissions continue to rise alarmingly. The dangerous political inertia which
The Ice That Burns: Are Methane Hydrates the Next Big Resource?
written by CleanTechies.com Contributor
Petroleum engineers in the 1930s knew what to think about methane hydrates, the magical “ice that burns”: they were a big nuisance. Chunks of these flammable frozen solids would sometimes clog oil and natural gas
You may surely know it by now : Germany decided to phase out completely all its nuclear power plants by 2022. This is done for political reasons as the local Greens are gaining power.
Some people are cheering as they believe this is great news for the environment. I, however, believe this is utterly wrong for the reasons I will outline in today’s article.
Today’s major environmental problem is climate change (or global weirding if you prefer).
You might believe that given the importance of the Greens in Deutschland, electricity emits little carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases per kWh. This clearly isn’t the case as I have previously wrote about it in a previous article for my own blog.
According to the book Sustainable Energy – without hot air, a French kWh is responsible for around 80 grams of CO2 equivalent ; A US one, 613 grams and a German one, 601 grams.
As you can see, German electricity is around eight times dirtier than the French one. The reasons for such a fact is simple : one country chose nuclear over coal. (to be honest and fair, France didn’t have coal anymore, as contrary to Germany…)
I am not saying that Germany should push for more nuclear. This isn’t my argument…
The Germans are, to my humble point of view, taking the problem by the wrong end: They shouldn’t be thinking about phasing out nuclear as soon as possible, but to phase out coal, which still accounts for 40 percent of local electricity production.
Renewables are witnessing an exponential growth there, and these are great news. But replacing nuclear by solar and wind won’t cut emissions. On the other hand, replacing coal by those same energy sources would literally benefit everybody.
It is widely admitted that coal is by very far the dirtiest energy source. Indeed, The Economist dubbed it as early as 2002 ” the Environmental Enemy Number One “.
Nuclear might be a problem as safety rules and regulations aren’t as tight and as enforced as they should be. Its waste might still be a problem for a few decades (endeavors towards recycling it are progressing), but coal is a much bigger problem.
Did you know that it takes a ton of coal to produce as much electricity as a gram of Uranium ?
Germany is a model for all governments for their support to renewable energy sources. But what always puzzled me is their hate of nuclear.
Sure, it isn’t exactly the perfect solution as the recent catastrophe of Fukushima in Japan have shown. But as I stated on my blog: “ Nuclear isn’t the solution, but there is no solution without nuclear.”
As you might have understood, and to infer this post, I don’t see any antagonism between renewables and nuclear. As a matter of fact, I see an important complementarity between the two.
I look forward to reading your opinion.
A new paper by Stanford lawyer Felix Mormann argues that pricing alone will not drive the transition to renewable energy, one of the key ingredients to a low-carbon economy necessary to mitigate the impacts of climate change. He identifies and analyzes the obstacles presently barring the rise of renewables, evaluates
Germany responded swiftly to the Japanese nuclear crisis by announcing a decision to phase out its older nuclear stations. Japan followed a few weeks later saying that it intends to focus on renewable energy (although it won’t do away with nuclear power altogether). And now Switzerland is looking to
As the second largest producer of hydropower in the United States, the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation has a key role to play in President Obama’s blueprint for a secure energy future. Reclamation’s staff of engineers, biologists, hydrologists and other professionals are working tirelessly to conserve water and improve energy efficiencies at our projects
I stumbled across a documentary programme on BBC World a while back, Nature Inc. It visited two Asian regions where the impacts of climate change are being experienced and described the active local measures under way to cope with them. It’s the sort of programme we ought to be seeing a great deal more
In 2007, the United States Congress gave the Department of Defense specific orders to have a minimum of 25 percent of all energy come from renewable sources of energy by the year 2025. According to the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary for Defense’s director of Facilities Energy, Joe Sikes,
“A gradual contraction into more sustainable patterns of resource use is not the norm for a society that is exploiting the environment. The norm is a last-ditch effort to maintain outward displays of power, and then a sudden, and dramatic, collapse.” That’s one of the foreboding statements with which Steve Hallett and John Wright punctuate their
In 1896 Charles Dow created the Dow Jones Industrial Average to track the nation’s leading nine companies. Today the Dow Jones Industrial Average or Dow 30 is made up of 30 leading US companies. It is the world’s best known stock index and everyone has heard of it.
What if the ever-increasing amounts of carbon dioxide that are heating up the atmosphere could be used to produce an abundant supply of liquid fuels? The U.S. government and private labs are pursuing that Holy Grail of renewable energy — but for now the cost of large-scale production is prohibitive.