Though North American and Western European countries have long been the largest emitters of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases, the economies of fast growing developing countries, particularly in Asia, are quickly making up for lost time and ground. China's rapid industrialization and reliance on conventional coal plants has in a relatively very short time span put it in on a par with that of the U.S. in terms of CO2 emissions, while emissions in rapidly industrializing countries across the Asian continent and around the world are growing faster than elsewhere, a trend that's forecast to continue for the next few decades.
This divergence has been a contentious “sore” spot between industrialized and industrializing countries as their representatives seek to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, and the workings of the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism, the principal technology transfer mechanism for developing emissions reduction projects in developing countries.
Seeking to bridge the divide, researchers at the United Nations Environment Program's Risoe Center in Copenhagen are proposing a set of “no lose” targets for developing nations' electricity sectors post-2012. Addressing weaknesses in the CDM, they advocate making structural changes that they believe would facilitate achieving significant CO2 reductions in developing countries' power sectors. Keys to their recommendations are a method for establishing national power sector emissions baselines and credit targets post-2012 for seven large CO2 emitting developing countries, and assessing the amount of potential emissions reductions and credits that could be achieved using them as a reference.
The Environmental Protection Agency is, yet again, not doing the very thing its name implies. For the umpteenth time in...[read more]
Would a dramatic reduction in demand for oil caused by a green vehicle revolution cause the same type of reduction in oil prices that the global financial crisis has?[read more]
Wind energy development in the United States maintains its record pace, overtaking Germany as the world leader in wind energy generation[read more]
It's taken a mere six months after discovering a massive geothermal field in Utah for Raser Technologies to build an initial plant that is expected to start delivering electricity to California consumers in a matter of weeks.[read more]
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Former Intel CEO Andy Grove's drive to spur electric vehicle retrofits across the US and rebuild domestic battery manufacturing go hand-in-hand and come at a time when the US is at “strategic inflection point” in terms of energy resource use and supply. Grove lays out his reasoning and hypothetical one million vehicle retrofit test case in an article commissioned by McKinsey & Co. for an upcoming publication.[read more]
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Datacenters, not exactly hot on energy conservation yet, have massive potential to jump on the green bandwagon by figuring out a way to re-use the heat from their servers sustainably. IBM, Intel and Microsoft are in on the game.[read more]
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Whether it's President-elect Obama's $15 billion-a-year “green” stimulus program or any other variation, setting a price on carbon emissions is essential if the US is to stimulate the economy and make the transition to a diversified, low carbon alternative energy base. A cap-and-dividend policy looks both environmentally and economically beneficial, as well as politically pragmatic, an economist, a regulatory expert and a successful entrepreneur maintain.[read more]
Datacenters are running out of energy. Fast. That means they're faced with a limit to their capacity. Yet few are focusing on energy savings. Learn why this is.[read more]
Apollo Plan Calls for $500 Billion in U.S. Clean Tech Investment and 5 Million Green Jobs in the Next Decade...[read more]
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Poznan's all about finance. A roundup of some of the proposals that have generated an interest.[read more]
Producing hydrogen gas by passing an electric current through a mixture of water and baking soda is not a new concept. Now, an emerging US automaker and well-established components manufacturer are teaming up to produce the Scorpion, a high-priced “eco-exotic” hybrid that blends hydrogen gas into its fuel mix.[read more]
What is Cleantech? This is the question Lightspeed Ventures Partners' Andrew Chung set out to explain to government officials in...[read more]
With all the recent hullabaloo about the new greener Macbook, it's easy to forget that there have been some green...[read more]
The Wharton Energy Conference has become one of the top energy events for MBA’s, bringing together energy industry leaders, investors,...[read more]
CleanTech is rapidly becoming a popular asset class. The launch of hefty investment funds in recent days proves this.[read more]
This post continues my reveiw of some key points from the discusion forum I attended earlier this month “After the...[read more]
With all this talk about the green economy, it’s nice to know that some people are working on the...[read more]
Friday's second session at the Net Impact North America conference was Cleantech Venture Capital Investing. After having interviewed two of the three panelists prior to the conference (posts are here and here), the panel itself was an opportunity to think more deeply about the lessons offered by some of the most experienced players in the cleantech sector.[read more]
