As Greenpeace pointed out (see left), this represents the capacity of all power plants in Mexico and South and Central Americas. In 2012, the global wind capacity increased by no less than 20 percent.

As I noted in February, the total capacity reached 282 Gigawatts as both the United States and China had installed roughly 13 gigawatts each. Cleantechnica believes we may enter the century of wind energy.

Luckily, the IEA proposes in its latest report four energy policies that would cut by eight percent the 2020 emissions compared to a business as usual scenario. This would amount to 3.1 Gt CO2 equivalent.

While these actions are not exactly what the worlds need to keep its climate as cool as it should be, they could be done at no net economic cost.

As Climate Progress summed up these actions :

• Targeted energy efficiency measures in buildings, industry and transport account for nearly half the emissions reduction in 2020, with the additional investment required being more than offset by reduced spending on fuel bills.
  —
• Limiting the construction and use of the least-efficient coal-fired power plants delivers more than 20% of the emissions reduction and helps curb local air pollution. The share of power generation from renewables increases (from around 20% today to 27% in 2020), as does that from natural gas.
  —
• Actions to halve expected methane (a potent greenhouse gas) releases into the atmosphere from the upstream oil and gas industry in 2020 provide 18% of the savings.
  —
• Implementing a partial phase-out of fossil fuel consumption subsidies accounts for 12% of the reduction in emissions and supports efficiency efforts.

If you have been reading this website – and others – for the past few months and years, there is nothing new. Let’s hope that the carbon taxes that will be implemented in China and elsewhere will have a bigger impact.

According to a Harris poll carried out for the European Climate Foundation and the French Economic, Social Affairs and Environment Council (CESE), over 80 percent of French people and business leaders are supporting the energy transition.

Interestingly, this post is the occasion to have a look at the little support given to shale gas and oil. As usual, please share and post your comments and questions there.

If nothing was done to reverse this nefarious trend, the average global temperature would increase by a massive 5.3°C. This would have “potentially disastrous implications” as IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven stated.

Continuing the inaction would have a staggering cost as it would be much more difficult afterwards to limit global warming to 2°C.

As Climate Progress noted :

Doing nothing to reduce carbon pollution this decade also has a staggering net cost of $3.5 trillion — assuming that post-2020 we then tried to get back on the 2 C (3.6 F) pathway, as the report explains:

Delaying stronger climate action to 2020 would come at a cost: $1.5 trillion in low-carbon investments are avoided before 2020 but $5 trillion in additional investments would be required thereafter to get back on track.

Luckily for us, the IEA has found four ways to limit greenhouse gases emissions at no net economic cost. This will be the topic of tomorrow’s post, so stay tuned.

” Greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil fell by nearly 39 percent from 2005 to 2010, largely because of reductions in the amount of forest loss, according to a new government report. “

” Overall, Brazil emitted the equivalent of 1.25 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2010, which was more than 10 percent lower than 1990 levels. “

Given how Google has mapped the Earth and how computers have gain in performance, the driverless car could soon be there to help our societies kiss good bye to car ownership as personal cars spend up to 95 percent of their time parked.

As Grist notes, self driving cars could be here between five and ten years, so don’t throw away your driving license yet. Meanwhile keep cycling and stay safe…

” A new analysis (…) suggests that Earth will warm more slowly over this century than we thought it would, buying us a little more time to cut our greenhouse gas emissions “

This might give us five to ten years more to act on climate change. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do anything in the meantime… Au contraire : let’s boost massively energy efficiency and renewables.

According to a study quoted by Cleantechies, ” The use of nuclear power from 1971 to 2009 prevented more than 1.8 million premature deaths related to air pollution and 64 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions. “

Of course, there are huge safety concerns over nuclear and having it based on plutonium over thorium wasn’t the best idea Humankind had, but who knows what will happen.

I am not saying that we should bank on atomic energy to bring significant greenhouse gases emissions cuts in the near future or that we should build more reactors, I am just thinking that nuclear is not as bad as some people would like you to think.

Climate and energy-wise, let’s roll our sleeves and go massively into energy efficiency and renewables. These two means can save us from climate catastrophe.

Ban new coal projects and phase out the existing capacity. Replace by efficiency and renewables. This would create hundred of thousands of jobs, help avoid catastrophic climate change and clean the air.

If we have seen that the United States could be coal-free by 2030, there have been to my humble knowledge no study of such a fact for the European Union.

Given how both the EU and the US have roughly the same share of coal in their energy mix, could the 27 members of the Union ban coal ?

This would be very easy for some countries such as France as they rely very little on that black dirty stuff. However, it would prove to be much harder for former Eastern European nations such as Poland as the vast majority of their electricity comes from coal.

I just wish Humankind as a whole could just stop using coal. It is highly polluting, a major contributor to climate change, harms and kills thousands of lives each month, and it isn’t that cheap anymore compared to renewables such as wind and solar.

Phasing out coal will no doubt be at the heart of the European energy transition…

” According to the latest statistics from Eurostat, greenhouse gases emissions in the European Union fell by 2.1 percent from 2011 to 2012. This takes place after a massive 4.1 percent decrease from 2010 to 2011. “

These are sure good news… As usual, to keep reading the full article, please go to Cleantechies. Comments and questions are welcome.

This allowed me last week to find great graph on how solar costs have been decreased, cut and slashed by a factor HUNDRED in the past 36 years from $76.67 per Watt in 1977 to $0.74 per Watt in 2013 (see image on the left).

And if you were thinking these prices rebounding, you are in for a disappointment as they are due to halve by 2020. Meanwhile fossil fuels prices have only increased significantly and will just keep on doing so.

Meanwhile, we have seen that the country is more than plagued by pollutions and environmental problems of all kinds. Let’s face it, if nothing was done, China would be facing a grim future.

Now here comes something that analysts hail as a game-changer, a climate breakthrough and a major step in battling climate change. Let’s find out what it is all this about.

As REneweconomy noted :

China, the world’s biggest polluter, is proposing to set a cap on greenhouse gas emissions as early as 2016 in a move that is being hailed as a potentially transformative step in the fight against climate change.

According to news reports from China, the powerful National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has proposed setting absolute caps that would divorce the growth on emissions from growth in the economy, and will also set a peak in its overall emissions in 2025, five years earlier than planned.

China has already pledged to cut its emissions intensity – the amount of Co2 it emits per economic unit – by up to 45 per cent by 2020. The significance of an absolute cap is that it promises to reign in emissions even if the economy grows faster than expected.

Furthermore, Point Carbon reports, at a recent NDRC meeting, its vice director Xie Zhenhua said China should set long-term emission targets for 2030 and 2050 in a bid to decarbonise its economy. China, like Australia is heavily dependent on carbon-intensive coal to generate electricity – just over 82 per cent. But it has also proposed a cap on coal consumption of 4 billion tonnes.

Lord Nicholas Stern, the chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, described it as “exciting news”, and said it should encourage all countries, the US in particular, to take stronger action.

“And it improves the prospects for a strong international treaty being agreed at the United Nations climate change summit in 2015,” he told The Independent in the UK.

For more analysis about this, please check out The Independent’s article, Grist and Cleantechnica.

While these actions and many others are quite obvious, they might not have the biggest impacts. Kelly Rigg, the Executive Director of the Global Call for Climate Action published a very interesting article on how you could do much much more.

To her, crowdfunding renewables, buying climate bonds (!), divesting from fossil fuels in your pension and mutual funds, voting with your wallet and joining a climate campaign are the next steps.

If I am aware of four of these steps :

• crowdfunding renewables and other cleantech at home and abroad is essential if we want to speed up the clean energy transition. I already wrote about crowfunding in my previous post on the Nanolight ;
  —
• divesting – while I actually never wrote here about it yet, I am aware that more and more people and institutions are removing their investments from fossil fuels companies to avoid being trapped in the carbon bubble ;
  —
• Voting with your wallet : here again, it is quite obvious : if you keep on buying stuff from people who are wrecking our environment, they’ll use YOUR money to wreck it even more.
  —
• and joining a climate campaign. I believe this should be on top of your list. From calling your representatives to get involved actively in

I have to admit that buying bonds was quite or even totally unknown to me. But as Kelly wrote in her post :

The Climate Bonds Initiative reminds us that most of the urban infrastructure we take for granted — from sewers and railways in the 19th century to the aerospace industry and highways of the 20th century — were financed with bonds that provided safe and secure returns for the public:

Bonds allow us to borrow against future economic benefits to allow for the investment needed now to deliver those benefits.

Although the Climate Bonds Initiative is aimed at large-scale institutional investors, you can ask your financial advisor about investing in climate-themed bonds.

You must have understood it : our most important actions to fight climate change is not a matter of personal choices : we have to change the system as a whole. Thanks to Kelly for reminding us this.

Yes, solar photovoltaic installed on rooftops is now cheaper than electricity from the grid in over a hundred countries, including most of Asia – including India and China – Europe as well as most Latin American and African countries.

And this could only the beginning as the costs of solar PV panels are due to halve by 2020. Needless to say, this is a real revolution that is taking place. Prepare yourself to see solar panels sprouting on roofs near you…

As Treehugger reports : “According to the Brazilian forest monitoring agency which uses satellite imagery to track deforestation in real-time, the world’s largest rainforest lost of 606 square miles of rainforest between August 2012 and April 2013 ”

” All told, this latest figure represents an increase of 88 percent over the previous year in which 322 square miles (Nota : 833 square kilometers ) was cleared.”

Started over six years ago – on January 2nd, 2007, this blog was launched to support my job research and to allow me to publish my findings in my intelligence work in everything pertaining to climate, energy, environmental issues and sustainability.

If the job goal wasn’t achieved (yet), the creation of this professional blog and the publication of my intelligence work were notable gains for my career.

An additional goal was to keep practicing my English. With thousands of lines written in this language one could say this goal at least was achieved.

I am on my way for the 2,000 posts mark. I hope to see you there and even beyond ! Thanks again for all your support !

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 worth reading. This is why I use Twitter to share dozens of news that are worth your time.

I believe it offers a good complement to this website. So if you are on Twitter and like this selection, don’t hesitate to start following me.

Climate change and environmental issues

Lord Nicholas Stern Identifies 3 Obstacles to International Climate Action http://shar.es/dwosx 

And speaking of compelling… “Millions face starvation as world warms, say scientists” http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Martin Luther King And The Call To Direct Action On Climate http://clmpr.gs/ZiSEru  via @thinkprogress

On RTCC: Desertification now affecting 168 nations http://bit.ly/15f1E52

RT @billmckibben: Epic #drought underway in ‘Asia’s water tower’ http://www.eenews.net/public/climatewire/2013/04/16/1 …

Here’s your carbon tax: persistent drought could knock nearly an entire point of India’s GDP growth this year: http://bit.ly/11odKDn

The Carbon Bubble: Are We Exploring for Fossil Fuels We Won’t Need? http://bit.ly/145OQy7

This carbon bubble video needs to be shared, especially with anyone who invests http://carbontracker.live.kiln.it

@CFigueres optimistic about 2015 #UNFCCC #climate deal [1] but “scale and speed” of policy need intensification http://bit.ly/ZpJ1sW

Energy and cleantech

380,000 Germans now work in the renewable energy sector, far more than in conventional energy. Many in installation and maintenance.

Who Says #Solar is Too Expensive? http://bit.ly/128EKI4  #energy #green #environment http://fb.me/2pKuF1qbm

Across the world, more & more countries & organizations are considering the Big Goal: 100% renewable power supply. http://www.renewableenergyworld.com

Tiny wires could be a breakthrough for cheap solar panels http://bit.ly/16KZ3w6

Shell chief climate guy: burning proven reserves of fossil fuels = dangerous climate change. But CCS is wrong answer. http://bit.ly/WmPSx7

Super-powered battery breakthrough claimed by US team, with tenfold boost in power density, 1000x faster charging http://bbc.in/13iEJWx

“Germany is installing 8 GW of solar power each year” Amory Lovins on Germany’s Renewables Revolution http://ow.ly/kaS92

The #offshorewind industry may be seeing the start of a French revolution in deep-water turbine design http://bit.ly/117HqEO

for the first time ever, all new electricity added to the U.S. power grid in March came from solar installations. http://inhabitat.com

We now burn 80x more coal than at the peak of industrial revolution. This must stop. http://e360.yale.edu

Falling #renewables prices could lead to a tripling of investment; would account for half of all generation by 2030 http://bit.ly/10x9fvn

Solar cooling panel could provide AC without electricity by sending heat to outer space http://ow.ly/kkVH2  via @derekmarkham

If Keystone gets blocked, what will happen to the tarsands? http://wapo.st/10zJqup  via @WashingtonPost

Sustainability

UK to plant 250,000 ash trees to outwit deadly fungus http://www.treehugger.com/ Trees, plant more trees !

Hope it’s the same for humans… RT @grist: Flies that eat organic live longer, make more fly babies http://bit.ly/YH3cR3

Amazing coverage of the divestment movement in Business Week–what a dent young activists are making! http://www.businessweek.com

1,426 billionaires have a collective worth of $5.4 trillion, while millions of kids go hungry. http://bit.ly/10UKKEp 

What does a #sustainability consultant actually do?? http://www.2degreesnetwork.com/

None of the world’s top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use http://bit.ly/113oEhN

Environmental Cost of Business Estimated at $4.7T Annually @BloombergNEF http://bit.ly/17HqIBt ” take natural cap in2 account!!

Good call! @Nike, @EMC, Ikea and other biz giants urge U.S. climate action http://grn.bz/16ScRXD  via @GreenBiz #CSR

Check out: Big Business Is Waking Up to Global Warming – but Is It Too Late? http://aol.it/17XzNWK  via @daily_finance

Europeans are buying two bikes for every car http://bit.ly/10buA61

#Clean your whole house with these 3 #natural ingredients: http://bit.ly/Zs1XT6  #greencleaning

A Green New Deal to deflate the carbon bubble: the irrepressible Colin Hines, who may one day get to Twitter. http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Misc

Since April 1978 KAL has been The Economist’s resident cartoonist. Here is a selection of his covers for the paper http://econ.st/ZDrL1C

I watched Life of Pi at the local ciné club. I had a great time. If you haven’t watched it, do it. It’s a magnificent story and movie

Instant quote of the week : ” #Nature spontaneously keeps us well. Do not resist her ! ” Henry David Thoreau

It seems I wasn’t the only one to call for more efficiency as it was responsible for 75 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions reduction in 2012 in the United States of America. Natural gas only accounted for a quarter of these reductions.

Given how energy efficiency solution – like insulating houses – are also great at creating jobs, I guess they’ll play an increasing role in the near future. The recent announcement is just the beginning…

Even if the efforts being done are lacking the necessary scale, results are very encouraging. Portugal is getting 70 percent of its electricity from hydro and wind, Spain over a half of electricity came from clean sources as well.

In Germany, solar can provide up to 22 GW, or 44 % of the total demand. In Australia, one in eleven houses have solar panels installed.

You got it : in a mere few years, renewables have been booming and this is due to be only the beginning as clean energy sources are getting cheaper and cheaper and are creating loads of jobs.

This is why as GreenTech Media notes, Conventional Wisdom About Clean Energy Is Still Way Out of Date :

“We’re fifteen to twenty years out of date in how we think about renewables,” said Dr. Eric Martinot to an audience at the first Pathways to 100% Renewables Conference held April 16 in San Francisco. “It’s not 1990 anymore.”

Dr. Martinot and his team recently compiled their 2013 Renewables Global Futures report from two years of research in which they conducted interviews with 170 experts and policymakers from fifteen countries, including local city officials and stakeholders from more than twenty cities.

They also reviewed more than 50 recently published scenarios by credible international organizations, energy companies, and research institutes, along with government policy targets for renewable energy, and various corporate reports and energy literature.

The report observes that “[t]he history of energy scenarios is full of similar projections for renewable energy that proved too low by a factor of 10, or were achieved a decade earlier than expected.”

For example, the International Energy Agency’s 2000 estimate for wind power in 2010 was 34 gigawatts, while the actual level was 200 gigawatts.

The World Bank’s 1996 estimate for China was 9 gigawatts of wind and 0.5 gigawatts for solar PV by 2020, but by 2011 the country had already achieved 62 gigawatts of wind and 3 gigawatts of PV.

Dr. Martinot’s conclusion from this exhaustive survey? “The conservative scenarios are simply no longer credible.”

Please have a look at the full article at it is full of hope for a quicker energy transition.

Will discuss more about it when I’ll get back from Oxford and London, so stay tuned !

The European commission seems to have understood that as it will ban three pesticides -called neonicotinoids or neonics for short – that are particularly harmful to bees and other pollinating agents. The ban will last two years.

This is a historic victory for environmental movements as bees pollinate up to 75 percent of all crops. Let’s hope other countries will follow the European lead.

While this may sound mundane to most people, this is a real event, and one that could have dire consequences. Last time CO2 concentration were this high, temperatures were 8°C (or 14°F ) higher.

Additionally, sea level were significantly higher. Both higher temperatures and higher sea levels would be lethal threats to our civilization.

It is worth noting that before the Industrial Revolution, CO2 levels were of around 280 ppm. Such a high level of 400 ppm haven’t been seen on this Planet for as long as for a million year.

Scientists have stressed the fact that getting back to 350 ppm would be ideal for our civilization. This is why a global campaign have been started in the United States by Bill McKibben.

The United Nations Environment Program brings an interesting perspective :

Observed concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere have exceeded the symbolic 400 parts per million (ppm) threshold at several stations of the World Meteorological Organization’s Global Atmosphere Watch network.

This is a wakeup call about the constantly rising levels of this greenhouse gas, which is released into the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning and other human activities and is the main driver of climate change. Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years, trapping heat and causing our planet to warm further, impacting on all aspects of life on earth.

Several other websites and newspapers have dedicated posts and articles to this.

For more, please check out the New York Times, the Washington Post, Grist, Treehugger and many others including National Geographic, On Earth and of course, Climate Progress.

” According to ADEME, solar PV has the potential to reach grid parity in France in the coming few years, and therefore is an essential component of sustainable energy policies. “

For solar to reach grid parity in a country relying massively on nuclear power would be a major achievement. For more, please refer to the official ADEME report (in French, pdf format)

The Guardian, the Financial Times and the Economist published compelling articles on a new report that points that this situation could bring another financial crisis as up to six trillions dollars are linked to unburnable carbon.

This strong warning is backed up by banks such as HSBC, Citi, and organisations such as Standard and Poor’s and the International Energy Agency.

The introduction from the Economist’s article is just brilliant and encapsulates the problem :

” Either governments are not serious about climate change or fossil-fuel firms are overvalued. “

The report by The Carbon Tracker Initiative points out that economies around the world could have to face another major crisis as fossil fuels companies would be overvalued if we were to become serious in our fight against climate change.

Here is an extract of the excellent Economist article :

Several recent reports suggest that markets are now overlooking the risk of “unburnable carbon”. The share prices of oil, gas and coal companies depend in part on their reserves. The more fossil fuels a firm has underground, the more valuable its shares. But what if some of those reserves can never be dug up and burned?

If governments were determined to implement their climate policies, a lot of that carbon would have to be left in the ground, says Carbon Tracker, a non-profit organisation, and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, part of the London School of Economics. Their analysis starts by estimating the amount of carbon dioxide that could be put into the atmosphere if global temperatures are not to rise by more than 2°C, the most that climate scientists deem prudent. The maximum, says the report, is about 1,000 gigatons (GTCO2) between now and 2050. The report calls this the world’s “carbon budget”.

As the official website points out :

• Already in 2011, the world has used over a third of its 50-year carbon budget of 886GtCO₂, leaving 565GtCO₂
• All of the proven reserves owned by private and public companies and governments are equivalent to 2,795 GtCO₂
• Fossil fuel reserves owned by the top 100 listed coal and top 100 listed oil and gas companies represent total emissions of 745GtCO₂
• Only 20% of the total reserves can be burned unabated, leaving up to 80% of assets technically unburnable

The Carbon Tracker Initiative gives recommendations. Please turn to page 28 of the report.

This really gives an excellent explanation of why Bill McKibben, the founder of the 350.org campaign is urging to divest from fossil fuels interests.

So if you are new to natural cleaning products, you can check Verda Vivo’s articles or this new one, from Earth 911. Their slideshow focuses on vinegar, baking soda and lemon, all common and natural ingredients.

Cheaper, safer and more environmentally friendly than your average cleaning products and detergents, I am amazed at how much you can do with them. I definitively should use them more.

Collectively, they represent as many as 500,000 bicycles combined. This just might be the beginning as to a specialist “bike sharing has experienced the fastest growth of any mode of transport in the history of the planet.”

If you are interested, please take the time to read Grist’s article as it is simply a must-read. Nonetheless, beware : it’s a long read…

As Elisa Wood wrote on Cleantechies : ” To achieve the goal, the Obama administration in 2011 initiated the Better Buildings Challenge, a way to encourage investment, share information and create demonstration projects that save energy.”

30 billion euros is a huge sum. I wonder how much these savings could translate to globally. I guess it’s high time to find out and launch a similar program globally to create jobs and save our civilization…

Your next car could run on air (and gas).

As the New York Times, the Guardian and Le Figaro [Fr] reported, the Hybrid Air combines a hydraulic drive that recovers energy each time the car brakes or decelerates as well as a conventional thermal engine.

These models would be ideal for urban driving. Due to be sold as early as 2016, it would be cheaper -and more efficient in city driving – than a Toyota Prius.

PSA ( the official name of the Peugeot Citroen company ) is willing to reach a mileage of two liters for 100 kms for 2020 (around 117 MPG).  This model seems like a good way of achieving those ambitious goals.

Now, here are some ideas that came to my mind while reading the afore mentioned articles.

First, why combine the ” scuba tank “ (ie. the hydraulic tank, filled with nitrogen ) with an electric engine, thus achieving a 100% clean motorisation ? I guess it just wasn’t feasible, but I am not sure.

Second, why not going for carbon fiber ? Peugeot would be able to reduce even more the energy consumption ? (granted, it would also increase significantly the price).

In any case, I just hope this will enable Peugeot Citroen to survive the crisis as the company got seriously hit as sales have been decreasing for the past six years…

They might be, and they can be considered perhaps cheap if you don’t take into account the tremendous negative externalities on the environment, our climate and human health. (and a tiny lil’ thing like our civilization ).

This could be depressing given the urgency of acting on climate change. Luckily there are two major trends against coal, oil and natural gas.

First : renewables are achieving grid parity all over the world. Both solar PV and wind power are getting cheaper and cheaper each month, allowing them to compete with “traditional” energy.

Second : carbon taxes are sprouting globally as fossil fuels are just too polluting and too damaging.

So don’t worry. Economics will make fossil fuels obsolete.

The Stone Age ended not because we had no more stones, but just because Mankind had invented something better. It will be the same with coal, oil and natural gas. They will be replaced by solar energies, wind power and all the other renewables…

—

For the record, here is the comment I left ( which still hasn’t be published. I wonder why…) :

So we might have oil and fossil fuels to kill ourselves. OK, so what ? Renewables are becoming cheaper than fossil fuels. This ” grid parity ” is taking place as I write those words all over the world. On a planet where economics reign supreme this is a huge argument for renewables.

Furthermore, renewables don’t pollute. You don’t get those horrific oil spills with them. Last but not least, they also create more jobs than fossil fuels. It’s a lose lose lose versus a win win win. Renewables will prevail. No matter what fossil fuels interest think, publish or say. -

Yep, a solar installation that generates fresh water, thus solving two common problems faced in developing nations around the world. Icing on the cake, it could also be used for air conditioning.

If all this wasn’t enough, IBM believes this could be cheaper than comparable solar systems, less than $10 cent per kilowatt hour. Talk about genius !

Here is the presentation video :

Click here to view the embedded video.

Let’s hope this will become a real product and that it will be use all over the world.