Our Global Future in the 21st Century is based on "The Third Industrial Revolution" which finally connects our new ICT infrastructure with distributed energy sources that are both renewable and sustainable
We already know that cloud computing can be more energy efficient in many cases, but how much energy can it save (and in what cases)? Google writes in a blog postthat a company can see energy savings of 65 to 85 percent from moving their internal hosted IT services — from email to documents to spreadsheets — over to Google Apps.
The idea is that organizations that host their own IT services commonly have more servers than they need and that are often times running inefficiently. But Google, on the other hand, has streamlined its servers and data centers to run as efficiently as possible and small companies can tap into this. Because efficiency is at the heart of cutting costs for Google, it’s been willing to invest in this type of infrastructure that many small organizations can’t afford or don’t have time or interest in maintaining.
The VC exodus away from cleantech startup investing continues. One of Europe’s most well-known venture firms, Index Ventures, has closed a new €350 million fund for early stage companies and Index partner Mike Volpi tells Fortune that the firm is no longer focusing on cleantech investments. When Index launched its first early stage fund back in early 2009, cleantech was one of the three sectors it said it would focus on, as well as IT and life sciences.
Over the 40 years of UNEP's existence, it has become apparent that it suffers from inadequate authority and a lack of resources. These deficiencies have constrained UNEP from inspiring the broad, catalytic environmental policies its creators envisaged.
In order to increase UNEP's efficacy in addressing environmental concerns and improving partnerships, governments are discussing several reform options. One suggestion is to transform UNEP from a subsidiary body of the UN General Assembly into a specialized agency. The other option is to improve UNEP's ability to deliver on its ambitious original mandate and enable it to perform additional functions as necessary without changing its current institutional form.
"No one institutional structure can guarantee effective resolution of environmental problems, especially at the global level," writes Ivanova. She argues that a systemic approach is necessary for success, where solutions begin at the source of challenges, instead of focusing on their symptoms.
According to the just-released 2012 Renewable Energy Scorecard from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), global renewable energy production has shot up by nearly 275 percent in the past ten years. Global renewable energy investment soared to $257 billion in 2011.
In 2002 countries meeting in Johannesburg for the tenth anniversary of the first United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro committed to “substantially increase” the share of renewable sources to the global supply of energy. Reporting a 275 percent increase is good news as representatives prepare for the start of the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development next week, but the stark fact is that it is only the beginning of a long road toward sustainability.
Jake Schmidt, NRDC’s director of international climate policy, says nations must “step up their game” in order to hit a target of 15 percent global production from renewable energy sources by 2020, a goal many clean energy economists and advocates say is required to get the world on the right path toward sustainability.
Click headline to read more and hot links to the report--
The cost of electricity is set to rise from July 1, with a national renewable energy target of 20 per cent by 2020.
Large-scale wind farms are increasing, solar energy is booming and hydro schemes are being adopted across the country.
But the real future of energy generation is in community- owned renewable energy projects, according to one of the men involved in setting up Australia's first citizen-owned wind farm.
Now he has his sights set on Tasmania.
Victoria's Jack Gilding was in the state last week to talk to locals about the viability of renewable energy projects in communities and their financial benefits.
The Hepburn Community Wind Farm consists of two turbines built by the community, after locals decided nearly seven years ago to take responsibility for their own energy needs.
''We get million or so income per year and $30,000 of that goes into community projects," Mr Gilding said.
''And that will go up. The project has created local jobs and raised the skill level of locals.
IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, today announced an equity investment of $35 million in the Convergence Partners Communications Infrastructure Fund to support more rapid development of information and communications technologies infrastructure across Africa.
The fund is expected to play an important development role in Africa, where ICT infrastructure bottlenecks impede the growth of business, and companies lack access to finance, especially risk capital and related expertise from investors that can help businesses succeed.
Andile Ngcaba, Chairman of Convergence Partners said, "There is an exciting opportunity to accelerate the development of Africa through increased investment in critical infrastructure, specifically ICTs.
We are proud to be working together with IFC in our new fund to deploy critical capital and expertise into this sector to the benefit of the continent".
Saleem Karimjee, IFC Senior Country Manager for Southern Africa, said, "The Convergence Partners Communications Infrastructure Fund will further spur Africa's development.
Access to communications helps improve economic competitiveness, facilitates efficient government services, increases the productivity of private businesses, and enhances living standards." The fund's investment focus will be to address the lack of enabling infrastructure that provides quality, affordable communications services, especially broadband, across Africa.
The fund aims to develop and invest in new wholesale, open access networks and related services, and will capitalize on the potential for communication technology platforms to deliver critical services such as banking, healthcare, education and government programs that improve living standards.
Nokia’s steepest stock drop in more than a decade is turning the mobile-device maker into a potential takeover target for buyers willing to bet that it still has a future in smartphones.
Nokia sank 18 percent Thursday after forecasting a wider second-quarter operating loss from handsets and saying it will cut as many as 10,000 jobs as it cedes market share to Apple’s iPhone and Samsung devices. After wiping out about $100 billion in market value, Finland-based Nokia trades at a 38 percent discount to its net assets, the least expensive on record, according to data compiled by Bloomberg dating to 1995.
Once Europe’s most valuable company, Nokia is losing money as it tries to rebuild the smartphone business around Microsoft’s Windows Phone software and after failing to sell an unprofitable equipment venture with Siemens. With the lowest price-sales multiple among communications-equipment makers, cash and short-term investments exceeding its $8.6 billion market value and more than 10,000 patent families, Nokia could attract Microsoft, said Falcon Point Capital. It may even be cheap enough to lure buyout firms, Avian Securities said.
As Brazil readies itself for the upcoming 2014 World Cup, an even larger global sporting event looms just a couple more years in the future. In conjunction with the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, several new structures will be erected in Rio’s cityscape. One of the many projects creating huge buzz is the Solar City Tower, an artificial waterfall designed to generate clean, renewable energy.
The vertical structure will be used as an observation tower, and it will capture and distribute solar power to the Olympic Village and to the city. The 345 foot structure will have solar panels around its base, used to store energy during the day, releasing it through turbines for use at night. For special occasions, the turbine will pump seawater into the tower and then shoot it back out to sea, creating a waterfall effect in the middle of the ocean.
Click headline to read more and view all of the drawings--
African Development Bank (AfDB) projects to develop concentrated solar power in Morocco and geothermal power in Kenya are two of some 20 renewable energy initiatives being covered by Africa Express, a year-long study of sustainable energy in Africa, and,what organizers hope will be the first successful tour of Africa by train.
The AfDB is a sponsor of the study conceived by French environmentalists and train enthusiasts, Jeremy Debreu and Claire Guibert. Over eight months, they will be travelling by rail through 26 countries to visit, study and document renewable energy projects that expand access to power.
The resulting white paper and documentary will highlight best practices and how to repeat them and identify key elements of successful project in terms of technologies, business models, policies and governance.
Twenty members of the statewide turbine opposition group Windwise met Thursday at Beacon Hill to lobby against two energy bills they say could lead to an increase in the number of turbines across Massachusetts.
Supporters of the first bill, titled "An act relative to competitively priced electricity in the commonwealth," say the bill doubles the amount of energy utilities must accept through net metering, or buy at retail price, making the energy market more competitive.
But Windwise members worry the emphasis on net metering will actually put pressure on local municipalities to build wind turbines to support the new demand. They also are opposed to the bill doubling the amount of renewable energy utilities must obtain through 10- or 20-year contracts.
"Our concern is that this bill will actually have an opposite impact than the Legislature expects," said Eleanor Tillinghast, an environmentalist who organized the Windwise lobbying effort. "You have these long-term contracts that lock in high, above-market rates."
The law would also require that instead of receiving real estate tax from developers, municipalities could receive only a payment of up to 5 percent of a facility's electric sales.
Sacramento’s school buses will likely soon run on one-hundred-percent renewable natural gas.
The California Energy Commission awarded yesterday Sacramento-based Atlas Disposal Industries a $300,000 grant to support the construction of the nation’s first anaerobic digestion-based renewable natural gas fueling station.
Atlas Disposal's Renewable Natural Gas Fueling Facility is under construction at the South Area Transfer Station in south Sacramento. The facility will use natural gas produced by converting food and organic waste collected by Atlas Disposal from area food-processing companies, restaurants and supermarkets into renewable natural gas.
One hundred percent of the electricity needed to run the fueling station will be generated by the Organic Waste Recycling Center operated adjacent to the facility.
The fuel that powered the U.S. from the industrial revolution into the iPhone era is being pushed aside as utilities switch to cleaner and cheaper alternatives.
The share of U.S. electricity that comes from coal is forecast to fall below 40 percent for the year -- the lowest level since the government began collecting this data in 1949. Four years ago, it was 50 percent. By the end of this decade, it is likely to be near 30 percent.
"The peak has passed," says Jone-Lin Wang, head of Global Power for the energy research firm IHS CERA.
Utilities are aggressively ditching coal in favor of natural gas, which has become cheaper as supplies grow. Natural gas has other advantages over coal: It produces far fewer emissions of toxic chemicals and gases that contribute to climate change, key attributes as tougher environmental rules go into effect.
Cap and trade went nowhere in Congress early in the Obama administration, but that’s not the end of the emissions-limiting scheme’s story in the United States, not by a long shot.
While Washington politicians fiddled on climate change legislation, 10 northeastern states embarked on their own scheme to reduce CO2 emissions, setting a total C02 limit and auctioning off allowances to fund energy efficiency and renewable energy programs. Supporters of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative say it’s helped to cut emissions – and a new report [PDF] backs up the claim.
So what’s Chris Christie’s problem?
A year ago, the New Jersey governor announced his state was pulling out of RGGI (often referred to as “Reggie”). Now, two environmental groups, the National Resources Defense Council and Environment New Jersey, have sued the Christie administration, charging that the governor and his Department of Environmental Protection violated state law in exiting the cap-and-trade compact.
Christie has said that RGGI “does nothing more than tax electricity, tax our citizens, tax our businesses, with no discernible or measurable impact upon our environment.”
But RGGI’s three-year progress report showed that with the system in place, average annual CO2 emissions fell by 23 percent in the Northeast U.S. over the last three years when compared to the previous three years.
Click headline to read more and access hot link to the report--
If just one percent of retail investments in savings accounts, money markets and U.S Treasuries was put into crowdfunding of solar projects — that can provide a 5 to 9 percent return to the investor — then that would deliver more than $90 billion for the creation of clean energy projects, according to a new white paper from Bloomberg.
The idea behind this emerging sector is that investing in the construction of putting solar panels on rooftops can provide a relatively low risk return on the upfront investment. Building owners generally lease solar equipment and enter into a contract to pay a fixed, low, electricity rate, commonly over about two decades. Over the past several years solar financing companies — like Clean Power Finance, Sungevity and Solar City — have emerged to provide the upfront capital, which can generally deliver around a 12 percent return.
Click headline to read more and access hot link to the white paper--
Japan approved on Monday incentives for renewable energy that could unleash billions of dollars in clean-energy investment and help the world's third-biggest economy shift away from a reliance on nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster.
Industry Minister Yukio Edano approved the introduction of feed-in tariffs (FIT), which means higher rates will be paid for renewable energy. The move could expand revenue from renewable generation and related equipment to more than $30 billion by 2016, brokerage CLSA estimates.
The subsidies from July 1 are one of the few certainties in Japan's energy landscape, where the government has gone back to the drawing board to write a power policy after the Fukushima radiation crisis, the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.
The push for renewables is aimed at cutting reliance on not only nuclear, but pricey oil and liquefied natural gas for energy needs.
The scheme requires Japanese utilities to buy electricity from renewable sources such as solar, wind and geothermal at pre-set premiums for up to 20 years. Costs will be passed on to consumers through higher bills.
The next generation of low-cost fuel cells could take your home off the grid and free your car from the gas pump with clean, renewable energy, and researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have brought us one step closer to that future. The team has deployed a biomimicry-based hydrogen production process that combines high speed with high energy efficiency, thanks to a catalyst that “lights up like a rocket.”
A faction within the renewable energy space has slaughtered one of smart growth’s sacred cows and set the stage for a strategic realignment of environmental and energy stakeholders struggling for control of the world’s future energy economy.
The emerging battle lines pit believers in the environmental and economic benefits of decentralized clean energy against investors in utility-scale, high-impact power plants sited in remote regions and linked to demand centers by an increasingly expensive and unreliable electric power grid.
In other words, the clean energy coalition is splintering between those who support the status quo and others like myself who believe the profligate economic and environmental wastefulness of the status quo is the challenge clean technology is supposed to solve – not support.
Climate change is set to reduce Latin America's capacity to produce renewable energy, according to Roberto Schaeffer, a Brazilian energy planning expert. He told the Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development underway in Brazil this week (11–15 June) that many forms of renewable energy are vulnerable to variations in climate, due to their dependence on water – as is the case with hydropower and biofuels – as well as on wind and sun.
Schaeffer— a researcher at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil — said that Brazil's biomass, hydroelectric and wind energy sectors are particularly vulnerable. Two years ago, Schaeffer participated in a Brazilian study entitled 'The Vulnerability of Energy Systems to Climate Change', conducted from 2008 to 2010. The study found that by 2040, Brazil's climate will display significantly greater variability than it does currently, with higher rainfall in some areas and prolonged periods of drought in others.
The tropical air was charged with hope and despair as the world’s leaders descended on Rio de Janeiro for the United Nations’ Earth summit in May 1992. Countries were buoyed by a string of successful environmental treaties in the 1970s and 1980s, capped by a landmark deal to save the ozone layer in 1987.
Yet the Earth summit in Rio, which drew 178 nations and around 100 heads of state, was also rife with frustration and distrust. Diplomats had spent the previous two years drafting a pair of treaties intended to safeguard Earth’s biodiversity and climate, but the talks had recently faltered as rich and poor countries split over who should pay for protecting the planet.
In the end, the leaders decided that they could not go home empty handed. They signed off on both the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Framework Convention on Climate Change, making broad pledges to solve some of the most complex problems facing humanity.
Countries also agreed to a laundry list of goals spelled out in a document known as Agenda 21, which eventually spawned the Convention to Combat Desertification. Although the agreements lacked teeth, they created formal international processes that engaged almost the entire world and eventually led to more targeted accords (see ‘Global awakening’).
An article published by ThinkProgress.org recently highlighted efforts by Republicans in Congress which the writer contends are attempting to reverse much of the progress made in the last two decades relating to clean energy and environmental sustainability.
The fun and games are scheduled to begin next week, says the article, when Grand Ol’ Party leaders will attempt to railroad through a bill called the Strategic Energy Production Act.
This stacking the deck in favor of the oil industry, says ThinkProgress.org, shows how “hollow” is the GOP’s mantra on energy that “we shouldn’t pick winners and losers” – with an inference against clean energy initiatives.
Instead, contends the piece, “the most anti-environmental House of Representatives in the history of Congress” will show it very much is picking a winner in seeking to free up more federal-owned land for drilling oil and natural gas.
Besides this new piece of legislation, amendments to existing efficiency programs have already been tabled, with aim of cutting funding for efficiency programs, such as R&D on wind technology, clean vehicles and even international commitments to assist developing nations in the pursuit of utilizing clean energy sources.
Although the article does take a somewhat sensationalist approach, it highlights what others have said is a rather worrying situation – increased pillaging of natural resources and consumption of fossil fuels, at a time when much of the world is looking at ways to conserve both the environment and such energy use.
DayStar Technologies, Inc. and Salamon Group, Inc., under contract with the Government of Samoa, shows the world the way on renewable energy in a bold and historical initiative.
Samoa's Prime Minister Hon Tuilaepa S Malielegaoi and his Cabinet have taken steps for Samoa to be the most solarized nation in the Pacific Region. Samoa is taking the lead in the South Pacific by reducing "Carbon Emissions" in the most significant way to date.
These actions will have an immediate short-term effect. They are also a real long-term sustainable reduction plan for the Country's carbon footprint. The planned first step will be the introduction of a 4 megawatt solar facility this year.
The first phase of the project is funded entirely by private investment. The steps that are being taken means that on a per capita basis Samoa will be one of the most solarized countries in the world.
Apparently, a citizens group in Berlin is looking to buy the capital city’s electricity grid. The group, Bürger Energie Berlin (BEB), wouldn’t be the first to do such a thing. As noted in this post on the documentary Power Play, Germans in the village of Schönau bought their grid decades ago and turned the area into a renewable energy leader. However, my guess is that this would the biggest such community grid purchase if it went through (correct me if I’m wrong).
BEB “has told Berlin’s Senate (as the City Council is called in the capital) that it is interested in buying the local power grid,” Craig Morris and Sven Ullrich of Renewable International writes. “The current contract with Sweden’s Vattenfall expires in 2014, and a new contract may be awarded in the next few months.”
How can you trap the most light through ultra-thin film solar cells — but keep costs down?
A question that’s kept many a researcher up at night. In the renewable energy industry, especially at such a fledgling stage, it is not only maximizing power output that is important. Unless new techniques ensure the resulting products are commercially viable and not so expensive that investors shy away, then projects are doomed to failure from the outset.
In solar cell arrays, it is the highly purified silicon elements that costs the most — in some cases, expenditure can be up to 40 percent of overall production.
So, how can you maximize the power output but keep silicon use — and cost — down to a minimum? MIT researchers in the Department of Mechanical Engineering have been working on a solution, and have created a new approach which may be able to reduce silicon usage by up to 90 percent, without detrimental effects for power output.
Instead of using thick, conventional layers of silicon, the team — Anastassios Mavrokefalos, professor Gang Chen, and three other assisting students — etched small inverted pyramids into the surface of the silicon. By creating this patterned texture, the team found that every indentation was able to trap light as effectively as thick silicon.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has invested equity of $35 million (about R294 million) in SA's Convergence Partners Communications Infrastructure Fund to boost AfricanICT.
A member of the World Bank Group, the IFC today announced the investment, which the organisation says will go towards supporting more rapid development of information and communications technologies across Africa.
“The fund is expected to play an important development role in Africa, where ICT infrastructure bottlenecks impede the growth of business and companies lack access to finance, especially risk capital and related expertise from investors that can help businesses succeed.”
The investment focus of the fund will be to address the lack of enabling infrastructure that provides quality and affordable communications services – especially broadband – across Africa. The fund aims to develop and invest in new wholesale, open access networks and related services, and will capitalise on the potential for communication technology platforms to deliver critical services such as banking, healthcare, education and government programmes that contribute to improved living standards.
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