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		News Archive     23/07/2008 07:00 AM £37bn plan to power EU with the Saharan sun Guardian: Vast farms of solar panels in the Sahara could provide clean electricity for the whole of Europe, according to EU scientists working on a plan to pool the region's renewable energy. Harnessing the power of the desert sun is at the centre of an ambitious scheme to build a €45bn (£35.7bn) European supergrid that would allow countries across the continent to share electricity from abundant green sources such as wind energy in the UK and Denmark, and geothermal energy from Iceland and ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM Ex-EPA Official Says White House Pulled Rank Washington Post: A former Environmental Protection Agency official yesterday contradicted EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson's congressional testimony on one of the administration's key global warming decisions, saying the White House ordered Johnson to block California's bid to regulate vehicles' tailpipe emissions. On Jan. 24, Johnson told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee under oath that he had made the decision on his own after determining there was no compelling evidence to ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM Immigration must be cut to tackle climate change, says study Herald Sun: IMMIGRATION must be slashed if Australia has any chance of seriously tackling climate change, says a Monash University study. The report said Australia's high population growth would be a major driver of greenhouse emissions, and would counter tough government measures to reduce carbon output. But the Rudd Government and its climate adviser Ross Garnaut were ignoring the population issue at their peril, said the study, entitled Labor's Greenhouse Aspirations, by Monash's ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM Lack of funds limits potential of carbon capture International Herald Tribune: There is such a buzz around renewable energy that you might think these technologies are developing fast enough to meet the majority of our power needs in coming decades. Think again. The use of wind, solar and geothermal energy is growing rapidly, but from very low levels in many of the most energy-hungry nations. Fossil fuels make up two-thirds of the global energy mix and would still make up almost half by midcentury - even under scenarios where annual emissions are kept at the ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM Population time bomb ticking on Canberra Times: A TWO-THIRDS cut in household greenhouse gas emissions would still not achieve Federal Government carbon targets because the population is growing too fast, a study into immigration policy and climate change contends. By 2050, when Australia plans to have cut its total emissions by 60 per cent, the population will have risen to just over 30 million unless immigration policies change radically, said Bob Birrell, director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM Solar power from Saharan sun could provide Europe's electricity, says EU Guardian: A tiny rectangle superimposed on the vast expanse of the Sahara captures the seductive appeal of the audacious plan to cut Europe's carbon emissions by harnessing the fierce power of the desert sun. Dwarfed by any of the north African nations, it represents an area slightly smaller than Wales but scientists claimed yesterday it could one day generate enough solar energy to supply all of Europe with clean electricity. Speaking at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, Arnulf ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM World needs 515 million hectares for food Tide: The world will need a minimum of 515 million more hectares by 2030 in order to grow food, bioenergy and wood products, according to studies. This is almost twice the amount of land that will be available, equal to a land mass 12 times the size of Germany. The two studies were released recently by the United States-based Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), an international coalition comprising the world's foremost organisations on forest governance and ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM California green energy proposal has thin support Reuters: Awareness is low, but 63 percent of those who had a view on it favor a California ballot measure that would require half the state's electricity to come from renewable sources by 2025, a Field poll issued on Tuesday shows. Voter awareness of Proposition 7 on the November ballot is extremely low -- 82 percent of those interviewed said they did not know of the measure. Phone interviews of 672 likely voters were conducted last week, Field Research said. Voters were asked opinions ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM California Pursues Ambitious Electricity Conservation Plan Dow Jones: Amid concerns about meeting growing power demand and fighting climate change, California regulators and utilities are working to cut electricity use in amounts that would power millions of homes. Under state law, the state's three largest electric utilities are mandated to try to reach a goal of saving 23,183 gigawatt-hours per year of electricity from 2004 to 2013, or enough electricity to power about 2.3 million homes. A draft plan issued earlier this month by the California ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM EPA Decision Making Is Criticized Wall Street Journal: A former Environmental Protection Agency official stepped up criticism of a decision by the EPA's chief to deny California's request to implement its own, tougher regulations on automotive greenhouse-gas emissions, a denial that he said appeared to be the result of pressure from the White House. When the EPA made known that it was leaning toward allowing California to go ahead in some fashion, "the response was clearly articulated that the president had a policy preference for a ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM French Firm Cashes In Under U.N. Warming Program Wall Street Journal: A French chemical maker is reaping a potential billion-dollar windfall under a United Nations program intended to spur climate-friendly investment in the developing world, highlighting the challenges of using market forces to tackle global warming. The company, Rhodia SA, manufactures hundreds of tons a day of adipic acid, an ingredient in nylon, at its factory here. But the real money is in what it doesn't make. The payday, which could amount to more than $1 billion over seven ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM Immigration levels driving emissions: researchers Australian Broadcasting Corporation: TONY EASTLEY: While the Coalition urges caution with the introduction of any emissions trading scheme and unions press their particular case, demographers at Melbourne's Monash University say the Rudd Government has little chance of meeting its 2050 greenhouse gas emissions targets if immigration remains at current levels. They argue that population growth is the main driver of emissions but it's being largely ignored by the Government. Samantha Donovan reports. SAMANTHA ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM United States: In trees vs. solar, trees win Mercury News: In Silicon Valley's famous "trees vs. solar panels" battle, the trees have won. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday signed into law a bill that guarantees if California property owners plant a tree before a neighbor installs solar panels on their roof, then the neighbor can't require the tree to be cut or trimmed, even if it grows to cast shade on the panels. State Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, wrote the bill in response to a Sunnyvale case that made national news ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM A recession will give ecological development a new life Guardian: The show homes at the end of a winding, unfinished road feel isolated, stuck in a corner of what remains of Telford's fragmented countryside.  The rain is pouring down and there are few builders working. The infrastructure of a major housing development is uncannily silent, and so too is the building site further up the road - and the ones after that. It's not the weather that's holding up work, it's the slump. This story is being repeated on hundreds of development sites ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM California ports' pollution plan proves a big haul Reuters: A short drive from the sandy beaches of Malibu rise two sprawling ports, where goods from around the world enter the United States before fanning out by road and rail to stores from coast to coast. The adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the United States' biggest, see nearly half of the nation's container traffic and are key to insuring goods made in China make it to retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. But the ports hold another, less honorable distinction: They are ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM Cartoonists use humour to tackle climate change Guardian: Can you laugh at global warming? Indeed, should you? The Ken Sprague Fund has organised a competition that set out to answer those awkward questions - so if you think that cartoons about climate change could be in poor taste, look away now. Around 150 artists from more than 50 countries submitted entries. The results, says John Green, secretary of the fund that was set up in memory of cartoonist Ken Sprague, were "bitingly satirical, outrageously funny or exceedingly bitter, and ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM Australia: Climate 'pawn in Libs leadership battle' Australian: THE critical issue of climate change has been caught up in the leadership politics of the Liberal Party, says Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Mr Rudd also slammed comments from Federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson, who today said it would be unlikely that a carbon emissions trading scheme would be up and running before 2012. "On something as critical as climate change which affects our economy, our river systems and our jobs and our kids we have a clean-cut course of ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM United Kingdom: Domestic energy costs: Energy-saving pilot project cuts carbon emissions by a fifth Guardian: Britain could cut its domestic fuel bills by £4.6bn a year if it adopted a series of energy saving measures, according to a report out today. An energy saving trial involving 64 households across eight cities organised by British Gas and monitored by the thinktank, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), also found that families cut their carbon emissions by a fifth. British Gas managing director, Phil Bentley said: "Reducing energy consumption is the single most ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM Australia: Emissions target 'excluded population' AAP: The Rudd government has little chance of meeting its 2050 greenhouse emission reduction targets if Australia's population continues to grow, a demography expert says. Population growth was the main contributor to emissions, but had been overlooked by government, Dr Bob Birrell from Monash University said. He forecasts Australia's population will reach 31.6 million by 2050, causing carbon emissions to rise to 800 million tonnes, four times the 2050 target. The government ... read more 23/07/2008 07:00 AM Indonesia: Experts doubt feasibility of govt goals to shift to renewable energy Jakarta Post: Experts doubt the government will be able to realize its plan to shift to renewable energy to reduce its dependency on depleting oil reserves and to deal with soaring global oil prices. The barriers to developing renewable energy still exists despite the government having already launched the energy mix policy two years ago, said Zuhal, professor of electricity engineering at the University of Indonesia (UI). "We are still facing financial and market barriers and other ... read more News Archive     Back to Homepage
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