Renewable Energy vs. Fossil Fuels (NYT)
June 14, 2011
(NYT)
Readers respond to a recent Op-Ed about the natural resources used to produce renewable energy.
A blog about energy and the environment.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – The Colbert Report – 6/1/11 – Video Clip | Comedy Central
June 2, 2011
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – The Colbert Report – 6/1/11 – Video Clip | Comedy Central.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says mountaintop mining is not a good thing for American democracy. (06:26)
New Film: The Last Mountain
Tonight on Colbert while promoting his new movie exposing the horrors of mountaintop removal by the Coal industry, at the end of a list of clean alternative energy sources that we should be replacing coal with RFK clearly enumerasted Natural Gas as one of the choices.Thanks a lot, Riverkeepers.
Colbert did launch a satirical attack on energy policy and “energy independence.”
IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation — SRREN
May 14, 2011 1 Comment
Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation — SRREN.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation
|
The Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN), agreed and released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on May 9th in Abu Dhabi, assesses existing literature on the future potential of renewable energy for the mitigation of climate change. It covers the six most important renewable energy technologies, as well as their integration into present and future energy systems. It also takes into consideration the environmental and social consequences associated with these technologies, the cost and strategies to overcome technical as well as non-technical obstacles to their application and diffusion. Summary for Policy Makers (SPM): Summary of the report, released on 9 May 2011 |
|---|
Overview of IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy
Statement of Ottmar Edenhofer, Co-Chair, at the 11th session of the IPCC Working Group III, May 2011, Abu Dhabi
Renewable Sources Could Provide 77% of World’s Energy by 2050, Report Says – NYTimes.com
May 11, 2011
Renewable Sources Could Provide 77% of World’s Energy by 2050, Report Says – NYTimes.com.
Renewable Sources Could Provide 77% of World’s Energy by 2050, Report Says
By JAMES KANTER
Published: May 9, 2011
BRUSSELS — Renewable sources could provide a majority of the world’s energy supplies by 2050, but only if governments dramatically increase financial and political support for technologies like wind and solar power, experts from a United Nations panel said Monday.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in a report that the availability of renewable sources like the wind and sun was virtually unlimited, and could provide up to 77 percent of the world’s energy needs by mid-century, but governments needed to adopt policies to take advantage of them.
“The report shows that it is not the availability of the resource, but the public policies that will either expand or constrain renewable energy development over the coming decades,” said Ramón Pichs Madruga, a member of the I.P.C.C. and the director of an economics research center in Cuba.
The report said renewable sources — bioenergy, wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower and ocean energy — currently accounted for about 13 percent of global energy supply.
To reach the goal of generating nearly 80 percent of the world’s energy from those same sources would require investments by governments and the private sector amounting to $5.1 trillion through 2020, and nearly $7.2 trillion between 2021 and 2030, according to the report.
The benefits would include better public health from cleaner air, as well as fewer greenhouse gas emissions, which would help hold an increase in global temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius.
Even so, a “substantial increase of renewables is technically and politically very challenging,” said Ottmar Edenhofer, a member of the I.P.C.C. and the chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
Among the most challenging factors is using a wider variety of technically and geographically diverse sources of energy in the future, according to the report.
Under the I.P.C.C. process, 120 experts and researchers prepared a Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation of about 1,000 pages comparing more than 160 scenarios on renewable energy.
In the second part of the process, government representatives of U.N. member states took until the early hours of Monday to agree on an outline of that report, called a Summary for Policy Makers. That summary is hugely important to clean energy companies and activists to press government leaders and international lenders to adjust energy policies and pay for new investment and infrastructure.
Worldwatch Institute Report Shows Nuclear Industry Was in Decline Even Before Fukushima
May 5, 2011
New Worldwatch Institute Report, Timed in Conjunction with Chernobyl Anniversary, Shows Nuclear Industry Was in Decline Even Before Fukushima
Washington, D.C.—Even before the disaster in Fukushima, the world’s nuclear industry was in clear decline, according to a new report from the Worldwatch Institute. The report, which Worldwatch commissioned months before the Fukushima crisis began, paints a bleak picture of an aging industry unable to keep pace with its renewable energy competitors.
To download a free copy of this report, click here.
“The industry was arguably on life support before Fukushima. When the history of the nuclear industry is written, Fukushima is likely to begin its final chapter,” said Mycle Schneider, lead author of the new report, The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2010-2011: Nuclear Power in a Post-Fukushima World, and an international consultant on energy and nuclear policy.
Some of the report’s key findings include:
- Annual renewable capacity additions have been outpacing nuclear start-ups for 15 years. In the United States, the share of renewables in new capacity additions skyrocketed from 2 percent in 2004 to 55 percent in 2009, with no new nuclear capacity added.
- In 2010, for the first time, worldwide cumulative installed capacity from wind turbines, biomass, waste-to-energy, and solar power surpassed installed nuclear capacity. Meanwhile, total investment in renewable energy technologies was estimated at $243 billion in 2010.
- As of April 1, 2011, there were 437 nuclear reactors operating in the world, seven fewer than in 2002. In 2008, for the first time since the beginning of the nuclear age, no new unit was started up. Seven new reactors were added in 2009 and 2010, while 11 were shut down during this period.
- In 2009, nuclear power plants generated 2,558 Terawatt-hours of electricity, about 2 percent less than the previous year. The industry’s lobby organization headlined “another drop in nuclear generation”—the fourth year in a row.
Despite predictions in the United States and elsewhere of a nuclear “renaissance,” the report concludes that the role of nuclear power was in steady decline even before the Fukushima crisis. The disaster will make the construction of new nuclear plants and extensions to the lifetime of current plants even more unrealistic.
“U.S. news headlines often suggest that a nuclear renaissance is under way,” said Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin. “This was a big overstatement even before March 11, and the disaster in Japan will inevitably cause governments and companies that were considering new nuclear units to reassess their plans. The Three Mile Island accident caused a wholesale reassessment of nuclear safety regulations, massively increased the cost of nuclear power, and put an end to nuclear construction in the United States. For the global nuclear industry, the Fukushima disaster is an historic—if not fatal—setback.”
Notes for Media
For media in North America, please email Russell Simon at rsimon@worldwatch.org to interview Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin. For media in Europe, please email Mycle Schneider at mycle@orange.fr. Other media may contact either Russell Simon or Mycle Schneider for more information.
Further Resources
About the Worldwatch Institute:
Worldwatch Institute delivers the insights and ideas that empower decision makers to create an environmentally sustainable society that meets human needs. Worldwatch focuses on the 21st-century challenges of climate change, resource degradation, population growth, and poverty by developing and disseminating solid data and innovative strategies for achieving a sustainable society. The Institute’s State of the World report is published annually in more than 20 languages.
About Mycle Schneider:
Mycle Schneider is an independent international consultant on energy and nuclear policy based in Paris. He founded the Energy Information Agency WISE-Paris in 1983 and directed it until 2003. Since 1997 he has provided information and consulting services to the Belgian Energy Minister, the French and German Environment Ministries, USAID, the International Atomic Energy Agency, Greenpeace, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the Worldwide Fund for Nature, the European Commission, the European Parliament’s General Directorate for Research, and the French Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety. He is a member of the Princeton University based International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM). In 1997, along with Japan’s Jinzaburo Takagi, he received the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize.”
Worldwatch E-mail List:
If you would like to receive Worldwatch press advisories regularly, please sign up at www.worldwatch.org/press-room.
Increasing oil prices could end economic recovery | Marketplace From American Public Media
January 5, 2011
Increasing oil prices could end economic recovery | Marketplace From American Public Media. Marketplace APR, Jan. 5, 2011
TEXT OF INTERVIEW
STEVE CHIOTAKIS:: You may’ve noticed at the gas station, the price keeps going up. But here we are with a global recovery trying to take hold, and the increasing price of oil could send that recovery into a tailspin. That’s the warning this week from the chief economist over at the International Energy Agency.
Fatih Birol says around the world, higher oil prices mean people will be be spending more money on gasoline. And less on everything else. Mr. Birol, good morning sir.
FATIH BIROL: Good morning to you too, thank you.
CHIOTAKIS: We’ve seen higher oil prices before though and the economy seemed — at that time, years ago — seemed to be just steam rolling along. Why are we concerned now?
BIROL: Last time we saw this level of crisis was in the year 2008. And of course the oil crisis was not the primary driver of the financial crisis, but they did play a key role in the run up to the financial crisis by reducing the business and household income.
CHIOTAKIS: This seems sort of like a vicious cycle — economic recovery that’s demanding more oil, and then that sends the prices up — are you saying that maybe this is a catch-22? That this could just keep happening over and over?
BIROL: The age of cheap oil is over, especially if the major consuming nations such as the United States and China do not move from oil-based mobility transportation system to an alternative one.
CHIOTAKIS: Do you have any predictions — say a year from now — where will oil prices be?
BIROL: By law, I cannot make any forecasts, but I hope we do not see the levels that we saw in 2008 because the demand is expected to be very strong. And if the producing countries do not respond by increasing their production this may well mean higher prices than we have now.
CHIOTAKIS: Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency joining us this morning. Thank you sir.
BIROL: Thank you very much.
GDACC 
