Almost half of new electricity is now clean and green reported by New Scientist's Fred Pearce.

Did I not tell you, if you do not have your own sources, & resources use my New Scientist RSS-Feed.

Almost half of new electricity is now clean and green is long awaited good news but there is still along trek ahead in an ever tightening schedule!

"That's a lot of clean power. Almost half of new electricity generation is now renewable, and the costs of wind and solar power are falling sharply. It "should give governments confidence to forge a robust climate agreement" next year, says Achim Steiner, director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

This comes a week before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's assessment of how to prevent dangerous climate change. The IPCC will stress the importance of quickly converting to renewables.

The latest annual Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment, published today by UNEP, reveals that 44 per cent of all generating capacity installed last year around the world was renewable. That is despite a 14 per cent decline in renewables investment, and in new electricity generally.

But the politics of green energy are changing fast. China is now the world's leader, having overtaken Europe. Last year, China invested $56 billion in green power.

Going clean

The green bubble seems to have burst in cash-strapped Europe, which was the vanguard of renewable energy for more than a decade. The continent cut investment by 44 per cent.

The only big exception was the UK, which increased investment by 12 per cent despite rumblings of discontent in the governing Conservative party. For the first time, the UK outspent Germany, with projects like the giantWestermost Rough wind farm leading the way.

Japanese investment also soared, increasing by 80 per cent. This was thanks to a rush to install solar panels, after nuclear power stations were closed following the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

Renewables kept 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from being emitted in 2013, says report author Ulf Moslener of the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management in Germany. Aside from hydroelectric dams, photovoltaic solar panels and onshore wind turbines are the biggest contributors.

The cost of generating solar power has fallen by 25 per cent since 2009, and the cost of wind power has fallen 53 per cent over the same period. As a result, the report says a growing number of such projects are being built without any subsidy. What's more, share prices in clean-energy companies, which have been in free fall since the start of the global recession, rose 54 per cent last year."

World must adapt to unknown climate future, says IPCC-Reports from New Scientist(NSci) via NSci-RSS Feed on this blog

NSci_Report on Climate Change, 03 April 2014 by Michael Slezak of NSci.

Perhaps chance readers may not have taken notice of my New Scientist feed links on Climate Change - Global Warming and their relationship to exessive GHG-GreenHouse Gases represented most often by ever increasing CO2 levels (inspite of some efforts to correct this).

Here, I have simply quoted the introduction to M. Slezaks article in order to draw readers attention to the renowned journal "New Scientist" and its effort to bring Climate (Change) Science & its important (life threatening) implications to as wide a public as possible and to the interest & to the importance & convenience of examining NSci's RSS feed links on my page heading.

"There is still great uncertainty about the impacts of climate change, according to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released today. So if we are to survive and prosper, rather than trying to fend off specific threats like cyclones, we must build flexible and resilient societies.

Today's report is the second of three instalments of the IPCC's fifth assessment of climate change. The first instalment, released last year, covered the physical science of climate change. It stated with increased certainty that climate change is happening, and that it is the result of humanity's greenhouse gas emissions. The new report focuses on the impacts of climate change and how to adapt to them. The third instalment, on how to cut greenhouse gas emissions, comes out in April.

The latest report backs off from some of the predictions made in the previous IPCC report, in 2007. During the final editing process, the authors also retreated from many of the more confident projections from the final draft, leaked last year. The IPCC now says it often cannot predict which specific impacts of climate change – such as droughts, storms or floods – will hit particular places.

Instead, the IPCC focuses on how people can adapt in the face of uncertainty, arguing that we must become resilient against diverse changes in the climate."

FOR MORE ON THIS VISIT  The New Scientist's Climate Change Topic Guide. and get your community involves in the combat, "The Good Fight, The Fight for Good" and our future generation's health, safety and happiness.

Big firms could make a mint from sustainable practices - environment - 04 March 2014 - New Scientist

Hope at last! Could it be that the Stern Report is making some headway?

THE MODEL:




New-industrial-model from Lavery Pennell


"Captains of industry, listen up. There is a fortune to be made from saving the planet.

If Europe's manufacturers operated as sustainably as possible, their profits would rise by €100 billion a year and 170,000 jobs would be created, according to a report on green businesses presented in London last week.

The report recommends that companies use fewer resources and recycle more. The money saved can be used to create new products.

It highlights carpet tile manufacturer Interface, which has cut the energy it uses to make tiles by 40 per cent since 1996. The company now recycles 43 per cent of its raw materials, sends zero waste to landfill, and recycles all its water. It has also reduced its emissions of carbon dioxide by 90 per cent. Interface is now the largest carpet tile company in the world, with revenues of $1 billion.

The impetus must come from bosses and investors. "Even if they don't care about sustainability, they need to care from a business perspective," says report author Greg Lavery of consultants Lavery/Pennell in London, UK.

"It means higher profits and lower investment risk."

W"RIGHTS"  Andy Coghlan in NewScintist  March 2014 

REFERENCES _FULL REPORT & SUPPORTING CALCULATIONS from LAVERY PERNNELL

2014-03 Lavery Pernnell_New-Industrial-Model-report.pdf 

Supporting Calculations for the New Industrial Model Report (pdf)

Big firms could make a mint from sustainable practices - environment - 04 March 2014 - New Scientist

New Scientist - Environment_Feed by leading UK popular science magazine in page leader position

Motivated by my chance discovery of my previous feed trial CleanTechnica, here is a top publisher of science for the general public the serious well noted UK mag. The New Scientist. I chose following my previous post the Environment feed but the reader will find a huge selection of subject (& feed) at thie following link:  New Scientist Feed 

CleanTechnica webzine reports on Renewable Energy_Feed Trial just added to my blog

This post is designed mainly to bring to readers' and potential readers' attention to work and information on "Clean Energy" approaches noteably: consumer technology, power and transportation  all important contributors ofcarbon dioxide (CO2) in the Energy Production/User equation:

The reader will find feed titles from CleanTechnica webzine on the right hand side (RHS) bar.

CleanTechnica energy-efficiency

I will be more than pleased to learn of your own prefered sources or any comments you may wish to make. Feel free it may perhaps reduce your own carbon-foot-print (CFP).

PS. This action follows my own recently-renewed interest in Photovolaic (PV) Solar Cells (SC's) stimulated by recent buzz (and perhaps hype?) on Ferroelectric-Photovoltaic (FE-PV) Solar Cells. I hope to summarize this in my core blog:

Materials Science and Engineering Defined

Enjoy.
JA.

How to be sucessful_5 points to sucess _ Pinned from Pinterest

In a nut shell.  

Commitment,Courage,Confidence,Certainty,Consistency 

cf Also

Peter Senge author of the Learning Organisation

Infed on The Learning Organisation

Pour les lectures de langue Française (FR)

(La pensée systèmique de Peter Senge - BlogActiv.eu)

Society for Organizational Learning_P. Senge (En)

Sol-Soc for Org Learning (Mailing list

'Sustainable' tropical timber trade a misnomer, says environmental group

The production and trade in 'sustainable' timber products in Southeast Asia is mostly 'a mirage' due to questionable forestry practices and loopholes in import regulations, alleges a new report from Friends of the Earth International. 

The report, ‘Sustainable’ tropical timber production, trade and procurement', focuses on logging in Malaysia and timber import laws in Japan, South Korea, and Australia. It says declining timber production in Malaysia shows that current management practices are inherently unsustainable, depleting future generations of natural resources. Worse is the environmental damage being wrought to the region's rich forests and the deprivations suffered by indigenous communities, especially in the state of Sarawak, where forest dwellers have been forced off their traditional lands. "We are witnessing a global depletion of natural timber resources and sustainable tropical timber remains essentially a mirage," said Meenakshi Raman, Honorary Secretary of Friends of the Earth Malaysia, in a statement. While several key importing nations seem to have in place regulations that would protect against such abuses, the report argues they have have not "resulted in meaningful changes on the ground". A chief issue has been a focus on legality of timber supplies, rather than safeguarding human rights or ensuring sustainability. "A disproportionate amount of emphasis seems to have been focused on eliminating the trade of illegal timber, at the expense of the efforts to ensure the sustainable production and consumption of tropical timber products," states the report. "Consumer countries have also failed to reduce their tropical timber consumption levels to more sustainable levels." "For policy to be able to address the reality on the ground, it cannot afford to ignore systemic corruption, the violations of human rights as well as unsustainable production and consumption patterns," says the report. "Policy has to be fully grounded on governance transparency and a real understanding on the ecology of natural resources as well as the human lives it affects." 





CITATION Friends of the Earth (2013). From policy to reality: ‘Sustainable’ tropical timber production, trade and procurement. 


'Sustainable' tropical timber trade a misnomer, says group

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