Global investments in sustainable energy must increase by USD500 million a year to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to a report launched in Rio this week, website SciDev.com reports.
Draft proposals to tackle the carbon impact of aviation look set to be delayed until March 2013, according to the head of the UN body overseeing long-running negotiations to deliver a global deal to curb greenhouse gas emissions from the sector, according to UK website Business Green.
In the face of increasing coal supply uncertainty Jindal Power, a subsidiary of one of India’s biggest steelmakers, plans to spend USD7.6 billion on hydroelectric projects over the next decade.
China’s National Energy Administration will unveil a series of detailed guidelines by the end of June, aimed at boosting the involvement of private investors in the domestic energy sector, which has long been dominated by state-owned firms, the China Business News reported yesterday, citing insiders with knowledge of the matter.
The Japanese government has given its approval to two key measures effecting the country’s short-term and long-term energy supply: a set of incentives for renewable energy that could unleash billions of dollars in clean-energy investment, and the restarting of two of the country’s 50 idled nuclear power reactors.
By taking these decisions so close together the government is no doubt hoping to offset at least some of the public criticism surrounding the much-anticipated nuclear restarts which Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has, for some time, been saying is an economic necessity.
Xie Zhenhua, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said yesterday that the value of the output from the energy conservation and environmental protection industry would reach 4.50 trillion yuan (USD706.58 billion) by 2015.
Responding to the study published at the weekend in Nature Climate Change, which suggested China’s greenhouse gas emissions could be understated by nearly 20 percent, the director of the Climate Change Research Center at the Chinese Academy of Sciences says his institute’s research points to the opposite conclusion.
The latest round of figures on global greenhouse gas emissions makes depressing reading.
Last month the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that, after a 3.2 percent rise of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2e) emission to 31.6 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2011, the world is running out of time to prevent catastrophic climate change.
"When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius (by 2050), which would have devastating consequences for the planet," Fatih Birol, IEA's chief economist told Reuters.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde said in Washington yesterday that pollution from coal generation plants was resulting in about 70,000 premature deaths every year in India.
China's carbon emissions could be nearly 20 percent higher than previously thought according to a new analysis of official Chinese data, suggesting the pace of global climate change could be even faster than currently predicted.
China is generally reckoned to have overtaken the United States in 2006 to become that world's top greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter and is currently thought to produce about a quarter of mankind's emissions that scientists say is heating up the planet and triggering more extreme weather.
But pinning down an accurate total for China's carbon emissions has long been a challenge because of doubts about the quality of its official energy use data.
Japan’s deputy prime minister, Katsuya Okada, indicated last week that the government may scrap an international pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020 because of the Fukushima nuclear crisis.
Encouraged by the initial results of a 4.5-MW wind power project in Gujarat, GAIL (India) is making further moves into India’s renewables sector with 100-MW worth of wind projects in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and eyeing opportunities in six other states.
The average monthly concentration of carbon dioxide has topped 400 parts per million in Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture, the first time this level has been reached in Japan
Beijing will introduce new fuel standards on May 31 that municipal officials say are nearly on a par with the European Union's Euro V, the first Chinese city to do so.
China's first deep-water drilling rig started operations in the South China Sea this morning, marking "a substantial step" made by the country's deep-sea oil industry.
A UN Development Programme ( UNDP) official has released a proposal to change the energy sector for the Pacific Islands by substituting carbon-intensive energy sources with investments in clean energy.
Several major Chinese cities have some of the world's highest per capita carbon footprints, a World Bank warned in a new report issued on Thursday. According to a story in the China Daily, greenhouse gas emissions in Tianjin, Shanghai and Beijing far exceed those of cities such as Paris, Tokyo, London, Barcelona and Jakarta the report stated.
Globally, most urban emissions come from transport, buildings and waste, but these three sectors only account for about 20 percent of China's urban emissions which are driven mainly by industry and power generation, largely because of its reliance on coal for energy.
A report this week in the Gulf Times claims that Bangladesh’s environment department as well as environmental activists are opposing the setting up of a coal-fired power plant near the Sundarbans, which they fear would adversely affect the world’s biggest mangrove forest in Bagerhat district of Khulna.
In what will be welcome news to many electricity-challenged Asian communities, Honda Motor Co has announced a portable generator capable of generating electricity by using propane gas which is far cleaner than the standard diesel or gasoline powered units.
This report by the World Bank spells out what the world would be like if it warmed by 4 degrees Celsius, which is what scientists are nearly unanimously predicting by the end of the century, without serious policy changes.
Companies in Asia reveal expectations that regulations that could lead to rising costs for reporting and reducing GHG emissions will also be the main sources of climate-related business opportunities.
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