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.
US energy giant ConocoPhillips China and its partner the China National Offshore Oil Corp have agreed to pay 1.68 billion yuan (USD267 million) for the oil leaks off northern Bohai Bay, China's maritime watchdog announced on Friday.
The law of unintended consequences is poised to strike East Timor, one of the world’s poorest nations, which could lose millions of dollars as Australia’s new carbon tax takes a bite out of revenue from offshore natural gas fields shared between the two countries.
China has come a step closer to capturing and storing its carbon emissions with the launch of the GreenGen coal gasification plant in Tianjin, according to a report in Nature.
Carbon capture and storage was highlighted by the leaders of the G8 group of nations in 2008, when they called for the development of 20 large-scale projects demonstrating carbon capture technologies by 2010. But with the exception of a few initiatives in Australia, Europe and the United States, many plans been delayed or cancelled.
The Chinese capital will continue to subsidize the scrappage of aging and heavy-diesel vehicles in response to concerns over the city's air pollution, an official with the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau told Xinhua on Tuesday.
Philippine blue-chip Ayala Corp plans to invest USD500 million in electricity generation over the next five years, in line with its goal to build a portfolio of around 1,000 megawatts of power capacity.
The group entered the power business last year when it bought 50 percent of a wind farm. It established AC Energy Holdings as its holding company for its power investments.
In a move that will be closely watched elsewhere, particularly China, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced the first-ever national standards to control air pollution from gas wells that are developed though hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
Much of the air pollution from fracked gas wells is vented when they transition from drilling to actual production, a three- to 10-day process that is referred to as completion. During this time hundreds of tons of chemicals ranging from cancer-causing benzene, smog-forming volatile organic compounds, and climate-changing methane escape into the atmosphere.
The United States and Japan have both reported that their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions rose in 2010, reversing the declining trend of the previous years.
In its annual submission to the UN climate organization, the US said that its GHG emissions were up 3.2 percent in 2010 compared with the previous year after two consecutive year-on-year falls. Emissions hit 6.82 billion metric tonnes in 2010, up from 6.61 billion in 2009 but still below the 7.25 billion recorded in 2007 before the onset of the global recession.
China has set a price for electricity generated from waste-to-energy plants that is double the amount paid to generators of power from coal-fired projects in a bid to encourage more development of renewable energy.
Even as coal production continues to rise in Mongolia to meet increasing regional demand, the country’s energy sector has actively embarked on a campaign to and tap into one of the world’s biggest alternative energy sources.
China has proposed joint projects with Japan in marine environment protection in the East China Sea as part of efforts to ease tension over the disputed Senkaku Islands located in the sea, sources familiar with bilateral ties said on Monday.
The city of Datong, famous for its rich coal resources in China’s Shanxi province, is being transformed into a new center for solar energy, according to a report in the China Daily today.
The solar industry has come far within the last few years and is now able to compete with traditional sources of energy in such places as Indonesia and the Philippines according to Sean Nakatani, senior manager of Tokyo Electron Ltd’s (TEL) solar department.
In preparation for an upcoming presentation in at a conference in Bali, Nakatani said that his company sees a very promising trend in solar with Asian markets playing a prominent role not only in the manufacturing of solar modules, but also in their installation.
China has set a goal of producing 6.5 billion cubic meters of shale gas a year by the end of 2015 as part of a five-year plan to increase the country's capacity to tap the unconventional resource, China's top energy authority said on Friday.
An energy firm in north China's Hebei Province has started constructing the country's largest plant for producing natural gas from oven gas, according to Xinhua.
The head of China's oceanic authority has said that the outlook for China's maritime environment is "not optimistic," calling for further efforts to build the ocean conservation culture, according to a report in Xinhua.
A group of businessmen and residents in the Philippines Subic Bay freeport are lobbying President Benigno Aquino III to consider the sprawling former US naval base for alternative energy projects, including wind and solar farms, instead of a planned coal-fired plant.
India’s gigantic Tata Group has said that it will pursue renewable energy projects for its overseas investments as coal-fired plants become more difficult to justify, according to Bloomberg.
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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