Yesterday thousands of protesters were out in the streets of Tokyo calling for the Japanese Government to forgo nuclear power, a day before the second anniversary of an earthquake and tsunami that triggered the world's worst atomic disaster in 25 years.
The nuclear meltdown at Tokyo Electric Power's (Tepco) Fukushima Daiichi plant forced 160,000 people from their homes, to which many will never return. It also sparked an unprecedented protest movement against nuclear power.
Only five days after a Japanese cabinet panel put forward a plan to phase out nuclear power in the country by 2040, the government has been forced to back down in the face of intense lobbying by business groups and political unease ahead of an election expected by year-end.
Yesterday Japanese lawmakers only partially endorsed the government’s energy strategy document, removing any mention of the deadline, which was the most strongly supported option in the two-month public consultation on which the document was based.
The escalating international trade war revolving around the Chinese solar industry took a turn for the worse Friday when China confirmed that it was investigating imports of US and South Korean polysilicon.
The probe relates to anti-subsidy and anti-dumping regulations, experts said, and will be seen as the latest sign of intensified trade frictions between the world's top two economies, China and the US.
Japan's earthquake and tsunami stricken Fukushima prefecture could rise from the rubble to become an export hub for offshore wind technology under plans put forward by a consortium to build the world's first floating wind farm.
Boeing and a smaller rival Chinese aircraft manufacturer, The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), yesterday announced that they have entered an agreement to jointly promote energy saving and emission reduction in the civil aviation industry.
A draft document is making the rounds in Durban that would raise cash from the world’s shipping industry through a special tax to help fund the USD100 billion Green Climate Fund.
According to Reuters, the document proposes that money raised by "specific actions" to reduce emissions from maritime bunker fuels -- which may be designed and implemented by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) -- could be directed to developing countries and used to aid climate adaptation through a Green Climate Fund.
Major Chinese car manufacturer First Automobile Works (FAW) this week launched the first batch of its independently-developed electric vehicles (Evs), just at a time when a sharp fall in sales of conventional gasoline cars at China's EV darling BYD Co is threatening to undercut its ambitious expansion plans for electric cars
A cap on energy consumption is expected to be at the heart of a Chinese low-carbon plan to be issued this year, experts believe, amid reports that officials have now agreed a level even higher than that anticipated, Reuters reported Thursday.
Just as public concerns mount over new reports of higher levels of radiation in more areas of China from Japan's quake-damaged nuclear power plant, a senior official with China's Ministry of Environmental Protection has promised to release information on environmental emergencies in an "accurate and timely manner."
China's State Council has indefinitely suspended safety approvals for new nuclear plants in the strongest sign yet that the quake-ravaged northeast Japan, and the deepening crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, may affect China's ambitious nuclear expansion plan.
Chinese lawmakers overwhelmingly adopted a national plan to steer the world's second largest economy into a path of fairer and greener growth in the next five years as reported in CleanBiz Asia last week.
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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