This Goat Means Business!

Year of the Goat it is, but our goat is decidedly blue. Not because he’s experiencing “the blues”, per say, but this is the year when the Blue Economy comes into its own. You can a call it the Circular Economy or you can adopt the New Climate Economy. But they all come down to the same basics. We have to transform our businesses and our economies. We have to manage our resources – energy, people, waste, water, food – like there is a tomorrow. Because we want the world and its people to have a future. Better than what’s being forecast.  Better than what we can expect unless we seriously cut our emissions. Unless we stop using and burning fossil fuels. Unless we rapidly expand our use of renewable energy. We must have a low to zero carbon economy. We need to aim for zero waste. Yes, this Year of the Goat we all must mean business. Not business-as-usual. Be like the mountain goat – head down, clambering over the difficult terrain, butting the opposition out of the way – and maybe we have some chance this year of achieving not only a sensible workable climate change agreement in Paris but growing our business in a sustainable and resilient way. We owe it to the goat. We owe it to ourselves. We owe it to our children and grandchildren. Go the goat!   – Ken Hickson

Call for a Climate Coalition for Change

On Saturday, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron (Conservative), the opposition leader, Ed Miliband (Labour), and the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrats), agreed to work together to combat climate change, whatever the outcome of May’s UK general election. 2011 Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt has called on Australia to follow Britain’s example by striking a joint pledge to urgently tackle climate change. He would be keen to help broker a similar deal between the Coalition, Labor and the Greens in Australia. Read More

Oliver Milman in The Guardian (16 February 2015):

Schmidt, who won the 2011 Nobel prize for physics and is a councillor at the Australian Academy of Science, said he would be keen to help broker a similar deal between the Coalition, Labor and the Greens in Australia.

Brian Schmidt calls on Australia’s political parties to emulate Britain’s joint pledge, signed by main political leaders, to urgently tackle climate change

Prof Brian Schmidt has called on the Coalition, the Greens and Labor to agree on a joint pledge to act on climate change

Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt has called on Australia’s political parties to follow Britain’s example by striking a joint pledge to urgently tackle climate change.

On Saturday, the British prime minister, David Cameron (Conservative), the opposition leader, Ed Miliband (Labour), and the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrats), agreed to work together to combat climate change, whatever the outcome of May’s general election.

Schmidt, who won the 2011 Nobel prize for physics and is a councillor at the Australian Academy of Science, said he would be keen to help broker a similar deal between the Coalition, Labor and the Greens in Australia.

“We should be inspired by what the three major parties in the UK have done, so soon before an election,” he told Guardian Australia. “I’d like to see the major parties do this in Australia, to come out with an accord to provide certainty.

“I’d be keen for someone to step up to help the process and if political parties think I’m right, I’d be happy to do so, as it’s such an important issue. All the major parties say they believe climate change is occurring, but the average Australian voter thinks they don’t agree on anything in this space.

“I’d say they don’t have to agree on everything, but let’s push Australia along as a global deal on climate change is inevitable and Australia should act, if only for its own economic self-interest. Its economy will be in ruins if it continues to be carbon-based.”

The joint statement in Britain cited climate change as one of the most serious threats facing the world.

“Acting on climate change is an opportunity for the UK to grow a stronger economy, more efficient and more resilient to risks ahead,” it said.

The parties pledged to seek a “fair, strong, legally binding” global climate deal in Paris later this year that would ensure temperatures did not rise more than 2C above pre-industrial times. The statement promised an accelerated transition to a “low-carbon economy” and to end the use of coal plants that don’t use technology to capture their carbon emissions.

Schmidt said Australia’s parties were “probably not ready yet” to commit to ending unabated coal use – about 75% of Australia’s energy comes from coal compared with about a third in the UK – but that a general statement of intent was critical.

“I don’t know what they hold in common, so I’d be looking for them to put a line in the sand as to what they’d like to say,” he said.

“I don’t think there’s any clarity in the political sphere, no party has articulated a strategy of what Australia should do and why it’s important for a big global effort. No one has said ‘we are cutting emissions because of these reasons’, which makes it look to the public like we’re cutting for no reason at all. There needs to be a more sophisticated debate around this.”

Greg Hunt, the environment minister, said: “We believe clearly and categorically in the science and are committed to and will achieve our targets.

“We’re investing $2.55bn to reduce Australia’s emissions. This is in stark contrast with Labor which gave Australia the worst of both worlds with higher electricity prices and an utterly failed emissions policy.”

Mark Butler, Labor’s environment spokesman, said: “Labor would welcome a bipartisan approach to climate action in Australia, particularly around renewable energy and restoring a legal cap on carbon pollution, but the Abbott government is simply not interested in taking meaningful action to address climate change.”

The chief executive of the Climate Institute, John Connor, said the British agreement was a “historic move” that would improve the country’s investment environment.

“It’s a stark contrast to the situation in Australia, where political divisions have caused severe damage to the investment environment for climate and clean energy, leaving us sliding backward as the rest of the world charges ahead,” he said.

The Coalition, Labor and the Greens have all officially stated that they support the mainstream scientific position that human activity is influencing the climate. The Coalition and Labor both support a minimum 5% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, based on 2000 levels.

However, prominent media commentators, Coalition MPs and the prime minister’s top business adviser, Maurice Newman, have repeatedly questioned the validity of climate science. Newman has, in stark contrast to the world’s major scientific bodies, warned that the world is in danger of cooling, rather than warming.

On Monday, the Australian Academy of Science released its latest update on the state of climate science. The publication aims to “counter confusion and misinformation” on the topic.

The guide, compiled by a panel of nine experts, poses questions such as “What is climate change?” and “Are human activities causing climate change?”

Schmidt said: “The purpose of this is to emphasise to citizens and policymakers that it’s time to stop talking about the science. To my mind, people who are non-experts should be called into question if they go against the entire academy on this. How can they be taken seriously if they do that?

“The media has a propensity to give airtime to people who are not experts, people like Maurice Newman. He’s entitled to his own opinion but I don’t understand why it should be given air. I could talk about the finances of Australia, but I wouldn’t expect those views to be aired.”

Prof Andrew Holmes, the president of the Australian Academy of Science, said: “The evidence is clear: climate change, caused by human activities, is real. The vast majority of scientists and scientific organisations in this field are in agreement on this. And yet there continues to be a gap between public understanding and the science of climate change.

“Climate change is not something happening in the far off future, it’s happening now – 2014 was the hottest year on record, and 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have occurred during the first 15 years of this century.”

While 2014 was the warmest year on record globally, it was the third warmest on record in Australia. Recent analysis by the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology stressed that Australia was on track for a temperature rise of up to 5.1C by the end of the century if emissions were not drastically cut.

Even a more moderate amount of warming is likely to have serious ramifications for Australia’s agriculture, public health and coastal infrastructure. The Great Barrier Reef faces the threat of being hugely diminished due to rising sea temperatures and ocean acidification.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/16/nobel-laureate-asks-australia-to-follow-uk-example-on-bipartisan-climate-deal

IKEA’s People & Planet Positive strategy shows how we can take charge too

A new online tool demonstrates that temperature rises can be controlled along with improving living standards. The global calculator project led by the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, shows that rapid action is required to alter the technology and fuels used and make greater use of land, food, energy and forestry. And to prove that it is possible to grow successfully and sustainably, the IKEA Group shows its People & Planet Positive strategy is on track and delivering good results – 5.9% annual increase in total sales to EUR 28.7 billion. Also IKEA is installing more solar panels and wind turbines – a step closer to producing more renewable energy than the total energy it uses by 2020. Read More

Top Europe story – plus report on new UK carbon calculator + story on WRAP

Rapid Action needed to Change the Climate – Discovery of a new tool to help us

By Stephanie Stanton in Science Microcap Observer (28 January 2015):

A new online tool demonstrates that global temperature rises can be controlled along with improving living standards.

According to the global calculator project led by the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, rapid action is required to alter the technology and fuels used by people to make a greater use of land, food, energy and forestry.

This particular calculator  - www.globalcalculator.org – also revealed that people can eat better, have a more comfortable standard of living and travel even more whilst cutting down carbon to prevent temperatures rising by more than 2C (the limit beyond which catastrophic outcomes are to be anticipated).

Actions are to be taken to cut down carbon emission from each units of electricity by at least 90% as well as expanding forests by 5 to 15%. These measures are the only way to develop the lives of the 10 billion people, the expected population by 2050.

Co-founded by EU climate initiative Climate-KIC, this calculator has been constructed by an alliance of a number of other organizations from the U.S., China, India and Europe and it targets to assist businesses and governments or any other stakeholders to review the options available for cutting emissions and alternatives for energy and land till the year 2050.

According to the Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey, for the first time everyone on Planet Earth can flourish while restricting global temperature rises to 2°C, averting the most serious impacts of climate change. The calculator is also clear about the fact that actions must be taken immediately if we are to improve the life here.

Mike Childs, head of policy at Friends of the Earth, a significant person in helping to test the tool has stated that it enables everyone to be part of this journey while making significant decisions and the right choices on fields such as energy, agriculture and manufacturing.

Meetings and discussions on climate changes are to be held in Paris later in 2015 and this calculator will show the political leaders that a cleaner and safer future is awaiting us only if we act fast!

Source: www.microcapobserver.com/rapid-action-needed-change-climate-discovery-new-tool-help-us/235525/  and www.globalcalculator.org/

IKEA Group Announces Strong Sustainability Progress

Report from Power Engineering International (28 January 2015):

The IKEA Group Sustainability Report for fiscal year (FY14*) 2014, released today, shows its People & Planet Positive strategy is on track and delivering good results. Sustainability performance is announced today alongside strong financial results, which show an increase in total sales to EUR 28.7 billion ($32.1 billion), a 5.9% increase (adjusted for currency impact) from last year.

Sustainability highlights from FY14:

During the year, IKEA Group committed to own a further 87 wind turbines, bringing the total to 224, and installed 150,000  solar panels, increasing the total to 700,000 and taking the company a step closer to producing more renewable energy than the total energy it uses by 2020. By the end of 2015, we aim to have invested and committed to invest EUR 1.5 billion in renewable energy projects.

The sales value of products for a more sustainable life at home passed EUR1 billion, a 58% increase compared with FY13. These products enable people to save or generate energy, reduce water use, cut waste and live healthier lives.

75% of all lighting products sold were LED or compatible with LED bulbs, which use 85% less energy and last 20 times longer than traditional (incandescent) bulbs. The entire IKEA lighting range will convert to LED by September 2015.

EUR66 million saved through energy efficiency efforts in stores and warehouses since FY10.

IKEA Group is one of the world’s largest buyers of FSC-certified wood in the retail sector, and 41% of its wood was FSC certified or recycled in FY14. All wood was sourced from suppliers that meet the IKEA forestry standard.

The share of cotton from more sustainable sources used in IKEA products reached 76%, meaning farmers use less chemicals and water, whilst increasing their earnings. IKEA is on track to reach its goal of 100% by the end of August 2015.

47% of managers are women.

The IKEA Foundation donated EUR104 million in 2014 to projects that support millions of children in some of the world’s poorest communities.

“Sustainability is a key driver of innovation and an integral part of our business strategy. We see it as a great opportunity to improve our business. That’s why we’ve set ambitious 100% targets, for example for our LED lighting range, important raw materials and renewable energy. We are determined to grow IKEA while also having a positive impact on people and the planet,” Peter Agnefjäll, President and CEO, IKEA Group.

“Through our People & Planet Positive strategy, we want to make IKEA completely sustainable. I’m proud to say that we’re making good progress in transforming the supply of key materials, with over ¾ of our cotton and 41% of our wood now from more sustainable sources, and we’re investing in renewable energy to bring us closer to our goal of being energy independent. And by making energy- efficient LED affordable and attractive, we’ve enabled millions of people to live a little more sustainably,” Steve Howard, Chief Sustainability Officer, IKEA Group.

IKEA US FY14 Highlights

IKEA installed additional solar energy systems to more US locations in FY14, with nearly 90% of our buildings outfitted with solar panels. IKEA announced two new stores; Merriam and Miami would open with solar panels. The IKEA Canton, Centennial, and Stoughton stores had their solar energy systems expanded by at least 25%. The IKEA Perryville and West Hampton distribution centers completed phase two of their solar panel installation.

The IKEA Merriam store will also have geothermal technology, a heating and cooling system.

In April 2014, IKEA US made its first wind farm investment in the US with the purchase of Hoopeston Wind in Hoopeston, IL. When completed, this project will generate enough safe, pollution-free energy to power approximately 30,000 US homes.

In the last 18 months, we have dropped the price of our E26 400 lumen bulbs (dimmable and non-dimmable) from $9.99 to $4.49 in order to make LED affordable for the many people; offering the lowest price on the market.

For more information on IKEA US community and environment programs, please read here: http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/this-is-ikea/reports-downloads/index.html

Source: www.powerengineeringint.com/marketwired/2015/01/28/ikea-group-announces-strong-sustainability-progress.html

“Big Oil” Fiddles While Earth Burns

While concerned citizens joined Global Divestment Day activities over the weekend, the finance world has raised further questions about the long-term viability of the fossil fuel industry. But it seem to be falling on deaf ears as the industry’s biggest players press on with rampant exploration and development of reserves. But then Ben van Beurden, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, has argued that big energy companies have not been assertive enough in the global warming debate and that they must advocate more strongly for climate action in the lead-up to the Paris Climate conference later this year. Read more

Fossil fuel industry oblivious to predictions of its own demise

By Will van de Pol for Renew Economy (17 February 2015)

While concerned citizens joined Global Divestment Day activities over the weekend, the finance world has raised further questions about the long-term viability of the fossil fuel industry.

However, these nervous rumblings seem to be falling on deaf ears as the industry’s biggest players press on with rampant exploration and development of reserves.

On Thursday, US-based Fossil Free Indexes (FFI) released a report titled The Carbon Underground 2015: The World’s Top 200 Public Companies Ranked by the Carbon Content of their Fossil Fuel Reserves. It found that far from acknowledging and acting to reduce their exposure to potentially unburnable reserves of fossil fuels, the potential CO2 emissions from the top 200 coal, oil, and gas companies’ reserves have increased to 555 Gigatonnes, 10% more than at the end of 2010.

While demonstrating the fossil fuel industry’s continued disregard for climate change targets, these figures are also totally at odds with dire market analysis and predictions that continue to surface from within the financial sector.

According to Jag Alexeyev, Director of Research at FFI, “Institutions and individuals increasingly recognise the risks that fossil fuel reserves could be unburnable and stranded, and are taking steps to reduce their holdings of coal, oil, and gas investments.”

Likely explanations for such a financially motivated move away from fossil fuel investment have been presented in a recent Deutsche Bank Research House report titled Peak Carbon Before Peak Oil, which provides an analysis of the drastic decline of oil prices throughout 2013.

Published late last month in Deutsche Bank’s market analysis magazine Konzept, the report hypothesises a sharp drop in fossil fuel demand as a result of increasing global political action to curb carbon emissions.

“A deal with stringent CO2 emission limits in order to honour previously agreed climate change targets means accepting that the entirety of the world’s known fossil fuel reserves cannot be extracted and burned,” explain the report’s authors Rinesh Bansal and Stuart Kirk.

While this is hardly breaking news for anyone who has kept a discerning ear to the climate change debate, it is yet another example of the financial sector’s growing malaise regarding the economic viability of fossil fuel companies and projects.

Recent market evidence, such as China’s most recent import figures, which surfaced last week, also hints at a shift away from fossil fuel dependency.

According to Chinese government customs data, the country’s coal imports throughout January 2015 were 53% less than the same period last year. While it is impossible to interpret this as definitive evidence of waning demand, put in the context of an 11% fall in year-on-year imports and an overall fall in Chinese coal consumption by 2-3%, statistics like these appear more and more like the beginnings of a decoupling of the economy with coal that the industry will be dreading, and those who value a safe climate rejoicing.

This pressing issue of future fossil fuel demand, and its relationship to political climate change action, is neatly summarised within the Deutsche Bank report; “If the currently agreed climate change targets are to be met with any reasonable certainty, over half the proven fossil fuel reserves would have to stay where they are – underground”, a sentiment that carries all the conservatism of a large financial institution.  After all, just last month University College London provided a geographical breakdown of the world’s unburnable carbon and that could only lead to the conclusion that if Australia has not already dug up its last “safe” lump of coal, it will do any second now.

Subsequently, this notion of ‘unburnable carbon’ raises perhaps the most pertinent question currently facing the fossil fuel industry – if demand is constrained to less than the amount that current reserves can provide, why does such continued emphasis and expenditure on exploration and development of further reserves remain? Greater book value in the short term? It just doesn’t seem to be fooling the finance sector.

There seems to exist a worrying cognitive dissonance between the actions of the fossil fuel industry’s biggest players and the ominous market analysis that is mounting to dissuade these actions. And, frankly, the institutions providing this advice on the incompatibility of most fossil fuel reserves with a safe climate are proving to be equally out of touch with themselves.

Encouraging though it is to see Deutsche Bank wade in on ‘unburnable carbon’, they remain the tenth biggest lender to coal worldwide. Seems that Deutsche’s specialised finance team needs to pick up its own analysis!

If the industry continues to ignore the writing on the wall, then sustained community action becomes evermore important in ensuring these environmentally devastating and financially unsustainable projects are unable to proceed – whether that be due to political intervention or, more likely, a lack of willing financiers.

With public activities such as Global Divestment Day, the increasingly vocal divestment movement continues to apply pressure to investors, adding to their growing list of reasons to discontinue funding of the fossil fuel industry. It might even force a few resource analysts to pick up their colleagues’ research.

The author is a researcher with Market Forces.

Source: www.reneweconomy.com.au/2015/fossil-fuel-industry-oblivious-to-predictions-of-its-own-demise-77508

Shell chief calls for climate action, but what are the firm’s motives?

By Peter Burdon in The Conversation (17 February 2015):

In a speech last Thursday at International Petroleum Week – one of the biggest events on the industry’s calendar – Ben van Beurden, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, argued that big energy companies have not been assertive enough in the global warming debate and that they must advocate more strongly for climate action in the lead-up to the Paris Climate conference later this year. He argued that:

The outcome of the political process is uncertain, but the trends behind it are unmistakable. Even more than the oil price, these trends will shape the future of the industry over the coming decades. For a sustainable energy future, we need a more balanced debate.

The issue, Beurden argued, is “how to balance one moral obligation, energy access for all, against the other: fighting climate change. We still need fossil fuels for a lower carbon, higher energy future.”

His comments came as negotiators from more than 190 countries met in Geneva to agree on a draft climate agreement that diplomats will take to the Paris summit in search of a deal.

Beurden has a significant platform from which to speak. His words will be weighed and considered by politicians around the world. But while he seeks to position Shell as a leader on climate advocacy, it is important to consider what motivations underlie his speech.

Is he seeking to build industry momentum to come to terms with climate science? Is his speech a reflection of growing tendency for oil and gas companies publicly to point the finger at coal producers? Or is Shell positioning itself to tap into the lucrative business to be made from the deleterious effects of climate change?

Context is crucial

To answer this question, we need to put Beurden’s speech into context and consider Shell’s record on climate change. In his instructive book, Windfall, US journalist McKenzie Funk notes that Shell was an early proponent of future scenario planning. This involves envisaging multiple versions of what the future could look like, and making plans in preparation for each of those alternatives.

Using this practice, Shell was able to predict and position itself to benefit from the twin OPEC oil shocks, the fall of the Soviet Union, the uprising against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, and the rise of global environmentalism.

Shell has been thinking about climate change since the 1970s. Unlike Exxonmobil, Shell did not plough huge funds into climate denial, and between 1998-1999 it even implemented an in-house version of the Kyoto protocol. According to Funk, this initiative included:

Plans to reduce the company’s own greenhouse-gas emissions by 10% by 2002, an internal cap-and-trade scheme, a shadow carbon price and a commitment to evaluate projects on the basis of not only the profit they would make but the carbon they would emit.

Climate change became an even higher priority in 2005 when Beurden was appointed as chief executive. He wanted his futurists to rock the boat and ask questions that would be deeply inconvenient for an oil multinational, like: what does the emerging reality of climate change mean for Shell?

In 2008 Shell published its view of a future under climate change. The report, Shell Energy Scenarios to 2050, describes two different scenarios, called Blueprints and Scramble.

Blueprints represents a future in which grassroots advocacy results in timely action on climate change. Governments legislate a price on carbon, shift energy toward natural gas, and deploy industry-developed technology for carbon capture and storage.

Scramble is the opposite scenario, in which industry becomes embroiled in a race for scarce resource, while an energy crunch prevents governments from coming together on a climate deal. Politically, the United States and its allies point the finger at China, while China continues increasing its greenhouse emissions well into the 21st century.

While neither scenario was a completely accurate forecast of where we are now, we are certainly living in a Scramble world.

The financial imperative

The important thing to understand from this is that for the most part, Shell is not transforming into a “green” company for the sake of it (except perhaps in its PR department). The company itself just wants to make money as best it can in the future, and if there is going to be a future price on carbon, that becomes something to factor into its strategy.

Shell may have wanted the Blueprints scenario to materialise because that made for a less volatile world – and because it has more natural gas than its rivals. But when Blueprints became unrealistic the company switched gears and said “if it’s a Scramble world, we’re going to Scramble too.” In fact, it was just after the collapse of the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks that Shell started to make big moves in search of Arctic oil. Shell plans to drill for oil in the Arctic this year.

In presenting this perspective, I want to make clear that Shell is not maniacally burning the Earth just to find a financial upside. Rather, the reality is that if governments are not going to act with sufficient urgency on climate change, figures like Beurden will attempt to use their influence to achieve certainty and satisfy their imperative for growth.

In the long term, anyone who looks seriously at climate change understands that this is only bad for society as a whole. As Naomi Klein argues in This Changes Everything, “the green billionaires won’t save us”.

We can add Beurden to the long list of chief executives, celebrities and media conglomerates who have promised an enlightened form of “green capitalism” but are also sticking closely to a path that leads to profit.

Source: www.theconversation.com/shell-chief-calls-for-climate-action-but-what-are-the-firms-motives-37644

Business Sustainability Conference Introduces

New Climate Economy to Asia

The New Climate Economy, which calls for global action to improve economic growth at the same time as reducing carbon emissions, will be a dominant topic at the first International Conference for Business Sustainability in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 22 & 23 April this year. Consistent with the objectives of the Blue Economy, championed by the Blue Asia Group, one of the conference organisers, the economic imperative recognises that rapid technological innovation and new investment in infrastructure are making it possible today to tackle climate change at the same time as improving economic performance. Read More

Report on the New Climate Economy

The International Conference on Business Sustainability in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 22 and 23 April 2015 will highlight the New Climate Economy and what it means for Asia Pacific. The United Kingdom is one of a number of countries pushing this new approach globally. Likewise the UK’s Climate Change and Energy Network in South East Asia will be supporting the Blue Asia Group’s efforts through this event and in the region.

Here’s an introduction to the New Climate Economy, launched in 2014:

The report finds that there are now major opportunities to achieve strong growth with lower emissions in three key sectors of the global economy – cities, land use and energy. To achieve this growth, governments and businesses need to improve resource efficiency, invest in good-quality infrastructure, and stimulate technological and business innovation.

Cities: Building better connected, more compact cities based on mass public transport can save over US $3 trillion in investment costs over the next 15 years. These measures will improve economic performance and quality of life with lower emissions.

Land use: Restoring just 12% of the world’s degraded lands can feed another 200 million people and raise farmers’ incomes by $40 billion a year – and also cut emissions from deforestation.

Energy: As the price of solar and wind power falls dramatically, over half of new electricity generation over the next 15 years is likely to be from renewable energy, reducing dependence on highly polluting coal.

Resource efficiency: Phasing out the $600 billion currently spent on subsidies for fossil fuels (compared to $100 billion on renewable energy) will help to improve energy efficiency and make funds available for poverty reduction.

Infrastructure investment: New financial instruments can cut capital costs for clean energy by up to 20%.

Innovation: Tripling research and development in low-carbon technologies to at least 0.1% of GDP can drive a new wave of innovation for growth.

The report finds that competitive markets and consistent government policy signals are essential for businesses and investors to create low-carbon jobs and growth. By establishing a strong carbon price and a level playing field through an international climate agreement, governments can unlock new investment and innovation.

“Major companies, smart investors and a new generation of entrepreneurs are already demonstrating how markets can drive low-carbon growth,” said Jeremy Oppenheim, Global Programme Director of the New Climate Economy project. “But inconsistent policy in many countries is now creating uncertainty, hurting investment and job creation. Businesses and investors need clearer market signals.”

Better Growth, Better Climate sets out a detailed 10-point Global Action Plan of practical recommendations that can achieve greater prosperity and a safer climate at the same time. These measures will all lead to net benefits to the economy, even before their climate benefits are considered.

Source: www.newclimateeconomy.report

For updates on the KL Conference on Business Sustainability, including the full line-up of speakers and associated events, go to www.sustain-abilitty-showcase.com

Art for Save Arctic Campaign, As Antarctic Glaciers Melt Faster

Not to make light of the climate change impacts on the Antarctic and the Arctic, but Since Greenpeace launched the Save The Arctic campaign it has seen an amazing amount of creativity and visual design, both from its talented supporters and the people who work at Greenpeace. So its encouraging a creative approach to Saving the Arctic from big pol and others who want to exploit this special place. But sometimes it’s hard to find the right tools for the job. At at the other end of the earth, news that the largest glacier in East Antarctica, containing ice equivalent to a six-metre (20-foot) rise in global sea levels, is melting due to warm ocean water, Australian scientists said this week. Read more

Arctic and Antarctic – story on Antarctic melt and something on Arctic re stop the drilling

Warm ocean melting East Antarctica’s largest glacier

Report from AFP (26 January 2015)

The largest glacier in East Antarctica, containing ice equivalent to a six-metre (20-foot) rise in global sea levels, is melting due to warm ocean water, Australian scientists said on Monday.

The 120-kilometre (74.4 mile) long Totten Glacier, which is more than 30 kilometres wide, had been thought to be in an area untouched by warmer currents.

But a just-returned voyage to the frozen region found the waters around the glacier were warmer than expected and likely melting the ice from below.

“We knew that the glacier was thinning from the satellite data, and we didn’t know why,” the voyage’s chief scientist Steve Rintoul told AFP.

He said that up until recently the East Antarctica ice sheet had been thought surrounded by cold waters and therefore very stable and unlikely to change much.

But the voyage found that waters around the glacier were some 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than other areas visited on the same trip during the southern hemisphere summer.

“We made it to the front of the glacier and we measured temperatures that were warm enough to drive significant melt,” Rintoul said.

“And so the fact that warm water can reach this glacier is a sign that East Antarctica is potentially more vulnerable to changes in the ocean driven by climate change than we used to think.”

Previous expeditions had been unable to get close to the glacier due to heavy ice, but Rintoul said the weather had held for the Aurora Australis icebreaker and a team of scientists and technicians from the Australian Antarctic Division and other bodies.

Rintoul said the glacier was not about to melt entirely overnight and cause a six-metre rise in sea levels, but the research was important as scientists try to predict how changes in ocean temperatures will impact on ice sheets.

“This study is a step towards better understanding of exactly which parts of the ice sheets are vulnerable to ocean warming and that is the sort of information that we can then use to improve our predictions of future sea level rises,” he said.

“East Antarctica is not as protected from change as we use to think,” he said.

The melt rate of glaciers in the fastest-melting part of Antarctica has tripled over the past decade, analysis of the past 21 years showed, according to research published last month.

Source: www.news.yahoo.com/warm-ocean-melting-east-antarcticas-largest-glacier-071912713.html

The Arctic needs your creativity

Greenpeace Blogpost by James Turner  (2 February 2015):

Save the Arctic Style Guide

Since we launched the Save The Arctic campaign we’ve seen an amazing amount of creativity and visual design, both from our talented supporters and the people who work here at Greenpeace. But sometimes it’s hard to find the right tools for the job.

Today we’re hoping to make it even easier to get involved by releasing an Arctic Style Guide.

As well as offering you colours, fonts and templates we’re also opening up a small selection of our best images and videos for you to download and use.

This is just one way we’re hoping to build a more ‘open source’ movement, where everyone can find different ways to contribute their talents and skills to help protect the Arctic.

Beginners welcome

You don’t have to be professional designer to use this guide. With help from our friends at Fake Crow we’ve tried to make it as simple as possible, so that if you just want to download an image and use it as wallpaper on your computer, well, that’s fine. At the same time we’ve included some suggestions on how to create a flyer or a smart email, things you can use to help persuade others to join this growing movement.

There are icons, fonts, palettes, and all sorts of other goodies. We want you to use these as a starting point for your work, a way to enhance your natural creativity. These aren’t rules, they’re suggestions, and we all know that sometimes the rebellious mind produces the best ideas.

Save the Arctic Style Guide

Overall we offer this to you as a tool – something we hope you will use to show the world the incredible beauty of the Arctic and the vibrancy of the movement that’s building to protect it.

We hope you like it. And please don’t forget to share you work with us, using the email address we’ve set up for this purpose: arctic_styleguide@greenpeace.org.

Competition time

Today we’re also launching a new competition to encourage our supporters to create images, videos or any other type of content for the campaign.*

We’ll share the best entries on social media, and the most popular will win a Vivienne Westwood Arctic T-Shirt and one of the actual expedition jackets we took to the North Pole.

Creativity vs. Arctic oil

Oil companies like Shell seem to have all the money in the world – and some pretty huge advertising budgets too. But we have ideas, imagination and creativity on our side. That’s incredibly important.

And it’s one of the reasons why we’re going to win.

So it’s over to you. Have fun, experiment and get started!

* Competition details

The competition is open to anyone – Greenpeace staff, our supporters and their friends. It will run from until 1 April  2015.

After this time we will place the best 10 entries on our Facebook page, and the winning entry (in terms of shares and overall engagement) will receive the prize. If you’ve made something that can’t be shared directly on Facebook (like a drawing or object), take a picture of it and we will contact you separately.

To enter the competition, please email your content to arctic_styleguide@greenpeace.org with the word ‘competition’ in the subject line. Please do not share your work directly on our Facebook page as we cannot assess entries this way.

Thanks, and good luck!

Source: www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/save-the-arctic/blog/52019/

Singapore Strong Showing in Global 100 Sustainability Ranks

Developer Keppel Land is among the world’s best when it comes to going green, according to the latest list of the world’s 100 most sustainable companies. Other Singapore names such as City Developments (CDL), StarHub and CapitaLand made the ranks as well. The aim of the Global 100 is to reinforce, raise awareness and showcase, annually, world leaders in corporate sustainability, including those that have been able to balance environmental performance, social performance and economic performance while delivering superior returns to investors. Read More

The aim of the Global 100 is to reinforce, raise awareness and showcase, annually, world leaders in corporate sustainability, including those that have been able to balance environmental performance, social performance and economic performance while delivering superior returns to investors. For the full list of the top 100 go to: www.rankingthebrands.com/The-Brand-Rankings.aspx?rankingID=107&year=895

Keppel Land named top ‘green’ firms

Report in Property Effect (23 January 2015)

Developer Keppel Land is among the world’s best when it comes to going green, according to the latest list of the world’s 100 most sustainable companies.

Other Singapore names such as City Developments (CDL), StarHub and CapitaLand made the ranks as well.

Keppel Land was ranked fourth worldwide, up 13 positions from 17th last year, on the Global 100 list, “coming up tops among Asian as well as real estate companies globally”.

The Global 100, now in its 11th year, is a list of the world’s most sustainable corporations.

It is deemed the gold standard in corporate sustainability.

The results were released at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland – being held from Wednesday to tomorrow – by Corporate Knights, a Toronto-based media and investment research company.

Corporate sustainability involves companies adopting strategies and practices that address the key issues for the world’s sustainable development, such as environmental protection, health and human rights development as well as fair globalisation.

Keppel Land chief executive said the firm is committed to “operate in an economically, socially and environmentally responsible manner” for its businesses, the environment and the community.

The developer holds various certifications on quality and environmental management, and occupational health and safety.

Telecommunications company StarHub saw its rank improve to 24th this year, from 29th last year, while CDL came in at 34th spot, up from 39th last year.

CDL, for instance, set a Guinness World Record last year for the largest vertical garden at its Tree House condominium.

The 24-storey, 2,289 sq m vertical garden is expected to achieve energy savings at the condo of between 15 and 30 per cent.

A total of 4,609 listed companies worldwide – with a market capitalisation of more than US$2 billion (S$2.7 billion) – were considered for the 2015 Global 100 project.

Firms “now, more than ever, are convinced that incorporating sustainability in their business models is no longer an option, but a necessity”.

StarHub chief executive said: “At the end of the day, we are all obliged to safeguard our environment and fellow man. After all, we did not inherit the earth from our forefathers; we are preserving it for our children.”

Source: www.thepropertyeffect.com/keppel-land-one-of-the-worlds-top-green-firms-23-january-2015/

High Powered Americans Drive Clean Energy Funding for India

UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Cities & Climate Change and former New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg urged “India’s private sector and foreign investors to continue developing and investing in the clean energy market which create knowledge-intensive jobs and support the nation’s goals,” when he attended the  important Renewable Energy Investment event in New Delhi over the weekend. And what was really achieved by President Obama’s very friendly meetings with Indian Prime Minister Modi in January? Read More

RE-Invest 2015: Michael Bloomberg urges investors to invest in clean energy market

Zee Media Bureau (16 February 2015)

New Delhi: UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Cities & Climate Change Michael R. Bloomberg on Monday urged “India’s private sector and foreign investors to continue developing and investing in the clean energy market which create knowledge-intensive jobs and support the nation’s goals.”

Bloomberg, who is in India to attend the Renewable Energy Global Investors Meet & Expo (RE-Invest) also applauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi for “confronting climate change” which “goes hand-in-hand with smart economic growth.”

The RE-Invest between 15-17 February in New Delhi has been organised by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. The central theme of RE-Invest is to attract large scale investments for the renewable energy sector in India.

The government has exuded confidence that the first renewable energy global investors’ meet will play a major role in taking India to international standards. Government is also optimistic that the conference will usher in green and clean and energy secure India.

Follow up on India – outcome of US-India agreements – NRDC in Climate spectator

Modi and Obama’s promising first steps

Anjali Jaiswal & Meredith Connolly  in Climate Spectator (29 January 2015):

Climate energy markets policy & politics science & environment solar energy

Natural Resources Defense Council

Amidst the Republic Day celebrations in January, President Obama and Prime Minister Modi signaled a stronger relationship in fighting global climate change and growing clean energy markets. The leaders of the largest democracies in the world agreed to cooperate on phasing down heat-trapping, hydroflurocarbons (HFCs), expanding clean energy markets, and enhancing bilateral climate change discussions toward achieving an ambitious agreement in Paris later this year.

Working towards robust global clean energy markets advances both leaders’ shared ambitions and builds a low-carbon economy in a country on the frontlines of climate change impacts. The commitment to advance the joint research and deployment projects provides greater opportunity for business and academic cooperation on solar, wind and energy efficiency.

As NRDC’s President Rhea Suh urged in her letter to President Obama and wehighlighted before the visit, cooperation on clean energy technology, finance and policy is essential to scaling up these markets, providing clean energy access and fighting climate change. Increasing efforts on climate resilience and air quality are also positive elements to protecting human health and fighting climate change.

Stronger climate change cooperation – including an HFC phasedown

Agreeing on bilateral cooperation to phase down HFCs under the Montreal Protocol is significant to fighting climate change and builds momentum toward greater cooperation to reach a new international phasedown agreement. Ahead of this trip, we highlighted that next steps could include continued task force discussions on technical knowledge exchange, a phasedown timetable, and an amendment to the Montreal Protocol. The US-India joint statement explicitly relies on the Montreal Protocol:

“The President and Prime Minister reaffirmed their prior understanding from September 2014 concerning the phase down of HFCs and agreed to cooperate on making concrete progress in the Montreal Protocol this year.”

The agreement on HFCs shows that India and the United States, along with other countries around the world, are prepared to help phase down these super greenhouse gases under the Montreal Protocol. As NRDC and the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) research shows, a growing number of Indian companies are leapfrogging to coolants in air conditioners and refrigerators that don’t heat the planet. Business cooperation with international companies, including those in the US, China, Japan and elsewhere can advance the HFC phasedown.

Expanding clean energy partnerships and financing

President Obama welcomed Prime Minister Modi’s increased goal of 100 gigawatts (GW) of solar energy by 2022 with a new influx of financing from the US Export-Import Bank among others and by enhancing energy efficiency and renewables cooperation.

American companies are eager to increase their participation in this growing market – US-based SunEdison and First Solar offer early successful examples. Our work with partners in India shows that the potential is huge to tap into India’s vast solar resources. It can create jobs, help India expand energy access, and help reduce pollution. Based on initial research by NRDC and CEEW, and given the limited data available in India, we estimate that at least 23,884 cumulative jobs in the solar industry from 2011 to 2014 – solely from commissioned projects currently producing electricity – were generated locally in India. Energy efficiency is also a tremendous energy resource in India and globally, as research from NRDC and the Administrative Staff College of India shows.

The new US-India joint statement details expansion of clean energy partnerships and financing:

– Expanding Partnership to Advance Clean Energy Research (PACE-R): A renewed commitment to PACE-R, including extending funding for three existing research tracks of solar energy, building energy efficiency, and biofuels for an additional five years and launching a new track on smart grid and grid storage.

– Expanding Partnership to Advance Clean Energy Deployment (PACE-D):Both the countries intended to expand our current Partnership to Advance Clean Energy Deployment (PACE-D) through increased bilateral engagements and further joint initiatives to expand cooperation in support of India’s ambitious targets in renewable energy.

– Accelerating Clean Energy Finance: Prime Minister Modi emphasised India’s ongoing efforts to create a market environment that will promote trade and investment in this sector. President Obama welcomed India’s ambitious solar energy goals and encouraged India to continue its efforts to increase trade and private investment in this sector. President Obama conveyed the potential availability of US Government official financing in this area, consistent with its policies, to support private sector involvement for those entities in contributing to India’s clean energy requirements.

– Demonstrating Clean Energy and Climate Initiatives on the Ground: Additional pilot programs and other collaborative projects in the areas of space cooling, super-efficient appliances, renewable energy storage, and smart grids.

– Concluding MOU on Energy Security, Clean Energy and Climate Change: Both countries concluded negotiations on a five year MOU to carry this work forward, to be signed as early as possible at a mutually agreed upon date.

Accelerating climate adaptation and air quality efforts

With 2014 as the hottest year on record and with climate change impacts already bearing down on vulnerable communities across the globe, President Obama and Prime Minister Modi also announced partnerships to develop climate resilience tools and improve air quality in India’s cities. Early warning systems and preparedness plans are vital to saving lives from extreme weather. The city of Ahmedabad in western India along with the Public Health Foundation of India-Indian Institute of Public Health, NRDC and others, launched the Ahmedabad Heat Action Plan, a pilot early warning system and adaptation plan addressing extreme heat in one of India’s rapidly urbanising cities.

The new US-India joint statement details the initial cooperation on climate resilience and air quality:

– Initiating Climate Resilience Tool Development: Jointly undertaking a partnership on climate resilience that will work to downscale international climate models for the Indian sub-continent to much higher resolution than currently available, assess climate risks at the sub-national level, work with local technical institutes on capacity building, and engage local decision-makers in the process of addressing climate information needs and informing planning and climate resilient sustainable development, including for India’s State Action Plans.

– Launching Air Quality Cooperation: Implementing EPA’s AIR Now-International Program and megacities partnerships, focused on disseminating information to help the urban dwellers to reduce their exposure to harmful levels of air pollution, and enable urban policy planners to implement corrective strategies for improving Ambient Air Quality in the cities keeping in view health and climate change co-benefits of these strategies.

Both countries signaled they are ready to help secure a strong global agreement this December in Paris. The strong strategic partnership on climate change and clean energy that we’ve seen President Obama and Prime Minister Modi building in the last six months is critical to reaching a global agreement.

Anjali I. Jaiswal is a senior attorney in the NDRC San Francisco office and works on the litigation team and India initiative. Meredith Connolly is an energy law and policy fellow at NDRC. Reprinted with permission from the US Natural Resources Defense Council.

Source: www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2015/1/29/policy-politics/modi-and-obamas-promising-first-steps?

Solar to the Rescue for Bangladesh as Glacier Melt Hurts Nepal

Residents of Islampur, a remote village in the northern Bangladeshi district of Naogaon, were stunned one night last summer when the darkness was suddenly illuminated by electric lights coming from a village home. A month’s walk from the nearest sea, Kathmandu — elevation almost a mile — is as vulnerable to climate change as the world’s coastal megacities. Rising temperatures are crimping power and food supplies as rural migrants stream to a city of 1 million that’s among the world’s most crowded. Read More

Bangladesh aims to be world’s ‘first solar nation’

By Pantho Rahaman for Thomson Reuters Foundation (25 January  2015)

Residents of Islampur, a remote village in the northern Bangladeshi district of Naogaon, were stunned one night last summer when the darkness was suddenly illuminated by electric lights coming from a village home.

Why the surprise? The community has no connection to the country’s power grid.

The owner of the house, Rafiqul Islam, is one of around 15 million Bangladeshis whose homes are now powered by solar home systems, or SHS, under a government scheme to provide clean power to communities with no access to grid electricity.

The Bangladeshi government aims to provide electricity to all of the country’s households by 2021. With financial assistance from the World Bank and other development partners, it plans to generate 220 megawatts of electricity for around 6 million households by 2017 through the solar home system programme.

Each solar home system uses a solar panel installed on the roof of an individual home. A 250 watt panel can produce up to 1 kilowatt of power a day.

Following Islam’s example, many villagers in Islampur have installed solar home systems, whether to light their homes or to run irrigation pumps.

“We are more than happy, because we don’t have power cuts in our system. But for those who are connected with the national grid, blackouts are regular,” Islam said.

Children are as pleased as their parents. A few years ago, accessing entertainment such as cartoons meant renting a television and a DVD player along with a battery, which most people could afford to do at most twice a year.

“Now children can have their own fun time every day,” Islam said. His daughter said she also can study until late into the evening thanks to the electric light.

10 PERCENT OF HOMES SOLAR

According to the government-owned Infrastructure Development Company Limited (IDCOL), which began the solar home system project in 2003, 3.5 million households – about 10 percent of the country’s total – had installed SHS by the end of 2014.

“Every month, 50,000-60,000 Bangladeshi households are connected with a solar home system. In May 2014, more than 80,000 connections were made,” said Mahmood Malik, head of IDCOL. The company runs the scheme with 47 partners, including nongovernmental organisations and businesses.

Dipal C. Barua, a solar home system pioneer in Bangladesh and president of the Bangladesh Solar and Renewable Energy Association, said that when the technology was introduced in 1996, it faced a range of barriers, such as the high cost of solar panels and a shortage of expertise for installation.

But 18 years on, both barriers have eased and solar home systems save the country 200,000 tonnes of kerosene annually, worth about $180 million, Barua said.

FIRST SOLAR NATION?

“My dream is to empower 75 million Bangladeshis through renewable energy by 2020 and make Bangladesh the first comprehensive solar nation of the world,” he said.

The government is providing low-interest loans to private companies to import and install solar panels for SHS, while businesses offer households or end-users low down-payments and the option to repay the cost of a solar home system over a period of one to three years. A 100 watt panel costs around 50,000 Bangladeshi taka ($640).

In addition to the SHS scheme, the government has constructed a 100 kilowatt solar power plant in Sandwip Island, in the Bay of Bengal, which began operating in 2010. There are plans to create 50 more so-called mini solar grids around the country by 2017, with the combined capacity to run more than 1,500 irrigation pumps.

The government is encouraging domestic and foreign investment in the plants by offering grants and low-interest loans to investors.

“We are very much in the process of creating a green Bangladesh,” said IDCOL’s Malik.

Source: www.trust.org/item/20150125132735-4btvj/?source=jtOtherNews2

Far From Rising Seas, Climate Change Plagues Kathmandu: Cities

By Natalie Obiko Pearson for Bloomberg (14 January 2015):

A month’s walk from the nearest sea, Kathmandu — elevation almost a mile — is as vulnerable to climate change as the world’s coastal megacities.

The capital of the poorest Asian country after Afghanistan already is feeling the effect: Rising temperatures are crimping power and food supplies as rural migrants stream to a city of 1 million that’s among the world’s most crowded.

“Kathmandu is the country’s production and consumption center,” said Mahfuzuddin Ahmed, an adviser in the Manila-based Asian Development Bank’s regional and sustainable development department. “Any climate-related hazards that spill into the national economy will be amplified there.”

The mountainous Himalayan nation may have crossed a tipping point of irreversible damage. Its glaciers have lost about a third of their ice reserves since 1977. Just like giant icebergs in the ocean, those glaciers play a critical role in the high-altitude jet streams that can delay monsoons, prolong droughts or spawn storms.

“It’s affecting daily life,” says Ram Sharan Mahat, Nepal’s finance minister. He calculates the economy will grow half a percentage point slower this fiscal year because of an erratic monsoon that hit crops, the mainstay of the economy. “I’m sure that’s largely attributable to climate change.”

Ahmed led a June study projecting Nepal could lose 10 percent of its annual gross domestic product by 2100 because of climate change. That makes it the second-most vulnerable in the region after the Maldives.

There’s something a mountain city like Kathmandu — some 600 miles (966 kilometers) from the Indian Ocean — shares with an atoll threatened with extinction from rising seas: a spectacular incapacity to do much about it.

Acrid Smog

An acrid brown smog shrouds the metropolis, obscuring the snow-capped Himalayan peaks in the distance that beckon trekkers worldwide. Diesel vehicles that would have been phased out in Europe years ago choke its narrow lanes, making cloth face masks indispensable.

Residents shop for vegetables and spices by candlelight amid blackouts lasting most of the day in the winter, when hydropower plants sputter as snow-fed rivers dry up. Garbage has turned the city’s sacred Bagmati River into a sewer, too filthy for fish to survive, though Hindu worshipers still bathe in its waters.

Economists and environmental experts warn that climate change will hurt those who have the least because they don’t have the resources or capacity to minimize the threats.

Ice Melt

Nepal lacks the network and skills to forecast the weather three days in advance, much less the complex changes in rainfall, snow and temperatures linked to ice melting in the world’s least-studied glaciers. Like most of South Asia, water isn’t stored when the rivers are full, making the population vulnerable to the vagaries of glacial melt and the monsoon — the annual wet season bringing 80 percent of its precipitation.

Its remittances-dependent economy is smaller than each of the 50 U.S. states. Its 28 million people have the lowest spending power of any Asian country apart from Afghanistan of about $2 a day, World Bank statistics show.

Runoff from glaciers storing the world’s largest body of ice outside the polar regions sustains Kathmandu and more than a billion people beyond. It’s the source of rivers that flow as far west as Iran and east to the South China Sea, including the Ganges, which feeds the world’s most populous basin.

“Glacial melt is the most obvious and potentially game-changing impact of climate change,” said Johannes Zutt, the World Bank’s country director for Nepal and Bangladesh. “If it reduces over time because there’s less ice to melt, that can have an incredibly destabilizing impact in a region where, during the dry period, it can get very dry.”

‘Threat Multiplier’

Climate change is a “threat multiplier” that escalates the risk of conflicts, the U.S. Defense Department said in a March report. That’s a worry for Nepal, which suffered a decade-long Maoist uprising that ended in 2006. By 2050, Himalayan glaciers are projected to recede so much that declining water could threaten the ability to feed 70 million people, according to the United Nations Environment Program.

Meanwhile, the runoff is pooling into more than 2,000 lakes scattered across the Nepalese Himalayas. Many didn’t exist just a few decades ago. At least 21 may be at risk of overflowing or bursting, potentially unleashing a wall of mud and water that can travel as fast as a speeding car for more than 200 kilometers.

Such floods, known as glacial-lake outbursts, could have devastating repercussions because $13 billion of planned hydropower projects, farmlands and popular tourist-trekking routes lie in paths at risk, according to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu.

Electricity Impact

Climate-change hazards in Nepal are similar to the risks of saltwater intrusion destroying farmlands and cities in coastal economies, Ahmed said. “One is a flood coming from the mountain, the other from the sea.”

Blackouts in Kathmandu worsened in August when the deadliest landslide in a decade blocked the Sun Koshi river, about 80 kilometers northeast of the capital. Water pooling behind the wall of debris submerged one hydropower plant, while other facilities along the river were damaged. In total, it knocked out 10 percent of the nation’s power capacity.

At an open-air market on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Ram Sharan Upreti, 38, sells onions and potatoes grown in Palanchok about 60 kilometers from the city.

“Rains don’t come like they used to,” he says, gesturing with gnarled hands and blackened nails toward the sky. Three years ago, they never came and he lost everything he’d invested that year. His three children are studying so they can get city jobs either in Kathmandu or abroad, he said. “I don’t want this life for my children,” he said. “It’s too uncertain.”

Source: www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-13/melting-glaciers-imperil-kathmandu-perched-high-above-rising-seas

Solar in the Lead Globally as Colorado & Hawaii Heat Up the US

Frost & Sullivan forecasts that global installed capacity of renewable energy will double from 1,566 GW in 2012 and reach 3,203 GW in 2025 at an average annual growth rate of 5.7%. Solar is in the lead, followed by wind.  A leading US power utility has joined forces with one of America’s pioneer community energy outfits to finance and develop 8.2MW of community solar projects in Colorado by mid-2015. Hawaii is officially a solar hot spot of national significance — and that makes it a fitting test bed for Department of Energy research meant to stretch the limits of rooftop PV penetration on island grids. Read more

Solar to contribute 33.4% of global renewable energy capacity

By Sabeena Wahid in GreentechLead (28 January 2015)

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan forecasts that global installed capacity of renewable energy will double from 1,566 GW in 2012 and reach 3,203 GW in 2025 at an average annual growth rate of 5.7 percent.

It is expected that over the 2012-2025 period, solar photovoltaic technology will record major growth with 33.4 percent of total renewable energy capacity additions.

Succeeding in the list of renewable assets will be wind energy at 32.7 percent, ahead of hydro power at 25.3 percent.

The remaining 8.6 percent of capacity additions will consist of other renewable technologies.

It is observed that economic difficulties in many parts of the world are affecting the outlook for renewable energy.

The feeble economic situation of Western world has made an impact on support schemes, which normally keeps renewable energy installations alive until grid parity is achieved.

On the other hand, the emerging economies have slowly started conquering renewable energy installations, achieving the target and grid parity.

In particular, regions such as Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa have recorded increased renewable energy capacity growth due to the urbanization, population growth, energy security concerns and strong economic development.

The decline in the cost of renewable energy due to technological innovation and scale economies achieved through mass deployment has enabled developing countries to adopt these technologies.

The report also predicts that global solar power capacity is due to increase from 93.7 GW in 2012 to 668.4 GW in 2025.

However, growth prospects of the concentrated solar power (CSP) market has been weakened due to huge price falls in technology, while solar PV is experiencing a thriving growth.

In the wind power market, offshore wind will see dull growth than expected due to political support withdrawal in Europe.

Solar, wind energies ruling over nuclear power growth

The global wind capacity will hit 814 GW in 2025 from 2012 level of 279 GW, with small-scale wind turbines exploring new application possibilities.

In the global bioenergy and waste segment, Europe will be the leading country. However, future capacity expansion in this field will be arising from Southeast Asia, Australasia, North America, Turkey, Iceland and Kenya.

Beyond 2025, marine power will be accepted widely due to support from government for emerging technologies.

Source: www.greentechlead.com/news/solar-contribute-33-4-global-renewable-energy-capacity-21357

America’s biggest utility to co-develop 8.2MW of community solar

By Sophie Vorrath in Reneweconomy (29 January 2015)

A leading US power utility has joined forces with one of America’s pioneer community energy outfits to finance and develop 8.2MW of community solar projects in Colorado by mid-2015.

The renewables arm of New Jersey and Texas-based power utility NRG Energy and Colorado-based community solar business SunShare said in a joint statement on Wednesday they aimed to install five ground-mounted solar PV systems, four in Denver’s metropolitan area and one nearby Colorado Springs.

SunShare breaks ground on Colorado Springs’ first community solar project

Once completed and online, the project is expected to have produced one of the largest operating community solar portfolios in the US, with the ability to power more than 1,600 homes for 20 years.

As Bloomberg notes, NRG – America’s largest independent power producer – made the shift into solar when faced with declining growth in its conventional fossil-fuel power business. A step most Australian utilities are still refusing to take.

The state of Colorado, meanwhile, has one of the nation’s most aggressive renewable energy standards, according to Bloomberg, and was the first in the nation to allow private developers to create community solar gardens in 2010 – a model that sells the power directly to consumers (namely those 75 per cent of Americans who can’t host solar panels on their roof) who get a credit on their bills.

For NRG Renew, the joint venture with SunShare – which has more than 100MW of solar gardens operating or under development – will more than double its current community solar portfolio.

“These types of programs, whether with homeowners, commercial businesses or municipalities, allow us to democratize participation in renewable power consumption,” NRG Senior Vice President Craig Cornelius told Bloomberg in a phone interview.

Customers of the solar gardens, mostly businesses and municipalities, will sign a 20-year agreement to get electricity from the ground-mounted panels.

NRG is providing the funds and will be the majority owner, while SunShare will manage the customer contracts, the companies said.

The projects could be dropped down into NRG Yield, a separately-traded unit that holds renewable-power plants, Cornelius said.

Source: www.reneweconomy.com.au/2015/americas-biggest-utility-to-co-develop-8-2mw-of-community-solar-18086

Charting Hawaii’s Spectacular Solar Growth

What rooftop PV on one of every nine homes means for island grids—and what to do about it

Jeff St. John in Greentechmedia (28 January 2015):

Hawaii is officially a solar hot spot of national significance — and that makes it a fitting test bed for Department of Energy research meant to stretch the limits of rooftop PV penetration on island grids.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released a report on Hawaii’s solar status this week that lays out the state’s situation in graphic detail. Over the past five years, net-metered solar capacity has skyrocketed on the island of Oahu, and has grown significantly on the smaller, more constrained grids of Maui and the island of Hawaii (the “Big Island”).

Big wind farms and thousands of solar rooftops are changing the shape of Oahu’s energy supply-demand curve, in ways that threaten grid stability as well as the economics of generating most of its power with imported oil. DOE labs have been working with Hawaiian Electric, the company that runs utilities on Oahu, Maui, Molokai and Hawaii, to track these system effects, with results like these showing the telltale duck shape — or, as HECO has dubbed it, the “Nessie curve” — caused when midday solar exceeds demand, then drops off to leave the utility with steep ramps in demand to match with limited resources.

Hawaii faces local grid problems as well. On Oahu, solar penetration has increased to beyond daytime minimum load on many distribution grid circuits, meaning that there’s more solar power being generated than electricity consumed by customers on that section of the grid. That’s the problem that led HECO to slow down new permits last year — and prompted the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission to respond with a broad set of orders, demanding that the state’s primary utility make fundamental changes to how it manages distributed energy.

DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory is helping out on this front by hosting tests of smart solar inverter capabilities with the Electric Power Research Institute and big third-party-solar provider SolarCity. That work led directly to HECO’s proposal this month to double the amount of solar it’s comfortable permitting on already-impacted circuits, from 120 percent to 250 percent of daytime minimum load, without causing grid-destabilizing voltage problems.

By easing the bottleneck on new solar projects, HECO also hopes to justify a concurrent plan to replace its lucrative net-metering tariff with a new set of credits that would pay roughly half as much for customer-generated power. But the implications of its fast-track move from R&D to policy proposal go beyond Hawaii’s shores. California has smart solar inverter pilot projects in the works, and utilities around the country are studying Hawaii to see what they might have to deal with if customer-owned solar starts to grow beyond their local distribution grid comfort zones. NextEra Energy, which is buying Hawaiian Electric Industries for $4.3 billion, will have to confront Hawaii’s solar situation head-on.

Jeff St. John is Reporter covering the green technology space, with a particular focus on smart grid, demand response, energy storage, renewable energy and technology to integrate distributed, intermittent green energy into the grid.

Source: www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Charting-Hawaiis-Spectacular-Solar-Growth