Energy

By Anna Gumbau ( China Dialogue ) – After the economic crisis caused by Covid-19 and the energy crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, European unity is being tested once again, this time by the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). When President Joe Biden signed the IRA into law in August 2022, European leaders […]

Climate Crisis

Time for some Climate Optimism: These 4 Charts on the Unstoppable Growth of Solar will Blow your Mind

The Conversation

By Andrew Blakers, Australian National University | – (The Conversation) – Last year, the world built more new solar capacity than every other power source combined. Solar is now growing much faster than any other energy technology in history. How fast? Fast enough to completely displace fossil fuels from the entire global economy before 2050. […]

Climate Crisis

For First Time, Wind provided more Power than Fossil Gas for Britain, enough to Power 300 mn. Teslas

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A new study commissioned by the UK private electric utility Drax and carried out by professors at Imperial College London has confirmed that in the first quarter of this year, wind turbines in Britain generated more electricity than did fossil gas plants. This is the first time the UK got […]

Climate Crisis

New wind turbine installations in Germany grow almost 50% in early 2023

Benjamin Wehrmann

Clean Energy Wire / Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung ( Clean Energy Wire ) – Germany installed 128 new wind turbines with a total capacity of 0.6 gigawatts (GW) between January and April 2023, an increase in the growth rate of 46 percent compared to the same period in the year before, according to figures by the […]

Climate Crisis

Good Climate News: New EPA Rule would make Fossil Fuel Plants cut Emissions 90% by 2040

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Michael S. Regan, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, announced on Thursday the most ambitious limits on how much carbon dioxide and other pollutants coal and gas-fired power plants can emit. The plants will have to cut their carbon dioxide emissions by 90% between 2035 and 2040. The new […]

Climate Crisis

Long Beach Plans a 400-Acre Facility for Floating Offshore Wind Turbines, Largest in World

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – City News Service reports that Long Beach is planning a 400-acre facility to manufacture and install offshore floating wind turbines off the coast of California. The port has many advantages in this regard, being a deep water port with a federal sea breaker. Each of the wind towers it plans […]

Climate Crisis

Our Climate Crisis: The Ultra-Wealthy have a Private Jet Problem, Therefore so do We

Inequality.org

Blogging Our Great Divide by Omar Ocampo ( Inequality.org ) – The past two years have been a bonanza for private aviation. The drastic increase in demand has led to flight delays, increased costs, and pilot shortages. But the slow deterioration of working conditions for aerospace labor has not stopped the jet-owning […]

Climate Crisis

Iraq Gas Flaring Tied to Cancer Surge

Human Rights Watch

Antonia Juhasz Senior Researcher, Environment and Human Rights @AntoniaJuhasz ( Human Rights Watch) – Ali Hussein Jaloud, an Iraqi man barely in his 20s, died April 21 of leukemia, a disease Ali and his family attributed to the pollution from the oil production and constant gas flares that surround their community in the southern […]

Climate Crisis

Sir Gawain and the Green King: What can Newly Crowned Charles III do to Combat the Climate Emergency?

Juan Cole

Revised Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – We can argue about the character of Charles’s philosophy of nature and whether it is conservative or not. I don’t really care about the origins of his concern for the dangers we face from the climate emergency. I’m just glad he takes this stance, unlike so many of his […]