Beijing is surrounded by rubbish dumps so large that they have been described as the city’s “seventh ring”. On Thursday Beijing Enterprises completed the largest ever Chinese acquisition of a German business, purchasing a German waste management company for €1.44bn. The target company is regarded as an industry leader in advanced technologies for filtering emissions. The firm currently converts 4.7m …
Continue reading “Beijing Enterprises buy German waste-to-energy group”
President Obama’s White House has proposed “bold” $10 per barrel tax on imports of oil. “The White House said that the tax would encourage a shift away from an oil-dependent transportation system and provide revenue that it would use to pay for much-needed infrastructure investment.” With a current price of $30-$40/bbl this represents a tax …
Continue reading “Obama proposes $10 per barrel oil tax — unlikely to happen”
Bubbles are created when buyers overpay in the hope of finding a ‘greater fool’ to sell to later. This has happened lately in the Chinese stock and property markets. Apartments were built on borrowed money, bought and left empty as prices rose, in the hope they could be offloaded later on to a greater fool before the bubble burst. The same approach was applied in the …
Some people think we can keep extracting fossil fuels and later use some techno-fix to extract the carbon back out of the atmosphere. Researchers in Germany have found that even if we did that, the fact that the oceans absorb CO2, then transport it to the deep ocean, means that the oceans would stay …
One entire state in Germany is about to product all its electricity (and more) renewably: http://cleantechnica.com/2014/06/23/100-renewable-electricity-will-achieved-german-state-soon/
The worldwide market is growing at just under 10% a year and could be a considerable contributor to reduced greenhouse gases. The estimated geothermal resource in the U.S. is between 100 and 500 gigawatts. Iceland is already generating a quarter of its electricity and around 90 percent of household heating from geothermal energy. More information here.
I think it was the science fiction writer Harry Harrison who first proposed the idea of genetically engineered buildings: you plant a seed, and in 24 hours it grows into the building you want, according to the design embedded in the seed. This summer, a step towards that idea will be built in New York. A new cooling tower is …
The concentrated solar power plant shown here has just been called “a pioneer for future power stations.” It has won an award from the Desertec project on the basis of its ability to store heat energy by melting salt, and so be able to generate electricity for 24 hours/day. The plant has been in operation …
The IPCC has released its latest report on climate change. In summary: Climate change has already impacted natural and human systems on every continent. Climate change is also damaging global food production, cutting our supply of fresh drinking water, and damaging our infrastructure. Coastal flooding could reduce global economic production by 10 percent by the end of the century. And the widespread damage already …
So, the IPCC has concluded that averting climate change catastrophe is ’eminently affordable’. Of course it is — it always was. Quibbles about the ‘cost’ of averting climate change have always been spurious, partly because the cost of not taking action will always be greater (ie death), and partly because any ‘cost’ will always show …
Continue reading “IPCC and renewable energy — the view from Texas”