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Shell Oil Spill Victims Reject 'Derisory and Insulting' Compensation Offer

Sat, 2013-10-05 00:05 — Maeryn Obley

Niger delta residents pass a burning Shell oil pipeline as they evacuate their homes by boat in December 2005. (Photo: George Osodi/AP) Image: Niger delta residents pass a burning Shell oil pipeline as they evacuate their homes by boat in December 2005. (Photo: George Osodi/AP)

commondreams.org - September 14th, 2013 - Andrea Gernabis

A Niger Delta community affected by oil spills has rejected a compensation offer from oil giant Shell they see as "totally derisory and insulting."

The residents of Bodo, Nigeria are represented by the London-based law firm Leigh Day to seek damages for two 2008 spills that devastated tens of thousands of residents in dozens of villages and unleashed a thick, black river of death that has choked mangroves and riverways for years.

The Guardian reports:

    On Friday the full scale of the spills could be seen from the air with over 75 sq km of mangrove forests, creeks, swamps and channels thick with crude oil.

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Solar Crowdfunding a Solution to Energy Poverty

Fri, 2013-09-13 23:27 — Maeryn Obley

Installing solar panels in a village.

Image: Installing solar panels in a village.

ecowatch.com - August 28th - Justin Guay

We have two broken systems—energy and finance—which conspire to support a coal fired centralized grid that never reaches the poor while driving dangerous climate change. That means 1.3 billion people around the world won’t escape the dark, and we’ll fry the climate, unless we disrupt these systems and deploy distributed clean energy. Three months ago the Sierra Club worked on a pilot project with SunFunder to promote such a potentially disruptive solution: solar crowdfunding for the world’s poor.

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David Cameron: UK Must Accept the Potential of Fracking

Tue, 2013-08-20 00:39 — Kathy Gilbeaux

      

Anti-fracking protesters in Balcombe, West Sussex, last month. Photograph: Lewis Whyld/PA

Prime minister says the UK needs to share in the energy benefits and need not worry about environmental concerns

theguardian.com - August 12, 2013

David Cameron has insisted the UK should accept fracking, claiming the controversial method of extracting gas will attract "real public support" when the benefits are explained.

The prime minister said the process would not damage the countryside and cause only "very minor change to the landscape".

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Cameron said: "I want all parts of our nation to share in the benefits: north or south, Conservative or Labour.

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BEMS Market Will Grow To $5.6 Billion By 2020

Thu, 2013-08-08 18:34 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Albert Gomez

      

energymanagertoday.com - August 7, 2013

With commercial building operators facing pressure to reduce energy consumption and IT-based controls and monitoring becoming widespread, a perfect storm of factors has led to new software platforms for building energy management systems (BEMS), says Navigant Research, which predicts that the BEMS market will grow from $1.8 billion to $5.6 billion by 2020.

The Navigant report, Building Energy Management Systems — IT-Based Monitoring and Control Systems for Smart Buildings: Global Market Analysis and Forecasts, says the BEMS market represents one of the fastest-growing and most promising waves of innovation ever to occur in the building industry.

It cites factors such as the increased knowledge and proliferation of digital controls within the building stock in the industry, the high priority focus on energy efficiency among corporations and governments, and the advent of cloud-based data management and Big Data as the reason behind the explosive development of the BEMS market.

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Thai Oil Spill Having Extreme Impact on Tourism - Minister

Thu, 2013-08-01 09:52 — Kathy Gilbeaux

      

Thai soldiers wearing biohazard suits take part as cleaning operations continue at Ao Prao Beach on Koh Samet, Rayong July 31, 2013. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha

reuters.com - by Amy Sawitta Lefevre - July 30, 2013

(Reuters) - An oil spill that has blackened beaches at a Thai holiday island was having an extreme impact on tourism and could spread to the coast of the mainland and affect the fishing industry, officials and an environmental group said on Tuesday.

Tourists were pouring off the island of Koh Samet, 230 km (142 miles) southeast of Bangkok, while soldiers and volunteers in white bio-hazard suits struggled to clear black oily sludge off the white sand.

"We're working to move visitors to other locations if they want to move," Tourism Minister Somsak Phurisisak told reporters.

"I'm very concerned, I didn't think this spill would impact tourism in such an extreme way."

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World Solar Power Topped 100,000 Megawatts in 2012

Wed, 2013-07-31 18:44 — Kathy Gilbeaux

                            

earth-policy.org - by J. Matthew Roney - July 31, 2013

The world installed 31,100 megawatts of solar photovoltaics (PV) in 2012—an all-time annual high that pushed global PV capacity above 100,000 megawatts. There is now enough PV operating to meet the household electricity needs of nearly 70 million people at the European level of use. While PV production has become increasingly concentrated in one country—China—the number of countries installing PV is growing rapidly.

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Dangerous Global Warming Could Be Reversed, Say Scientists

Fri, 2013-07-26 17:00 — Kathy Gilbeaux

      

We’re going to need a bigger bucket of water.  Shutterstock

grist.org - by Natalie Starkey - July 14, 2013

Global warming could be reversed using a combination of burning trees and crops for energy, and capturing and storing carbon dioxide underground (CCS), according to an analysis by scientists. But experts cautioned that trying such an approach after temperatures had passed dangerous levels could be problematic, as climate change reduced the number of trees available for “bioenergy.”

The bioenergy and CCS method was the most cost-effective way of tackling carbon emissions, said the team at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, publishing their research in the journal Environmental Research Letters on Thursday.

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Research - Meeting global temperature targets—the role of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/3/034004/article

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Bloom Energy Made from Beach Sand

Wed, 2013-07-24 23:48 — Kathy Gilbeaux

http://www.bloomenergy.com

Bloom Energy is changing the way the world generates and consumes energy.

Our unique on-site power generation systems utilize an innovative new fuel cell technology with roots in NASA's Mars program.

Derived from a common sand-like powder, and leveraging breakthrough advances in materials science, our technology is able to produce clean, reliable, affordable power,... practically anywhere,... from a wide range of renewable or traditional fuels.

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Fossil Fuel Use Pushes Carbon Dioxide Emissions into Dangerous Territory

Tue, 2013-07-23 22:42 — Kathy Gilbeaux

 
earth-policy.org - by Emily E. Adams
July 23, 2013

Increasing global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), a heat-trapping gas, are pushing the world into dangerous territory, closing the window of time to avert the worst consequences of higher temperatures, such as melting ice and rising seas. Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels have grown exponentially. Despite wide agreement by governments on the need to limit emissions, the rate of increase ratcheted up from less than 1 percent each year in the 1990s to almost 3 percent annually in the first decade of this century.

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Wind at parity with new coal in India, solar to join by 2018: HSBC

Thu, 2013-07-18 10:13 — Gina Angiola

By on 11 July 2013

Wind energy is now cost competitive with new-build coal capacity in India, and solar is likely to follow suit sometime between 2016-18, according to a report by HSBC.

The report on India Renewables, Good bye winter, hello spring, published on April 30, says the growing cost-competitiveness of renewable energy with new-build coal – and the arrival of wind parity, despite the upper wind FiT range being around 15 per cent lower than the upper tariff range for new coal capacity (see chart 3 below) – is helping to drive strong renewables growth on the sub-continent.

India’s share of renewable generation in the total electricity mix increased to around 6 per cent in the 2012/13 financial year – an amount the government is hoping to grow to 20 per cent by the end of 2020, to help meet the nation’s a peak power deficit of 12GW, or around 9 per cent of its demand....

 

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