Iceland is famous for its breathtaking scenery, its geysers, its Blue Lagoon—and for using its abundant renewable energy, and especially for tapping the volcanic roots of the island in developing its geothermal resources.
Iceland today generates 100 percent of its electricity with renewables: 75 percent of that from large hydro, and 25 percent from geothermal. Equally significant, Iceland provides 87 percent of its demand for hot water and heat with geothermal energy, primarily through an extensive district heating system.
Altogether, hydro and geothermal sources meet 81 percent of Iceland’s primary energy requirements for electricity, heat, and transportation. Iceland has profited by using the low cost of its renewably generated electricity—and the stable price it represents over the long term—to lure a large aluminum smelting industry to the island.
Click headline to read more and access hot links--
Pour un développement durable et pour l'efficacité énergétique. «Pour ce qui est de l’avenir, il ne s’agit pas de le prévoir mais de le rendre possible. » Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Efficacité énergétique. Pourquoi ? Comment ? Pour faire la différence dans votre organisation, économiser et faire un geste concret pour l'environnement, tout en réduisant le gaspillage et les excès.
San Francisco and Oakland want to hold fossil fuel companies liable for sea level rise costs. In an unusual move, the judge ordered a climate tutorial for the court.
Stephane Bilodeau's insight:
2 Examples of the Judge's questions and the short answers suggested by the reporter:
Q1. What happens to all our direct heat—from cars, radiators, furnaces?
A1. Is this part of the problem? Again, it's trivial—about 1/100th of the greenhouse effect. Raising it in a climate change liability case would be a red herring.
Q2. In school we learned that humans exhale CO2 but plants absorb it and exhale oxygen. True? And why haven't plants solved the CO2 buildup for us; and is our growing population's breathing part of the problem?
A2. Let's take this from the bottom: human (and all animal) breathing is pretty much carbon neutral because the CO2 it returns to the atmosphere was already there very recently. As for plants soaking up the excess, forests and other vegetation are indeed major carbon sinks that can absorb lots of carbon—in other words, healthy forests could offset some of our global warming pollution. But we have been laying them to waste, especially in the tropics. Razing and burning forests releases stored carbon, making the problem worse.
Every new year seems to arrive on the heels of another unfortunate climate record set. And 2017’s is among the most startling: Climate-related and other natural disasters caused a staggering $306 billion in total damages in the US, making 2017 by far the most expensive year on record for disasters in the country.
Is climate change really making weather more extreme? And can we really do anything about it? Get the facts in @ClimateReality’s free e-book: http://bit.ly/2ENYbna
1
Stephane Bilodeau's insight:
Climate change increases our risk of both heavy rains and extreme droughts. But why – and how – is that? Aren’t the two contradictory? Science has shown that climate change touches every corner of our planet’s ecosystem, and the water cycle is no exception. Specifically, as global temperatures have increased at their fastest rates in millions of years, this rise has directly affected things like water vapor concentrations in the atmosphere, clouds, and precipitation and stream-flow patterns. Because the processes involved are highly dependent on temperature, changes in one have consequences on the other.
The plant comprises an integrated concentrated solar power and water desalination facility
Stephane Bilodeau's insight:
The MAT plant comprises an integrated concentrated solar power (CSP) and water desalination facility that can serve a community of 1,000 people in a desert area, Orascom added. Describing the plant as “experimental”, Orascom said that the project will serve as a “launching pad for scaling [the] technology and developing the project into a full-fledged research and development centre for renewable energy”.
The 7.9 MW array will supply 30% of the airport's electricity needs at a price 2 cents lower than the going utility rate.
The project was made possible through a partnership between airport officials, Borrego Solar (which built the project) and NRG Energy (which will purchase the electricity produced over a 25-year period under a power-purchase agreement (PPA)).
The project was made possible through a partnership between airport officials, Borrego Solar (which built the project) and NRG Energy (which will purchase the electricity produced over a 25-year period under a power-purchase agreement (PPA)).
Experts say the American West is full of geothermal reservoirs whose energy could power millions of homes. But extracting that energy isn't easy.
Stephane Bilodeau's insight:
Geothermal energy uses the earth's natural heat to create electricity. CTR CEO Rod Colwell confirms that Hell's Kitchen project s still in the permitting stages, and it's going to cost a lot of money – around a billion dollars. But if it's successful, Colwell plans to build more. He hopes to build enough plants to be able to produce 1,000 megawatts of electricity, which could power about 800,000 homes.
With California looking to phase out its use of fossil fuels, that's no small number. "Particularly in California," Colwell says, "we will not be able to import any carbon-fired energy after 2025. So it's important that geothermal is that integral value in the mix." Geothermal's got a long way to go. But Colwell and others are betting that new technology and the demand for clean energy will someday bring this forgotten renewable to the forefront of clean power.
Enter the search term "100 percent renewable energy" into Google, and you will find fierce debate. Is the possibility of 100 percent renewable energy a myth? Or is the world already close to achieving this goal? This debate tends to underemphasize energy efficiency. But recent research makes a case that energy efficiency is important in any discussion about 100 percent renewable energy.
In August, International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) published a working paper, "Synergies between Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (PDF)." IRENA finds that energy efficiency can enable a more rapid shift to renewable energy in all countries and sectors.
//
Pour atteindre 100% d'énergie renouvelable, le monde doit surmonter les défis techniques, politiques, culturels et financiers. Le rapport IRENA constate que l'efficacité énergétique peut aider à surmonter bon nombre de ces défis.
To approach any 100 percent renewable energy scenario, improved energy efficiency is needed in both energy-supply sectors and energy-consumption sectors. More than 60 percent of energy produced in the United States in 2016 across all sectors was wasted, according to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, so there is plenty of room for improvement.
Driving the discussion about renewable energy is the need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. The 2015 Paris Agreement aims to limit the total global warming due to human activities to 2 degrees Celsius. Pairing energy efficiency with renewable energy deployment can achieve 90 percent of emissions reductions required to meet this goal, according to IRENA.
Only around 20 percent of the global energy supply is currently renewable. Moving closer to 100 percent will require deep shifts in the global energy system.
The threats that climate change poses to business, markets, and, indeed, capitalism are peculiarly hard for most top teams to spot, let alone act on.
Our brains evolved to respond reflexively to immediate threats but ignore or downplay systemic crises that creep up on us. Such market dynamics behave like vortices — a whirlwind in the air, or a whirlpool in water. When a vortex is just beginning to form, it is virtually invisible unless you have extremely good peripheral vision and happen to know what you are looking for. In this stage, things move at a deceptively slow pace. Even the best-designed vessels — or ventures — find themselves drawn inexorably into the danger zone. Then, suddenly, there’s a point of no return.
Such slow — but ultimately exponential — dynamics characterize what I call the carbon vortex. Picture the three major hurricanes photographed from space in the autumn of 2017 in a single, unparalleled NASA image. Think, too, of the forecast that carbon dioxide emissions, instead of declining, will probably have spiked by 2% in 2017, in part because much economic growth in China is still fueled by coal.
2
Stephane Bilodeau's insight:
Today’s climate challenge is so far beyond our collective experience that it demands a radically different kind of engagement from senior leadership teams in the private sector. John Elkington, Chairman and Chief Pollinator at Volans, offers 4 early steps to help your top team get a grip, spot the potential silver linings in the gathering storm clouds, and, over time, learn how to “speak carbon” with growing fluency.
1. Plunge into the data. A growing number of indices now show the trajectory. Consider the work of Carbon Tracker on the growing risks of stranded assets and the death spiral impacting coal. See, too, PwC’s Low Carbon Economy Index 2017, tracking the rate of the low carbon transition in each G20 economy. The top performers in 2016 were China and the UK, which reduced their carbon intensities by 6.5% and 7.7%, respectively.
2. Embark on a learning journey. Growing numbers of senior teams are going on “learning journeys,” visiting regions and organizations that are at the cutting edge of change.
3. Swallow hard — and raise the price of carbon. If we are to meet climate pledges made under the Paris climate agreement, the cost of emitting carbon dioxide must rise to $50–$100 per ton by 2030.
4. Invert the vortex. This inversion approach is also championed by the Carbon Productivity Consortium, anchored by the German materials company Covestro. The aim: to work out how best to invest an increasingly squeezed global carbon budget for much-enhanced economic, social, and environmental returns.
Parmi 30 risques globaux – économiques, sociétaux, géopolitiques, etc. - les cinq types de risques environnementaux, à savoir, les conditions météorologiques extrêmes, la perte de biodiversité et l’effondrement des écosystèmes, les catastrophes naturelles, les désastres environnementaux causés par l’homme et l’échec de l’atténuation et l’adaptation au changement climatique, apparaissent tous comme supérieurs à la moyenne. Les conditions météorologiques extrêmes ont été classées comme risque le plus proéminent d’entre eux, et arrive même en tête des 30 risques globaux en termes de probabilité (et en deuxième place au niveau des impacts).
Longer, harsher winters may be in store for the portions of North America as the polar vortex continues to weaken and shifts, according to a new study.
Stephane Bilodeau's insight:
"With warming and ridging in the Kara Sea, this typically allows for less ice cover but also is a conducive atmospheric pattern for lower temperatures in the North American mid-latitudes," AccuWeather Meteorologist Edward Vallee said.
Researchers at China's Lanzhou University penned the study, which was published in Nature Climate Change last month.
"It has been shown that increases in Eurasian and Siberian snow cover in the fall can launch upper-level warming events that reach into the stratosphere and weaken the stratospheric polar vortex," he said, stating that this Arctic warming can weaken and alter the placement of the polar vortex.
Cet article traduit du National Observer est clair et préoccupant: les combustibles fossiles sont encore totalement dominants dans la consommation mondiale d’énergie.
Même après 25 ans d’effort global pour transitionner vers des énergies plus sûres, on n’observe pas la moindre inflexion significative de la domination des combustibles fossiles. Mis ensemble, ces trois graphiques « manquants » des données BP sur les combustibles fossiles – des quantités toujours croissantes; augmentant chaque année; et maintenant une domination écrasante – peignent un tableau consternant de la fort médiocre réponse de l’humanité à la menace croissante.
Comme l’a regretté le gouverneur de Californie, Jerry Brown, dans une récente interview au New York Times : “Aucune nation ou État n’est en train de faire ce qu’il devrait. Ceci est très grave, et la plupart des gens le prennent beaucoup trop à la légère vue la gravité de la menace. On ne saurait trop en faire pour sonner l’alarme, car pour l’instant la réponse n’est pas du tout à la hauteur du défi.”
Pour répondre à la double menace du changement climatique et de l’acidification des océans, presque toutes les nations ont promis de brûler moins de combustibles fossiles. Mais jusqu’à présent, l’humanité continue d’en brûler toujours plus.
Dozens of countries have government-recommended diets. That advice differs from country to country, but according to a new study, following it generally would help the environment.
Via SustainOurEarth
Stephane Bilodeau's insight:
Behrens just published his analysis in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He looked at what would happen if people in 37 different countries followed the dietary recommendations of their own governments. In general, he says, those shifts would be good for the planet. Greenhouse gas emissions would fall, waterways would suffer less pollution from fertilizer, and less land would be required to feed people.
The "ecodistrict" project required cooperation from the city, architects and a corporate neighbor.
Stephane Bilodeau's insight:
The unique installation is far more energy-efficient than conventional options, according to Amazon's sustainability team. It also carries tangible sustainability benefits for Amazon's partners, including the city of Seattle and the Westin Building Exchange, which runs the 34-story "carrier hotel" providing source of the energy. "I'm familiar with other properties that have used waste heat from a data center, but not across owners," noted Mike Moriarty, the senior engineering manager for the site, in a blog post. "That's what made this one a little unique."
ON THE EVE of the first world war a young Winston Churchill switched the Royal Navy from coal to oil. As Daniel Yergin put it in his book “The Prize”, the reliance on doubtful supplies of oil from Persia rather than Welsh coal turned energy security into a question of national strategy.
Stephane Bilodeau's insight:
"The transition to clean energy is partly driven by the need for ever bigger efforts to tackle global warming. Among other things, that means clean energy needs to expand from electricity, which gets most of the attention now, to heating, transport and industrial processes. It involves building a spider’s web of cross-border grids to help offset the variability of sun and wind power. As the transition gathers pace, it may even require support for petro-economies made vulnerable by the switch.
(...)
Such “energy democratisation” could provide better access to electricity for the 2bn people likely to be added to the global population in the next few decades. It could help decentralise economies and counter the perception that the market works just for the rich and powerful. It could also open up a whole new realm of innovation, just as oil did with motor cars, suburbanisation, air travel, plastics and mass food production in the 20th century. The great game of green energy need not be winner takes all."
When Arctic temperatures spike, extreme winter weather is 2 to 4 times more likely in Boston and New York, while the West tends to be warmer, a new study shows.
Stephane Bilodeau's insight:
Jennifer Francis, a Rutgers University climate researcher and co-author of the study, said that while the study doesn't show causation.
The links between Arctic warming and extreme winters are another symptom of dangerous climate disruption, Francis said. "As we continue to load the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, the Arctic will continue to warm faster than elsewhere, and the likelihood of persistent winter weather events is likely to continue and perhaps increase," she said.
"Decision-makers and individuals must prepare for disruptions to what used to be 'normal.' Extremes are likely to increase in frequency owing to a number of climate-change-related effects," she concluded.
Understanding how extreme weather and temperatures are changing helps relief organizations like the Red Cross determine where to stockpile emergency supplies.
Stephane Bilodeau's insight:
"We're seeing intensifications now that basically break the rules of meteorology," said Alasdair Hainsworth, chief of Disaster Risk Reduction at the World Meteorological Organization. "We used to have rules of thumb that tropical storms couldn't increase in intensity more than a certain amount each day. Those rules are being broken and tossed out the window. And we're seeing more extreme events in places where we're not used to seeing them."
The leading lobby for the electric utility industry and a prominent environmental group today issued a joint statement in support of an "accelerating" clean energy transition that is defined by energy efficiency, reducing carbon emissions and empowering states and customers.
Stephane Bilodeau's insight:
The 21 recommendations from the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) and the Natural Resources Defense Council speak not just to where the electricity industry is now, but — more important — to where it is headed in the coming decades.
"Our perspectives and constituencies are very different, but we find much common ground on clean energy progress, grid infrastructure needs, opportunities for regulated electric companies in electricity resource portfolio management and investment, and the potential need for collaboratively developed rate design and other regulatory reforms," EEI and NRDC said.
Americans are paying a fearsome price for global warming. The federal government's National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration reported earlier this week that the three powerful Atlantic hurricanes of 2017 -- Harvey, Irma and Maria -- cost Americans $265 billion, and massive Western forest fires another $18 billion. Scientists have shown that human-induced climate change has greatly increased the frequency and intensity of such disasters
Jeffrey Sachs says New York City took key steps this week in announcing that it was divesting fossil fuel stocks and suing major oil companies to recover damages from climate change.
Stephane Bilodeau's insight:
"To meet the limits on global warming set in Paris, we have to decarbonize the energy system by midcentury at the latest. Even if we do, we still will face high costs for generations to come from the climate change that has already occurred. Yet we still have the chance to head off a catastrophic rise in warming that could lead to several meters of sea level rise and other disasters to health and safety.
By divesting, New York joins other investors who have gotten rid of fossil fuel investments in sending a powerful message to the major oil companies: Transition out of your world-threatening activities. It's past time to stop drilling for more oil and gas when the world already has in proven reserves much more than could ever safely be used, and invest instead in wind, solar, hydro and other low-carbon energy sources. The world will have to "strand" some large portion of the coal, oil and gas reserves already discovered. There is certainly no need to develop new, high-cost oil and gas fields in Alaska, the Arctic or coastal waters."
Eminent Arctic and Ocean Physics scientist, Dr. Peter Wadhams, and Dr. Maria Pia Casarini discuss the possibility that it's 'game over' for the climate. Hosted by Stuart Scott, at COP22 Marrakesh.
The current state of feedbacks suggest that we may already be past the ‘tipping points’, or to say it another way, over the threshold of the runaway state and accelerating down that slippery slope.
The show focuses on the perils of climate change if things stay “business as usual–b.a.u.” It shows a clip from Dr. Matthew Watson from the School of Earth Science, University of Bristol, UK who was one of the first scientists to speak out about the rapid trajectory of climate change if b.a.u. continues.
While this video cannot establish a categorical answer to that question, it certainly puts the question in the front of your mind where it should be, rather than somewhere in the back.
Since 1990, Americans have cleaned up their climate pollution — per person — twice as fast as Canadians. Americans have come from well behind in the climate race to catch up and current estimates show they have probably passed us already.
Stephane Bilodeau's insight:
The most recent emissions projections from the Trudeau government show the situation is rapidly getting worse.
Share of Canadian climate targets taken up by Oil & Gas and Transport Sectors, 1990 to 2050 Back in 1990, Oil & Gas and Transportation emitted 38 per cent of the nation's climate pollution. Since then these two sectors' combined emissions have kept rising even as we made commitments for stronger climate targets.
The result has been that they capture an ever larger share of our climate targets: 53% of our 2005 target 58% of our 2010 Kyoto target 60% of our 2020 Copenhagen target 72% of our 2030 Paris target under current policies; 65% if all proposed polices in the Pan-Canadian Framework and elsewhere get enacted on time and work as well as advertised
By continuing to drag our feet towards the low-carbon future, we've allowed pollution from these two sectors to eat up ever more of our nation's safe climate budget — leaving less and less room for the rest of the Canadian economy.
Last year there was significant movement by the financial community to push companies to look harder at climate change in particular, but also at other factors that matter to long-term performance, such as LGBT rights, economic inequality, and boardroom diversity. Then 2018 started with a bang — one that could indicate a further shift in investor priorities.
In his annual letter to S&P 500 CEOs, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, made a full-throated defense of both long-term value creation and corporate purpose.
And it’s powerful stuff, especially coming from the world’s largest asset owner. Fink points out that governments seem to be failing to prepare for long-term issues and that “society is increasingly turning to the private sector” to step up on societal challenges. (Interestingly, Apple CEO Tim Cook used remarkably similar language about the role of business in society last summer).
But the money quote from Fink was this:
"Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose. To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society."
What's behind the record-shattering cold heading our way?
Stephane Bilodeau's insight:
The term Nor'easter simply refers to a midlatitude winter storm. Many Nor'easters form when that same polar jet stream collides with warm currents from the Gulf jet stream.
This collision facilitates winter storms like bomb cyclones, notes meteorologist for Weather Underground Bob Henson. "Any areas that lose power due to heavy snow and strong winds will be vulnerable to intense cold," says Henson, making conditions more dangerous for people at risk.
What role does climate change play in all this? It's well known that climate change can influence weather. The effect is known to exacerbate natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires, and warming Arctic regions may even be making U.S. winters colder.
Almost half of the electricity customers in Puerto Rico lack power, according to officials on the island, 100 days after Hurricane Maria hit the island.
Government officials on the island told The Associated Press on Friday that only 55 percent of Puerto Rico's 1.5 million electricity customers have power.
Before Friday, the only official figures from the Puerto Rican government concerned the amount of electric generating capacity that the island-owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) had running.
As of Friday, the generation figure stands at 69.8 percent, the utility says.
Click headline to read more and access hot links--
The Army Corps of Engineers has taken a leading role in electric infrastructure recovery after PREPA ended a highly controversial contract with Montana-based Whitefish Energy. The Corps now hopes to return power to the entire island by May, eight months after Maria made landfall as a Category 4 storm.
"There is possibly a broader issue facing the companies and workforce of today. Our mental approach to change, or put another way, how our cognitive thought-processes react to new technologies. Consider this thought: as our attention spans have shortened, and as we zoom along trying to make mental shortcuts (heuristics) to make decisions rapidly, is it possible when it comes to innovation we may naturally be being handicapped due to ‘cognitive biases’, or even a ‘cognitive capacity limit’.
Quite possibly, we may ‘anchor’ to a piece of data we are exposed to while making a decision, regardless of pertinence or just simply doing what we’ve always done because we know no better. We may also ‘frame’, often drawing different conclusions from the same underlying information, depending on how it is presented.
Over the last 50 years, many technological innovations have spread with stunning speed; don’t expect 4IR to be any less dramatic. This may terrify some people, it may also liberate others. There are potentially many amazing benefits, and of course, anybody used to “old fashioned” ways of working might question whether any new-fangled technique with its amazing benefits will outweigh all the effort and cost. Therefore, can a company, and its workers, afford to let the 4th industrial Revolution pass them by."
Imagine a ship carrying commodities from Australia to China, and another carrying the same, but in the opposite direction. Both routes are equal in distance. Yet that first journey, from Australia to China, costs 33% more, on average, than the return trip. This isn't because of tariffs, subsidies, or some other government policy...
Stephane Bilodeau's insight:
"While China and Australia are extreme examples, these dynamics are largely the global norm. Looking at satellite data since 2012, Kalouptsidi and her colleagues determined that most countries are either net importers of commodities—like China and India—or net exporters, such as Australia, Brazil, the US, and Canada. So great are these trade asymmetries that, at any given time, around 45% of dry-bulk ships are cruising the seas carrying no cargo whatsoever."
New York City’s public housing authority is taking bids in a plan to lease its roofs for community solar projects that could power thousands of urban homes.
Stephane Bilodeau's insight:
"Our goal is to help solar power be accessible by anybody in New York City, which is not the case currently," said Daphne Boret-Camguilhem, senior program manager for energy and sustainability at NYCHA.
By expanding the use of rooftop solar, New York City would not only reduce its carbon footprint―the city has a goal to cut emissions 80 percent by 2050, and buildings are its largest sources of greenhouse gases―but also create renewable energy jobs for low-income residents and connect more communities to cleaner, cheaper power.
Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.
How to integrate my topics' content to my website?
Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.
Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.
To get content containing either thought or leadership enter:
To get content containing both thought and leadership enter:
To get content containing the expression thought leadership enter:
You can enter several keywords and you can refine them whenever you want. Our suggestion engine uses more signals but entering a few keywords here will rapidly give you great content to curate.
Your new post is loading...
