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China offers surprise hope in climate change fight
Karl Malakunas, AFP
YANQING, CHINA (AFP) – Teenager Zhu Xiaotong’s home a few hours’ drive outside Beijing is a world away from the acrid air and snarling traffic jams that have come to dominate China’s energy-hungry capital.
Cherry tomatoes, capsicum and spring onions rise up from a little garden patch that forms the centrepiece of her family’s brick courtyard home, while a solar panel heater ensures the Zhu’s have warm water even in winter.
Zhu, the 19-year-old daughter of cabbage farmers, has also for the past few months cooked the family meal in their sparse kitchen on a new eco-friendly stove that burns crop waste ultra-efficiently instead of noxious coal.
… The Zhu family stove, in fact, is being held up as a symbol of what many may be surprised to hear — that China could be one of the world’s saviours in combatting global warming.
… China is also quietly emerging as a global force in renewable energy technologies, from big-ticket items such as wind and solar power to small products like the Zhu’s stove.
This is being driven by strong government policies, its own vast market and businesses seizing opportunities in a fast-growing global industry, according to the China programme manager for Worldwatch Institute, Yingling Liu.
“China has the potential to be a world leader in the renewable energy sector,” Washington-based Liu told AFP
(2 October 2007)
Tourist industry to pledge climate-friendly future
AFP
DAVOS, Switzerland – A UN conference on tourism and climate change was due to end Wednesday with a pledge to “green” the travel trade while highlighting the 880 billion dollar industry’s vulnerability to global warming.
UN tourism, environment and weather agencies, national tourism officials and executives were drawing up a declaration that will be put to a ministerial meeting in London on November, officials said.
“The immediate risk is that tourism is demonised for its carbon footprint and regulated because the industry doesn’t act to regulate itself,” said Christopher Rodrigues, chairman of the VisitBritain tourism board.
Tourism accounts for about six percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to a UN report in Davos, and the number of travellers is due to more than double by 2020.
(3 October 2007)
The tourist spokesperson claims that the tourism industry is being “demonised.” A more disinterested observer might say that tourism is being asked to assume responsibility for its actions. -BA
Oil-rich Norway must play bigger climate role-minister
Aasa Christine Stoltz, Reuters
OSLO – Norway must play a leading role in the fight against climate change because its wealth is based on oil and gas production, the country’s new energy minister said on Tuesday, urging the industry to do more on the environment.
Norway’s offshore oil and gas industry is already subject to some of the strictest environmental standards in the world, including a carbon dioxide tax and a ban on flaring.
But in her first public speech since taking office last month, Aaslaug Haga said companies could do more to reduce their carbon footprints.
“We need a private sector which is conscious about its responsibility,” said Haga, who said she wants to prioritise investment in renewable energy.
“Climate change is our time’s biggest challenge,” she said, adding that a greener industry could provide competitive advantages for Norwegian firms.
Haga spoke at a presentation of a new study showing that Nordic firms were not taking enough action in the fight against global warming, even though they were relatively more aware of the issues than many of their peers elsewhere in the world.
(2 October 2007)
Pressure vessel
John Vidal, The Guardian
Stop Climate Chaos may have only seven staff members but it has successfully galvanised extensive support from groups and the public to help force a law on climate change – and its work is not over yet.
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Labour wants a 60% cut in UK carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 and has promised to legally bind government to reach it. But that is not good enough, says the Conservative party, which argues that the figure is out of date and omits the fast-growing emissions from aviation and shipping. It wants a legally binding 80% cut by 2050. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats say nothing less than a 100% cut is needed, and that Britain must be carbon neutral by 2050.
Sixty, 80, 100? 2040, 2050, 2020? What difference can these targets make when Britain cannot even reduce its carbon emissions by 1%, despite years of the government talking up climate change?
“It makes a lot of difference,” says Ashok Sinha, director of Stop Climate Chaos (SCC). This is the tiny, seven-person organisation based in east London that is coordinating the biggest public campaign in Britain since Stop the Debt in the 1990s and Make Poverty History (MPH) last year brought hundreds of thousands of people out on to the streets.
In two years, the organisation set up by five major environment groups has attracted nearly 60 more national environment, development, faith, consumer and other voluntary sector groups. It is a formidable, broad coalition of campaigning organisations representing 4 million to 5 million people, including the Women’s Institute, Unicef, Oxfam and international development groups, many unions, student organisations, Christian and Islamic faith groups, health charities, justice and social networks.
(26 September 2007)
New Energy Finance’s CEO uses game theory to analyze future of international treaties (transcript and video)
Monica Trauzzi:, OnPoint, E&E TV
As we continue to debate and discuss the future of international climate policy, how might a post-2012 policy affect clean energy and clean technology investment? During today’s OnPoint, Michael Liebreich, CEO and founder of New Energy Finance, a London-based company that specializes in research of clean energy and carbon markets, discusses how game theory can be applied to climate negotiations.
Liebreich comments on the importance of incentivizing clean energy investment throughout the world. He also explains what a recent 30 percent drop in ethanol prices will mean for investors and the biofuels industry.
(3 October 2007)
