healthier, happier and richer

The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is usually referred to as ‘decarbonisation’. Jonathan Porritt, the chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, thinks that it is better to call it “re-solarisation”, because this is positive and solar power has immense potential.

The US EPA is to issue guidelines on which forms of biomass are sustainable and which not. This is some progress, but the Scottish government is doing much better, issuing mandatory standards in April 2011.

Is gas sufficiently low-carbon to be an adequate bridge technology? No – it’s emissions for every unit of electricity produced are over three times as high as emissions from nuclear power.

UK Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, has proposed a radical overhaul of the UK’s electricity market. This is good news, but the government must do more to combat fuel poverty.

On Wednesday 15 July 2009, the UK government published its plan to make the UK a low carbon economy. It is good on electricity, quite good on energy efficiency and heat, but bad on transport.

In November 2009, 3% of OECD electricity was generated by renewables other than hydro. 14% came from hydro. And this was only 17% of what electricity was then used, not total energy used.

Yesterday I went to Brussels for a seminar on CCS with Ruud Lubbers, who used to be prime minister of the Netherlands and is now running the Rotterdam Climate Initiative.

Comment on the launch of the European Climate Foundation’s latest report, Power Perspectives 2030.

So climate change has claimed a political victim in Australia and you don’t know whether to laugh or cry…

This is a summary of a longer paper by Prashant Vaze and Ed Mayo on how a new, low-carbon energy infrastructure can be financed at reasonable cost.