OAKLAND, California, 23 July 2019 – On 29 July 2019, humanity will have used nature’s resource budget for the entire year, according to Global Footprint Network, an international sustainability organization that has pioneered the Ecological Footprint. It is Earth Overshoot Day. Its date has moved up two months over the past 20 years to the […]
By Sam Arie 17 July 2019 (Financial Times) – Few things should make you as optimistic — or as pessimistic — as the rise of renewable energy. Optimism comes from a new sense of urgency as the UK, Germany, and Spain set record highs for use of wind and solar power, and record lows for […]
By Alan Neuhauser 1 July 2019 (US News) – There’s a reason nuclear plants are built close to water. Harnessing the enormous power of nuclear fission, plants generate steam, which shoots through pipes to spin a turbine that generates massive amounts of electricity. To keep from getting dangerously hot, the plants suck up surrounding water […]
IRVINE, California, 1 July 2019 (UCI News) – The nations that have signed agreements to stabilize the global mean temperature by 2050 will fail to meet their goals unless existing fossil fuel-burning infrastructure around the world is retired early, according to a study [pdf] – published today in Nature – by researchers at the University […]
By Cristina Rojas 12 July 2019 (PSU) – Efforts to shift away from fossil fuels and replace oil and coal with renewable energy sources can help reduce carbon emissions but do so at the expense of increased inequality, according to a new Portland State University study. [Data available here: Renewable energy injustice McGee and Greiner […]
By Hannah Pitt, Kate Larsen, Hannah Kolus, Shashank Mohan, John Larsen, Whitney Herndon, and Trevor Houser 8 July 2019 (Rhodium Group) – For the past five years, Rhodium has provided an independent annual assessment of US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and progress towards achieving the country’s climate goals. Given the current state and federal policy […]
By Gerald Porter Jr. and Jeremy Hodges 22 June 2019 (Bloomberg) – The Kariba Dam has towered over one of Africa’s mightiest rivers for 60 years, forming the world’s largest reservoir and providing reliable electricity to Zambia and Zimbabwe. But as drought grips the region, flow on the Zambezi river has dwindled to a third of what […]
By Spencer Dale 11 June 2019 (BP) – The Statistical Review of World Energy has been providing timely and objective energy data for the past 68 years. In addition to the raw data, the Statistical Review also provides a record of key energy developments and events through time. My guess is that when our successors […]
5 June 2019 (NHM) – A letter authored by Natural History Museum Head of Earth Sciences Prof Richard Herrington and fellow expert members of SoS MinErals (an interdisciplinary programme of NERC-EPSRC-Newton-FAPESP funded research) has today been delivered to the Committee on Climate Change. The letter explains that to meet UK electric car targets for 2050 […]
4 June 2019 (The Consciousness of Sheep) — One of the advantages of being a rocky island in the northeast Atlantic, right underneath the Gulf Stream is that you get to deploy record amounts of offshore wind turbines to delay the day when your economy grinds to a halt. This is the reality of modern […]
