Durban


If private investment is an indicator of what is in vogue (and profitable), renewable energy is certainly trending. At the UN Climate Change Conference the independent US government agency, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), announced that it committed $1.1 billion in financing for the renewable sector during fiscal year 2011, up from just $10 million in 2008.

OPIC works to mobilize private sector investments in emerging markets; supporting projects that both benefit the social and economic development of the host country, as well as create growth and jobs for the US. This year, clean energy projects drastically increased, with investment in everything from solar power to biomass production. Keep reading →


The United Nations Climate Change conference in Durban, South Africa this year will shuttle its delegates to and from the conference in electric vehicles.

“We’re here to demonstrate that zero-emission vehicles are a real and affordable solution for reducing CO2 emissions,” Mia Nelson, of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, says in this video. “These cars are also extremely easy to use and extremely easy to recharge. In fact, with an EV you will never need to go to a gasoline station ever again. You can simply recharge from the comfort of your own home.” Keep reading →


Recently, the U.S. Department of Energy released startling statistics. Not only did last year’s global levels of greenhouse gases jump by the biggest amount on record, but the output was also higher than the worst case scenario outlined by experts just four years ago. The world pumped about 564 million more tons of carbon dioxide into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009. That is a 6% increase.

Against this backdrop, November’s Conference of Parties 17 (COP17) in Durban – the last round of international negotiations ahead of the Rio +20 earth summit next year – could not come at a better time. South Africa’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, this year’s rotating president of the COP series, has stressed that COP17 will be a challenging meeting and seeks to focus the conference on two primary issues: first, how to finance the costs of combating climate change; and second, how to get 194 countries to agree to a second period of the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Keep reading →


Last week, news from the Department of Energy’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center announced that 2010 was a record year for CO2 emissions. Not only did emissions reach a record high, but the annual amount of growth was unprecedented.

This is a worrying rise. It means that emissions are exceeding the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change’s (IPCC‘s) worst-case scenario. It means that the world could be heading for dangerous, unprecedented, and irreversible climate change. Keep reading →