Climate Change

Where Is The Greed In Climate Change Markets? AOL Energy Comment

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Investors representing staggering sums of money gathered at the headquarters of United Nations to hear a day of discussions on climate risk and energy solutions this week.

The packed room included bankers, pension fund executives, policy-makers and the usual crowd of climate change professionals largely made up of consultants that cycle in and out of public and private organizations wearing different hats but often propounding the same message. Their message is one that seemed welcome in the last decade – that markets could be harnessed to solve climate change problems, that a price on carbon emissions would be good not just for health but for businesses currently facing (in the oft-quoted Nicholas Stern phrase) “a result of the greatest market failure the world has seen.” Keep reading →

 /  Published January 13, 2012 at 2:00 PM

EU 2050 Energy Roadmap Neutral On Nuclear Power

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Even as Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol this month–during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa–the European Union set an aggressive energy roadmap to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 80%-95% below 1990 levels by 2050.

The transformation will make Europe less dependent on external energy supplies. Keep reading →

 /  Published December 16, 2011 at 9:30 AM

OPIC Pumps $1.1 Billion Into Clean Energy

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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 →

 /  Published December 15, 2011 at 6:00 AM

World and its people cannot accept no for an answer

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On #climatechange, Ban Ki-moon tells Durban attendees the world & its people cannot accept ‘no’ for an answer http://bit.ly/rG7Ove #COP17 @UN

 /  Published December 6, 2011 at 12:02 PM

Happening now in Durban: UN Climate Change Conference

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Happening now in Durban: UN #ClimateChange Conference http://bit.ly/vc4q4m. Follow #COP17 for updates @UN

 /  Published December 5, 2011 at 9:30 AM

UN Climate Change Conference Brings EVs To Africa

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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 →

 /  Published November 30, 2011 at 6:00 AM

A Wake Up Call For COP 17

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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 →

 /  Published November 29, 2011 at 9:00 AM

Mitigating Climate Change From Wall Street

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The potential for climbing costs in reacting to climate change are looking more and more bleak and it may be time for leaders outside the environmental community to do something about it, business leaders on a Ceres-sponsored call said on Friday.

The meeting was purposefully scheduled to start six hours after the release of a United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel report on climate change in Uganda. It warned global leaders that climate change is real and could have disastrous environmental and economics impacts. Keep reading →

 /  Published November 21, 2011 at 6:00 AM

Have Politics Battered Climate Change Talk?

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Climate change solutions were battered by the recession and political shifts have pushed the issue to the sidelines of the US energy debate, while international climate talks remain mired in the same arguments that have derailed consensus for years.

That was the message from speakers at the US Association of Energy Economists conference October 11 in Washington, DC. In the US, they say the only climate-related action in the next few years will probably come from the Environmental Protection Agency, while internationally, there’s no sign of any progress for December’s UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Durban, South Africa. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 11, 2011 at 3:45 PM
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