Opinion:
¶ “For China, Climate Change Is No Hoax – It’s a Business and Political Opportunity” • Chinese leaders are taking aggressive action to cut carbon emissions. Reasons go past air quality in their nation’s cities and include market share in promising export markets for green technologies and “soft power” in international relations. [DeSmog]
Shanxi wind farm (credit Hahaheditor12667, creative commons)
¶ “Leveraging Technology To Settle The Climate Change Debate” • The great irony of the climate change challenge is that the solutions humanity needs to leverage to reduce emissions at a rate necessary to avert catastrophic climate change already exist. Not only that, many of these technologies can compete on the basis of cost alone. [CleanTechnica]
Science and Technology:
¶ University of Delaware oceanographer Andreas Muenchow stood before Congress in 2010 and balked on climate change. He said he wasn’t sure. He needed more evidence. But he recently decided to see what was happening in Greenland for himself, in a project to study the ice shelf intensively. He has returned, no longer a skeptic. [NOLA.com]
Water rushes through a deep gully into a river on Petermann Glacier. (Must Credit: Washington Post photo by Whitney Shefte)
World:
¶ If the broad policy commitments of various countries are implemented, coal will lose its rank as the dominant fuel for power generation to renewables by 2040, the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook forecasts. It says plainly, “[T]he boom is over: global coal demand declined in 2015 for the first time since the late 1990s.” [POWER magazine]
¶ Deforestation and climate change have decimated the available supply of wood that is used for traditional roof construction in the Sahel region of West Africa. One creative enterprise based on an architectural technique from the ancient Nubia is bringing latter-day Sub-Saharan Africa an offer of superior homes at very low cost. [CNN]
The Nubian vault program aims to stimulate the local economy.
It has trained over 500 masons and generated over $2 million.
¶ According to meteorological reports, rainfall in Sri Lanka declined declined drastically in 2016 compared to previous years. As a result, meteorologists have warned that the country may face a severe drought in 2017. This could have a serious impact on the country’s electricity generation, agriculture and other areas. [Sunday Leader]
¶ Egypt’s Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy has a plan to boost the country’s use of renewable energies. Their plan is to hit a benchmark of 20% by 2022 for domestic power use. Recent events, however, tell a complex story of the country’s struggle to make progress in the face of financial headwinds. [Gulf News Journal]
US:
¶ An electric utility in Vermont says it has found malware code allegedly used by Russian hackers on one of its company laptops. The Burlington Electric Department said it had taken “immediate action to isolate” the computer, which was not connected to the electrical grid. The government had alerted them to the “Grizzly Steppe” code. [BBC]
¶ New York City now has a continuous 9-mile, northbound bikeway from downtown Brooklyn up into the Bronx – running across the Manhattan Bridge, up through First Avenue, and then over the Willis Avenue Bridge. “Bikeway” apparently means protected bike lanes – not just the common, one-white-stripe variety. [CleanTechnica]
New York City bikeway (Photo: David Meyer | Streetsblog NYC)
¶ It looks like the US is about to get much more serious about developing its vast wave energy potential. In the past, researchers have worked at several relatively modest sites in Hawaii and the Pacific Northwest, but now the DOE is funding for a new, $40 million utility scale test site in the waters off the coast of Oregon. [CleanTechnica]
¶ The risk of flooding in the US is changing regionally, according to University of Iowa engineers. They determined that the threat of flooding is generally growing in the northern half of the US and declining in the southern half, as regional climates change. The American Southwest and West, meanwhile, are experiencing decreasing flood risk. [ScienceBlog.com]
Regional flood risks – please click on the image to enlarge it.
¶ The Washington Electric Cooperative, based in Marietta, Ohio, partnered with generation and transmission provider Buckeye Power, to install a 50-kW solar array for the co-op’s members through a Buckeye Power community solar program called OurSolar. The program aims to install a total of 2.1 MW with Ohio co-ops. [Parkersburg News]
¶ Utility regulators in New York this week signaled continued support for a “clean energy” plan that would subsidize three nuclear power plants for twelve years as a “bridge to renewables.” The New York Public Service Commission rejected or delayed 17 petitions to reconsider aspects of its Clean Energy Standard. [MassLive.com]
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