Sustainability Outlook Headlines

Electric Cars Linked to Increased Carbon Emissions

An environmental group has warned that electric cars could increase carbon emissions in the atmosphere.

The Environmental Transport Association has called for the new generation of vehicles to carry meters to calculate how much electricity they are using.

The Government has assigned a total of 250 million dollars to promote electric cars, much of which will be used to reduce the cost to the consumer by up to 5,000 dollars.ut the ETA - which describes itself as a "Green AA" - has raised objections about their possible benefits.

"Significant changes to the way we produce... Read more..

National Solar Mission implementation plan delayed

The National Solar Mission implementation plan, which was to be launched on November 14, 2009, has been delayed, said a release issued by the Prime Minister's Office on Friday. The delay, say sources, is because the cabinet couldn’t clear the mission due to the unavailability of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee. The issue about appointing the nodal ministry for the mission is also to be finalised. The Rs 91,684-crore draft plan, which aims to install 20,000 mw of solar power, has been already approved in principle by the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change. The delay may be... Read more..

World leaders back delay to final climate deal

U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders on Sunday rallied around plans to avert a failure at next month's climate summit in Copenhagen that would delay legally binding agreements until 2010 or even later. "Given the time factor and the situation of individual countries we must, in the coming weeks, focus on what is possible and not let ourselves be distracted by what is not possible," Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told the leaders. "The Copenhagen Agreement should finally mandate continued legal negotiations and set a... Read more..

Climate change to influence farm production in India: Mayee

Bhubaneswar, Nov 14 : The Impact of Climate Change will be more visible in India and influence the agriculture production of the country in future, Agricultural Scientist Recruitment Board Chairman Charudatta Digambarrao Mayee said today. Addressing the 29th convocation of the Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT) here, Mr Mayee said the climate change had been on the forefront of the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) research agenda.He said the ICAR had sanctioned a project on ''modelling the performance of few major cropping systems in Eastern... Read more..

Power for India, Jobs for the U.S.

Ed. note: You can always keep up with Secretary Chu through his Facebook page.

Before joining President Obama in China on Monday, I am visiting India, another crucial partner for the United States as we meet the challenge of climate change and help speed the transition to a clean energy economy.

India has three times as many citizens as the United States but consumes just 15 percent as much electricity. But in the coming decades, India is likely to become the third largest energy consumer in the world... Read more..

India to unveil 20,000 MW solar power plan

India will soon launch an ambitious plan to boost its solar power generation from 3 MW to 20,000 MW by 2022, the country's minister for new and renewable energy said on Friday.

'The amount which we are going to talk about is huge. I can only say that much,' Farooq Abdullah, told reporters, adding that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh plans to announce its new policy next week.

The policy framework, known in official circles as 'the National Solar Mission,' will address the high cost of manufacturing solar panels as well as the high price of solar power, Abdullah said.

A... Read more..

Black Carbon: An Overlooked Factor in Warming

You can see it as you're flying into New Delhi — or rather, you can't see a thing. As the plane descends to the Indian capital on an ordinary November day, it is immersed in air so polluted as to be opaque, a brownish sludge that scatters any sunlight. The air clears a bit once you've deplaned, but the horizon still contracts, pollution closing off the New Delhi sky like a dome.

That soupy brown air is the result of so-called black carbon expelled into the atmosphere in and around the Indian capital, from the burning of biomass for cookstoves and of black coal for... Read more..

Methane - A Greenhouse Gas Becomes Star of the Market

Capturing methane, one of the gases that contributes to global warming, is fast becoming an attractive environmental deal for industrialised countries - and for Latin America. But the trend is causing tensions between social and environmental activists.

Brazil has already signed on to the first international project for capturing methane, responsible for 20 percent of the emissions that cause what is known as the greenhouse effect and changes in the global climate. The idea is to use the gas to produce electricity.

Projects like this in the developing world will receive... Read more..

IEA urges low-carbon energy investments

The world will need to spend an additional $10.5 trillion in the next two decades on energy efficiency and low-carbon energy to avoid runaway climate change, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The agency published its annual World Energy Outlook on Tuesday (10 November), detailing what needs to be done to move to a sustainable energy future.

With a month to go before the UN climate conference in Copenhagen, the IEA hopes to add momentum to the negotiations that are now expected to produce a political framework agreement rather than a detailed, legally binding... Read more..

Surplus overhangs EU carbon market: further impact on carbon pricing

A surplus of emissions allowances overhanging the EU carbon market threatens a market slump at the end of the year or early in 2010, according to some market analysts.

The impact of recession on industrial output in Europe has meant significantly reduced requirements for EUAs during 2009 among heavy industrial emitters covered under the EU ETS, such as cement, steel and chemical manufacturers. Although there has already been a recession-driven sell-down in EUAs earlier this year, analysts say the surplus is yet to be fully unwound, Reuters reports.

On November 11, the... Read more..

India wants free tech transfer to meet climate change challange

Ahead of the global meet on climate change in Copenhagen next month, India today pitched for free transfer of technology from developed to developing countries to meet the global challange of climate change. Speaking at an international conference here, Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma urged industrial nations to ensure free transfer of technology and unconditional transfer of resources to developing countries to address the global challenge of climate change. He said the only way forward in a world divided between rich and poor nations with huge gaps in development... Read more..

Terrestrial ecosystems and oceans can absorb much more CO2 than expected

A new study by researchers from the Bristol University, UK, has suggested that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 (carbon dioxide) than had been previously expected.

The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket.

Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0... Read more..