Deadly floods in the Horn of Africa. Summer wildfires that ravaged Canadian forests. Global temperature records unprecedented in the history of humanity.
Environment
6 hours ago
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21
World leaders will face a reckoning over humanity's failure to curb climate-heating emissions and polluting fossil fuels when they meet for UN climate talks next week, as the planet swelters in likely the hottest year in ...
Environment
Nov 23, 2023
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9
The oil and gas sector, one of the major emitters of planet-warming gases, will need a rapid and substantial overhaul for the world to avoid even worse extreme weather events fueled by human-caused climate change, according ...
Environment
Nov 23, 2023
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To meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and limit global heating to 1.5°C, global annual emissions will need to drop radically over the coming decades. A new paper from climate economists at the University of Oxford says ...
Economics & Business
Nov 22, 2023
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4
After two years of robust modeling and gathering input from over 100 community members, 14 community-based organizations, and 31 additional stakeholder organizations in Los Angeles, the U.S. Department of Energy's National ...
Environment
Nov 17, 2023
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A new report by Harvard's Growth Lab finds that South Africa's economy is performing poorly, and its society is facing the consequences of extreme unemployment and inequality. Three decades after the end of apartheid, the ...
Economics & Business
Nov 15, 2023
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30
Climate change in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific Islands worsens inequities and threatens unique island ecosystems, cultural resources, human health, livelihoods, the built environment, and access to clean water and healthy food.
Environment
Nov 15, 2023
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If you're like most people, you've been taught that climate action is a sacrifice. Cutting emissions from fossil fuels, you've probably been told, is the economy-squeezing price we must pay for a livable planet. But our research ...
Environment
Nov 15, 2023
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Around 100 climate campaign groups warned COP28 organizers Monday that success of critical upcoming talks in Dubai rests on whether countries can negotiate a formal agreement to replace polluting fossil fuels with clean power.
Environment
Nov 13, 2023
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CO2 electroreduction is a promising technique to convert renewable electricity and CO2 to high-value fuels and chemicals. Selectivity, energy efficiency, carbon efficiency, and sustainability are the criteria for CO2 electroreduction ...
Analytical Chemistry
Nov 9, 2023
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Renewable energy is energy generated from natural resources—such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat—which are renewable (naturally replenished). In 2006, about 18% of global final energy consumption came from renewables, with 13% coming from traditional biomass, such as wood-burning. Hydroelectricity was the next largest renewable source, providing 3% of global energy consumption and 15% of global electricity generation.
Wind power is growing at the rate of 30 percent annually, with a worldwide installed capacity of 121,000 megawatts (MW) in 2008, and is widely used in European countries and the United States. The annual manufacturing output of the photovoltaics industry reached 6,900 MW in 2008, and photovoltaic (PV) power stations are popular in Germany and Spain. Solar thermal power stations operate in the USA and Spain, and the largest of these is the 354 MW SEGS power plant in the Mojave Desert. The world's largest geothermal power installation is The Geysers in California, with a rated capacity of 750 MW. Brazil has one of the largest renewable energy programs in the world, involving production of ethanol fuel from sugar cane, and ethanol now provides 18 percent of the country's automotive fuel. Ethanol fuel is also widely available in the USA. While most renewable energy projects and production is large-scale, renewable technologies are also suited to small off-grid applications, sometimes in rural and remote areas, where energy is often crucial in human development. Kenya has the world's highest household solar ownership rate with roughly 30,000 small (20–100 watt) solar power systems sold per year.
Some renewable energy technologies are criticised for being intermittent or unsightly, yet the renewable energy market continues to grow. Climate change concerns coupled with high oil prices, peak oil and increasing government support are driving increasing renewable energy legislation, incentives and commercialization. New government spending, regulation, and policies should help the industry weather the 2009 economic crisis better than many other sectors.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
