Category Archives: Energy

Big banks’ trillion-dollar finance for fossil fuels ‘shocking’, says report

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Coal, oil and gas firms have received $3.8tn in finance since the Paris climate deal in 2015

The world’s biggest 60 banks have provided $3.8tn of financing for fossil fuel companies since the Paris climate deal in 2015, according to a report by a coalition of NGOs.

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic cutting energy use, overall funding remains on an upward trend and the finance provided in 2020 was higher than in 2016 or 2017, a fact the report’s authors and others described as “shocking”.

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‘They aren’t used to losing’: wealthy New York enclave battles over offshore windfarm

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Wainscott, a hamlet in the Hamptons, offers a new obstacle in Biden’s renewable energy plans as ‘Nimbys’ fight back with petitions, lobbyists and lawsuits

Should Joe Biden’s plans for a huge expansion of renewable energy across the US survive the gamut of congressional bickering, a very different obstacle threatens progress – wealthy homeowners who enjoy sweeping scenic views.

Wainscott, a hamlet in the wealthy New York enclave of the Hamptons, is the unlikely setting for a rancorous battle over what would be the state’s first offshore wind farm. A flurry of angry letters to the local newspaper has escalated to petitions, the hiring of high-powered lobbyists and now lawsuits, in what could presage similar quarrels elsewhere as the Biden administration seeks to support a national boom in new wind turbines at sea and on land.

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China leads world’s biggest increase in wind power capacity

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Developers built windfarms with a total capacity of almost 100GW in 2020, a rise of nearly 60% on previous year

China built more new windfarm capacity in 2020 than the whole world combined in the year before, leading to an annual record for windfarm installations despite the Covid-19 pandemic.

A study has revealed that China led the world’s biggest ever increase in wind power capacity as developers built almost 100GW worth of windfarms last year – enough to power almost three times the number of homes in the UK and a rise of nearly 60% on the previous year.

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Yallourn, one of Australia’s last brown coal power stations, to close early in favour of giant battery

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Power station produces 13% of Victoria’s and 3% of national emissions and employs 500 people

One of Australia’s dirtiest coal-fired power stations, Yallourn in Victoria’s Latrobe valley, will close four years earlier than scheduled and be replaced, in part, by a grid-scale battery.

EnergyAustralia announced on Wednesday it would shut the 1970s-built, 1,480-megawatt brown coal plant in mid-2028.

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China’s five-year plan could push emissions higher unless action is taken

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Target is in line with previous trends and could mean greenhouse gas emissions continuing to rise

China has set out an economic blueprint for the next five years that could lead to a strong rise in greenhouse gas emissions if further action is not taken to meet the country’s long-term goals.

The 14th five-year plan, published in Beijing on Friday, gave few details on how the world’s biggest emitter would meet its target of reaching net zero emissions by 2060, set out by President Xi Jinping last year, and of ensuring that carbon dioxide output peaks before 2030.

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What is cryptoart, how much does it cost and can you hang it on your wall?

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When is a meme worth $600,000? When technology has created a ‘unique’ version that can’t be owned by anyone else

Pat, I keep hearing references to cryptoart which are all very … cryptic. What is this thing?

Hey Lucy! So you might have heard of it in context of the $US600,000 Nyan Cat gif or the more recent Kings of Leon NFT Album, both of which are examples of cryptoart. Cryptoart is a way of making digital art unique, and therefore – according to some people – valuable. Normally, digital art is very easy to replicate due to the very nature of digital information. So cryptoart is a way of making digital files one-of-a-kind.

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‘It’s radical’: the Ugandan city built on solar, shea butter and people power

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Ojok Okello is transforming his destroyed village into a green town where social enterprises responsibly harness the shea tree

The village of Okere Mom-Kok was in ruins by the end of more than a decade of war in northern Uganda.

Now, just outside Ojok Okello’s living-room door, final-year pupils at the early childhood centre are noisily breaking for recess and a market is clattering into life, as is the local craft brewery, as what has become Okere City begins a new day.

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Cancel all planned coal projects globally to end ‘deadly addiction’, says UN chief

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Call comes at event hosted by UK government, which is under pressure over planned coalmine in Cumbria

All planned coal projects around the world must be cancelled to end the “deadly addiction” to the most polluting fossil fuel, the UN secretary-general António Guterres said on Tuesday.

Phasing out coal from the electricity sector is the single most important step to tackle the climate crisis, he said. Guterres’s call came at the opening of a summit of the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA), a group of governments and businesses committed to ending coal burning for power.

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Fossil fuel cars make ‘hundreds of times’ more waste than electric cars

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Analysis by transport group says battery electric vehicles are superior to their petrol and diesel counterparts

Fossil fuel cars waste hundreds of times more raw material than their battery electric equivalents, according to a study that adds to evidence that the move away from petrol and diesel cars will bring large net environmental benefits.

Only about 30kg of raw material will be lost over the lifecycle of a lithium ion battery used in electric cars once recycling is taken into account, compared with 17,000 litres of oil, according to analysis by Transport & Environment (T&E) seen by the Guardian. A calculation of the resources used to make cars relative to their weight shows it is at least 300 times greater for oil-fuelled cars.

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Denmark’s climate policies ‘insufficient’ to meet 2030 target

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Report says country set to cut carbon emissions by 54% compared with 1990 levels, not 70% as planned

The Danish government’s efforts towards meeting the country’s ambitious target of reducing emissions by 70% by 2030 have been judged “insufficient” by the body tasked with monitoring its progress, with measures so far announced only likely to take it a third of the way.

In its first annual status report, the Danish Council on Climate Change said new laws, inter-party agreements and initiatives announced since the country’s climate law came into effect last June would reduce emissions by the equivalent of 7.2m tonnes of CO2 by 2030, which is only enough to reduce Denmark’s emissions by 54% compared with 1990 levels.

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Electricity needed to mine bitcoin is more than used by ‘entire countries’

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Bitcoin mining – the process in which a bitcoin is awarded to a computer that solves a complex series of algorithm – is a deeply energy intensive process

It’s not just the value of bitcoin that has soared in the last year – so has the huge amount of energy it consumes.

The cryptocurrency’s value has dipped recently after passing a high of $50,000 but the energy used to create it has continued to soar during its epic rise, climbing to the equivalent to the annual carbon footprint of Argentina, according to Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, a tool from researchers at Cambridge University that measures the currency’s energy use.

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Joe Biden to meet Justin Trudeau of Canada after Keystone pipeline order

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  • Allies seek to turn page on strains of Donald Trump era
  • Oil permit revocation and US goods order complicate picture

Joe Biden will hold his first bilateral meeting with the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, on Tuesday, the White House said on Saturday.

Related: Alberta leader says Biden's move to cancel Keystone pipeline a 'gut punch’

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Human destruction of nature is ‘senseless and suicidal’, warns UN chief

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UN report offers bedrock for hope for broken planet, says António Guterres

Humanity is waging a “senseless and suicidal” war on nature that is causing human suffering and enormous economic losses while accelerating the destruction of life on Earth, the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, has said.

Guterres’s starkest warning to date came at the launch of a UN report setting out the triple emergency the world is in: the climate crisis, the devastation of wildlife and nature, and the pollution that causes many millions of early deaths every year.

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Mexico was once a climate leader – now it’s betting big on coal

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As the climate crisis worsens, Andrés Manuel López Obrador plans to buy nearly 2m tons of thermal coal from small producers

The men on the midnight shift smoked cigarettes and cracked jokes in the glow of their helmet lights as they prepared to go underground. They were loading safety equipment and coils of pipe onto wheelbarrows, in readiness for a second shift due to start working later that week.

“We’re reactivating the industry,” said Arturo Rivera Wong, who had just taken on 40 more workers at the mine he owns in the scrublands of the border state of Coahuila.

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Nigerians can bring claims against Shell in UK, supreme court rules

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Ogale and Bille villagers say Shell oil operations have caused severe pollution including to their drinking water

Two Nigerian communities can bring their legal claims for a cleanup and for compensation against the oil company Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary in an English court, supreme court judges have said.

In what lawyers said was a “watershed moment” for the accountability of multinational companies, on Friday the court overturned a decision by the court of appeal, and ruled that the cases against Shell could proceed.

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‘This land feeds our souls’: the battle to save the Rockies from big coal

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Growing opposition to the lifting of mining protections in Alberta has forced the Canadian province to backtrack

To the east of the Bluebird Valley ranch, the grasslands of the Canadian prairies extend beyond the horizon. To the west, the fields rise, and then sharply erupt into the Rocky Mountains.

Cattle graze the 3,600 hectares (9,000 acres) of the Bluebird, an hour south-west of Calgary, and on hot summer days rancher Jolayne Gardner’s children jump into the chilly waters of a creek that threads the rolling hills.

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World needs to kick its coal habit to start green recovery, says IEA head

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Energy watchdog’s Fatih Birol says shift away from coal in key regions needs to be made a global priority

Dependency on coal in key parts of the world is preventing a global green recovery from taking off, and the shift away from coal needs to be made a global priority, the head of the world’s energy watchdog has said

Coal still forms a key part of China’s energy system, and plans are in train for further coal-fired power plants in the country. India is also heavily dependent on coal, and despite increasing its renewable energy generation has shown little sign of reducing its use of the fossil fuel.

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UN global climate poll: ‘The people’s voice is clear – they want action’

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Biggest ever survey finds two-thirds of people think climate change is a global emergency

The biggest ever opinion poll on climate change has found two-thirds of people think it is a “global emergency”.

The survey shows people across the world support climate action and gives politicians a clear mandate to take the major action needed, according to the UN organisation that carried out the poll.

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Biden raises hopes of addressing climate crisis as Cop26 nears

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President has vowed to rejoin Paris agreement, cut fossil fuel reliance, and invest in low-carbon growth

Joe Biden’s pledges of strong action on the climate crisis have buoyed international hopes that 2021 can be a breakthrough year, resetting the world on a greener path to net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate experts cheered the inauguration of the new US president, who has vowed to rejoin the Paris agreement, rethink US reliance on fossil fuels, and devote hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus spending to low-carbon economic growth.

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Electric car batteries with five-minute charging times produced

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Exclusive: first factory production means recharging could soon be as fast as filling up petrol or diesel vehicles

Batteries capable of fully charging in five minutes have been produced in a factory for the first time, marking a significant step towards electric cars becoming as fast to charge as filling up petrol or diesel vehicles.

Electric vehicles are a vital part of action to tackle the climate crisis but running out of charge during a journey is a worry for drivers. The new lithium-ion batteries were developed by the Israeli company StoreDot and manufactured by Eve Energy in China on standard production lines.

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