This overview sets the scene for the various modules in the Renewables 2024 Global Status Report Collection. It provides high-level trends on the status of renewables in the wider fossil fuel-dominated energy system in the context of global challenges such as climate change, development goals and the geopolitical landscape. Urgent …
The government can truly be proud that it played a big role in the outcome of the recent Berlin climate convention. Its record, however, was not an entirely unbesmirched one. Indian officials, goaded by Indian NGOs, finally agreed in Berlin to support the small island countries" proposal that industrialised nations …
THE Danish government is all set to paint the country a vibrant green. It plans to impose a set of "green taxes" which will encompass both the industrial sector and the consumers. While it is not likely to take much of a toll on the latter, it seems the corporate …
WHILE scientists debate the reality of global warming, an extraordinary experiment in the Pacific has dredged up impressive evidence in favour of the seemingly preposterous idea that pumping iron into the sea might stave off the heating of the planet. The theory is that many parts of the ocean lack …
THE North is persuading India to accept joint implementation (JI) programmes to curtail its emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas. High level delegations from Canada and Germany visited Delhi recently to hold talks with the Indian government officials and experts on national energy policy issues. The reason behind …
THE governments of the industrialised countries, shaky about meeting their present commitment to roll back their co2 emissions to the 1990 level, launched a 3-pronged attack in the February 17 Climate Change Convention in New York. The strategy was meant to loft the ball for such reductions to newly-industrialised countries …
THE industrialised countries are back to their pre-Rio game of chess. They imposed their narcissistic environmental agenda on the economically atremble South by virtually bamboozling it into signing the treaty on climate change in 1992. Three years later, the North has not only reneged on its commitments, but also seems …
LAST autumn, the Greenhouse Debate -- one of the objectives of the Greenhouse Tour (Down To Earth, December 31, 1994) -- organised by Friends of the Earth (FOE)-Netherlands, sought to show how Dutch society can contribute towards reducing energy consumption. The stated objective of 50 per cent less carbon dioxide …
The European Commission's (EC) attempt to devise a common carbon energy tax has fallen apart. At a meeting in Brussels in mid-December 1994, European environment ministers gave their assent to the adoption of individual measures by member-states to cut down carbon dioxide emissions. uk environment minister John Gummer said that …
Friends of the Earth (FOE) Netherlands organised a Greenhouse Tour from September 3 to December 11. They travelled by boat through the many canals and rivers in the Netherlands, visiting 42 municipalities that have signed the Climate Alliance, a declaration in which municipalities have pledged to do all they can …
The present targets set by various countries to limit carbon dioxide emissions are not enough to avert an increase in its atmospheric levels, concludes the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). The report says that an accumulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the …
WHEN temperatures soared to alarming levels this summer in India, the rising level of global warming was squarely blamed. Many saw the rise as a confirmation of their worst fears that all of Earth is getting increasingly warmer. Although it is inconclusive as yet whether global warming was actually responsible …
1980s Growing public Concern over scientific Evidence that Earth is getting warmer and the need to control the emission of greenhouse gases NOVEMBER 1988 First session of the Inter-governmental Panel for Climate Change sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation DECEMBER 1990 The UN General …
WHAT could the consequences be of the rapid extinction of plant and animal species, as witnessed this century? A team of researchers at the Centre for Population Biology, of the UK's Imperial College at Silwood Park says that it has demonstrated experimentally, for the first time, that the loss of …
SWELLING concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are threatening the diversity of tree life on Earth, say 2 US ecologists (Science, Vol 263, No 5149). O L Phillips of the Missouri Botanical Garden, USA, and the late A H Gentry (1945-1993) analysed independent surveys of tropical forests worldwide and …
THE Brazilian minister for environment, Rubens Ricupero, says that Western politicians, NGOs and the media betray the attitude that Third World countries look for what he calls the "lowest common denominator" in international negotiations. These dirty and inefficient cousins apparently force the rest of the world community to settle for …
SCIENTISTS have now discovered that huge quantities of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, produced when fossil fuels are burned, are mopped up by boreal forests -- coniferous forests in the northern hemisphere -- which are themselves coming under the loggers' axe (New Scientist, Vol 141, No 1907). It is established …
RECENT Canadian studies suggest that hydroelectric power generation may, in some cases, be a major source of greenhouse gases, such as methane and carbon dioxide, and so be as polluting as thermal power generation (Ambio, Vol 22, No 4). The gases are produced, explain John W M Rudd of the …
A TIMES poll showed 92 per cent of British citizens opposed the two-stage imposition of a value-added tax on domestic fuel and heating. Unperturbed by these figures, British chancellor Kenneth Clarke said in a television interview, that they must go ahead to help bring down the L50 billion borrowing requirement. …
A TEAM of US researchers have said carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon pollution levels in Kathmandu were the highest among Asian cities, writes Jan Sharma in a Panos report. The average carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon content of emissions of 8,000 vehicles monitored by the team were 3.95 per cent and 0.76 …
THE EIGHTH session of the negotiating committee for a convention on climate change, held in August in Geneva, failed to agree on "joint implementation" by industrialised countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Joint implementation essentially means that industrialised countries can sponsor cheap efforts in the Third World to reduce greenhouse …
