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Notes"Well, of course it is! Every new technology is more expensive. What if we hadn’t started using computers because they were more expensive than typewriters? What if we hadn’t started using cell phones because they were more expensive than land lines? Where would we be?"/Topics/focus-clean-energy-wind-585-mfk013011.jpg)
US Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus’ no nonsense response to the argument that renewable energy sources (e.g. solar, wind, geothermal) are (currently) more expensive than non-renewable energy (e.g. oil, coal, natural gas). I found the quote in the recent Climate Progress article, ‘The U.S. Military Takes on Global Warming’.
(Photo credit: Pew Environment)
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Notes Climate Leadership: 'South Korea Passes Cap-And-Trade Legislation'
From Sustainable Business:
South Korea passed legislation to begin a national cap-and-trade program with a near unanimous vote of 148-0, with three abstentions.
The fourth largest economy in Asia, South Korea is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions among industrialized countries, doubling since 1990. It is the 8th biggest source of GHG emissions in the world and has a national target of cutting them 30% by 2020.POSCO, the world’s third largest steelmaker, and Samsung Electronics, the largest electronics manufacturer, are among South Korea’s biggest polluters.
Emissions trading is scheduled to begin in Korea in 2015, the same year as those in Australia and China. New Zealand started emissions trading in 2009, and the EU’s went into effect in 2005. South Africa has plans for a program. In the US, the northeastern states have a cap-and-trade program, California’s begins in 2013.
In April, both Mexico and Peru passed national climate change legislation.This opens the possibility of linking country cap-and-trade programs - allowing participants to trade regionallly and eventually worldwide - which would raise the value of carbon markets substantially.
Check out the rest of the article here.
(Photo credit: Energy Korea)
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Notes"There are two ways to level the energy playing field. The first is to internalize the almost unmeasurably dire cost of fossil fuels, which as a byproduct of their use are radically altering the planet’s climate in ways increasingly inimicable to life as we know it, through carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes and such. In Germany, doing this to a sufficient level to make coal more expensive than renewable power would’ve made the domestic coal industry furious. It would’ve been a ferocious political battle. So the Germans under the left-wing Red-Green Coalition in 2000 went another way.
The other way – which gave rise to the feed-in tariff – is to incentivize renewable energy sufficiently to offset the avoided cost of the greenhouse gas it doesn’t create. In a sense, you’re internalizing the practice that has emerged in carbon-priced markets worldwide, in which polluters buy offsets from green energy facilities. Instead of doing such elaborate market gymnastics, you simply build the desired offset into the green energy price through a pricing obligation. Grid operators in countries like Germany buy wind and solar and other renewably generated power at costs high above the cost of coal-fired power, and the added cost is passed on to consumers. In the case of the German energy market, the average household saw energy bills rise by about 40 euros per year (fifty bucks or so) in the first decade of the feed-in tariff."Writer Chris Turner explains the “two way to level the energy playing field” in his MNN article, ‘What have we learned about cheap energy?’
(‘Renewable Electricity Generation in Germany’ graph: Volker Quaschning via Clean Technica)
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Notes Celebrating sustainable transportation: 'CicLAvia draws 100,000 cyclists, skaters and pedestrians'
From The Los Angeles Times:
Los Angeles held its first CicLAvia in October 2010, when 7.5 miles of streets were blocked off to motor vehicles from East Hollywood to Boyle Heights. Sunday, which marked the fourth version of the event, tested the city’s flexibility as cyclists invaded downtown, Dodgers fans attended a home game up the hill and the Lakers faithful poured into L.A. Live — all at roughly the same time. And somehow the city still seemed to function.
The idea of booting cars off the roads and turning the asphalt over to cyclists and pedestriansfirst took hold as a weekly ciclovía in Colombia more than 30 years ago and was later adopted by cities elsewhere in Latin America and in the United States.
The festival was an immediate hit in L.A. and quickly became the city’s marquee event for pedestrians and cyclists.
“Angelenos are aching for a day without a car. CicLAvia provides us one of those days,” Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Sunday before joining in the ride.
“But the change doesn’t have to be temporary, so we are taking steps to make it easier for Angelenos to get from point A to point B — with or without a car,” he said.
Villaraigosa used the platform Sunday to unveil a privately funded $16-million bike-share program that aims to put 4,000 rental bicycles at 400 kiosks across the city.Check out the rest of the article and news video of the event here.
(Photo credit: Los Angeles Times)
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NotesClean Energy Future: ‘Solar Cheaper Than Oil in Long Run’
From Bloomberg:
Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bin Ali Al-Nuaimi, a member of one of the ruling royal families in the United Arab Emirates, talks about his efforts to change the way his country makes and consumes energy, and the outlook for the growth of renewable energy sources. He speaks on Bloomberg Television’s “InBusiness with Margaret Brennan.”
Al-Nuaimi was also recently profiled by CNN in the article, ‘From polluter to protector: The UAE’s Green Sheikh’.
(Photo credit: Masdar City)
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Infographic: ‘How Are Cities Tackling Climate Change’
From C40 Cities:
Earlier this year, C40 and urban sustainability experts Arup released a groundbreaking report detailing these actions and uncovering where mayors hold the most power to effect change. The research found that C40 mayors have strong powers to mitigate and adapt to climate change in sectors from transport to buildings to waste management. Those powers represent a significant opportunity, and one that many city leaders are already seizing.
40 cities across the C40 network have collectively taken 4,734 actions to tackle climate change–more than three quarters of which have been implemented since C40 was founded in 2005.
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Notes 'Global Ranking of Top 10 Resilient Cities'From TriplePundit:
Resilient cities, those that are working to transition towards a low-carbon economy while also preparing to avert the worst of climate change, are gaining interest and attention from policy makers, city councils and others worldwide. In fact, today, leaders from the public and private sector, supported by ICLEI (see below) and the U.S. Green Building Council, are launching a National Leadership Speaker Series on Resiliency and Security in the 21st Century.
“The battle to prevent catastrophic climate change will be won or lost in our cities…” (C40 Cities Initiative)
Cities account for up to 80% of GHG emissions globally and are home to more than 50% of the world’s population (headed to 60%, 5 billion people by 2030). As I mentioned in my previous post, if we refocus our efforts on the right solutions soon enough, we can mitigate the worst of climate change while actually improving our city economies and growing corporate profits. Hunter Lovins and I recently published a book entitled Climate Capitalism to share stories of cities and companies around the world who are profiting from that transition to the low carbon economy. Furthermore, the longer we wait the more we will have to pay for adaptation.
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The Top 10 Resilient Cities Are….
10.) Tokyo, Japan
9.) London, UK
8.) New York, USA 
7.) San Francisco, USA
6.) Paris, France
5.) Vancouver, Canada
4.) Stockholm, Sweden
3.) Barcelona, Spain
2.) Curitiba, Brazil
1.) Copenhagen, DenmarkYou can check out the runners up and why each city ranked where it did here.
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Notes 'Quebec adopts cap-and-trade system to fight climate change'
From The Montreal Gazette:
Environment Minister Pierre Arcand announced the official adoption of Quebec’s cap-and-trade system to fight climate change Thursday – three days after what Arcand called the federal government’s “utterly regrettable” announcement that Canada will withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol.
Arcand said if industrialized countries abandon Kyoto – the lone legally binding international agreement on greenhouse gas reduction – it becomes all the more crucial for states and provinces to take legislative action to reduce emissions quickly.
Arcand said the cap-and-trade system will be good not just for the climate, but for the economy.
“With the adoption of this legislation, Quebec is positioning itself at the starting line, beside California,” he told a news conference Thursday at Montreal’s Biosphere.
“We are participating in the emergence of an economic tool that will transform one of the most significant environmental challenges of the 21st century into a real trampoline toward a green, prosperous and sustainable economy.”
States and provinces, through endeavours like the Western Climate Initiative, are acting independently to create a linked North American market for carbon credits, which aim to reduce emissions, encourage investment in clean energy technologies, create green jobs and improve public health.
California became the first state to adopt a cap-and-trade program in October, and like Quebec’s system, it comes into full effect in January 2013.
Check out the rest of the article here.
(Photo credit: Globe & Mail)
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Notes"Effectively addressing climate change will require over the coming decades a fundamental remaking of energy production, transportation and agriculture around the world — the sinews of modern life."
~ New York Times journalist John Broder, in his analysis of the recent international climate change negotiations in Durban, South Africa.
(Photo credit: Climate Literacy)
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Notes Climate Change: 'China to tax carbon emissions by 2015'
From Business Green:
China looks set to impose a direct tax on its largest greenhouse gas emitters by 2015, according to reports in state media.
Proposals for an environmental tax are being reviewed by the Ministry of Finance and are expected to come into force before the end of the 2011-2015 five-year plan, the state news agency Xinhua reported today, citing government sources.
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The prospective tax is the latest in a series of measures from the Chinese government designed to curb the country’s soaring greenhouse gas emissions, which oil giant BP recently estimated made up a quarter of the world’s total in 2010.
Most notably, the country’s latest five year plan includes targets to reduce carbon intensity, the amount of CO2 produced per unit of GDP, by 17 per cent from 2011 to 2015.
To ensure the target is met the government has launched wide-ranging incentives to drive investment in low carbon energy, introduced tough new fuel and energy efficiency standards, and piloted carbon trading mechanisms in several provinces.
Check out the rest of the article here.
(Photo credit: Urban Age)
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Under the right circumstances, solar cells from Semprius could produce power more cheaply than fossil fuels
via nextbigfuture
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Nature inspires more creative minds
The more you get away from the stresses of daily life and the more time you spend... -
The Spring of 2012 Is the Hottest in U.S. History
In case, you know, you haven’t been outside in the past three month, it’s...
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Walkable neighborhoods now more valuable than car-centric ones
If you can walk to the post office, library and eateries, your real estate could... -
Ride. a short film on bike commuting.
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Urbanized, a feature-length documentary by Gary Hustwit about the design of cities, which looks at the issues and strategies behind urban...
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“Income Inequality As Seen from Space,” Per Square Mile, May 24, 2012
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Cycles of Life by Grant Snider
