Sustainability Outlook Headlines

PTL Solar (TM) Saves 6,800 Metric Tonnes in Annual Carbon Emissions; Wins Environmental Award

PTL SOLAR(TM), experts in solar street lighting solutions and part of Green Energy LLC, today announced it has received the 'Environmental Sector Award' at the first Middle East Business Leaders Summit and Awards 2010, for enabling the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region save an aggregate of 6,800 metric tonnes in annual carbon emissions.

The Dubai-based company also won the 'Power and Energy Sector Award 2010' for its leading role in introducing solar energy solutions into the MEA markets, through over 100 projects it implemented in 2009.

Prabissh Thomas, Managing Director... Read more..

South Asian leaders admit SAARC failure; blame India, Pakistan

South Asian leaders Wednesday admitted their mutual differences, particulary those between India and Pakistan, failed SAARC to overcome key challenges of poverty, climate change and terrorism in the region as they met for their 16th summit in the Bhutan capital Wednesday.

At the opening of the two-day South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit, heads of the eight member nations pitched for empowerment and close connectivity of South Asia to help in meeting numerous challenges of the region that is home to a fourth of the human race.

Opening the summit in... Read more..

Safesky in talks with States for solar projects

The Israel-based Safesky Software, which claims to be the cheapest solar power solution provider in the world, is scouting for projects in India.

“We are in talks with several State Governments and private companies,” Mr Arik Klein, President and Founder of the company, said here on Monday at a conference.

“We have spoken to the West Bengal Government for solar power projects with a cumulative capacity of 15 MW and are also looking at private projects with capacity ranging between 1 MW and 15 MW,” he said.

The company is also looking at private solar projects in Delhi... Read more..

New biogas technology can save thousands of lives

Many lives that are lost due to indoor air pollution caused by cooking with wood, dung, coal and crop waste could be saved with new biogas technology, say scientists.Justin Henriques, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Virginia and co-executive director of Least of These International (LOTI), thinks he might have an answer to help solve the problem.

Henriques explained how his team updated the 1930s biogas digester technology to allow the units to convert animal waste into enough methane gas daily to sustain a household of eight.

The... Read more..

Carbon Capture Technology Not Practical, Claims Study

As if the fossil fuel industry hadn’t had enough bad news recently, a new study out of the University of Houston concludes that carbon capture and storage technology, which sequesters carbon dioxide emitted from power plants into the ground, cannot work on the scale needed.

The study, by Michael Economides, professor of chemical engineering at the University of Houston, and his co-author Christene Ehlig-Economides, of Texas A&M, says the amount of space needed to store the CO2 emitted from an average coal plant underground has been massively underestimated, and that a single... Read more..

US eager for progress on climate deal

THE US is focused on making “solid, pragmatic progress” towards reaching a binding international treaty to tackle climate change, according to Todd Stern, President Barack Obama’s chief climate envoy.

Speaking in Washington before travelling to Bonn for informal talks convened by German chancellor Angela Merkel and Mexican president Felipe Calderón.

The purpose of the three-day meeting – which is being attended by representatives of more than 40 countries – is to begin preparing the ground for next December’s UN climate change conference in the Mexican resort of Cancún.

BASIC meet on climate equity in June

The BASIC group of India, China, Brazil and South Africa have decided to recast the debate about `climate equity' and will hold a special session on it in the next meeting in Brazil in June.

The move by the BASIC nations comes as pressure from the developed countries to junk the principle of `historical responsibility' embedded in the existing UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has increased.

The convention at present recognises the fact that developed countries have been primarily responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. With a universally... Read more..

Mexico, Germany urge the world to act on climate change at conference with 45 countries

With the fight against global warming in serious trouble, Germany and Mexico are calling on world leaders to get international negotiations back on track and reach concrete results by the end of the year.

“We need to show the world how serious the threat is,” Mexican President Felipe Calderon said as he opened an international climate change conference in Germany on Sunday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who also spoke at the opening of the conference co-hosted by both countries and aimed at laying the groundwork for the next U.N. conference on climate change, asked nations... Read more..

CFL gamble pays off, UN okays project

Manu Maudgal refreshed a certain webpage every 15 minutes, late on 29 April. He had every reason to. On Thursday, the world’s largest carbon emission reduction project under the United Nations (UN) framework got the nod. The project is Indian and it aims to replace around 400 million light bulbs with energy-efficient compact fluorescent lamps, the swirly white bulbs popularly known as CFLs. The bulbs will be distributed to every household at a minimal cost of Rs15 per CFL, which usually costs upwards of Rs100.

Maudgal, a technical specialist with the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE... Read more..

India to Launch Climate Adaptation Fund for South Asia, Seeks to Increase Strategic Dominance

India has announced to set up a fund to assist South Asian countries to adapt to the challenges of the changing climate. The 16th South Asian Association on Regional Cooperation (SAARC) held at Thimphu, Bhutan had the theme ‘Towards a Green and Happy South Asia’. Heads of governments of eight South Asian countries took part in this summit which focused on environmental issues.

SAARC was established on December 8, 1985 by Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Pakistan. Sri Lanka, Nepal and Maldives; Afghanistan was later added as a member. In terms of population it is the largest regional... Read more..

Greenpeace not LOL over Facebook carbon footprint

After an emotional breakup with the timber industry, Prineville, Oregon, was thrilled to get friended by Facebook.

The social networking site chose the high-desert timber town of 10,000 to take advantage of its cool nights and dry air in hopes of making its first-ever data center an energy efficiency landmark.
But the concept failed to impress Greenpeace.

In a report posted on the Internet last month, the environmental group praised Google and Yahoo for tapping hydro power — but challenged Facebook for building in coal country.

The feud shows how hard it can be... Read more..

International Climate Governance: Will Redefining "Insiders" Enable Global Progress?

After the fizzle of Copenhagen, international climate change discussions entered a dull hibernation, in part because the intense and largely unsuccessful negotiations sapped the previous momentum of cooperation between governments, NGOs and other groups trying to strike a post-Kyoto global climate change bargain. Having envisioned yet failed to achieve such a grand compromise, many stakeholders retreated in subsequent months to analyze the causes of failure and to outline their next steps. After this convalescence, climate policy discussions are now restarting both internationally and in... Read more..