Tag: climate change technologies

Dumping iron into the sea can bury carbon dioxide for centuries, potentially helping reduce the impact of climate change, according to a major new study. The work shows for the first time that much of the algae that blooms when iron filings are added dies and falls into the deep ocean.

Nuclear power could generate nearly a quarter of the world's electricity by mid-century, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said yesterday (16 June), arguing that it will be a key technology in curbing global warming.

A new global climate treaty would provide an opportunity to create social cohesion by sharing low-carbon technologies between rich and poor countries, Jacqueline McGlade, executive director of the European Environment Agency (EEA), told EurActiv in an interview.

With UN climate talks marred by tensions between poor and rich countries over carbon emissions reduction targets, some are now looking at the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as a more solid foundation for a deal.

Civil unrest and human rights litigation cases are likely to increase in the coming years unless heads of state and government show political leadership to stop climate change, said Mary Robinson, a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and former Irish president, in an interview with EurActiv.

With nearly 200 nations having begun climate talks in Copenhagen, a genuine global regulatory framework is required to create a level playing field for businesses seeking to slash their emissions and move towards a low-carbon future, Giuseppe Montesano, head of environmental policy at Italian power company Enel, told EurActiv in an interview.

After the last round of climate talks before the UN conference in Copenhagen ended with a sense of pessimism and impending defeat, the Danish ambassador to the EU, Poul Skytte Christoffersen, warns against the danger of postponing a deal until next year.

The drive to 'green' the EU economy will only succeed if it provides real solutions for low income households and works towards a "renewed sense of shared prosperity," European Economic and Social Committee President Mario Sepi told EurActiv in an interview.

In order to manage the huge task of transforming the current energy system to fit climate considerations, it is important to keep future ground-breaking technology options open while making early emission cuts by using energy more efficiently, Franklin M. Orr, director of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University, told EurActiv in an interview.

China hit out at rich nations at international climate talks in Bangkok yesterday (6 October), saying failure to honour past climate commitments was undermining UN-led efforts to try to seal a broader pact in December to fight global warming.

With only 70 or so days to go before leaders meet to agree on a post-Kyoto climate deal in Copenhagen, there is a need to speed up negotiations and "make political choices," Danish Climate Change and Energy Minister Connie Hedegaard told EurActiv in an interview.

Green jobs and competitiveness will feature high on the incoming European Commission's agenda as it takes on the challenge of delivering on pledges to lead the world in combating climate change.

Scientists should not meddle with the Earth's complex climate by experimenting with futuristic geo-engineering options when softer approaches are available, Frank Raes, head of the climate change unit at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, told EurActiv in an interview.

The EU will embark on a radical decarbonisation of its transport and electricity sectors to retain leadership on climate change in the run-up to 2020, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said as he outlined the EU executive's priorities for the next five years. But environmentalists remain sceptical.

While governments haggle over the amounts needed to finance climate adaptation in developing countries in order to close a global agreement later this year, concerns are being raised that the demand side of adaptation has been ignored.

Despite the need to come up with a global climate deal by the end of the year in Copenhagen, diplomats involved in the negotiations are not making enough progress, India's special envoy on climate change, Shyam Saran, told EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

A very important priority of China's relations with the EU is to vigorously promote co-operation in energy saving, emission reduction, environmental protection and new energy sources, writes Ambassador Song Zhe, head of the Mission of the People's Republic of China to the EU, in an essay published on the mission's webpage on 18 April.

The US must not do less than the EU to cut greenhouse gas emissions, said in an exclusive interview with EurActiv Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which received the Nobel peace prize in 2007 together with former US vice-president Al Gore.

China and India must play their full part in fighting climate change and accept that programmes financed by the West to modernise their industries will only come in return for making genuine efforts at home, warns the EU's chief climate negotiator in an interview with EurActiv.

The UN climate change conference in Copenhagen this December "may well determine whether or not the world can respond to a threat which scientists are convinced will lead to catastrophic change unless we act fast," writes Michael Berendt, a senior policy advisor at Fleishman Hillard, on Blogactiv.

Political objectives to reduce CO2 emissions and transform the energy system are set to shape the EU's industrial and economic development in the coming decades, but the 'third industrial revolution' has been challenged by a financing squeeze as the world grapples with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

There is "no need to wait for extreme weather events to strike and islands and coastal regions to be flooded" to develop effective climate change adaptation policies, argue Frank Biermann, professor of environmental policy sciences at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IES) et al. in a November paper for the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS).

EU countries should pour money into 'green' jobs to make Europe the world leader in green engineering, John Monks, secretary-general of ETUC, the European Trade Union Confederation, told EurActiv in an interview, describing the bloc's economic recovery plan as "ambitious, but not enough".

A group of MEPs will head to ongoing UN negotiations in the Polish city of Poznań next week, urging world leaders to put development at the heart of a post-Kyoto climate deal in an attempt to combat rising mistrust between developed and developing countries over the issue.