Posts tagged ‘global warming’

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07/06/2016

Indian solar power | The Economist

NARENDRA MODI, India’s prime minister, visits America for three days this week for talks with Barack Obama. Climate commitments may be one of many topics discussed. Six months ago 187 countries agreed to cut pollution through pledges for the UN climate talks in Paris. The deal adopted there was stronger than many expected, but much remains to be done. Even if countries manage to do all they offered, global warming will likely be held to around 3.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures. Conversely, the Paris deal aims overall to ensure warming does not exceed 2°C.

Unlike America and China, the world’s two largest polluters, India did not pledge a future reduction in aggregate emissions. It offered instead to reduce the intensity of its emissions—the amount of pollution per unit of economic output—by around a third by 2030 as measured against 2005 levels. Its greenest promise was to install 175GW of renewable power by 2022 (most of it solar). This is an enormous undertaking. In 2014, for example, the world’s entire installed solar capacity was 181GW.

The Modi government says the plans are “ambitious but achievable”. The country’s total installed solar power capacity now comes to 5.8GW; to meet its targets it will need to speed up from adding around 4GW a year to adding more than 15GW instead.

Mr Modi believes solar power is the “ultimate solution to India’s energy problem”. Of 250m households in India, 56m do not have access to electricity. The majority are in rural areas where off-grid solar installations, suitable for single homes or small clusters of buildings, could prove particularly helpful.

India’s solar programme is a good way to assess how seriously countries are taking the Paris agreement—particularly given India’s huge population and increasing economic heft. Mr Modi’s moves will illuminate the state of climate diplomacy.

Source: Daily chart: Indian solar power | The Economist

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14/04/2015

India will set Climate Change conference agenda: Modi – The Hindu

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has slammed developed nations for questioning India over global warming despite it having the lowest per capita emission of gases and asserted that India will set the agenda for the Climate Change conference to be held in France in September.

Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser (centre) smiles as a trainee hands over a small Berlin TV Tower to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a visit to the Siemens company in Berlin on Monday.

“I am surprised that the world is scolding us even though our per capita gas emission is the lowest…,” he said while addressing a reception for the Indian community here last night.

Underlining that preservation of nature was in the customs and tradition of Indians which they have done for ages, Mr. Modi said, “The whole world is posing questions to us. Those who have destroyed climate are asking questions to us. If anybody has served the nature, it is Indians.”

He asserted that India is “not answerable to the world” and will tell them that “you destroyed nature.”

Underlining that India should lead the way to deal with climate change, the Prime Minister said, “India will set the agenda for the upcoming Conference of Parties (COP)” meeting to be held in Paris in September.

Referring to India’s traditional practices and traditions, Mr. Modi said it is the only country which has served the nature the most as Indians even treat even river as mother and worship trees.

“Treating the nature well comes naturally for Indians and they (developed nations) are teaching us,” he said.

The Prime Minster said the solutions to the “crisis” on account of global warming are in India’s traditions and customs.

“We should go out with confidence,” he said, asking the Indian diaspora to contribute in this regard.

At the same time, he said India also wants solutions to the global problem of climate change. In this regard, he spoke about his government’s initiatives to tap clean and renewable energy for generating 175 Gigawatts of electricity from it.

One Gigawatt is equal to 1,000 MW.

“Earlier, we did not go beyond Megawatts but in 10 months, we have at least started thinking of Gigawatts,” he said.

via India will set Climate Change conference agenda: Modi – The Hindu.

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01/04/2015

China to unveil measures to fight water pollution | Reuters

China is to launch an action plan to protect the quality of its scarce water resources after years of rapid economic growth that have left much of its water supply too polluted for human consumption or for growing food.

The plan, expected to be published this month, will require firms in heavily polluting industries such as paper mills and dye and chemical plants to treat discharged water and it will set higher penalties for those that violate rules on discharging pollutants, according to official media reports.

One third of China’s major river basins and 60 percent of its underground water are contaminated, according to official data, posing a major threat to public health and food security.

The long-awaited action plan is expected to be approved by the cabinet this month to give it legal powers to hold polluters and local authorities responsible.

“The plan will ring an alarm bell with local authorities who did little to protect water and will help to remove the regional segregation that constrained the growth of the water treatment business,” said He Yuanping, executive vice president of Originwater, a private clean water technology company.

He estimated the treatment business could be worth more than 2 trillion yuan ($323 billion) in terms of the total investment involved, including assets owned by local governments.

via China to unveil measures to fight water pollution | Reuters.

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18/12/2014

China Plans to Dethrone King Coal – Businessweek

China is, by far, the largest consumer of coal worldwide. In 2011, China accounted for nearly half the coal burned globally, according to data compiled by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. China is also the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases that cause global warming. That’s the bad news.

China's Coal Demand May Peak Before 2020

The good news is that China’s coal usage is “very likely to peak before 2020,” according to a report (PDF) published by the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). The author, Li Zhidong, a professor at Nagaoka University of Technology in Japan, examined data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics to find that the country’s appetite for coal is rising at a dramatically slower rate today than a few years ago. In 2011, China’s coal usage jumped 9 percent; last year, it rose only 2 percent.

Several factors are behind the trend. The first is simply that China’s manufacturing sector has slumped, meaning that factories required less additional electricity.

A more lasting factor, however, is that China’s push to expand renewable energy usage has made coal account for a declining share of power generation. In 2010, coal-fired power plants supplied 75.6 percent of China’s electricity; that dipped to 73.3 percent by 2013. Whether or not the economy picks up, the share of coal power is likely to continue to decline. In just the past three years, China has busily installed new dams, windmills, solar panels, and nuclear plants, adding 64 gigawatts of hydropower, 46 Gw of wind power, 15 Gw of solar power, and 4 Gw of nuclear power, according to NBR.

via China Plans to Dethrone King Coal – Businessweek.

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07/11/2014

China’s Solar Power Push – Businessweek

As the world’s largest emitter of carbon, China has decided that one of the best ways to clean up its polluted air is through solar power. The country has led the world in solar installations for the last two years and will likely do so again in 2015. It’s on pace to reach 33 gigawatts of solar power capacity by the end of 2014, 42 times more than it had in 2010 and more than exists in Spain, Italy, and the U.K. combined, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. (The U.S. will have 20 gigawatts by the end of this year.)

Most of China’s solar power comes from sprawling utility-scale solar farms in the country’s rural west. Now the idea is to distribute solar panels in urban areas, putting them on top of office buildings and factories and connecting them to the grid without building miles of costly transmission lines. In 2015, BNEF estimates that China will add as much as 15 gigawatts of solar capacity, enough to power roughly 16 million homes. More than half of that increase will come from cheap panels installed on commercial buildings. If the 2015 projection holds, China will have installed twice as much solar power in factories and office towers in one year than currently exists in all of Australia, one of the world’s sunniest countries.

via China’s Solar Power Push – Businessweek.

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20/01/2012

* Chinese climate change report stark and honest

Global warming threatens China’s march to prosperity by reducing crops, shrinking rivers and unleashing more droughts and floods, says the Chinese government’s latest “Second National Assessment Report on Climate Change”.

China is the world’s second biggest economy after the US and the biggest emitter of greenhouse gas pollution, now ahead of the US.

Global warming caused and exacerbated by greenhouse gases from industry, transport and changing land-use poses a long-term threat to China’s prosperity, health and food production, says the report. With China’s economy likely to overtake the United States’ in 20 or 30 years, that has dire consequences.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/18/us-china-climate-idUSTRE80H06J20120118

Posted in China alert, Climate change, Ecology, Good news, Pollution | 4 Comments »

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