The European Union has been committed for years to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020 (compared to 1990).

As we have seen in a recent article, reaching such targets is very plausible and wouldn’t need much additional effort from the 15 historic members nor the enlarged 27 countries Union. (more…)

A new U.N. fund designed to manage billions of dollars to help developing nations combat climate change and called The Green Climate Fund will be based in South Korea.

The Board of the fund has selected Songdo, Incheon City, South Korea, the board of the fund over Mexico, (more…)

Energy is both the engine of the modern global economy and one of the biggest drivers of our sustainability challenges, including climate change. Providing access to affordable sources of energy will be critical to alleviating poverty and ensuring peace and prosperity for the 9 billion people expected to inhabit Earth in 2050. However, if we don’t find ways to (more…)

A team of U.S. researchers has developed a software system that they say documents carbon dioxide emissions in urban areas down to the level of individual buildings or street segments. Using publicly available data on local pollution, traffic counts, and building uses — as well as models of building-by-building energy consumption — the researchers from Arizona (more…)

The California Center for Sustainable Energy, with the California Air Resources Board, has conducted the largest social innovation plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) owner survey in the state’s history. Recording date from more than 2,500 Californian PEV owners, the results have been released. The survey shows that nine out of ten owners said these vehicles (more…)

Here is some really good news coming from the European Union. From the EU environmental agency – EEA, located in Copenhagen – greenhouse gases emissions from the 15 first Member States decreased by 3.5 % between 2010 and 2011. The EU-15 emissions are now 14.1 % below the base-year level under the Kyoto Protocol. (more…)

Is it possible to make gasoline with biomass? Some people think so and this is what CORE BioFuel has set out to do since it was founded in 2008.

The company’s mission is to commercialize its biomass-to-gasoline process, a patent-pending variant of ExxonMobil’s methanol-to-gasoline (MTG). (more…)

“I think the internal combustion engine will disappear from the streets of our cities in the next thirty years because transportation will be mass transportation, or probably electrical power.” — Gaylord Nelson, April 1990[1]

Unless something really amazing happens in the next (more…)

A new report published last week by the anti-regulatory Mercatus Center (an advocacy outfit associated with the Koch brothers) took aim at appliance and vehicle efficiency standards. In the report, the authors argue that standards reduce consumer choice and are not justified because the environmental benefits are small and consumer benefits are non-existent. (more…)

When Galileo promoted the idea that the earth revolves around the sun in the 1600s, the church rejected his claims as heresy and subjected him to a lifetime of house arrest. Understandably, such theories could contaminate the minds of good Christians, and would therefore be bad for business. (more…)