LONDON, July 3 (Reuters) – Technology that would convert
carbon dioxide from a scourge on the climate to beneficial
products is inching towards commercial reality and is already
cheaper than carbon capture and storage.
CO2 can, in theory, be converted in the making of such
products as concrete, plastics and minerals. (See Chart 1) There
are major problems, however. Annual CO2 emissions far exceed the
global market for such products, and some of these products
release CO2 back into the atmosphere.
LONDON, July 1 (Reuters) – The relentless growth in China’s
carbon emissions looks to have peaked and started to slow, in
part simply because of a cooling economy but also the result of
new targets to curb pollution and climate change.
China alone emitted more than a quarter of global carbon
dioxide last year, and in the past decade has accounted for
two-thirds of the net annual growth in global emissions.
LONDON, June 27 (Reuters) – Britain’s new support plans for
renewable energy confirm that offshore wind is the most
expensive green power technology, raising the question why the
country is placing so much faith in it.
Offshore wind is even more expensive than solar power, which
is not an energy technology where Britain has a competitive
advantage, as a northern country whose climate is dominated by
wet Atlantic weather.
LONDON, June 26 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s climate
plan, unveiled this week, may boost regional schemes to cut
greenhouse gas emissions, known as cap and trade, four years
after the United States failed to pass legislation for a
Unlike Europe, the United States has no national cap and
trade scheme to combat carbon emissions. The U.S. Congress
considered but ultimately failed to bring in a national scheme
in a climate bill which stalled in the Senate in 2009.
LONDON, June 25 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will
bypass Congress in a plan to impose new rules to curb coal
plants’ carbon dioxide emissions, and that means the real test
will come in court.
Obama’s move, announced on Tuesday, has long been awaited by
green groups hoping it will help meet emissions goals and feared
by lobbies representing fossil fuel producers and industrial
LONDON, June 21 (Reuters) – A major recent study has put the
cat among the pigeons on climate change, challenging the size of
the problem in the near-term and the role of a recent slowdown
The paper, published in the journal Nature Geoscience in
May, involved scientists from 14 institutions and calculated
that more extreme climate change was now less likely, after
taking into account slower warming in the past decade.
LONDON, June 19 (Reuters) – U.S. state-level targets show
the remaining potential for renewable power in some states such
as Illinois, within an overall picture of waning mandates.
The United States has no federal targets to install or
generate renewable power, where demand is instead driven by
states in the form of renewable portfolio standards (RPS).
LONDON, June 18 (Reuters) – Germany utility E.ON
has made a high-risk bet on fuel cells for distributed power,
after entirely missing out on a solar boom in Europe’s largest
Solar has undermined peak wholesale power prices and in turn
the economics of gas-fired power plants, compounding the problem
for conventional utilities missing out on the subsidy-backed
LONDON, June 13 (Reuters) – The European Union, United
States and China are most likely to resolve a multi-billion
dollar trade dispute over solar power equipment by agreeing on a
floor price for Chinese products.
The EU’s executive Commission and the United States
Department of Commerce have said that China is selling solar
panels and components at far below fair market values and
pushing European and U.S. companies into insolvency. Chinese
sales to both regions exceeded $30 billion in 2011.
LONDON, June 12 (Reuters) – The majority of British offshore
winds farms are winning planning permission and proceeding to
construction, suggesting that a large portion of those with
outstanding applications will be built.
Britain is the world leader in a technology that is expected
to account for a rapidly rising share of global wind turbine