Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Exiled_Tyke wrote: »

A slightly unusual green energy project. A shame there's not a lot of technical detail. But perhaps Mart has this up his sleeve and ready to share.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-41870096

Of all the most polluting nations – US, China, Russia, Japan and the EU bloc – only India’s carbon emissions are rising: they rose almost 5% in 2016. No one questions India’s right to develop, or the fact that its current emissions per person are tiny. But when building the new India for its 1.3 billion people, whether it relies on coal and oil or clean, green energy will be a major factor in whether global warming can be tamed.

“India is the frontline state,” says Samir Saran, at the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi. “Two-thirds of India is yet to be built. So please understand, 16% of mankind is going to seek the American dream. If we can give it to them on a frugal climate budget, we will save the planet. If we don’t, we will either destroy India or destroy the planet.”

There are signs of hope, however, driven by astonishing drops in the price of renewable energy in the last few years. Costs are falling faster than anyone predicted, with new record-low prices set this year for solar and wind. State governments can now pay less for clean energy than they pay for new coal power.

Mathur, who was the Indian delegation’s spokesman at the 2015 Paris climate summit, says that once batteries become powerful enough to store renewable energy for night time or when winds are weak, India’s energy emissions are likely to plateau and then fall. “I personally saw this happening around 2035, but in the past three years, that has shifted to 2025, driven by the news in the solar prices and the sharper than expected fall in the price of batteries.”

India’s government has now forecast that no new coal-fired power stations will need to be built for at least 10 years. By that time, Mathur argues, it will be cheaper to supply new demand using renewable power. “As [existing] coal plants retire they will be replaced by renewables, because that’s what makes economic sense.”

What happens in India also matters to the rest of the world for a practical reason, says Saran, by driving down the costs of, for example, rolling out solar plants and super-efficient LED bulbs. This would mean all developing countries can leapfrog a polluting fossil fuel phase as they grow.

“We will mass produce it, mass aggregate it, mass process it for the world,” he says. “America did it for the first billion people. India is now doing it for the rest of the six billion on the planet.”

For those currently without any electricity, solar power is the perfect solution, both fast and affordable, says Stern. Back in Rajghat, a young mother called Ramhali agrees. Three days earlier, a group of students from a nearby city, Dholpur, installed a single, five-watt light in her home, powered by solar panels on the roof. It has replaced the old liquor bottle filled with kerosene, that flickered with toxic, black-tipped smoke and gave the children headaches.

So can India’s leaders bring light to its poorest people, build clean, green cities for its billion-strong population and end the plague of air pollution? Figueres says: “More important than my opinion is their opinion, and they think they can, and do so with many benefits.”

Scotland’s wind energy industry once again has smashed records with an “unprecedented” amount of electricity being generated in October, enough to provide 189% of the country’s household electricity needs and more than 100% of the country’s electricity demand on 15 out of 31 days.