An article by David Scrimgeour, CEO of DS Consulting and Foreign Direct Investment Expert for Germany, UK and USA

Renewable energy is a remarkable success story in Germany. Current estimates suggest that at least 250,000 are employed in this industry. Half of the world’s market for solar energy is in Germany and the majority of the global wind turbine manufacturers and component suppliers are German SMEs. In the biogas sector there are already 4000 anaerobic digestion plants using organic material as feedstock.

Over the last few years a new industrial sector has emerged with specialist engineering consultancies, plant manufacturers as well as service and maintenance providers. Some of these companies have become relatively large, often able to raise substantial capital by going public. The industry has engaged in cross-border investment, both within and beyond Europe, and this has enabled German companies to profit from international trends in alternative energy deployment and to become the world’s technology leaders in renewable energy.

However, although all this sounds positive, there are obstacles to be overcome and also risks to be managed. The main issues are: lack of capital, limited resources and “thinking big”. And the main danger is …inaction. If German companies do not get their act together quickly then foreign investors will acquire these technology assets thereby cutting out the entrepreneurs from the opportunity to generate wealth in global markets. In fact there are signs that this is already happening. (more…)

A talk by Jim Hansen and coworkers on the role of non-CO2 pollutants, given at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, sounds yet again optimistic that we can avoid climate destabilization. Non CO2 forcings take a surprisingly large part in the total amount of climate forcings, but they can be reduced with appropriate policies. The main problem remains to be CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. Therefore, Jim Hansen again calls for strict and drastic policies to drastically reduce CO2 emissions, especially by quickly moving away from coal-fired power plants that cannot sequester CO2.

We note that it will be exceedingly difficult to determine the aerosol climate forcing relative to pre-industrial climate.  However, for policy purposes it may be sufficient to start with the present situation and consider climate forcing changes relative to today.  The planet’s present energy imbalance, at least to first order, determines the change of climate forcings needed to stabilize climate.  Climate models, using typical presumed scenarios of climate forcings for the past century, suggest that the planet should be out of energy balance by +0.75 ± 0.25 W/m2, but observations of ocean heat content change (averaged over the 11-year solar cycle) suggest an imbalance of only +0.5 ± 0.25 W/m2 (absorbed solar energy exceeding heat radiation to space). (more…)

OUR CHOICE to provide blueprint for solving the climate crisis

EMMAUS, PA, and NEW YORK, NY, March 24, 2009—Today Vice President Gore announced that his next book, Our Choice, will be published by Rodale in the US and by other publishers internationally on November 3, 2009.

Picking up where An Inconvenient Truth left off, Our Choice utilizes Mr. Gore’s forty years of experience as a student, policymaker, author, filmmaker, entrepreneur and activist to comprehensively describe the real solutions to global warming. A co-recipient of the Nobel Peace prize in 2007 for his environmental work, Mr. Gore continues to make sense of the pressing issues we face and Our Choice will unquestionably inspire and rally those ready to fight for solutions that were deemed impossible only a short time ago. (more…)

Who on earth likes to go to the movie and get depressed? Right. Me neither.  But what about a combinations of depressing news, with eye-opening frankness, amazing insights that we all really should have thought of long ago, and a new realization about the immenseness of human stupidity? Ok, actually, that doesn’t really sound too much fun, either. Never mind that.

Just forget any description you read, and any hesitation you might feel.

Just watch it when you get the chance. Or - even better - don’t wait for the movie to come to you.  Try your best to get the movie into your theaters. Now.

The Age of Stupid. (more…)

Berlin, February 2009: A red Volvo is parked behind the building, the hood void of its motor. The engine sits idling inside a large white room, engulfing a nearby, eight foot-high green cactus with gentle heat… What sounds like the beginning of a bizarre dream is a scene from the show Under Lime by the British artist Simon Starling in Berlin, which recently opened at the Temporäre Kunsthalle in Berlin. Starling is a conceptual artist who has become increasingly known for illuminating the relationship between (art) production and the environment and between creation, energy and waste in a global context.

Take the cactus in the exhibition hall: It is not your off-the-rack type, but one of the species which Sergio Leone’s film team brought to Spain’s Taberna desert to film their famous Spaghetti Westerns in the 1960s. “It is the only true desert in Europe and it was cheaper to produce the movie there than in the real Wild West,” Starling explains. He transported the cactus first to Frankfurt and now to Berlin using the same red Volvo parked outside the exhibition and used the guts of the car to provide the desert plant with its natural climate. (more…)

One of the conclusions of the climate change conference in Copenhagen is that the time to act is more urgent than ever. “Inaction is inexcusable.” Sir Nicolas Stern clearly described that we CAN afford a low carbon economy. But the costs of action will increase with every year of inaction.

Action is rather attractive, Lord Stern commented, as it is a great opportunity to improve our economy towards a low-carbon economy by adding new jobs, and at the same time laying the foundations for a new era of a sustainable future.

So what should we invest the money in? Well, we all know that. We need to heavily invest in renewable technologies that already exist. (more…)

If you thought you knew all about climate change, and that you truly understood what we are up against, think again.

The overwhelming scientific evidence presented at the climate change conference in Copenhagen during the last 3 days have been quite stunning and very disturbing, to say the very least. The urgency is immense, the actions too whimpy, and the speed of change too slow.

“Have you ever played Russion Roulette?” John Schellnhuber, director of PIK and climate advisor of the German government, asked at his plenary speech. Nobody of the several thousand scientists in the hand raised his or her hand. “Well, we all are plaing it right now.”

Russian Roulette is the fun game of loosing your life with a 1 out of 6 chance. Actually, seems not really such a fun game if you think about it. If you have seen Harry Potter, when Harry, Ron, and Hermione play wizzard chess, you know what I mean.

After calculations by Malte Meinhausen from PIK, we have a 1 out of 6 chance to NOT stay underneath a global warming of 2 Degrees celsius even with an 80% cut of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 compared to 1990 levels.

Think about it. We have an about 16% chance to face a global catastrophe. As became apparent at this conference, a warming by more than 2 Degrees Celsius wouldbe “very difficult”.

Maiken Winter

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On the last day of PowerShift 09 - climate education and activism by more than 12,000 youth that gathered from all over the US in D.C. - on March 2 2009, a large number of people will converge in D.C. to protest against coal (see earlier blog entry here and an article by the washington Pots by Bill McKibben here).

In this yet largest demonstration against coal-fired power plants in the U.S., participants will call for attention to the fact that CO2 concentration has risen to dangerous levels, and that we thus cannot afford to keep adding CO2 to the atmosphere. (more…)

Led by China, the developing world is engaged in a flurry of dam construction, touting hydropower as renewable energy in an era of global warming. But critics point out that the human and environmental costs of dams remain high.

Reposted from Yale360, written by David Biello

The Jinsha River tumbles down from the highlands of the Tibetan Plateau and courses through China for more than 1,300 miles before becoming the Yangtze. Until recently, it was a free-flowing waterway that ran through the picturesque landscape of Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces, but that is changing rapidly: Taking advantage of a drop of nearly 14 feet per mile, the Chinese government is building — or planning to build — as many as 12 large dams on the Jinsha. More than 300,000 people will be displaced, numerous cultural sites will be flooded, and river ecosystems irretrievably altered. (more…)