Sustainable Energy for All in 2012
Picture: Abbie Trayler-Smith / Panos Pictures / DFID At the outset of this new year, under the banner of the United Nation’s sustainable energy for all campaign, the voices clamoring for a revolutionary shift from centralized fossil power to decentralized clean energy are growing louder. What’s more, they are increasingly coming from traditionally conservative [...]
Human Stories of An Energy Revolution
Guest post by Grace Boyle, Greenpeace India Roughly one in six people in the world live in India. Approximately 40% of those people have no access to electricity – and the amount with access to a reliable, quality supply is even smaller. The centralised energy system currently favoured by policy makers is not delivering electricity [...]
Now for the People, Now for the Planet: COP 17 Climate Negotiations
This is the fifth annual UN Conference of the Parties (COP) conference that I have attended. My journey in the process started with the landmark COP 13 in Bali, Indonesia in 2007. That conference was the first major one that was to layout a roadmap for what the post-Kyoto regime might look like. Its mandate [...]
Era of Cheap Coal Ends, Solar Age Dawns
The bright lights of Diwali have further exposed the depth and breadth of India’s coal crisis bringing a 21st century reality into painful focus: Geologically speaking coal is abundant, economically speaking cheap coal is not. India may be the first country to face this harsh reality, but it will not be the last. Fortunately, the clean energy sector is [...]
Solar Wars
If anyone needed proof that clean energy is the future they need look no further than the recent trade disputes the US has filed against China over wind and now solar. Nations simply do not fight over unprofitable, unviable sectors. Instead they do exactly what China, India, the EU, and the US are all doing: [...]
Democratizing Energy: Mobile Phones Push Community Power
There are six billion mobile phone connections worldwide – 80% of which are in the developing world. A sizeable portion of this market, over 548 million people, own a cellphone but have no means of charging it. These un-electrified, mobile phone users mark the intersection between mobile phone and off-grid energy that is spawning a [...]
