2013: The Best Energy Stories of the Year

By Kevin Bullis

Clean energy technology made progress in 2013, but low-carbon energy isn’t growing fast enough to meet goals for limiting climate change. That would require switching energy sources as fast as France did when it converted almost all of its electricity generation from fossil fuels to nuclear power in just 30 years. While solar panels and wind turbines are being installed quickly, worldwide fossil fuel consumption is rising even faster, causing greenhouse gas emission rates to go up. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is drawing up carbon dioxide rules that will shut down coal plants, but they will do little to reduce emissions more than low natural gas prices already have by prompting a shift away from coal. Meanwhile, coal consumption is increasing around the world.

Continue Reading

One Comment

  1. There is a major debate going on in Australia at the moment questioning the anthropogenic side of climate change and there is an excellent piece in today’s “Australian” newspaper by Professor Michael Asten, Professor of Geophysics at Monash University in Melbourne Australia. He points out that research into the cyclical nature of several aspects of climate previously have been under reported or discounted but following papers by several highly respected scientists have been acknowledged by the IPCC although those findings are yet to be incorporated in IPCC modelling. Asten argues that five key observations that have been identified recently in peer reviewed journals must be taken into account in future reviews and models. He further states that this new information highlights the need for far more rigorous questioning of the present models which Asten suggests may overplay the impact of anthropogenic warming to a highly significant degree. You can read this article at:
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/bring-science-to-climate-policy/story-e6frgd0x-1226793918373#

Comments are closed.