The European project SUNRISE, “Solar energy for a circular economy”, has been selected as one of the six Coordination and Support Actions (CSA) within the Horizon 2020 programme. Funded with €1M, it will last one year (starting in spring 2019), setting the basis for a European large-scale research project. The SUNRISE Vision is a radical and ambitious scientific and technological approach for solar energy conversion and storage to provide a … [Read more...]
Too “low-hanging fruit” is not sweet enough (and eventually neither clean nor cheap)!
At a lunch debate organised by the European Heat Pump Association (EHPA) on “The costs of a low level of ambition in greening the heating and cooling sector” and hosted by EUFORES President MEP Jeppe Kofod on 30 January, representatives from industry, civil society, the European Commission (EC) and MEPs from several countries and political groups (Jeppe Kofod, Bendt Bendtsen, Theresa Griffin, Jo Leinen, Gesine Meissner and Paul RĂĽbig) … [Read more...]
The great battery race
The coming of cheap and effective lithium-based batteries will cause the greatest changes in the energy and automobile sector since Henry Ford built the model T, writes Gerard Reid, founding partner of Alexa Capital, financial analyst and co-founder of the Energy and Carbon blog. But European countries like Germany and France have no significant production, in contrast to China, which views batteries and their raw materials as key factors in the … [Read more...]
Nuclear deal or not, Trump will turn Iran into a hot spot
Donald Trump could easily annul the Iran nuclear deal, writes Rajan Menon, Professor of International Relations at City College of New York and Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute. However, whether or not he will do so, is not the most important question, writes Menon. The real question is what he will do to Iran – and how disastrous that could turn out to be. Courtesy of Tomdispatch. … [Read more...]
A presidential campaign speech from 2052
70% of electricity in the US now is generated by renewables, and natural gas from fracking is on the decline, says a presidential hopeful in a campaign speech in 2052. He promises voters that if elected he “will ensure completion of the energy transition”. … [Read more...]