Solar-Powered Noise Barriers Quiet Traffic While Generating Electricity

Cole Mellino  ::  EcoWatch  ::  3 August 2015 

From the country that brought you the solar road comes solar noise barriers. Highway noise barriers are usually not very aesthetically pleasing and only serve one purpose—to quiet traffic for the surrounding community. But a researcher in the Netherlands, Michael Debije at the Eindhoven University of Technology, is trying to change all that.

Since April, Debije has launched two pilot projects along the A2 highway in the Netherlands to test a new kind of solar panel he has developed. Using an innovative technology known as luminescent solar concentrators (LSC), the translucent sheets “bounce light internally to the edges of the panels, where it is beamed onto regular solar panels in concentrated form,” saysFast Coexist. The year-long pilot project will help determine how well the barriers hold up in terms of power generation capabilities and with vandal-resistance and maintenance requirements.

Because the barriers are so aesthetically pleasing and translucent, they could be used in urban areas to reduce noise pollution. Photo credit: Eindhoven University of Technology

The panels are ideal for the gray skies of Northern Europe because they work even on cloudy days. A single half-mile stretch can provide enough electricity to power 50 homes.

“The LSC panels can be made in different colors, so the result is something like an oversized stained-glass window,” says Fast Coexist. “Because light can shine through them, they could be used in urban areas, shielding noise without making either pedestrians or motorists feel cut off.”

Debije says thanks to recent breakthroughs with LSC panels, they are now a commercially viable product. Photo credit: Eindhoven University of Technology

Debije and his team published a paper in Nature this spring that shows how they have overcome previous problems with LSC panels, and the team now claims they are commercially viable, according to Tech Times. “Further benefits are that the principle used is low cost, they can be produced in any desired, regular color, is robust, and the LSCs will even work when the sky is cloudy,” Debije told Tech Times. “That means it offers tremendous potential.”

Renewable Energy Is Not Always ‘Green’: Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Hydroelectric Reservoirs

Kale Roberts  ::  Mother Earth News  ::  2 July 2015

Photo by Robert Campbell, Wikimedia Commons

Hydropower is often considered a clean energy source, free of climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions. But although dams have been demonized for disrupting fish migrations and flooding valleys inhabited by families for generations, this so-called renewable form of energy has largely escaped scrutiny for its climate impacts. After all, how could the atmosphere be harmed by letting a river flow through a few energy-generating turbines encased within a 50-foot wall of concrete and steel?

Hydropower is the world’s leading form of renewable energy, accounting formore than 16 percent of global electricity generation. But dam enthusiasts who tout hydro’s climate credentials may not like the news about its emissions numbers.

Studies conducted over the past decade have shown that greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, are produced by hydroelectric systems in potentially huge amounts.

In some cases, emissions from hydropower can even exceed those that would have been produced from burning conventional fossil fuels instead. For example,a 2014 study finds that the Curuá-Una Reservoir in Brazil emitted 3.6 times more greenhouse gases than would have been emitted had the electricity come from oil.

How Hydroelectric Dams Produce Greenhouse Gases

When a dam is built for energy generation, the land upstream of the impoundment is flooded. The more than 45,000 large dams built around the world cover a combined area the size of Montana (Barros et al., 2011). For many, within their depths lies former forest land.

As the submerged trees, grasses, shrubs and soil decompose, microbes convert the carbon stored in the vegetation into gas that can bubble up to the surface and escape to the atmosphere. Carbon trapped within the soil percolates out in the form of carbon dioxide.

Age matters. Studies show that younger reservoirs may be bigger emitters than older one, because most carbon is released from drowned vegetation within the first several years of flooding.

Location matters, too. Emissions seem to be highest from dams built in the tropics, presumably because higher temperatures give decomposer microbes themetabolic boost to do their work.

Methane Matters

Methane is of particular concern. The gas is made anywhere methanogenic (methane-producing) bacteria can thrive without oxygen—so, in the guts of pigs and people, peat bogs and permafrost. Unfortunately, methane is also 25 timesmore potent a planet warmer than carbon dioxide over 100 years. And warm, tropical places can produce more of it.

Methane has plenty of opportunities to escape during the hydropower process: It bubbles up from the oxygen-free muck that accumulates at the bottom of reservoirs. It is churned out in the spray coming off spinning turbines. For miles, it wafts off the newly agitated surface of the river downstream from a dam.

So much methane is produced that studies suggest more than 20 percent of what humans are responsible for may come from dams, which may be releasing up to104 teragrams of the gas annually. (This may be more than all the methane produced per year from burning fossil fuels, according to NASA.)

A Lack of Information or Regulatory Failure?

Of course, impacts from big hydro projects go beyond greenhouse gas emissions to include altered land use, the collapse of migratory fish populations and the displacement of people. Coastal erosion can occur downstream from reservoirs when sediment becomes trapped behind dam impoundments, preventing the silty particles from reaching the sea where they build and stabilize coastlines.

Despite large hydro’s detrimental impacts on life, land and atmosphere, many nations fail to include emissions associated with dams in their total greenhouse gas reporting. This gap in information makes hydro emissions difficult to track—and to regulate.

Most hydropower is concentrated in Asia, but more than 150 countries employ the technology for at least some of their energy. The Worldwatch Institute reportsthat “in 2008, four countries—Albania, Bhutan, Lesotho, and Paraguay—generated all their electricity from hydropower,” and “15 countries generated at least 90 percent of their electricity from hydro.”

Moreover, when nations have made steps to report hydro emissions, the international hydroelectricity industry has attempted to muddy the waters bydownplaying the amount of carbon degassing from their projects.

Take Down the Dams?

Before you think tearing down all dams is the answer, consider this: Taking down a large dam may actually release more greenhouse gases from the newly exposed, carbon-rich soil than were produced throughout the entire life of the dam.

For example, decommissioning Arizona’s Glen Canyon Dam in the United States, which provides power from Lake Powell, would theoretically produce nine timesmore methane following takedown than all the methane produced during Glen Canyon’s 100-year operation.

What is the Solution?

What many believe would be a good first step is for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s foremost scientific authority on the subject, to ask all participating nations to report greenhouse gas emissions from hydroelectric reservoirs. Can that happen with so many questions left unanswered?

More research on the climate impacts of hydropower is needed, in more places and at all stages of big dams’ lifecycles. Until then, policymakers may be overlooking a potentially significant contributor to climate change, perhaps difficult to calculate but ever present, hidden at the bottom of a placid reservoir.

Kale Roberts is the Blogging Coordinator for MOTHER EARTH NEWS and a Rachel Carson Scholar at the Bard Center for Environmental Policy. His interests include renewable energy, real food and sustainable rural development.

References

Barros et al. (2011). Carbon emission from hydroelectric reservoirs linked to reservoir age and latitude. Nature Geoscience, 4, 593-596.

Demarty, M. & Bastien, J. (2011). GHG emissions from hydroelectric reservoirs in tropical and equatorial regions: Review of 20 years of CH4 emission measurements. Energy Policy, 39, 4197-4206.

International Energy Agency [IEA]. (2010). Renewable Eenergy essentials: Hydropower. Free publication. Accessed May 11, 2015, from http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/hydropower_essentials.pdf.

IPCC. (2006). Appendix 3: CH4 emissions from flooded land: Basis for future methodological development. 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.

Magill, B. & Climate Central. (29 October 2014). Methane emissions may swell from behind dams. Scientific American. In Energy & Sustainability. Accessed May 09, 2015, from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/methane-emissions-may-swell-from-behind-dams/.

NASA. (2010). Education: Global methane inventory. GISS Institute on Climate and Planets. Accessed May 11, 2015, from http://icp.giss.nasa.gov/education/methane/intro/cycle.html.

Pacca, S. (2007). Impacts from decommissioning of hydroelectric dams: a life cycle perspective. Climate Change, 84, 281-294.

Worldwatch Institute. (2013). Use and capacity of gobal hydropower increases. In Vital Signs. Accessed May 09, 2015, from http://www.worldwatch.org/use-and-capacity-global-hydropower-increases-0.

Yang, L., Lu, F., Zhou, X., Wang, X., Duan, X., & Sun, B. (2014). Progress in the studies on the greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs. Acta Ecologica Sinica,34, 204-212.

Elon Musk: Tesla Battery Will ‘Fundamentally Change the Way the World Uses Energy’

Cole Mellino   ::  EcoWatch  ::  1 May 2015

 Renewable energy sources like solar and wind have always been limited by their intermittency, but now Tesla CEO Elon Musk has unveiled a suite of batteries to store electricity for homes, businesses and utilities, saying a greener grid furthers the company’s mission to provide pollution-free energy, reports Bloomberg.

“We’ve obviously been working on building a world-class battery, a super-efficient and affordable way to store energy,” Khobi Brooklyn, a Tesla spokeswoman, told The New York Times. “It’s just that we’ve been putting that battery in cars most of the time.”

The Tesla P85D just won the 2015 AAA Best Green Car Award, marking the second year in a row an all electric Tesla Model S has taken top honors from AAA. But Tesla has been disrupting more than just the auto industry for a while now. In February, Musk announced a partnership with SolarCity to use rooftop solar panels fitted with Tesla’s batteries to allow customers to keep that energy in-house. It’s all part of Tesla’s plans to revolutionize the energy grid.

“Our goal here is to fundamentally change the way the world uses energy,” Musk told Bloomberg. “We’re talking at the terawatt scale. The goal is complete transformation of the entire energy infrastructure of the world.”

Tesla’s home battery, the “Powerwall,” is a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that mounts on the wall and comes in 7 kilowatt-hour or 10 kilowatt-hour versions, the company said in a statement. A larger product, the “Powerpack,” can store more energy to power businesses. Deliveries will begin in late summer at prices starting at $3,000.

“Our goal here is to fundamentally change the way the world uses energy,” says Elon Musk.

Battery storage for renewable power is finally coming of age. “The battery is designed to enable so-called ‘load-shifting’ by charging during times when electricity prices are lower due to less demand, and discharging when demand and prices are high,” says Bloomberg. It can also store solar power generated during daytime and release it at night, and serve as backup during outages, Tesla says.

Tesla hopes that its $5 billion “gigafactory” under construction near Reno, Nevada will drive down the cost of the batteries for both cars and energy-storage products through mass production. More such factories will be needed to help make the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, Musk said.

Tesla’s batteries are already being used by companies such as Wal-Mart, Cargill and Jackson Family Wines, and Green Mountain Power plans to sell its home batteries to customers. Tesla has also partnered with Southern California Edison to install batteries for utilities, while Amazon and Target will pilot the batteries.

Revolutionary Family Shows True Meaning of Self-Reliance

Cole Mellino  ::  EcoWatch  ::  23 January 2015 

Think you can’t grow much food in an urban area? Think again. One family’s 4,000 square foot farm in Pasadena, California “not only feeds a family but revolutionizes the idea of what can be done in a very unlikely place—the middle of a city.” KCET reporter Val Zavala gives us a glimpse into the Dervaes family’s Path to Freedom Urban Homestead. “I brought the country to the city rather than having to go out to the country,” said Jules Dervaes, who created the farm with his three adult children, Justin, Anais and Jordanne.

This urban homestead produces 6,000 pounds of food a year.

They grow almost all of the food they need. Ninety percent of their all-organic, vegetarian dietcomes from their garden. The operation involves 400 varieties of vegetables, fruits and edible flowers, which is 6,000 pounds of food a year. They raise eight chickens, four ducks and two goats, which provide them with eggs and milk. Chefs from high-end restaurants come directly to their house to buy their excess.

When asked if he had any doubts in the beginning, Jules admits he did. “I kept thinking this place was too small. There’s no way that we are going to be able to feed ourselves, plus I never thought we’d be able to grow the vegetables for the market,” he said. Dervaes decided to embark on this endeavor because he was concerned about what was in his and his children’s food. He wanted them to eat organic, GMO-free food, and he knew the best way to ensure that was to grow it himself.

The Dervaes’ say they love their homesteading lifestyle and couldn’t imagine it any other way.

The family has a solar panel on the roof that provides all of their electricity. Not that they use much. Most of their “gizmos,” says Anais, “are hand-powered” like their hand-crank smoothie maker. That puts their electricity bill at about $12 per month. Their car runs on biodiesel, which they make from vegetable waste that restaurants drop off at their house for free. These people have all the hook ups.

But it’s not all sunshine and flowers (though they have plenty of both). The Dervaes’ work very hard, make roughly $20,000 a year and have to deal with weather-related disasters, pests, disease and now climate change. Justin said, “we’ve been gardening so long that you can sense things are off. We have this little bug, the Junebug, that comes out in June, but now it doesn’t come out until July, August and September—so something is off.” Water is also a serious issue. With the drought in California, Jules has relied on clay pot irrigation, an ancient form of irrigation, to conserve water.

All that hard work is well worth it when the family sits down to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

By growing all of their food themselves, except staples such as wheat, rice and oats, they are able to eat fresh and delicious, organic food for $2 a day per person. They have attracted a lot of attention since they began homesteading in the mid 1980s. Many homesteaders have emulated their model. They offer workshops and events on their farm, and they even have a blog. They are proof of the bounty you can grow on one-tenth of an acre.

Watch here as KCET’s Zavala reports on this revolutionary family:

Offshore Wind Trumps Offshore Drilling in Job Growth and Energy Generation

Cole Mellino  ::  EcoWatch  ::  14 January 2015 

The oil and gas industry has been lobbying to expand offshore drilling for years, claiming it will increase U.S. energy independence, result in millions of dollars in state revenue and create thousands of jobs. A new report, Offshore Energy by the Numbers, An Economic Analysis of Offshore Drilling and Wind Energy in the Atlantic, from Oceana challenges these claims byshowing that “offshore wind would produce twice the number of jobs and twice the amount of energy as offshore drilling in the Atlantic Ocean.”

In the next 20 years, offshore wind could create about 91,000 more jobs than offshore drilling and could generate enough energy to power over 115 million households. Photo credit: Shutterstock

It turns out that the fossil fuel industry’s estimates on revenue and job creation potential have been inflated because of the “inclusion of oil and gas resources that are not economically recoverable” and a reliance on “an assumption of a state revenue-sharing system” that just does not exist. Not only are the benefits exaggerated, but the estimates do not account for the loss of jobs and revenue in fishing, tourism and recreation, which depend on a healthy marine ecosystem. Drilling threatens the aquatic life in this ecosystem, nearly 1.4 million jobs and more than $95 billion in gross domestic product.

Oceana points out offshore drilling poses a serious threat to aquatic life even before “a rig is ever put in the water” because oil and gas companies use seismic air guns, which “make dynamite-like blasts to search for oil and gas deposits deep below the ocean floor.” The Obama administration announced its decision last July to consider proposals for the use of seismic air guns from Delaware down to Florida.

“Based on the government’s own estimates, seismic blasting in the Atlantic could harm fish populations while injuring as many as 138,000 marine mammals like whales and dolphins, disturbing the vital activities of as many as 13.5 million more,” said Andrew Menaquale, report author and energy analyst at Oceana. Menaquale also found, again based on the government’s own estimates, that “if all of the economically recoverable offshore oil and gas in the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf were extracted and used, oil demand would only be met for less than five months and gas demand would only be met for less than 10 months, at current consumption rates.”

Alternatively, the report shows, “in just 13 years, offshore wind could generate more energy than could be provided by all of the economically recoverable offshore oil and gas resources.” And in the next 20 years, “offshore wind could create about 91,000 more jobs than offshore drilling” and “could generate enough energy to power over 115 million households.”

“Unlike offshore drilling, offshore wind provides power directly to coastal communities where we need energy the most, without the risk of oil spills or carbon pollution,” said Menaquale. “It’s time for the U.S. to use the lessons learned from more than 20 years of offshore wind development internationally and apply them to generating clean, renewable energy off our coasts.”

Solar Is Creating Jobs Nearly 20 Times Faster Than Overall U.S. Economy

Anastasia Pantsios  ::  EcoWatch  ::  15 January 2015 

All those senators currently debating in Washington D.C., calling the Keystone XL pipeline approval bill an urgent “jobs creation bill,” are looking for jobs in all the wrong places.

Solar installation alone added more jobs in 2014 than both the oil and natural gas sectors—jobs that can’t be outsourced. Photo credit: The Solar Project

They should be perusing the National Solar Jobs Census 2014, the fifth annual such report compiled by the nonprofit Solar Foundation. What they’d find there puts the pipeline project to shame. Despite attacks on clean, renewable energy around the country, creating uncertainty in the sector,  job creation grew dramatically. It outperformed the slowly improving U.S. economy, creating jobs at nearly 20 times the rate of the overall economy.

Last year, jobs in solar increased by 21.8 percent, adding up to 31,000 new jobs in 2014 and bringing the total number of solar-related jobs in the U.S. to 173,800. That’s an increase of 86 percent since 2010. The vast majority—approximately 157,500— work 100 percent on solar activities.

“The solar industry has once again proven to be a powerful engine of economic growth and job creation,” said The Solar Foundation’s president and executive director Andrea Luecke. “Our Census findings show that one out of every 78 new jobs created in the U.S. over the past 12 months was created by the solar industry—nearly 1.3 percent of all jobs. It also shows for the fifth consecutive year, the solar industry is attracting highly skilled, well-paid professionals. That growth is putting people back to work and strengthening our nation’s economy.”

And despite attacks in states like Ohio, which froze its renewable energy standards last June and is talking about permanently eliminating them, The Solar Foundation projects that growth will continue. Its employer survey, which collected data from more than 7,600 U.S. businesses, found that the next year solar is likely to see a similar increase of almost 21 percent, bringing the total number of workers in the industry to 210,060.

“Demand for clean renewable power is growing,” said Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor and Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. “Solar exists at the critical intersection between energy, the economy and the environment. As the nation’s fastest growing energy source, solar is adding thousands of new jobs each year. Its growth will almost surely continue to be robust in coming years.”

The survey also found that installation remains the largest source of domestic solar employment growth, more than doubling since 2010 and that those workers are more and more diverse, with more African-Americans, Hispanics, women and veterans than in the 2013 report. Solar installation jobs have already blown past employment in the shrinking coalindustry, which is now down to only 93,185 jobs. And while the oil and gas pipeline construction and extraction added 19,217 jobs in 2014, the solar installation sector created almost 50 percent more jobs.

Those jobs are that can’t be outsourced, won’t disappear in two years like the Keystone XL construction jobs and don’t come with negative health impacts or harmful impacts on the environment.

“The tremendous growth in the solar industry last year is further evidence that we can clean our air and cut climate pollution while also growing the economy,” said former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “The more data we have about the renewable energy industry, the better positioned policymakers and investors will be to make informed decisions. The Solar Jobs Census has the potential to help make that possible.”

And with jobs in the wind sector increasing  rapidly as well, supporting fossil fuel industries at the expense of renewables seems like bad economic as well as bad environmental policy.

“Americans want greater clean energy deployment, and conventional electricity generation is among the largest sources of air and water pollution in the U.S.,” said Lyndon Rive, CEO of Solar City, the largest solar employer in the U.S. “As the Census underscores, solar is providing a tremendous boost to our economy while meeting public demand for choice, competition and cleaner, more affordable energy.”

Can Shoes Generate Renewable Energy with Every Step We Take?

Anastasia Pantsios  ::  EcoWatch  ::  8 January 2015

Maybe he hasn’t figured out all the details to make them technically feasible for mass production yet. But a concept for shoes that generate electricity has earned 22-year-old Vancouver university student Taylor Ward, who describes himself in his resume as “an aspiring experience designer looking to learn, grow and take the world by storm,” a slot as one of the five finalists in the Interaction Design Association (IXDA) 2015 Student Design Challenge. He and the other finalists will go to the Interaction15 conference in San Francisco next month to present his idea to a panel of judges. The winner will receive access to research and design tools to help them further develop their idea.

This year’s theme was “Envisioning the Wearable City.” And while other contestants came up with ideas for clothing that helped guide visitors to places of interest, connect people or enhance women’s safety, Ward was thinking green. His idea involves creating clean, renewable energy through something most people do every day: walk.

Inspired by Vancouver’s goal to become the greenest city in the world by 2020, Ward proposed a shoe he calls Step. It features insoles that produce energy as the wearer walks through a system of piezoelectric nano-generators and capacitors that capture and store the energy. As the shoes collect energy—over 100w with each step, Ward says—the wearer would go to a transfer station where they would discharge it into wireless charging pads. That energy could then be used to power homes, schools and businesses. Ward proposes placing them in high-traffic areas like transit stations, parks, schools, busy street corners and hockey arenas (this is Canada, after all!) 

The Vancouver walkers could be producing renewable 

energy with each step. Photo credit: Shutterstock

“Simply walking up to a station and standing in the transfer area would tap out your current raised energy and send it back into our city,” he wrote in his proposal. “We could also incentive giving power. Transferring enough power to the right station could land commuters a free coffee, movie tickets, or even a discount to the game.”

He said that the shoes wouldn’t cost more than a pair of high-end athletic shoes, although the charging stations would require a major funding source.

“Normally piezoeletric sensors are quite inexpensive,” he told City Lab. “The difficult part comes down to the capacity that a small capacitor (or series of capacitors) could hold and the cost for those parts. In the end, I would assume that the wearable itself would still be moderately priced, but the real cost would come from transfer stations. Similar charging stations using inductive charging do exist, but to impact a full city with these stations would be the larger investment from city council and urban planners.” 

The Step would capture energy and store it for 

discharge at a transfer station. 

Image credit: Tyler Ward

The Simon Fraser University student described how Vancouver’s density and walkability make it the idea location for his concept.

“Vancouver is one of the only North American cities that does not have a major highway cutting through its center,” he said. “This has caused our city to develop a high density of urban living and nomadic culture. Within our core, there are 13,000 residents per square mile, the highest in Canada. Additionally, for the millions that are just outside the city, there are 48 skytrain stops that all lead downtown. So what if we could use our crowded streets of commuting passengers to our advantage?”

“We take approximately 150 million steps in our lifetime,” said Ward. “Let’s capture that power.”

UK Wind Power Smashes Records As Scotland Eyes Fossil-Free Future

Gabrielle Bailey  ::  TckTckTck  ::  5 January 2015

Wind power went from strength to strength in the UK in 2014, with new figures from the National Grid showing the sector smashed its previous energy generation record last year.

Across the board, UK wind power generation is breaking records. December generation broke records, with wind’s contribution to the electricity mix rising to 14 percent. Photo credit: Creative Commons / André van Rooyen, 2009

It was revealed this week that the wind power in the UK climbed 15 percent in 2014 and now powers a quarter of British homes.

Wind power generation rose from 24.5 terawatt hours to 28.1TWh—enough to supply the needs of more than 6.7 million households across the UK.

Across the board, UK wind power generation is breaking records. December generation broke records, with wind’s contribution to the electricity mix rising to 14 percent.

In Scotland too, energy generation from wind broke records—in November alone, energy from Scottish wind farms provided power for 107 percent of homes in the country.

Maf Smith, deputy chief executive of RenewableUK, said:

It’s great to start 2015 with some good news about the massive quantities of clean electricity we’re now generating from wind, with new records being set month after month, quarter after quarter, and year on year, as we increase our capacity to harness one of Britain’s best natural resources.

He noted the importance clean energy would play in the forthcoming general elections:

We’re now into a general election year so we know that the political temperature is set to carry on rising over the next few months. The cost of energy has become an important political issue, so now would be a good time for voters, prospective parliamentary candidates and MPs to take account of the fact that onshore wind is the cheapest form of renewable energy we have at our fingertips.

The news of wind power’s great success comes as a new World Wildlife Fund (WWF) study predicts that Scotland’s power grid could viably become entirely fossil-free by 2030.

The study found the Scottish government’s policy goal of decarbonising Scottish power generation by 2030 was technically possible, due to the country’s abundance of wind and wave energy resources.

Paul Gardner, lead author of the WWF report, said:

Our technical analysis shows that a system with an extremely high proportion of renewable electricity generation located in Scotland can be secure and stable.There is no technical reason requiring conventional fossil and nuclear generation in Scotland.

What’s more, while the Scottish government’s current decarbonisation plan to 2030 relies on untested carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, the latest research shows this is not needed to ensure a fossil-free future.

It states that “a renewables-based, efficient, flexible, electricity system is perfectly feasible by 2030”

To become entirely renewable-dependent would be a cheaper and safer option for the country.

Renewable energy is more than 50 percent cheaper than installing carbon capture and storage in thermal plants, while renewables would be replacing dangerous fossil fuels that have negative effects on the planet and on public health.

Moreover, WWF stated that renewable projects in the pipeline are more than adequate for the country’s electricity needs.

Gina Hanrahan, climate and energy policy officer at WWF Scotland, said:

Pursuing this pathway would allow Scotland to maintain and build on its position as the UK and Europe’s renewable powerhouse, cut climate emissions and continue to reap the jobs and investment opportunities offered by Scotland’s abundant renewable resources.

The report has given the Scottish government a number of policy recommendations to be implemented if the target is to be met, suggesting  Westminster and Holyrood  should work together to support initiatives to reduce the demand for energy.

Richard Branson and Amory Lovins Join Forces to Accelerate Clean Energy Revolution

Richard Branson and Amory Lovins  ::  EcoWatch  ::  17 December 2014

The world’s three biggest carbon emitters—the U.S., China, and the European Union—have allannounced emissions goals or limits in the past few months. That’s great news, but global fossil fuel demand continues to rise, and with it, so do climate change’s risks—to the economy, to the environment, to security, to human health and to people living in poverty in areas whereclimate change will have a devastating impact. The most recent IPCC report (AR5) found that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” “human influence on the climate system is clear,” and “limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.”

Combating climate change through energy efficiency, renewable energy technologies, clean transportation, and smarter land use can reap great rewards both economically and environmentally. Photo credit: Shutterstock

The 2014 report Risky Business: The Economic Risks of Climate Change in the United Statesdetailed the serious economic harm we can expect from climate change if we continue on our current path. But the challenge before us is about more than averting the worst economic impacts of climate change. As highlighted in the recently released Better Growth, Better Climate report from The New Climate Economy, it’s also about finding enormous economic opportunity in clean energy solutions that both tackle global warming and unlock growth opportunities for all.

The transformation to a low-carbon future is arguably the greatest business opportunity of our time. Combating climate change through energy efficiency, renewable energy technologies, clean transportation, and smarter land use can reap great rewards both economically and environmentally.

Fortunately, an energy revolution is rising all around us—enabled by smart policies in mindful markets, and led by business for profit. Efficient energy use fuels more economic activity than oil, at far lower cost, while its potential gets ever bigger and cheaper. In each of the past three years, the world invested a quarter-trillion dollars—more than the market cap of the world’scoal industry—to add over 80 billion watts of renewable capacity (excluding big hydro dams). Generating capacity added last year was 37 percent renewable in the U.S., 68 percent in China, 72 percent in Europe and 53 percent in the world. Last year, the world invested over $600 billion in efficiency, renewables, and cogeneration.

This growth is accelerating: solar power is scaling faster than cellphones. Last year alone, China added more solar capacity than the U.S. has added in 60 years. Electric vehicle sales are growing twice as fast as hybrid cars did at a comparable stage. Shrewd companies are realizing climate solutions’ enormous business opportunities—a prospect scarcely dimmed by cheaper oil, which makes only a few percent of the world’s electricity.

Global companies like IKEA, Google, Apple, Facebook, Salesforce and Walmart have committed to 100 percent renewable power. Tesla’s stock is up an astounding 660 percent over the past two years and has half the market value of General Motors Corp. The NEX index, which tracks clean energy companies worldwide, grew by 50 percent over the past two years—far outperforming the general market—while equity raisings by quoted clean energy companies more than doubled. Many of the world’s top financial firms concur that the era of coal and of big power plants is drawing to a close; Germany’s biggest utility is divesting those assets to focus on efficiency and renewables.

Yet we need to create even bigger and faster change. Which is why we are delighted to announce that our two nonprofit organizations—Rocky Mountain Institute and the Carbon War Room—are joining forces. By uniting two of the world’s preeminent nonprofit practitioners of market-based energy and climate solutions, we will help turn the toughest long-term energy challenges into vast opportunities for entrepreneurs to create wealth and public benefit for all.

United we stand to make a greater impact more quickly. Indeed, we already are. Our first combined program, the Ten Island Challenge, is making progress in six Caribbean countries. Caribbean economies suffer from some of the world’s highest electricity prices—perpetuating poverty, swelling national debts, and blocking sustainable development. They are also on the front lines of climate change, facing earlier impacts from sea-level rise, rising temperatures, and extreme weather events. Our alliance is laying the groundwork to transform these islands’ energy systems from dependence on costly imported diesel oil to cleaner, cost-effective efficiency and local renewables. This will cut electricity costs, boost private investment, and enhance and diversify local jobs. We are demonstrating that entire economies can adopt low-carbon solutions while strengthening their economies.

And islands are just the beginning as we build on our organizations’ initiatives already underway and on our new joint efforts to go further, faster together. In trucking, the learnings of our North American initiative will seed a new China program—strengthening an exciting collaboration with the Chinese government’s energy analysts that’s already showing the maximum share of efficiency and renewables that could support the forecasted economic growth of what will soon become the world’s largest economy. In cement, we will join forces to offset the energy surge from construction in the world’s fastest-growing economies. And we will combine our work on cracking the biggest nut of all: energy efficiency in buildings. Since they use nearly three-fourths of U.S. electricity, that’s the key to making electricity supply affordable, distributed, diverse, resilient, and largely renewable.

Switching to a fossil-fuel-free energy system will not only cost less, but will help re-ignite the world’s economies. In the U.S. alone, Rocky Mountain Institute’s Reinventing Fire analysisfound that a 158-percent bigger economy could need no coal and oil and one-third less natural gas, yet cost $5 trillion less than business as usual. We are closer than ever before to transforming the world to a low-carbon energy system. Rocky Mountain Institute and the Carbon War Room are excited to coordinate their proven approaches to scaling transformational change worldwide. Together, we will more than double our impact on the scale and speed of the energy transformation to a clean, prosperous, secure and low-carbon world.

We will reach this better world only if we all collaborate. None of us can do this on our own.  That’s why we are thrilled to be joining forces, and hope that others will be inspired to do the same—so we can build this exciting new world of opportunities at the pace our grandchildren require.