Cuba on the Road to Clean Energy Development

By Patricia Grogg
IPS

HAVANA, Feb 7, 2012 (IPS) - More than a decade ago, solar electricity changed the lives of several mountain communities in Cuba. Now this and other renewable power sources are emerging as the best options available to develop sustainable energy across the island.

"If the world's clean energy potential exceeds our consumption needs, why do we insist on using the polluting kind?" asked Luis Bérriz, head of the Cuban Society for the Promotion of Renewable Energy Sources and Respect for the Environment (CUBASOLAR), a non- governmental organisation that promotes the use of alternative and environmentally-friendly power sources.

The true colors of green economy

By Silvia Ribeiro
América Latina en Movimiento
December 19, 2011

Twenty years after the UN Conference on Environment and Development (World Summit or Eco ‘92) a new world conference will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2012. Rio+20, as it is known, will be set in the midst of the greatest global crises in the century: environmental devastation, biodiversity erosion, climate crisis, economic and financial crisis, food crisis, and health crisis.

Although Rio+20 was supposed to review the commitments made, the state of the real problems and the strategies to resolve them, the issues on the agenda are green economy and new forms of global environmental governance. If the term “sustainable development” was ambiguous and was profusely manipulated, the substitution for green economy points to an even more restrictive approach, which privileges those who dominate the markets.

Denmark: New Red/Green gov't aims for 100% renewables

By Simon Leufstedt
GreenBlog
5 December, 2011

The new red and green government in Denmark wants to end the country’s reliance on fossil fuels. In a proposal presented to the parliament last week the Danish government laid out their new and bold energy plan. By 2050 Denmark should get 100% of their energy from renewable energy sources.

The proposed energy plan would have four central deadlines. Under the new plan the government wants to see Denmark generate 52% of its energy from renewable sources, such as wind power, as early as 2020. This target alone would cut Denmark’s greenhouse gas emissions with 35% based on 1990 levels. By 2030 all coal-fired power plants in Denmark will be phased out and replaced by biomass and other renewable energy sources. And in 2035 the Danish government expects that all of the country’s power and heat will come from renewable energy sources. And if their plan is followed, the country’s entire energy supply could come from renewables in 2050.

Wanted: Good green energy jobs

Wind and solar energy projects don't create a lot of jobs and the ones they do create don't pay all that well

By Marjorie Griffin Cohen and John Calvert
Vancouver Sun
October 27, 2011

The energy sector is often promoted as an area where a "winwin" situation exists for labour and climate change policy. The prevailing view is that the economy will create many good new jobs as it shifts from dirty energy production to clean, renewable energy.

We wish this were so, but our study of employment in the energy sector finds that these claims are largely wishful thinking. While there are new developments, overall Canadian energy policy is "more of the same." It is explicitly driven by private-marketbased decisions, rather than careful planning by governments to ensure both good environmental and labour outcomes. To the extent that there is public planning, it is focused on delivering outcomes the energy industry wants. This planning failure has implications both for the lack of greening of the energy sector, and the types of jobs being created.

Selling Nature to Save Nature, and Ourselves

By Stephen Leahy
Inter Press Service
July 6, 2011

THE HAGUE - Avoiding the coming catastrophic nexus of climate change, food, water and energy shortages, along with worsening poverty, requires a global technological overhaul involving investments of 1.9 trillion dollars each year for the next 40 years, said experts from the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) in Geneva Tuesday.

"The need for a technological revolution is both a development and existential imperative for civilization," said Rob Vos, lead author of a new report, "The Great Green Technological Transformation". [ Baker River Dam Site / International Rivers)] Many believe the green technology transformation that the new U.N. report calls for is unlikely to succeed without a move away from the economic growth-at-all-costs paradigm that dominates nearly everyone's thinking.

Sustainable Development, Not ‘Green Economy’

Emilio Godoy
July 16, 2011

HAVANA TIMES, July16 (IPS) — With less than a year to go for the Rio+20 Summit, civil society in Latin America and the Caribbean is mustering its strength to defend the principles of sustainable development, as opposed to the model of a “green economy”, which it views as only benefiting the business interests of big companies.

“The green economy is the new international environmental vogue, but it has lost all vestiges of the concept of sustainable development and has taken another direction,” Maureen Santos, an expert on international issues at the Brazilian Federation of Agencies for Social and Educational Assistance (FASE), told IPS.

Canada Falling Behind Global Trend To Green Energy

By Jim Harding
Originally published in R-Town News
May 20, 2011

Recent UN reports confirm that the shift to green energy (renewables, energy efficiency and bio-energy) is gaining ground globally. The United Nations Environmental Program's (UNEP's) report "Global Trends in Green Energy 2009" shows that for the second year in a row investments in green energy topped those in non-renewables - fossil fuels and nuclear combined.

The $162 billion invested globally in 2009 is a quadrupling since 2004. Excluding hydro this created 50 gigawatts (GW) of new energy capacity, which is equivalent to 75 coal-fired plants. By 2009 renewables constituted 25% of all global electrical capacity and accounted for 18% of power production. Most telling is the trend; in 2009 renewables accounted for 60% of all newly installed energy capacity in Europe and 50% in the US. This trend could be our saving grace with our race against catastrophic climate change.