One man is scrolling slowly through his emails. Another is flopped across his desk doing a good imitation of being asleep. It is a Wednesday afternoon at the China Beijing Environment Exchange, a centrepiece of China’s closely watched efforts to test carbon markets, and the action is not exactly frenzied. “There are currently around two to three trades a day,” says Yang Wang, the exchange’s carbon trading centre director.
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La lista delle infrastrutture energetiche di interesse europeo individuate dalla Commissione Ue era stata resa pubblica a ottobre insieme all’ammontare dei fondi a disposizione per il periodo 2014-2020: 5,85 miliardi. Ieri è stato ufficialmente lanciato il bando per accedere alla prima tranche da 750 milioni di euro di finanziamenti che rientrano nella Connecting Europe Faciliy (Cef) per lo sviluppo e il completamento delle grandi reti infrastrutturali energetiche. Il focus sarà su gas ed elettricità per aumentare la sicurezza delle forniture e mettere fine all’isolamento energetico di alcuni Paesi Ue.
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FOR all the debate about it, Britain’s shale-gas industry is minuscule. Whereas roughnecks in America have sunk many thousands of wells since a boom began more than a decade ago, Britain has fracked at only one test site, in Lancashire, and not since 2011. In a report published on May 8th, an all-party group from the House of Lords said that speeding shale-gas exploration should be an “urgent national priority”. So far, so familiar—and entirely in tune with the position of the coalition government. But the authors go on to blame the government, not green campaigners, for holding the frackers up.
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Una conversione ambientale “inconsapevole” fa ottenere all’Italia la leadership nelle trasformazioni green dell’economia superando la Germania, tradizionalmente considerata il campione in questo settore. Nel 2014 la Penisola emerge nettamente, sotto tutti i profili, come un Paese che consuma meno risorse, meno energia e produce meno emissioni. In Italia la produttività di risorse (Pil in rapporto alla quantità di materia consumata) è infatti migliore del 10% rispetto alla Germania e del 26% rispetto all’Ue; le emissioni pro capite di CO2 sono inferiori del 23% rispetto a quelle tedesche e del 15% rispetto alla media Ue.
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The use of drones has generally been synonymous with controversial globalised warfare, but falling costs and higher performance are now making them increasingly useful for conservation and environmental organisations. In the US, a non-profit group called Conservation Drones is working with manufacturers to scale up production, making drones more affordable for environmental groups and conservation scientists, with results that have already benefited Australian research groups. The founding director of Conservation Drones, Lian Pin Koh, told Guardian Australia the drones were a “game changer” that would “soon become a standard item in the toolbox”.
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