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Sustainables jobs surge fades as wind farms face axe

The so-called “green jobs” boom in renewable energy has not lived up to the hype. As government policy flip-flops in favour of one form of energy to another – one minute offshore wind, the next minute, fracking – investors are losing faith. In March, SSE, the big energy company, announced a freeze to its bills until 2016, at the expense of 500 jobs and its involvement with several offshore wind parks. In the past year too, the second phase of the world’s largest offshore wind farm, the London Array, was scrapped; energy group RWE ditched its Atlantic Array and Scottish Power Renewables dropped plans for an Argyll Array.

Eight ways climate change is making the world more dangerous

Forget the future. The world already is nearly five times as dangerous and disaster prone as it was in the 1970s, because of the increasing risks brought by climate change, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organisation. The first decade of the 21st century saw 3,496 natural disasters from floods, storms, droughts and heat waves. That was nearly five times as many disasters as the 743 catastrophes reported during the 1970s – and all of those weather events are influenced by climate change.

En Espagne, un chantier de stockage de gaz sous-marin a provoqué mille séismes

Il n’y a plus de doute. Le projet Castor est bien le responsable de la vague de séismes qui a secoué le sud de la Catalogne et le nord de la communauté de Valence à l’automne 2013. Cet ancien gisement pétrolier sous-marin situé à 21 km de la côte espagnole et à 1 800 m de profondeur, transformé en entrepôt de gaz, devait permettre de stocker sous la mer l’équivalent de trois mois de la consommation de gaz dans la région de Valence, pour faire face aux pics de consommation ou à d’éventuelles ruptures d’approvisionnement.

‘Back door’ climate fix to supplant EU emission goals

As European leaders wrangle over energy and climate goals for 2030, Brussels officials are already pushing through a bill that effectively locks in deeper greenhouse gas cuts while potentially pushing up power bills for households and heavy industries. European Union leaders are in talks over whether to set a 40 percent cut in carbon emissions compared with 1990 levels, extending a 2020 goal to cut emissions by 20 percent under 1990 levels.

Extreme weather official advice rewritten to remove climate change link

The government has been accused of significantly watering down its official advice on extreme weather after removing mention of links between climate change and events such as bushfires and heatwaves. A document on the Department of Environment’s website, aimed at informing the public on how climate change is influencing dangerous weather, has removed an explicit reference linking the two. A previous version of the document opened with the statement: “There is a growing and robust body of evidence that climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.

Technology drives change in energy

The world of energy used to be fairly straightforward. Big state-owned utilities generated power and fed it through wires and pipes into customers’ houses. It was a well functioning system that seemed to be set in stone. But this centralised, “command and control” model is under pressure as never before. Energy is changing fast, as technological innovation disrupts the old paradigms. Smart grids, smart meters and smart home appliances embedded with sensors that connect them to the “internet of things” promise to revolutionise our approach to energy use.