The Planet flu

The UK must pursue energy efficiency more aggressively to meet its target of an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050, according to a new report from the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC). It is possible to halve the energy used in the country’s homes through a mixture of energy efficiency improvements and modest lifestyle changes, the centre says.

Decarbonising would require measures like nuclear and CCS technology in addition to renewables, which alone cannot meet the demand in time.

For India, an investment of $10 billion in energy efficiency improvements could result in gigantic energy savings, a new World Resource Institute (WRI) report states. According to Powering Up: The Investment Potential of Energy Service Companies in India, the energy service company sector (ESCO) could help the country save from than 183.5 billion kilowatt hours, while turning a profit.

The large and energy-intensive Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai hired Sudnya Industrial Services, an ESCO, to undertake an analysis. The results showed that the air-conditioning system comprised 60 percent of the hospital’s energy usage and that an upgrade was necessary. The entire investment of the hospital to do this upgrade was US$12,000, the annual savings are US$17,000, and the payback time was nine months.

Meanwhile the Indian envoy to a two-day meeting in Washington of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, Shyam Saran ruled out a cap on development , preferring a rapid deployment of technology to make the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. What exactly does the 'cap on development' being talked about? Anyone know?

India had been able to achieve 8-9 percent growth with energy use growing by only 3-3.5 percent, he said.

Meanwhile, on the issue of fossil fuels, it looks like we better let the fuels remain fossils, at least most of what is left!

Two new studies published in Nature note that there is very little space left for wiggling out of a 2 deg rise. The two studies, one from the U.K. and one from Germany, measure total emissions into the atmosphere, rather than atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.

Humanity can only emit 1 trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide between 2000 and 2050 to have a 75% chance of limiting temperature increases to 2 degrees celsisus. Since we already pumped out about 234 billion tons through 2006, that leaves only about 760 billion tons in the piggy bank, as it were. We need to stop using fossil fuels long before we run out of them. This may be a 'pandemic' we are refusing to acknowledge.

Winding up the weekend, some good news for clean energy followers. The new search engine for renewable energy, reegle aggregates energy news, has a map detailing renewable energy projects around the world and provides links for energy industry players in government, business, media and academia.