So, most people who followed the Copenhagen climate talks came away feeling vaguely disappointed, but I just came across two bits of news that give me hope that even though we aren’t seeing the broad sweeping action we’d like, we are making progress.
The first is a report, which I read on the Sustainable Business site, indicating that NO new coal plants “broke ground” in 2009. Over the past 12 months, plans for more than two dozen new plants were either abandoned or shot down. These plants would have coughed up approximately 146 million tons of carbon dioxide on an annual basis. Also on the positive side, there was a 22.5 percent increase during 2009 in the amount of electricity produced by wind generation technology.
There are still plants on the planning boards, despite the push toward renewable energy. You can read about them, as well as the defeated ones, on a special Sierra Club Web site.
The other tidbit I appreciated is the announcement that the U.S. Department of Energy intends to put approximately $336 million into three new Energy Innovation Hubs, where they hope to accelerate research and development in the following:
- The production of fuels directly from sunlight
- Improving energy-efficient building systems design
- Developing computer modeling and simulation for the creation of advanced nuclear reactors
