Europe

The Environmental Protection Agency estimated recently that the United States emitted about 6,946 million tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gases in 2008. Or did it?

According to a study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, taking a look at what Americans consume as well as what they produce could add more than 10 percent to the total.

In his new book, A World Without Ice, geophysicist Henry Pollack explains the complex influences that Earth's ice has had on human survival, and that population growth and industrialization are now having on the survival of Earth's ice. Following is an excerpt.

By Henry Pollack

Just as the international financial system surprised the world with a major collapse in 2008, the global climate system, with its human component, is equally capable of serious surprises.

Lurking in the shadows of climate change is the possibility that the accelerations we now observe in the climate system are portends of approaching tipping points.

Europe is considering key changes to its energy technology budget – proposals that could give new life to the continent's lagging cleantech sector at a time when the U.S and Asia are leaping far ahead.

The recommended changes come from the European Commission (EC) in its Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan. The blueprint urges a tripling of the EU energy research budget over the next ten years, from a yearly investment of $4.4 billion to $11.8 billion. In total, an extra $74 billion in public and private energy investment would be needed by 2020.

"Increasing smart investments in research today is an opportunity to develop new sources of growth, to green our economy and to ensure the EU's competitiveness when we come out of the crisis," EU Commissioner for Science and Research Janez Potocnik said.

The proposal represents a test of the EU's stated willingness to cut its global-warming emissions by at least 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Member states will have to examine the plan before handing it to the European Parliament for approval.

While America's clean energy technology sector has grown dramatically in the past few years, the exact opposite has occurred in Europe.

Its one-time promising sector has headed south fast.

The two regions had almost identical cleantech investment in 2003. But by 2008, things had changed. North America had outstripped Europe to invest nearly three times as much in clean energy, according to a report undertaken by New Energy Finance for the UK-based Carbon Trust, "The Rise and Fall of Clean Energy Investment."

The Carbon Trust is rightfully worried. Europe stands to lose out on the lucrative shift to a low-carbon economy, the report warns:

"While Europe may have initially been much faster to promote clean energy technologies, the rate of investment clearly has not kept up with North America. In today’s global marketplace this could have profound effects on the ability of European economies to benefit from demand for clean energy generation, products and services."

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• Stacy Feldman's blog
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The most ambitious solar power plan ever conceived may be coming into some serious cash.

A group of 20 German firms is forming a consortium this July to begin raising $555 billion for the much-discussed Afro-European solar research project known as Desertec, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung revealed this week.

Desertec seeks to transform Saharan Africa into a solar hub for Europe by constructing a supergrid of concentrating solar thermal plants (CSP) on 6,500 square miles of North African desert. They claim their scheme could eventually meet much of the continent's electricity needs.

Half a trillion dollars in funding would certainly be a tremendous start in that direction. In fact, that kind of financing would be enough to power 15 percent of the continent by 2050.

Talk about a boost for Big Solar.

The news of the colossal cash infusion is grabbing global headlines. And it's no wonder. The firms involved are some of the heaviest hitters in Europe: insurance giant Munich Re, German engineering leader Siemens, Deutsche Bank, energy companies RWE and E.on, among others.

Lagging so far behind the rest of Europe in delivering green energy, the UK needs to make a bold statement. Two recent developments have collided to make that more likely.

First came the government's ambitious programme to up the production of renewable energy. It will require generating a third of the country’s energy from green sources by 2020 and a massive expansion of offshore wind power projects.

Second came plans to turn London’s iconic Battersea Power Station, immortalised by Pink Floyd, into what developers claim is the UK’s largest ever sustainable development project.

The power station was a major contributor to the capital’s appalling air quality in the 20th century, including the great London smog of 1952, which scientists believe may have killed as many as 12,000 people.

The developers plan to place a low-energy-using office complex alongside Battersea Power Station – along with futuristic chimney and ecodome. And they want the plant to emerge from its dirty past as a green energy powerhouse – burning biomass and other waste to generate electricity.

What a fantastic symbol – the promise of renewable energy rising up through the shell of our coal-fired past and giving a new life to the defunct industrial zone in sustainable work space and housing. But skeptics have thrown cold water on the bold idea.