“Overcapacity”, a geeky economic term, has recently become the new buzzword for international discussion around China’s solar and electric vehicle industries. It is also becoming one of the thorniest issues in China’s relations with other major economies.

Notably, the word was mentioned five times in the G7 Leaders Communiqué released last week, with the G7 countries framing it collectively as a global challenge.

It is a debate that was initially sparked by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during her April visit to Beijing. According to her, China’s cleantech industry has excess capacities that cannot be absorbed domestically, leading to exports at depressed prices. And she stressed that this should be a concern not only for the US, but also for Europe and other emerging markets.

Days after climate talks, US slaps tariffs on Chinese EVs and solar panels

China strongly disagreed with this claim, while Yellen’s concern resonated in the EU, which has long focused on China’s market dominance. In short, there is an overcapacity of “overcapacities”, with neither side finding identical terms of reference. But as this debate is a harbinger of how climate solutions and political agendas will interweave, it’s worth parsing out some lessons for each side, on their own terms.

The US’ “overcapacity” claim as presented by Yellen is a non-starter in China.

China’s clean energy industry is an important point of pride internationally and a source of legitimacy domestically for Beijing. From that perspective countering the “overcapacity” claim is both emotionally and strategically important.

Strategically, this claim is being used to justify trade measures and tariffs against China’s clean energy products. Emotionally, the cleantech industry is a modern-day success story of China’s entrepreneurship and innovation. In China’s public discourse, the US “overcapacity” claims lands as a rejection of that success.

Lithium tug of war: the US-China rivalry for Argentina’s white gold

The result is a political debate in which – by design – no side can convince the other. And the lesson? This posturing is at odds with US-China climate diplomacy as we’ve known it to function in the past. Whatever objectives this approach serves, it does not include closer climate collaboration between the US and China, even as multilateral climate action at the UN level still requires them to take action in concert.

In China, discussion on “overcapacity” emerged from an ongoing conversation about how to manage investment hype. And the answer lies on the demand side.

For investors inside China at a time of challenging economics, few industries are as attractive as the clean energy industry. And business leaders have focused on the risks of hot money and breakneck expansion of clean energy manufacturing capacity for some time now, particularly in the solar industry.

This was probably the origin of “overcapacity”. But in China, this has been a familiar, almost perennial discussion of investment and industrial cycles. While the US argument equates exports to overcapacity, Chinese companies argue that it is demand that determines overcapacity, and they make investment and expansion decisions based on projections of both domestic and global demand.

Q&A: What you need to know about electric vehicles (EVs) and their batteries

That said, the size of China’s domestic market means it will remain the “base” for Chinese manufacturers. In the overseas market, the “overcapacity” claim underscores the complexity and uncertainties Chinese companies face.

For Chinese policymakers, one obvious response to the new market dynamics should be taking domestic demand to new levels. That means addressing lingering questions for China’s renewable energy future – namely, how to resolve the impact of coal. China’s power market was designed for a system dependent on coal, but it needs reform to allow wind and solar to take the central role. Injecting new political momentum to accelerate the reform will be key.

The EU has long been concerned about China’s market dominance, and the “overcapacity” debate is pushing it to decide its role in this trilateral trade and climate dynamic.

Even before this debate erupted, the EU had already begun, subtly, to diversify supply chains and build its own industrial strength, reducing dependence on Chinese products. Last week, the EU announced a maximum tariff of 38% on imported Chinese-made electric vehicles, concluding that Chinese EV makers are benefiting from “unfair subsidies”.

At this stage, it’s still unclear if this is the end of the EU’s low-key approach to date. Cultivating an EU-based clean industry hub without compromising the global response to climate change is a challenge, especially as the EU positions itself as a climate leader.

Entering the fray of US-China tension only makes this feat more complex, especially given uncertainties on the US end in an election year. How the EU approaches this climate and trade nexus will ultimately shape the trilateral dynamic among the world’s three largest carbon emitters in the coming years.

The Canadian city betting on recycling rare earths for the energy transition

For China, where relations with the EU and other countries are concerned, it’s worth taking a step back and looking at the hidden messages in the “overcapacity” debate. Other countries want more than just Chinese products.

Climate leadership is not a buyer-seller relationship, but one between partners who want solutions that create local jobs, develop opportunities, and enable native development of a sustainable future.

China should see its role in the global clean transition as more than a manufacturing hub. The transition requires tools, technology, finance and know-how, and China has much to offer. It is time for China to think more creatively about how to leverage its industrial advantages to provide the solutions with which the world is currently under-supplied.

The post Lessons from trade tensions targeting “overcapacity” in China’s cleantech industry appeared first on Climate Home News.

But the money pledged still falls short of the $4 billion a year needed for the rest of this decade to wean poor African households off traditional dirty fuels including charcoal, kerosene and firewood, while climate campaigners criticised efforts to switch them to fossil gas.

Countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and India have made progress in recent years, in line with a global goal to provide clean cooking for all by 2030. Yet four in five Africans still use highly polluting cooking methods – around half of the 2.3 billion people who lack clean options worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol told the summit his organisation’s aim of making 2024 “a turning point” for clean cooking was being realised.

“It’s now or never,” he said, adding that the IEA will track the commitments made in Paris and share the results with the international community in a year’s time. “We will follow it as if it is our own money,” he emphasised.

In Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s net zero vision clashes with legacy of war

Separately, the African Development Bank (AfDB) confirmed an earlier pledge, first made at the COP28 climate summit last year, to mobilise around $2 billion for clean cooking over the next 10 years, earmarking 20 percent of its energy finance for that purpose.

Speaking in Paris, AfDB president, Akinwumi A. Adesina, said his own eyesight had been damaged by smoke from cooking fires during his childhood in Nigeria, while a friend and members of her family had died in an accident after she was sold petrol instead of kerosene as cooking fuel.

“Why do we let things like that happen?” Adesina asked, adding that enabling clean cooking is a matter of “human dignity, fairness and justice for women”. “It is about life itself,” he said.

Experts have long pointed to the health damage to women and children from carbon monoxide and black soot emitted by cooking over open fires or with basic stoves. Dirty cooking contributes to 3.7 million premature deaths annually, according to the IEA, with women and children most at risk from respiratory and cardiovascular ailments linked to indoor air pollution.

Ahead of the Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa this week in Paris, some climate and gender activists pointed to the small number of African women represented at the gathering – who they said accounted for less than a fifth of registered participants.

World Bank tiptoes into fiery debate over meat emissions

Janet Milongo, coordinator of renewable energy for Climate Action Network International, said the event was biased “towards the continuation of the colonial, patriarchal representation of the continent”.

Speeches were made largely by male leaders of governments and companies, with the notable exception of Tanzania’s president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, and Damilola Ogunbiyi, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Sustainable Energy for All.

Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (left) with the presidents of Sierra Leone, Tanzania and  Togo, the prime minister of Norway; H.E. Maroš Šefčovič, Executive Vice President of the European Green Deal and Akinwumi A. Adesina, President of the African Development Bank Group at the Clean Cooking Summit for Africa in Paris, May 14, 2024 (Photo: International Energy Agency)

Clean cooking ‘opportunity’ in NDCs

Ogunbiyi, who is Nigerian and has worked on clean energy policy for the government, said her country had made a big effort on solar electrification but had forgotten about clean cooking.

“We can’t make that mistake again,” she said, calling for clean cooking to be a key part of African governments’ investment plans for their energy transition.

UN climate chief Simon Stiell urged more governments to seize the opportunity to include measures to boost clean cooking in the next updates to their national climate action plans (NDCs) due by early next year.

As of December last year, only 60 NDCs included one or more measures that explicitly target clean cooking, such as Nepal’s goal to ensure that by 2030 half of households use electric stoves as their main mode of cooking and Rwanda promising to disseminate modern efficient cookstoves to 80% of its rural population and 50% of people in cities by that date.

Stiell noted that planet-heating emissions from dirty cooking methods are “significant”, amounting to about 2% of the global total – the equivalent of emissions from the aviation and shipping sectors combined.

UN agrees carbon market safeguards to tackle green land grabs

He said the world has the technology to shift people onto modern, cleaner sources of energy and cut emissions in the process, calling it “low-hanging fruit”.

Dymphna van der Lans, CEO of the Clean Cooking Alliance, a global partnership of organisations working on the issue, said it was important to raise awareness not just about the scale of the problem – but to ensure people understand it is an issue that can be solved.

“The technologies exist – they are out there, there are fantastic companies providing these fuels and solutions and services to these customers that actually can be deployed immediately… and reach the populations in Africa,” she told Climate Home after the summit.

LPG conundrum

On stage in Paris, companies ranging from fossil fuel giants such as Total and Shell to smaller manufacturers of cookstoves said they would expand their efforts to reach new customers with more efficient stoves running on modern energy, including liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), bioethanol and electricity.

While there is widespread consensus over ending the use of firewood and charcoal – which contribute to deforestation – there is less agreement over which fuels should replace them.

Efforts to build new distribution networks for LPG – a form of fossil fuel gas – are particularly controversial. At the summit on Tuesday, TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné said his company wants to increase its 40 million African LPG customers to 100 million and will invest more to boost its LPG production capacity in East Africa.

Pouyanné said there is a need to make LPG cooking affordable – noting that the $30 upfront investment required for a stove and gas canister is too high for most people – which could be done through “pay as you cook” loans.

Some international development agencies that work on the ground to help poor households access clean cooking – including Practical Action – support the use of LPG as a “transitional step” towards clean cooking where options like electricity or ethanol are not available.

“Our primary objective is to ensure people, especially women and children, have access to the best possible solutions which don’t compromise their health and that in the long term aren’t contributing to the worsening climate crisis,” said Practical Action CEO Sarah Roberts.

In the IEA’s “least-cost, realistic scenario” to reach universal clean cooking this decade, LPG remains the primary solution, representing nearly half of households gaining access, while electric cooking is the main option for just one in eight homes.

Days after climate talks, US slaps tariffs on Chinese EVs and solar panels

The IEA’s analysis shows that this strategy, centred on LPG, would drive up emissions by 0.1 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2030. But that would be more than offset by reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from switching away from firewood, charcoal and inefficient stoves, resulting in a net reduction of 1.5Gt of CO2 equivalent by 2030.

Net greenhouse gas emissions annual savings from clean cooking access in the IEA Access for All scenario by 2030 (in Mt CO2-eq) (Source: IEA)

Red = Combustion; Orange = Avoided combustion; Yellow = Unsustainable harvesting; Green = Net savings          

At the summit, Togo’s president Faure Gnassingbé described LPG as “really the way forward” for clean cooking, and said more production capacity was needed in Africa. He added that ESG investors – which normally apply green and ethical standards – should adjust their environmental criteria so they can back LPG cooking projects despite it being a fossil fuel.

“We should be clear-headed and not open up to sterile debates on this issue,” Gnassingbé told the summit.

Some climate justice activists disagreed, criticising high-level backing for fossil gas as a clean cooking solution.

Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a Nairobi-based energy and climate think-tank, said on social media platform X that the need for clean cooking alternatives “is used by many African politicians as an excuse for building gas infrastructure” which is intended to develop an export industry and never reaches poorer households.

Here’s my response to yesterday’s summit on Clean Cooking in Africa & the declaration issued by #IEA.

“This declaration is a lazy & misguided statement which seems to rely on the private sector to use gas as a solution to this problem.

However, there’s no evidence that will…

— Mohamed Adow (@mohadow) May 15, 2024

He said the money raised at the summit should be channelled instead into high-efficiency, low-cost electric cookers for African women, which could be powered by renewable energy.

Carbon finance principles

Another controversial way of promoting clean cooking, backed by the IEA-hosted summit, is by developing and selling carbon credits for the emissions savings from new technologies and fuels.

The IEA said that around 15% of the total amount pledged in Paris would come via carbon finance, with the proceeds from selling offsets helping subsidise customers’ access to clean cooking.

But Climate Home found in an investigation last year that the methodologies used to calculate emissions reductions from more efficient cookstoves in India had overstated their greenhouse gas savings.

To counter such problems, the Clean Cooking Alliance announced a new set of “Principles for Responsible Carbon Finance in Clean Cooking” in Paris, backed by 100 organisations working in the space.

Road row in protected forest exposes Kenya’s climate conundrum

The voluntary principles, which aim to build confidence in carbon markets for clean cooking, say project claims should be evidence-based, case-specific and substantiated, and their benefits should be transparent. The alliance is also working with the UN climate secretariat on a new methodology for clean cooking carbon credits which it hopes will be ready this year.

Van der Lans said the goal was to strengthen the quality and integrity of clean-cooking carbon credits in line with the latest science, to achieve a higher, fairer price that fully reflects the work being done to protect forests by moving away from charcoal and firewood.

“Everybody within the clean cooking ecosystem is signing up to these principles,” she noted – from banks to carbon credit verification agencies and companies selling the technology.

“That is a good signal that we’re doing the right things and we’re moving this market in the right direction,” she added.

(Reporting by Megan Rowling; editing by Joe Lo)

The post Paris summit unlocks cash for clean cooking in Africa, side-stepping concerns over gas appeared first on Climate Home News.

While the newspapers are full of stories focusing on the price of oil and the seemingly endless debate over the future of nuclear power, there are plenty of largely untapped sources of energy out there ripe for exploitation.

The Aerogenerator X floating wind turbine is has attracted interest from Arup. (Source: ©Wind Power Limited/Grimshaw)

With Ban Ki-moon pushing his Sustainable Energy for All initiative at the Rio+20 Summit this month and the IEA recently espousing the potential for gas, the energy question is being pulled in different directions.

A number of less obvious options are now making progress. For some that means research moving from the lab to larger scale trials, for others it means technologies that were once limited to small markets going mainstream.

These new technologies provide new routes to help us cut carbon, save money and boost the economy along the way creating jobs in research, manufacturing and maintenance.

I’ve picked out five future energy sources yet to go global, that have large-scale potential, big backing and a spark of ingenuity that moves the debate forward in a sustainable way.

Get involved: Comment below, tweet @rtccnewswire or email me your own ideas.

Seaweed and algae

It’s a staple of some people’s diets and the basis of a skin treatment for others, but there’s also a dual role for seaweed and algae to play in the energy sector.

Grown in farms either on land or at sea, algae and seaweeds can provide a feedstock for biodiesel without using up land that could other wise be used for agriculture.

The US Navy and shipping giant Maersk have already conducted large scale trials of the technology. The fuel can be mixed with regular oil-based supplies and requires no changes to engines or supply lines.

An Asia-Pacific wide research network is also looking at how seaweed farms could be used as carbon sinks, in much the same way as forests do on land. An added bonus.

VIDEO: The University of Pusan in South Korea tells RTCC about its dual research on seaweed as an energy source and carbon sink.

Space solar

This particular renewable energy solution is certainly unlikely to attract any of the “not in my back yard” opponents that some other technologies are stifled by.

Engineers from Strathclyde University are hoping to put a large solar array in space and then beam the energy back to the surface of the planet using either a laser or microwaves.

The idea is not new, but a recent trial showed that the team’s lightweight spinning panels can support additional bulk, allowing the solar cells to carry the transmitter cutting the complexity and cost of the initiative.

The team hopes the laser could be used to direct energy to remote areas and could play an important role in disaster relief.

Another project led by EADS Astrium, the space engineering  and manufacturing arm of defence firm EADS, looks to exploit their existing space hardware experience by using more traditional looking satellites.

Some in the blogosphere have pointed out the worrying potential for this to be turned into weapon…

VIDEO: The EADS Astrium space-based solar proposal

Floating offshore wind turbines

There are two problems with offshore wind.

First of all, it’s costly to build the necessary foundations and deep sea structures necessary to support them. The specially designed ships needed to build and maintain them also cost money.

Secondly, there are only so many places where the seabed is shallow enough to build, but far enough from land to please planners and maximise benefit of high wind speeds.

Floating turbines can solve both these problems.

There a number of models undergoing development with the UK and the US agreeing in April this year to work together on progressing them.

Engineering giant Arup has thrown it’s weight behind the Aerogenerator X (see video below).

Marine Power

There is a host of different technologies looking to generate marine power and several are beginning to mature at the same time. A demonstrator test site has been established in the UK with a second planned. Interest in establishing similar facilities has come from Chile, China and the US.

Pelamis Wave Power’s snake-like systems float on the surface with the movements between each section converted to electricity.

Aquamarine Power’s Oyster system is fixed the seabed near the shore with the waves moving a large paddle that pumps liquid at an onshore generator.

Marine Current Turbines (MCT) meanwhile, use tidal currents to generate power via two rotors fitted to each underwater structure.

The three companies above have all attracted investment from engineering firms and utility companies. MCT is now owned by Siemens.

VIDEO: Neil Davidson of Aquamarine Power explains to RTCC how marine power can cut dependence on fossil fuels and help lower prices for consumers. 

Geothermal

Outside of the US, geothermal remains a largely mysterious source of electricity generation to many. The process involves cycling water through hot underground rock and using the resulting steam to drive turbines. It requires specific geological conditions but advances in the technology are opening up new markets.  China, UK, Germany, Turkey and others are now looking to exploit their own resources.

Iceland and Italy provide almost all of Europe’s supply and it remains under utilised in many other markets.

The Geothermal Energy Association estimates that in East Africa, there is the potential for 15GW, the equivalent of 15 nuclear power stations.

Iceland produces more electricity than it needs from its vast geothermal resources. The country recently signed an agreement with the UK to explore the possibility of transmitting electricity generated by Iceland’s volcanic activity across the North Sea.

A geothermal borehole in Iceland, where the technology has helped the country generate all its electricity from renewable sources. (Source: Flickr/Lydurs)

Get involved: Comment below, tweet @rtccnewswire or email me your own ideas.

The post Volcanoes, seaweed and space lasers: Five energy technologies to fight climate change appeared first on Climate Home News.

In this article, blue-chip IT firm Intel, explains how the sector can enable massive global emission cuts.

Recent studies have estimated the ICT industry’s contribution to the world’s energy and carbon footprint to be 2% and rising.

A major focus of government policy in recent years has been on reducing the growth of ICT’s direct footprint.

Smart technologies could cut the need for US oil imports by 36%. (Source: Intel)

Many of these same studies, however, have highlighted the significant role ICT can play in reducing the footprint of the rest of society – the other 98% – through the energy efficiency gains such technologies can help enable.

The Climate Group and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) in 2008 produced a report entitled, “Smart 2020: Enabling the Low Carbon Economy in the Information Age” that found that ICT strategies could reduce global carbon emissions by up to 15% in 2020 against a baseline of business as usual.

A 2008 Boston Consulting Group report found that smart technologies have the potential to reduce U.S. CO2 emissions by as much as 22% by 2020 through the concerted application of broadband and ICT in four areas: Smart Power Grids, Smart Roads, Smart Buildings and Travel Substitution.

A 22% reduction would mean $240 billion in cost savings or a reduction of 36% in imported oil.

Similar reports have been completed for China and India through the Digital Energy Solutions Campaign (DESC).

If integrated into the economy, ICT can potentially reduce carbon emissions in China by 13-18% of the intensity reduction targets by 2020. An example of this is in the industrial sector which consumes approximately 70% of China’s energy.

Zhejiang SUPCON Technology Ltd, a pioneer in “smart motor” technologies, provides total ICT solutions and products across industrial sectors and public utilities.

ICT has the potential to cut industrial emissions in the developed and developing worlds. (Source: Intel)

The applications of its intelligent plant automation system (InPlant) has been installed in over 6,000 worldwide facilities of oil and gas, petrochemical, chemical, electric power generation, cement, pulp and paper, and metallurgy.

The improved industrial process automation through the system has given significant economic and environmental benefits to users by averagely increasing 19.2% of product quality and improving 13.5% of productivity resulting in reduced energy consumption by 3-5% and reduced waste.

At the national level, emission reduction potential from ICT enabled smart motors is 286 MtCO2 in 2020.

In India, ICT solutions can lead to emission reductions of 8-10% of the estimated GHG emissions in 2030 for specific sectors.

Street lighting in India constitutes about 13% of the country’s total electrical energy consumption.

Considering that there are a vast number of streets connected to a common line, it is a cumbersome task to maintain and control these systems.

In this respect, implementation of ICT enabled advanced technology solutions can provide for greater convenience in street lighting management and quality, apart from delivering energy savings due to enhanced energy efficiency of lighting equipment.

A smart street lighting energy conservation project implemented by Bangalore Development Authority reduced energy consumption of the town towards street lighting to the tune of 40-45%.

Assuming street light energy consumption of 450 terawatt hours in 2030 in the business as usual scenario, ICT-enabled street lighting management systems can reduce energy consumption by as much as 135 terawatt hours, resulting in emission reductions to the tune of 116 MtCO2 in 2030.

Intel Corporation is the world’s largest semiconductor company and the leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products. Intel believes that climate change is not only an environmental issue, but an important societal challenge that warrants a serious policy response. Intel’s contribution to meeting this challenge includes mitigating our own impact, leading our industry and engaging at the policy level.

The post Rio+20 Business Focus: Intel on how IT can cut carbon and boost profits appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Bahrain World Trade Centre. (Source: Flickr/JustDONQUE.images)

A new study has revealed that the cleantech sector is being driven by real business demands rather than the pursuit of good publicity.

The report, by the Grant Thornton advisory group, also highlights the growing optimism within the industry.

“Companies once approached the cleantech sector – as buyers or sellers – because it was a good thing to do, a socially responsible corporate action,” said Randy Free, member of Grant Thornton’s global Cleantech group and tax partner in the United States. “But today, around the world, cleantech means reducing costs and increasing profits.”

The research looked at a number of areas from utilities and renewable energy to energy efficiency and construction.

When asked what was driving demand for clean technologies among businesses, the most common answer was cost reduction, which was cited by 52% of the companies surveyed. The least popular answer was to enhance their brand.

Optimism

Optimism in the clean tech sector is on the increase in 2011 with 37% saying they were optimistic about the next 12 months compared to 34% the previous year. The all-sector average fell from 24% to 22% during the same period.

We’re really on the cusp of something big,” said James Brice, sustainability service head, Grant Thornton South Africa.

“We’re not quite sure yet how big, because the government keeps on changing its tack, but we’re going through the first wave of our country’s renewable energy tendering process.”

The impact of policy is not limited to South Africa with Grant Thornton’s analysts in Russia, India, Canada and throughout Europe picking out the role of governments in driving the sector.

When asked to list the cleantech market drivers, Vivek Vikram Singh, associate director, Grant Thornton India said: “One to 10 would be government regulations – everything else is 11th.”

While there are plenty of reasons for the sector to celebrate, the report acknowledges that it is not immune to global financial constraints.

While the situation is improving, businesses taking part in the report continue to list the cost and availability of loans as a major constraint to their operations.

The post Profit not image driving cleantech boom as business tackles climate change appeared first on Climate Home News.

Apple has been criticised by Greenpeace for relying too heavily on coal for its data centres. (Source: Flickr/Yutaka Tsutano)

Apple, Twitter and Amazon have been criticised by Greenpeace over the renewable power and energy efficiency of their growing data centres.

As more and more data storage is moved to “the cloud”, vast banks of servers are required to host the information creating a new energy drain.

The power to operate and cool these data centres is also a large cost for firms such as Facebook and Google.

The Greenpeace report looked at each company’s energy efficiency, renewable advocacy, transparency and how sensibly their infrastructure had been sited.

Amazon, Apple and Twitter all received at least one “grade F” in these four criteria

Apple also had the highest percentage of its energy (55.1%) sourced from coal and just 15.3% from renewables.

The company has since defended its record adding that its new Maiden data centre will draw 60% of its energy from renewable sources.

Google, which has previously invested in clean energy projects, and Yahoo were top of the class.

The post Greenpeace slates Apple, Twitter and Amazon over energy use appeared first on Climate Home News.

The transfer of technology is not just about North-South transfers (Source: EU)

The UN system to transfer climate technology is not about rich nations giving to poor, according to a member of the UN climate agency’s Technology Executive Committee.

The goal of the mechanism is to shift the technology required to reduce the impact of climate change, to countries where it is needed most.

It is frequently assumed that this means rich nations from the global North acting as donors to poor countries from the global South.

“This concept that tech transfer is North-South is invalid, a lot of the technologies that we are dealing with are South-South,” said Matthew Kennedy, Senior Planner with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland and a member of the UNFCCC’s Technology Executive Committee.

“A lot of the technology will not be going from Europe to Africa or Europe to Asia. For example biofuels coming from Brazil to Africa, or perhaps solar technologies from China and India being repatriated and exploited within Africa,” said Kennedy.

He added that the breakdown of the rich-poor divide was one of the principles carried forward in the Durban Platform at the UN climate change talks last year.

“The regulatory environment might be different but a good energy project has the potential to be implemented in a number of jurisdictions. It’s about identifying the good projects that have the ability to be replicated.”

The Technology Executive Committee is meeting in Bonn this week for the second time since its formation.

The transfer of technology has proved to be one of the less controversial components of the UN climate talks, which Kennedy attributes to progress made during previous rounds of the UN climate talks.

“The reason it hasn’t received a lot of criticism is that all of the Parties, Annex 1 [developed] and non-Annex 1 [developing] are aware of the benefits that technology transfer can bring. There are questions about who is going to finance it however,” he said.

“In general terms, there is very much consensus on the mechanisms to deliver technology.”

The Technology Executive Committee will discuss its agenda for the next two years, nominate six new members and discuss recommendations on the possible hosts of the Climate Technology Centre, through which much of its future work will be done.

Speaking ahead of the meeting UNFCCC chief Christiana Figueres said: “Technology is vital for developing countries to both curb their emissions and to build more climate-resilient societies.

“This meeting is an important next step towards ensuring that the Mechanism becomes fully operational this year and begins delivering concrete results,” she said.

The post UN delegate: Technology transfer is not about the rich giving to poor appeared first on Climate Home News.

Rising power prices are increasing pressure on data centre owners to cut energy costs. (Source: The National Archives)

Facebook will locate its data centres with a preference for access to renewable power sources as the result of a pact with Greenpeace.

The company will also increase research into clean energy solutions for data centres, which it will share with other big tech firms through the Open Compute Project.

The two organisations will also work together to promote energy efficiency. The agreement comes after a Greenpeace campaign calling for ‘Facebook to unfriend coal’, which gathered the support of more than 700,000 people.

Energy use from data centres is growing as companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon store increasingly large volumes of data.

Google currently sources an estimated 30% of its electricity from renewable energy with plans to increase this to 35% in 2012. The company shelved its own renewable energy research project in November 2011.

In October, Facebook announced that it was building a new data centre in Sweden to take advantage of cheap hydropower and the cold air temperatures, allowing it to cool the hardware without using additional cooling units and fans.

Apple is also rumoured to be considering investing in a solar panel installation near its data centre in North Carolina.

The post Facebook signs clean energy pact with Greenpeace appeared first on Climate Home News.