Proposed ban on private vehicles is part of a plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels
Oslo’s new leftist city government said Monday it wants to ban private cars from the city centre by 2019 as part of a plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions.
The Labour Party and its allies the Socialist Left and the Green Party, winners of the 14 September municipal elections in the Norwegian capital, presented a platform focused on the environment and the fight against climate change.
Pension fund will divest 90% of coal assets and 50% of oil and gas stocks by 2020 to help limit global warming and protect the fund from climate risk
The £2.9bn UK’s Environment Agency pension fund (EAFP) has become the first in the world to change its investment choices to help meet the internationally-agreed target of limiting global warming to 2C.
The move will include divestment of 90% of its coal assets and 50% of its oil and gas stocks by 2020.
Total of 25 businesses said they will either fold or have to cut staff, putting over 350 jobs at risk as a result of cuts to feed-in tariff and renewables obligation
Hundreds more jobs will be lost at solar power companies if planned changes to government policy come into force in the new year, 25 small businesses have told the Guardian.
The solar and energy efficiency companies have already made 32 staff redundant between them and more than a dozen of the firms said they expect to close if the changes come to pass as expected, with the total loss of more than 350 jobs.
Sir Jeremy Heywood’s intervention appears to reflect concerns that ministers’ remarks could make final decision vulnerable to legal challenge
Britain’s most senior civil servant warned ministers not to speak out publicly over proposals to build a third runway at Heathrow before the Conservative party conference, it has been reported.
Sir Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary, wrote to ministers in the runup to the party conference season to caution them about commenting in public on the issue, according to the BBC.
Huge quantity of protective steel was left out of initial construction of China General Nuclear Corp’s first reactor, built close to Hong Kong in 1987
One of the Chinese nuclear power firms pushing for a stake in the UK’s energy industry left out hundreds of critical steel rods when building its first reactor near Hong Kong in 1987 because workers misread the blueprint.
The missing parts were added in a higher layer of the foundation, with extra steel to reinforce them, after the extraordinary mistake was discovered. The plant has now been operating safely for more than two decades.
The cost of solar panels dropped 80% between 2008 and 2015 and solar technology is becoming an increasingly common sight both in business and residential contexts. Panels are now an affordable commodity for the middle classes and a team of researchers at Michigan State University have aimed to take advantage of that new market. They’ve develop a flexible, clear plastic that can harvest solar energy without impeding view.
The Transparent Luminescent Solar Concentrator (TLSC) is designed for use as part of any clear surface, including on buildings and mobile phones.
Previous attempts at layering solar cells over plastic materials have been ineffective, plagued by low energy yields and challenges with materials that were coloured, rather than transparent. MSU’s scientists overcame these obstacles after discovering a class of organic salts that directly target specific nonvisible wavelengths of sunlight. The solar harvesting system developed by the team absorb specific non-visible wavelengths of sunlight. These materials can then be tuned to pick up just the ultraviolet and the near infrared wavelengths that then ‘glow’ at another wavelength in the infrared. The PV solar cells at the edge of the plastic then convert the light into electricity.
The challenge now for MSU’s researchers, is maximising the energy-producing efficiency of the solar concentrator. Current energy conversion hovers at just 1% and TLSC will need to achieve 5% before going to market. The team are confident of reaching a 10% conversion rate in the foreseeable future.
TLSC offers the potential to change any glass object — from the Louvre’s glass pyramid or your own mobile phone into a conductor of electricity. It provides designers and architects with a new opportunity and could play a role in transitioning to a larger scale and wider adoption of solar power.
Once regarded as a distant, almost futuristic technology, it is now a question of “when”, rather than “if”, autonomous driving systems will hit the market at scale. This month, Toyota Motors took a significant step in that direction, announcing that it intends to deploy self-driving vehicles by 2020. That’s just five years into the future. At this point, it seems more likely that the date will move forward, rather than back.
The announcement comes simultaneously with the launch of new technology that will allow Toyota’s vehicles to “talk to each other, scan blind spots, warn of changing traffic lights and keep a safe distance from other cars.” Many of those features are already being utilised individually and in combination in newer Toyota models and by other leading manufacturers,
Safety is the largest driver of autonomous driving technology development at this time. Manufacturers have reached a plateau in terms of the improvements that can be made to seat-belts and the frame of the car.
Instead, companies like Toyota are investing in technology that has the power to prevent crashes to begin with. Toyota chief safety technology officer Moritaka Yoshida described autonomous driving as “a technology that will change the concept of the car.”
The part of the tech that still needs development is communication systems, both vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure, known as ‘intelligent transportation systems’ (ITS).
The development of ITS is also a potential catalyst for a different vision of our mobility system. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Growth Withinreport factored in the development and widespread adoption of autonomous driving technology into an alternative vision for mobility in Europe, where the cost per passenger-kilometre could be reduced by up to 60-80%.
Several leading car manufacturers are now expected to release autonomous vehicles in the not too distant future, including Nissan, Audi and General Motors.
Selside, Yorkshire Dales The young potholers re-emerge into sunlight, blinking like startled moles and buzzing with the marvels they had seen
The cavers peer into their hands to check the bright discs of yellow light that show their headlamp beams are switched on. These twentysomething novices then follow their instructor into Lower Long Churn, a classic caving trip in the Three Peaks country of Whernside, Ingleborough and Penyghent.
If only I could follow suit. But I am still recovering from my hip revision procedure of two years ago. I can at least use my trekking poles to enjoy the limestone countryside, though. The sedimentary rock hereabouts is riddled with caves etched over aeons by acidic rainwater running into the ground and attacking the fissures and cracks below the turf where aromatic wild thyme grows – and where the cavers have disappeared.
The 6cm long goby is an ‘average swimmer’ but can travel hundreds of kilometres through Australia’s red centre in just a trickle of water
A trickle of water running over parched earth is all the encouragement the desert goby needs. The unassuming little fish, reckoned by researchers to be a poor to average swimmer, only needs a few centimetres of water to follow a rivulet from one isolated, muddy puddle to the next. In the desert rivers region on the southern edge of Lake Eyre in Australia’s red centre, a few centimetres of water may be all it gets.
But their ability to move quickly and opportunistically when floodwaters hit has caught the attention of researchers.
Diplomats mobilised for unprecedented PR push, with Paris summit seen as last chance to reach agreement
France has launched an unprecedented diplomatic drive to shepherd nations big and small towards a major climate change deal, ahead of a Paris summit next month that is the next major make-or-break moment for the movement against global warming.
Every one of France’s ambassadors, in embassies and consulates around the globe, has been educated on the demands of climate change, and instructed in how to communicate the messages to the governments they deal with, ahead of the summit, which starts on 30 November.
