"Efforts to keep the Amazon rainforest
standing and reduce Brazil’s planet-warming emissions are being hampered
by budget cuts for the country’s environmental watchdog and its main
climate change programme, researchers have said.
Brazil has
seen a sharp spike in deforestation under the right-wing government of
President Jair Bolsonaro, with less than half the forest inspectors it
had a decade ago and the COVID-19 pandemic spreading rapidly across the
Amazon region.
Compared with 2019, the first five months of 2020
registered a
Amazon deforestration: Climate Change News com
substantial drop in government spending on forest
inspection activities carried out by the Brazilian Institute of
Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama).
For January
to May 2019, the amount allocated was R$17.4 million ($3.24 million),
against R$5.3 million so far in 2020, according to figures provided by
the Institute of Socioeconomic Studies (INESC), a non-profit
organisation that has analysed Brazil’s public budget for more than 30
years.
"If environmentalists proposed a comparable guarantee to windfarms or
industrial-scale solar or hydrogen they would be hounded for blatant
rent seeking."
The Morrison government’s post-Covid recovery commission has called for
an astonishing level of support for a declining carbon fuel.
"Gas in our own national electricity market has declined by 29% since 2014 and renewables sprung up by 70%, according to data from OpenNEM.
The official market operator believes by 2040 the role of gas is going
to be smaller. The gas glut on the world market will last the decade.
A decision by Canberra to rescue a declining carbon fuel by sinking
billions into gas would mean Australia having to say officially it was
abandoning its Paris targets. Given that our 2019-20 fire season is the
most recent image the world has of us, this would brand us an
international pariah.
Liveris admitted he “tingled with pride”
being recruited as an adviser by the US president, Donald Trump. But a
Biden-Harris presidency will elevate climate diplomacy and have little
regard for an Australia turning its back on climate action as
flamboyantly as Brazil’s president Jay Bolsonaro who allows fires to
denude the Amazon." Bob Carr
"Climate change is an economic issue, not a matter of religious
observance, or inner city high fashion. All the ridiculous language of
“belief” and “scepticism” – as if climate science was astrology, or a
cult, or a wellness guru – has been entirely unhelpful to progress.
Labor is fully capable of putting workers at the centre of a plan for
economic transformation which will see carbon-intensive industries scale
back and other more sustainable industries prosper in a low carbon
world.
Remember when you would take your TV to get repaired if it was broken?
Now, most people just buy a new one.
When a new phone comes out, we
ditch the old one. Each time we do this we're eating into a finite
supply of resources and creating mountains of waste.
A circular economy –
also known as closing the loop – is when used items don't end up in
landfill, but instead become the building blocks for new products.
There's a whole industry waiting to be developed in Australia, if
governments would get on board.
"Australia is host to a stranded asset. That is, something once
valuable that is now worthless as events have moved on.
We call it
Canberra. Specifically, Parliament House. Even more specifically, the
federal energy and climate debate.
The rest of the country has
moved on. The Coalition government and the Labor opposition are both
policy anachronisms stuck in a cul de sac of dead arguments.
"The Minister for Energy and the Environment in the Liberal government of NSW, Matt Kean, has a message for Canberra:
'The
community has moved on, the market has moved on, capital
Carbon tariffs will soon impact on trade.
has moved on,"
he tells me. "The only people standing in the way are those defending
vested interests, the beneficiaries of the fossil fuel industry. Those
MPs are defending Blockbuster in a Netflix world.' "
"As Kean's comments demonstrate, Australia's state governments are moving on, too. Including Liberal ones. Consider
four of the developments in the real world – the digital world of
Kean's metaphor, as opposed to the vintage-model videotape – in
Australia in just the past four days.
Our Renewable Future
On
Tuesday, the world's biggest mining company, BHP Billiton, announced
its plans to sell off all its thermal coal mines, the type of coal
burned to make electricity, within two years. It's also selling down
some of its other carbon-intensive assets and has committed to net-zero
carbon emissions from its operations by 2050. Executive pay is now
linked to meeting the firm's emissions targets.
Climate Criminals
"On Thursday, the National Farmers
Federation announced its members had voted to adopt an economy-wide
policy of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The peak farm industry body
has long been one of the most politically conservative lobbies in the
land. "There is a huge potential for Australia to be a global leader in
low-emissions agriculture," said the NFF president, Fiona Simson. Some
farm sectors are well ahead in cutting their own emissions – the red
meat industry has committed to net zero by 2030.
On
Friday, the big Australian insurance firm Suncorp announced it would no
longer invest in, finance or insure any new oil and gas ventures.
That's on top of its policy banning dealings with new thermal coal. It
has pledged to phase out all its thermal coal exposures within five
years.
Climate Criminals
Also
on Friday, it was reported that Australia's biggest electricity
generator, AGL, had lodged planning documents disclosing its first
concrete steps towards shutting its coal-fired Liddell power station in
2022. The big Liddell generators in NSW's Hunter Valley are almost 50
years old. The plant is past its useful life. AGL, Australia's No. 1
emitter, has committed itself to net-zero emissions by 2050. It, too,
will link executive pay to meeting its emissions target."
The
WHO Manifesto for a healthy recovery from COVID-19 lists six steps to
create a healthier , fairer and greener world while investing to
maintain and resuscitate the economy.
"A team of researchers from Michigan State University managed to
develop fully transparent solar panels – a breakthrough that could lead
to countless applications in architecture, as well as other fields such
as mobile electronics or the automotive industry. Previous attempts to
create such a device have been made, but results were never satisfying
enough, with low efficiency and poor material quality.
A
transparent luminescent solar concentrator waveguide is shown with
colorful traditional luminescent solar concentrators in the background.
The new LSC can create solar energy but is not visible on windows or
other clear surfaces – Courtesy of Michigan State University,
Photography: G.L. Kohuth
“We can tune these materials to pick up just the ultraviolet and
the near infrared wavelengths that then ‘glow’ at another wavelength in
the infrared” – Richard Lunt, assistant professor of chemical
engineering and materials science at MSU’s College of Engineering. The
captured light is transported to the contour of the panel, where it is
converted to electricity with the help of thin strips of photovoltaic
solar cells.
Solar panels are great, particularly when you are looking at making
your home a lot more energy efficient. Here at Energy Formula, we’re
looking forward at helping you reach your goal. If you’ve been looking
at the idea of solar panels but you just can’t get behind their
functionality as far aster aesthetic appeal, you aren’t alone. There are
many people whose sole reason for not going solar is due to the
appearance of the panel itself. No you have a new way to consider
looking at solar power: through transparent solar panels!
How do transparent solar panels work? These are exactly as simple as they sound. They’re panes of glass
that are coated in a solar concentrator top layer that acts as the solar
panel itself. Invisible to the eye, this super lightweight coating can
be applied to any clear surface and give it maximum solar potential
while still keeping the window itself perfectly clear. This is
essentially an invisible solar panel! These unique transparent solar panels work by using molecules to
absorb the light that hits the glass and then transporting it to the
actual contour of the panel and converting it into energy through the
photovoltaic cells that you know about already. This development would make the most out of the buildings’ facades,
since the vertical footprint is often larger than the rooftop one –
especially for glass towers. Solar harvesting of Transparent Solar
Panels would, thus, become more efficient and aesthetically, without
altering the architectural design. Moreover, this technology could be
easily integrated in old buildings.
The process of their power is exactly as you would expect, but it’s
so special and unique to think that it happens entirely invisible to the
naked eye in the form of a film that can be spread over any clear
surface. Truly, it’s the stuff of legends, but it is very much real
life.
Perks of transparent solar panels
There are no end of perks to consider for transparent solar panels,
but her are some of the leading options to know about for our world as
we know it.
It allows for skyscrapers to engage with renewable energy:
We already know that there are all sorts of skyscrapers and such kinds
of buildings that are filled to the brim with glass. This means that
there are floors and floors, and panes and panes of glass already there
ready to be used for solar power. We just have to use it.
It’s simple to apply and easy to benefit from:
This film must be applied correctly, but it is easy to do so by
professionals, and it will be as simple as “peel and stick” as far as
the benefits . No complicated software, no upkeep. It’s just a covering
for windows of any size and maximum solar power.
It can be an after-market solution: Buildings
new and old can benefit from the use of transparent solar panels as it
is intended as an after-market treatment to consider for glass in both
commercial and residential buildings.
While transparent solar panels have only 1% energy efficiency right
now compared to the blue and black ones that you’ve seen before, there’s
a lot of hope that this will continue to build and grow as more people
get interested in solar power and the technologies that can be used to
put it into effect a bit more realistically for commercial buildings. "
