Category Archives: Fossil Fuel Reduction

PLEA Network

12 June 2015, The Carbon Brief, Letting the fox into the chicken coop! UN welcomes oil groups’ help to fight global warming: The UN will accept an unusual offer from six of Europe’s largest oil and gas groups to help it fight global warming as countries work on sealing a new international climate change agreement due in December. The proposal from companies including Royal Dutch Shell and Britain’s BP was “very, very welcome”, the UN’s top climate official, Christiana Figueres, told the Financial Times. Chief executives of the six companies wrote to Figueres in May saying they wanted to help countries devise a global carbon-pricing system ahead of the climate agreement. The move laid bare a transatlantic rift between some of the world’s largest energy groups, after US oil producers, Chevron and ExxonMobil, declined to join. Pilita Clark, Financial Times Read More here

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12 June 2015, Renew Economy, 10 things we learned about Tony Abbott’s war on renewables: Ever since the Coalition election victory in September 2013, and indeed beforehand, RenewEconomy has been accused of making a harsh assessment on its approach to climate and clean energy policies. Wind energy the biggest loser as Abbott sweeps to power, we wrote the day after this ultra-conservative Coalition came to power. And we continued with headlines such as Australia’s wind turbine syndrome, why Abbott hates the RET; Abbott’s Achilles Heel – is it ideology or ignorance?: andTony Abbott’s energy rules: It’s goodies versus baddies. Harsh? Turns out we were probably not harsh enough. Our lingering suspicion that the Abbott government’s policy positioning and actions have been designed with one thing in mind – to cripple the clean energy industry in Australia – have been proven to be true … by the Prime Minister himself. Read More here
PLEA Network
11 June 2015, World Resources Institute, Bonn Climate Talks Outpaced by Progress Outside the Negotiations: As negotiators leave Bonn, Germany after two weeks of talks on the international climate agreement that will be concluded in Paris at the COP 21 summit later this year, one thing is clear: The pace of negotiations must speed up considerably. Most importantly, that pace must catch up to what’s happening outside the negotiating halls.Actors around the world sent strong signals this past week for ambitious climate action. The G7 made historic pledgesto decarbonize the global economy over the course of the century and significantly increase the number of people around the world covered by climate disaster insurance. Norway’s $900 billion sovereign wealth fund announced that it will divest from coal-related investments. Ethiopia and Morocco were the latest countries to submit national climate plans – known as intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) – to the UN climate process, demonstrating their intent to tackle climate change and build low-carbon and resilient economies.Inside the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Bonn, however, the talks did not match the momentum of outside developments. Negotiators focused on how to consolidate a lengthy text of the draft agreement and made only modest progress in discussing key, substantive issues. As nearly all negotiators said themselves, they will have to move the process forward quickly now and find ways to focus on the central questions at hand. Read More here
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11 June 2015, Energy Post, Canada will find US shale oil revolution hard act to follow:The new edition of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, just released, reports that the US recorded the largest increase in oil production in the world, surpassing Saudi Arabia, thanks to its shale revolution. Can Canada follow the US example now that huge new shale oil deposits have been identified in the country’s remote Northwest Territories? Andrew Topf of Oilprice.com reports that the oil may well be there, but the external conditions are very different from those in the famous Bakken Formation in the US. There are many hurdles to overcome before the Northwest Territories become another Bakken. Read More here