Thursday, October 22, 2015

Victoria's Green Matters - 22nd October 2015



Deal With IT's Secretary Victoria Nicholls writes a regular column in the East Kent Mercury:

We may feel that governments around the world are not doing enough to combat climate change but more and more schemes are coming to light where investment in renewable energy systems is taking place.

Some far sighted countries are helping investors put serious money into solar power. For example, Burundi now has a deal for a solar field which will provide 15% of the country’s energy generating capacity and Tanzania has a plan to give a million homes access to solar energy by the end of 2017. Bangladesh aims to extend solar power to every home by 2021 while Morocco plans to build five large solar plants by 2020 with the aim of exporting energy to Europe. Surely, if these minor economies can see the advantages in taking these steps, why on earth can’t we?

Some large economies too are seeing the benefits; in Queensland, Australia, the expansion of solar rooftop installations produced so much electricity that prices crashed and even in the mighty USA rooftop solar is the fastest growing source of power with an increase of 70% year on year. Last month President Obama announced measures to encourage more take up of solar and Hillary Clinton has made solar a large part of her presidential campaign. India, the world’s third biggest greenhouse gas emitter, has promised to produce 40% of its electricity from low carbon sources by 2030; it is the last large economy to submit its plans to the UN before the climate talks in December.

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