By Joseph Nyangon How China Can Shape the Future of Carbon Markets In the lead-up to the 2015 Paris climate change conference, policymakers stressed the need for creation of integrated carbon markets and called for linking new climate financing mechanisms with the United Nations-organized Green Climate Fund (GCF) based in South Korea. Both the U.S. and […]
Read More »Microbeads and Environmental Concerns
By Ariella Lewis The environmental threat posed by microbeads in personal grooming products Americans are progressively kicking the habit of relying on disposable plastic water bottles for their hydration needs. We tote our reusable water receptacles with pride, aware that we are contributing towards the eradication of our planet’s plastic plague. But, alas, the plastic […]
Read More »Paris Agreement: A Landmark Climate Change Policy Architecture Reached
By Joseph Nyangon “History is written by those who commit, not those who calculate,” declared François Hollande, France’s president, after all nations reached a new climate change agreement in Paris. The 21st UN climate conference opened in Paris on November 30, 2015 and ran over its original deadline, closing a day late on December 12. Unlike […]
Read More »Two Very Different Perspectives on Carbon Emissions Trading
By Jeongseok Seo In an effort to address climate change, carbon emissions trading schemes (hereafter, ETS) have been widely championed as an instrument for mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Currently there are about 40 countries where a regional or national scheme is in operation, including 31 countries in Europe. Several states in the United States, the […]
Read More »Why the U.S. Urgently Needs to Invest in a Modern Energy System
By Joseph Nyangon Investment in ‘smart’ energy offers a viable and effective long-term solution that allows the energy industry to shift its supply sources, build new transmission and storage systems, and increase its energy efficiency goals. In a speech commemorating the thirty-fifth anniversary of the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2009, former U.S. secretary of state, […]
Read More »The Green Cred of Bike Sharing Programs
A.L. Smith The announcement that Philadelphia will be rolling out its new bicycle sharing program this spring gives me a minute to reflect on the pros and cons of this new type of transportation infrastructure. First off, a bit about the program. The program will be implemented in two phases. The first is this spring […]
Read More »Mobilizing Public and Private Capital for Clean Energy Financing
By Joseph Nyangon Innovative financing, increased capital investment and technological improvement are catalyzing renewable energy growth. The energy market in the United States is undergoing a dramatic transformation, driven by technological advancement, market dynamics, and better policies and laws—none of which was a decade ago. Venture capitalists made huge profits from the computing boom of the 1980s, […]
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