Blogs & Ecology

Efficiency. Image credit:Nature.com

Burj Dubai Tower, still under construction Via:TagPuan

TreeHugger has posted many times on Dubai's sometimes "green," sometimes wretchedly-excessive building boom (please pardon one last requiem use of the now much out-of-favor "green"). The boom is over; and a crash looms for Dubai landlords and credit holders. Falling oil prices have a lot to do with it. See more from a CBS report, below the fold....

Ten Large Retail Corporations Profiled Using EthicalQuote

The world watched, although in what seems to have been a relatively detached manner, given the general lack of coverage, the events happening over the last two weeks at the UN’s climate change conference in Poznan, Poland (1-12 December). “Present but not contributing” would aptly describe some of the nations there. The US had a delegation, but it represented outgoing president Bush. Obama did not send his own climate team, although he has called climate change “a matter of urgency.”

By: Alan Fortescue (Note: The opinions expressed here are those of the author’s, not necessarily Earthwatch’s.)

In anticipation of an Obama victory, investors scooped up insanely cheap renewable energy stocks on the day before and the day of the election. The solar sector saw some of the most impressive gains, with stocks like Evergreen Solar (NASDAQ:ESLR) climbing 44 percent, and Solarfun Power Holdings (NASDAQ:SOLF) picking up 49 percent.

A group of 52 high profile investors announced the beginning of a massive letter writing campaign to urge businesses to sign on to the UN’s Global Compact. "Amid the current financial crisis, this underscores the importance of universal principles and the long-term management of environmental, social and governance issues," said Executive Director of the UN Global Compact, Georg Kell, "We applaud this effort, which represents the largest recruitment drive ever undertaken with respect to the UN Global Compact."

The investment will go toward so-called Enhanced Geothermal Systems. Whereas conventional geothermal technology relies on finding naturally occurring pockets of steam and hot water in the ground, EGS works by injecting regular unheated water into “hot basement rock” deep below the planet’s surface. This heated water is the forced through and rises to the surface where it can be mined for all its hot water glory (remember: heat is an untapped source of stored energy!)

The US Department of Energy likes the potential of EGS:

 
Image by Flickr user Project BS

In 1897 Charles E. Fisher and Prescott Ford Jernegan presented their ‘gold accumulator’ to a crowd of potential investors at Passamaquoddy Bay, Maine. They claimed it could suck particles of the precious metal out of the swirling currents, making untold fortunes - and they were right.

Recently only a pipe dream, the carbon market has exploded in recent years. With “cap and trade” schemes available in the EU and more recently British Columbia - Canada’s most western province - plans are set to follow suit in Australia, New Zealand and the rest of Canada. Even the typically sluggish United States seems poised to adopt some form of emissions trading scheme, with all three presidential candidates stating their support for some permutation of a carbon trading initiative.

Generation Investment Management has closed $638Million in initial funding for its Climate Solutions Fund. The company is chaired by former vice president Al Gore and serves to be a leader in investing in sustainable enterprises with a slant toward solving various environmental problems.

According to the Financial Times: