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Cause and effect have come into play, and certain geopolitical events have triggered unforeseen but far-reaching and positive repercussions in terms of an accelerated global shift towards Green Energy.
Nations worldwide are charging towards a greener future
Every month, our friends at FutureCrunch publish a free positive newsletter—a bullet-point roundup of dozens of the kind of news articles BrightVibes publish every day—covering among other topics; breakthroughs in technology and healthcare, human and animal rights, habitat conservation, and of course keeping abreast of the global clean energy movement.
We couldn’t help but notice the impressive number of positive energy-related stories in the latest edition, so we thought we’d round those up for you in one place. We published an article very similar to this last month about European countries, but buckle up BrightVibes readers, the world has been busy hastening a greener future — all 18 of these reports are news to us, and none were included in our last roundup.To dive deeper into a particular item, source links are included with each.
1. Analysis from energy strategist Kingsmill Bond predicts Russian aggression will drive a faster shift towards clean energy, thereby catalysing market conditions and political appetite for renewables to displace fossil fuels. Read the full story ? Source: Canary 2. Japan to impose ban on Russian coal imports following G-7 pledge. Japan will impose the ban as part of additional sanctions against Russia following the latest commitment by leaders of the G-7 nations, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on 8 April, marking the country’s first commitment to curb any commodity imports from Russia. Read the full story ? Source: S&P Global 3. EU agrees an import ban on all forms of Russian coal. This affects one fourth of all Russian coal exports, amounting to around €8 billion loss of revenue per year for Russia. Read the full story ? Source: European Commission 4. Russia’s ambitions in the Arctic have been left somewhat high and dry too. Novatek and Gazprom, the country’s two biggest fossil gas companies, are fully dependent on western technology, and the latest round of sanctions from the EU have effectively crippled their Arctic operations. With the halt in liquified natural gas (LNG) projects, Russia will not be able to achieve its dreams of a Northern Sea Route either. Read the full story ? Source: Barent Observer 5. Germany’s new government just released its ‘Easter Agreement,’ the most ambitious clean energy target among all industrialised nations. It’s the country’s biggest energy reform in decades, a new policy that frees up land for clean energy production, speeds up permit procedures, and aims to achieve a 100% renewable power supply by 2035. Read the full story ? Source: Deutsche Welle 6. Portugal is accelerating its energy transition, with a new goal to increase the share of renewables in electricity production to 80% by 2026, four years earlier than previously planned. “Portugal has already taken very significant measures in the energy transition, but the evolution and duration of the war in Ukraine must necessarily imply new measures.” cabinet minister Mariana Vieira da Silva told a news conference, Read the full story ? Source: PV Tech 7. Ireland – Up to 75% of the electricity flowing into the Irish grid can now come from variable renewable sources. It’s the first national power system in the world to reach this level, overcoming ‘major technical challenges’ to succesfully integrate electricity from wind farms, solar farms and interconnectors linking it with other countries. Read the full story ? Source: ReNew 8. Buoyed by a surge in investment and new projects, wind power has become Spain’s main source of electricity generation, and just in time, as Europe seeks to curb its energy imports from Russia. Spain now plans to become the ‘energy breadbasket’ of Europe, aiming to generate 74% of electricity from renewable sources by 2030. Read the full story ? Source: TechXplore 9. The Philippines is massively ramping up its solar capacity, with planned projects growing 10-fold in the last year. As of March 2022, the country has 13 GW of solar in the pipeline, up from a mere 1.3 GW in March 2021, with wind power also growing substantially. Read the full story ? Source: PV Tech 10. Taiwan is planning a massive clean energy spending spree, in an effort to accelerate its energy transition. Government and state-owned companies will spend about $32 billion between 2022 and 2030 on renewable technologies, grid infrastructure and energy storage. Read the full story ? Source: Bloomberg 11. USA: 83% of all new power capacity added in the United States in 2021 was renewable, while fossil gas additions were down 50% compared to 2019. The US also set a major renewable energy milestone last month: wind power was the country’s second-highest source of electricity, edging out nuclear and coal for the first time since the EIA began gathering the data. Read the full story ? Source: CNN 12. Maryland has become the latest US state to mandate an end to carbon emissions on a net basis economy-wide by the middle of the century. The package, which includes substantial environmental-justice provisions, has instantly become one of the country’s most aggressive climate change laws. Read the full story ? Source: Canary 13. Japan’s three largest banks, amongst the largest remaining financiers of coal in the world, have announced they will stop financing new thermal coal mining. The three institutions are thought to have billions of dollars in outstanding loans to the coal mining industry, a tally expected to decline gradually with the end of new financing. Read the full story ? Source: Nikkei 14. Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation, one of the largest private domestic banks in the Philippines, says it will stop providing financial support for existing coal plants by 2031. In December 2020, it became the first Philippines bank to announce it would no longer provide financial support for new coal power projects. Read the full story ? Source: Business Mirror 15. Consumers in the United Kingdom bought more electric cars in March 2021 than in whole of 2019, despite the overall car market being down by 14% year on year. “At the current rate, sales of new electric vehicles will overtake both traditional petrol and diesel sales by 2025.” Read the full story ? Source: Guardian 16. Canada just joined the ranks of countries and states planning to ban sales of combustion engine cars, requiring all new passenger car sales to be zero-emissions by 2035. The government will gradually ramp up pressure on automakers, requiring at least 20% zero-emissions sales by 2026 and 60% by 2030. Read the full story ? Source: Engadget More than 90% of vehicles sold in Norway in March 2022 were electric. Okay, Norway is a small country, and yes there are incentives; nonetheless this shows what’s possible, and how the switch is likely to happen sooner than many expect. What’s particularly encouraging is seeing how EVs are starting to eat into overall distance travelled by all cars. Read the full story ? Source: Clean Technica 18. The World is about to pass another important milestone in electric vehicle adoption. Bloomberg is estimating that 20 million plug-in vehicles will be on the road globally by June 2022. That’s remarkable growth from only one million in 2016, and way, way faster than anyone (including BNEF) predicted even a year ago. Read the full story ? Source: Bloomberg
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