– Along these lines, this Saturday, March 29 at 8PM (your local time), the world is being asked to turn OFF the lights from 8-9PM for Earth Hour. Some of the world’s most iconic skylines, including Atlanta , Chicago , Phoenix and San Francisco , will go dark for one hour in this dramatic call for action on climate change. With 25 cities participating in 10 countries, Earth Hour will be the largest voluntary power down in history. In the US , Denver , Miami and Charlotte have also signed on. China’s done it, how about the U.S.
On March 18, the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission raised renewable energy targets for 2006-2010. China says it will almost double clean energy consumption during the period to 10% of total energy use. That would displace 166 million tons of coal. See the story below. Meanwhile in the U.S. , Spanish wind developer Iberdrola Renovables, which recently launched the world’s largest clean energy IPO, has commissioned its biggest wind farm – the 223.6 MW Klondike III wind farm in Oregon . The site is expected to produce enough power to supply 110,000 homes. Iberdrola Renovables is now the second-largest wind operator in the U.S. – after GE – with 2,145 MW installed and another 369 MW under construction. Next week the United Nations Climate Change Conference meets in again, this time in Bangkok , to continue negotiations begun in Bali last December. The goal of the meeting is to define a concrete program to stop the growth of greenhouse emissions over the next 10-15 years, and significantly reduce them by 2050. Al Gore’s nonprofit, the Alliance for Climate Protection, is doing its part. It will spend $300 million over the next three years to convince Americans to get seriously involved in reducing their emissions. See story below.
Every year we produce a green investing report on a different sector of the industry. This year, it’s on Investing in the Recycling Industry, which happens to be one of the few ways to profit during the current recession. The recycling industry has grown to be a backbone of the world’s economy – a true green business success story. The world’s economy, which continues to devour the earth’s resources, literally couldn’t function today without it.
