The White House released this statement which makes interesting reading:

Energy & Environment

“So we have a choice to make. We can remain one of the world’s leading importers of foreign oil, or we can make the investments that would allow us to become the world’s leading exporter of renewable energy. We can let climate change continue to go unchecked, or we can help stop it. We can let the jobs of tomorrow be created abroad, or we can create those jobs right here in America and lay the foundation for lasting prosperity.”

-President Obama, March 19, 2009
Progress

* The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included more than $60 billion in clean energy investments that will jump-start our economy and build the clean energy jobs of tomorrow:
o $11 billion for a bigger, better, and smarter grid that will move renewable energy from the rural places it is produced to the cities where it is mostly used, as well as for 40 million smart meters to be deployed in American homes.
o $5 billion for low-income home weatherization projects.
o $4.5 billion to green federal buildings and cut our energy bill, saving taxpayers billions of dollars.
o $6.3 billion for state and local renewable energy and energy efficiency efforts.
o $600 million in green job training programs – $100 million to expand line worker training programs and $500 million for green workforce training.
o $2 billion in competitive grants to develop the next generation of batteries to store energy.
* Increasing, for the first time in more than a decade, the fuel economy standards for Model Year 2011 for cars and trucks so they will get better mileage, saving drivers money and spurring companies to develop more innovative products.
* The President issued a memorandum to the Department of Energy to implement more aggressive efficiency standards for common household appliances, like dishwashers and refrigerators. Through this step, over the next three decades, we’ll save twice the amount of energy produced by all the coal-fired power plants in America in any given year.
* Supporting the first steps of a legally-binding treaty to reduce mercury emissions worldwide.
* On Earth Day 2009, the President unveiled a program to develop the renewable energy projects on the waters of our Outer Continental Shelf that produce electricity from wind, wave, and ocean currents. These regulations will enable, for the first time ever, the nation to tap into our ocean’s vast sustainable resources to generate clean energy in an environmentally sound and safe manner.

Guiding Principles

To take this country in a new direction, the President is working with Congress to pass comprehensive legislation to protect our nation from the serious economic and strategic risks associated with our reliance on foreign oil and the destabilizing effects of a changing climate. Policies to advance energy and climate security should promote economic recovery efforts, accelerate job creation, and drive clean energy manufacturing by:
Investing in the Clean Energy Jobs of the Future

President Obama does not accept a future in which the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders. It is time for the United States to lead again. Under President Obama, we will lead again, by developing an American clean energy industry, a 21st century economy that flourishes within our borders.

* Creating new Jobs in the Clean Energy Economy. Drive the development of new, green jobs that pay well and cannot be outsourced.
* Investing in the Next Generation of Energy Technologies. Invest $150 billion over ten years in energy research and development to transition to a clean energy economy.

Securing our Energy Future

Our reliance on oil poses a threat to our economic security. Over the last few decades, we have watched our economy rise and fall along with the price of a barrel of oil. We must commit ourselves to an economic future in which the strength of our economy is not tied to the unpredictability of oil markets. We must make the investments in clean energy sources that will curb our dependence on fossil fuels and make America energy independent.

* Breaking Dependence on Oil. Promote the next generation of cars and trucks and the fuels they run on.
* Producing More Energy at Home. Enhance U.S. energy supplies through responsible development of domestic renewable energy, fossil fuels, advanced biofuels and nuclear energy.
* Promoting Energy Efficiency. Promote investments that reducing energy bills in the transportation, electricity, industrial, building and agricultural sectors.

Closing the Carbon Loophole and Cracking Down on Polluters

We must take immediate action to reduce the carbon pollution that threatens our climate and sustains our dependence on fossil fuels. We have had limits in place on pollutants like sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and other harmful emissions for some time. After decades of inaction, we will finally close the carbon pollution loophole by limiting the amount of carbon polluters are allowed to pump into the atmosphere.

* Closing the Carbon Loophole. By stemming carbon pollution through a market-based cap, we can address in a systematic way all the energy challenges that we face: curbing our dependence on foreign oil, reducing our use of fossil fuels, and promoting new industries right here in America.
* Protecting American Consumers. Revenues generated by closing the carbon loophole will be returned to the people, especially vulnerable families, communities, and businesses.
* Promoting U.S. Competitiveness. Ensure a level playing field for domestic manufacturing and secure significant actions to combat climate change by our trading partners.

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The Sun’s core is hot: 15 million degrees centigrade to be precise. Whizzing around it at great speeds are hydrogen atoms. They collide, fuse together and provide a burst of energy in the form of light. This never-ending process uses around 600 million tons of hydrogen every second. Without this process, life could not exist on this planet.

But the Sun’s core is not the hottest place in the solar system. Surprisingly, that honour goes to an innocuous-looking research establishment near Oxford in the United Kingdom. Culham Science Centre is where the JET (Joint European Torus) nuclear fusion reactor is based. There, a gram of hydrogen is heated to 200 million degrees centigrade by high-energy beams. See what happens below.

Conventional nuclear reactors use nuclear fission, the opposite of fusion. Energy is released when the heavy atoms in uranium decay to form smaller atoms. A fusion reactor works in the opposite way by catching the sub-atomic particle formed by the fused hydrogen atoms in lithium liquid causing it to boil. The boiling lithium liquid is then used to drive electricity-producing steam turbines.

No carbon dioxide emissions and a plentiful supply of raw material (ie. water from which the hydrogen is produced) mean that the fusion is better for the environment than fission. Added to that , the process is more stable and the reactor tiles only become mildly radioactive and are safe within one hundred years. So there isn’t any radioactive material to worry people.

But there’s a downside. The fusion process can’t be made to last long at present and produce more energy than is put in to speed up the hydrogen atoms. JET is only able to return 65% of the power put into it and the reaction only lasts a few seconds. And JET is the largest and most advanced fusion reactor on the planet.

JET, though, is being used to develop a new reactor, ITER. It’s hoped ITER will be operational by 2018. This will generate electricity from fuel in ordinary seawater. Amazingly, just one cubic kilometre of seawater contains enough material to release more energy than all the oil reserves!

ITER is a massive project. It’s the largest joint science project since the International Space Station. So important is it, that the UK has promised almost half of its energy-research budget to the ten billion euro programme.

Unfortunately, it’s likely to take another three decades before fission power stations are a reality. But as John Parris, of the HiPER project which is looking into laser-drivin fusion, told the Mail On Sunday: ‘This is save-the-world science. Fusio is the only serious answer to future energy demands – this is the energy Holy Grail. The human race has a massive, ravenous demand for power, and there is no other way to provide grid-level energy’.

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Commissioner Dimas made the remarks in a statement to mark World Environment Day, which has climate change as its theme.

Commissioner Dimas’s statement reads as follows:

The new global climate agreement that is due to be finalised at the Copenhagen climate conference in December is the world’s last chance to prevent the dangerous, perhaps even catastrophic, levels of climate change that are projected by scientists to occur as early as 2050 – well within the lifetimes of over a billion young people alive today.

Last week a study for the Global Humanitarian Forum underlined the human tragedy climate change already represents. Today climate change seriously affects 325 million people every year, kills about 315,000 people a year through hunger, sickness and extreme weather, and causes global economic losses of over $125 billion annually, the study estimates. These numbers are projected to rise substantially over the next 20 years.

Governments around the world have rightly recognised that the recession is no reason to slow the battle against climate change. Indeed, governments in Europe and elsewhere are designing the stimulus measures our economies need so that they both create jobs and tackle climate change by investing in energy efficiency, renewable energy and other low-carbon technologies of the future.

To prevent dangerous climate change, the international scientific consensus tells us that global warming must be kept to less than 2°C above the pre-industrial temperature. This translates into around 1.2°C above today’s level since warming of 0.76°C has already occurred, and some studies suggest the amount of greenhouse gases already emitted makes it likely that further warming of up to 1°C is unavoidable.

Time is not on our side.

Urgent and ambitious global action is therefore imperative if we are to prevent dangerous climate change that threatens to cause enormous human suffering, undermine economic progress and poverty reduction, and trigger potentially catastrophic environmental changes.

This need for urgency and ambition must be reflected in the pace and content of the international negotiations to prepare the Copenhagen agreement.

The discussions under way in Bonn this week and next must take account of that. They need to inject greater momentum into the talks themselves and turn the draft negotiating texts now on the table into a blueprint for a sufficiently ambitious Copenhagen agreement.

The developed world must lead the way. To get global emissions onto the right track to prevent dangerous climate change, developed countries must start by cutting their collective emissions to 30% below their 1990 levels by 2020, in accordance with the science evidenced by the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The European Union has shown its leadership and determination by putting in place legislative measures to achieve a 20% reduction and by committing to scale this up to 30% if other countries agree to do their fair share.

Now our partners need to show leadership, too. Some developed countries have yet to announce emission targets, while those targets on the table so far risk falling well short of the collective 30% reduction needed. Greater ambition is essential.

We cannot win the battle against climate change unless developing countries, and particularly the big emerging economies, step up action to limit their rate of emissions growth. But only by setting a strong example themselves will developed countries succeed in convincing the developing world to join the global effort that Copenhagen must launch.

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The country’s President, President Calderon announced far-reaching plans to reduce Mexico’s greenhouse gas emissions and create five new protected environmental areas. He said that Mexico would reduce its emissions of global warming gases by 50 million tonnes annually.

People all around the world organized events.ranging from the massive to the local: from a major tree-planting drive across India organized by Tata Motors to a concert in Ecuador, a recycling drive in Seattle, and an ‘educational picnic’ on real grass in the heart of the gothic old town of Torun in Poland, alongside painting competitions, neighbourhood clean-ups and a multitude of awareness-raising events.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the UNEP, said people from over 100 countries around the world were today sending a clear signal to their politicians and world leaders that action was urgently needed—Mexico had heard and responded to that call.

“If we are to neutralize the serious threats from climate change while seizing the opportunities for a low carbon, resource efficient economy, then governments must Seal the Deal at the UN climate convention meeting in Copenhagen in just over 180 days,” he said.

“The challenge in Copenhagen is to bring over 190 countries, at different points in their development together in common cause where each understands they are gaining rather than losing by combating climate change,” said Mr Steiner.

“Some nations are indeed bringing forward creative and potentially unifying proposals that may set the world on course towards a 21st century Green Economy. Today, President Calderón underlined Mexico’s rapidly evolving leadership on climate change—its determination too to be part of the solution despite the country having no formal, legally-binding commitments under the Kyoto Protocol,” he added.

“I am convinced that this announcement is just the kind of oxygen needed over the coming weeks and months—it has certainly made WED 2009 a very special day in a very important year,” said the UNEP Executive Director who along with businessmen, scientists, ambassadors and young people was attending the celebrations in the Yucatan.

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