1. Solar power is booming

An Imagined Earth

Top 10 lists are big at this time of year. As the holidays approach, it’s a good time to reflect on the year that was and think about the year ahead. Somehow, wrapping it up into a top 10 seems to make sense.

My last post was about things that haven’t gone so well for planet Earth this year and there’s been a lot of bad news about climate change over the last month. Today, I want to end my blogging year on a positive note by giving my top 10 reasons to be hopeful about the future of our planet. So here they are. Feel free to add your own to the list in the comments.

The price of solar panels continued to fall rapidly in 2012 and Australia is now the largest residential solar PV market in the world. Australia has more…

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Ecocucina

Christmas is here and it’s time for presents. Have you considered giving healthy, handmade and eco-friendly gifts for a change?
My suggestion is to make these delicious homemade herbal teas and to give them to your friends and relatives as Christmas presents, maybe along with a nice tea filter, a teapot infuser or a mug.

Apple skin and cinnamon herbal tea
Properties: relaxing and digestive

Ingredients
1kg organic apple skins
4 cinnamon sticks

Preparation
Wash the apples thoroughly and remove the skins. Use the apples as you prefer, then julienne the skins, lay them on a metal plate and dry them (on the radiator, in the oven or in the dehydrator). Mix the dehydrated apple skins and the cinnamon sticks and put your herbal tea into small glass jars. Decorate the jars to taste. To make the infusion, put one teaspoon of mixture for every cup in your teapot and…

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Groupe Intellex

Those who doubted the findings in 2009 of Wilkinson and Pickett’s ‘The Spirit Level’ may care to revisit the subject of equality in the light of the recent report from Boston Consulting Group.

In BCG’s ‘Sustainable Economic Development Assessment’ we have new methodologies and data for assessing the quality of GDP growth – the extent to which wealth is converted into well-being.

It turns out that countries with high rates of growth are not necessarily able to convert that into societal development whereas other less-GDP-impressive countries seem to have far better mechanisms for raising living standards.

Why should this matter when we seem to have little or no growth?  This study arrives at a time when people are drawing lessons from recessionary times and, in facing up to the creative disruptions of the digital economy, are more than ever beginning to appreciate the real role of infrastructure in enabling both…

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Greece: Thessaloniki do it like Vienna!

In 2013 the process of expressining interest for setting up a thermal waste treatment plant in Thessaloniki (in the area of Sindos) via Public-Private Partnerships, will start. It was announced by the  the mayor Yiannis Boutaris of the city on the sidelines of the symposium, hosted by the Council of the Federation for Sustainable Development.

AT DOHA CLIMATE TALKS: FAILED AMBITION AND UNFULFILLED PROMISES

China leaves behind the US as world’s leading trade partner

Renewable energy country attractiveness indices

Ernst & Young have conducted a very interesting report containing Country Attractiveness Indices (CAI ) score for 40 countries around the world regarding their attractiveness of their renewable energy markets, energy infrastructure and the suitability for individual technologies. China is the winner as it remains the  best place to undertake renewable energy projects like solar or wind, while Germany and U.S. hold the second and the third place respectively. The top five is completed with India holding the 4th place and France the 5th. Grid issues, strong partisan views, mixed policy signals and austerity measures are just some of the tensions that are slowing the pace of expansion across the top five countries.

Is your favorite electronic gadget green?Greenpeace has the answer!

Every day, more people around the world rely on laptops, phones and tablets to make their lives more productive and fun. Electronic gadgets can make our lives better, but the rate at which we purchase and discard these devices is having a serious impact on our planet.