2019 | World Bank Halts Financing of Upstream Oil & Gas. 2020 | Cape Verde Achieves 100% Renewable Energy Goal. The island nation of Cape Verde has pledged to power the entire country with nothing but renewable energy by the year 2020, and vowed to help other African states work towards the same goal in future. With almost no mineral resources of its own and little arable farmland, the outcrop in the middle of the Atlantic ocean relies on expensive imports for almost all the needs of its 550,000 population. But there are two things it does have in abundance: sun and wind.
In 2010, the Cape Verde government released a study setting out the benefits of investing heavily in solar power plants and wind turbines, suggesting short term targets of 25 per cent renewable energy by the end of 2011 and 50 per cent by 2020. Yet that same research suggested the country would benefit in a variety of ways if it could achieve the loftier ambition of completely divesting from all fossil fuel imports. “Cape Verde wants to serve as a laboratory,” he told CNN. Reuse content. 2020 | Sweden Becomes World's First Oil-Free Economy.
Sweden is to take the biggest energy step of any advanced western economy by trying to wean itself off oil completely within 15 years - without building a new generation of nuclear power stations. The attempt by the country of 9 million people to become the world's first practically oil-free economy is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, farmers, car makers, civil servants and others, who will report to parliament in several months. The intention, the Swedish government said yesterday, is to replace all fossil fuels with renewables before climate change destroys economies and growing oil scarcity leads to huge new price rises. "Our dependency on oil should be broken by 2020," said Mona Sahlin, minister of sustainable development. "There shall always be better alternatives to oil, which means no house should need oil for heating, and no driver should need to turn solely to gasoline.
" The decision to abandon oil puts Sweden at the top of the world green league table. 2022 | Germany Closes Last Nuclear Power Plant. Germany's coalition government has announced a reversal of policy that will see all the country's nuclear power plants phased out by 2022. The decision makes Germany the biggest industrial power to announce plans to give up nuclear energy. Environment Minister Norbert Rottgen made the announcement following late-night talks. Chancellor Angela Merkel set up a panel to review nuclear power following the crisis at Fukushima in Japan.
There have been mass anti-nuclear protests across Germany in the wake of March's Fukushima crisis, triggered by an earthquake and tsunami. 'Sustainable energy' Mr Rottgen said the seven oldest reactors - which were taken offline for a safety review immediately after the Japanese crisis - would never be used again. Six others would go offline by 2021 at the latest and the three newest by 2022, he said. Mr Rottgen said: "It's definite. Before the meeting she said: "I think we're on a good path but very, very many questions have to be considered.
Greens boosted. 2025 | Last UK Coal Plant Closes. 2027 | India Generating 60% of Electricity from Renewables. The Indian government has forecast that it will exceed the renewable energy targets set in Paris last year by nearly half and three years ahead of schedule. A draft 10-year energy blueprint published this week predicts that 57% of India’s total electricity capacity will come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2027.
The Paris climate accord target was 40% by 2030. The forecast reflects an increase in private sector investment in Indian renewable energy projects over the past year, according to analysts. The draft national electricity plan also indicated that no new coal-fired power stations were likely to be required to meet Indian energy needs until at least 2027, raising further doubts over the viability of Indian mining investments overseas, such as the energy company Adani’s Carmichael mine in Queensland, the largest coalmine planned to be built in Australia. “India is moving beyond fossil fuels at a pace scarcely imagined only two years ago,” he said.
2029 | Coal for Energy Use Banned in Finland. HELSINKI/OSLO, Feb 28 (Reuters) - The Finnish parliament approved on Wednesday a government proposal to ban the use of coal to produce energy from May 1, 2029, a parliamentary official said on Thursday. As a result of the decision, coal plants owned by Fortum and other energy firms will have to halt operations, though a programme will be implemented to compensate some of the costs, he said.
In the first nine months of 2018, coal represented eight percent of Finland’s total energy consumption, according to Statistics Finland data. “It has been planned for quite some time. Yesterday it was approved. The effective date is May 1, 2029. It is a legislation to ban the energy use of coal,” said Lauri Tenhunen, a senior adviser to the Finnish Parliament’s commerce committee, which prepared the legislation. After that date, coal can only be used in an emergency, he told Reuters. 2030 | Tesco Running on 100% Renewable Energy. UK supermarket giant Tesco is not exactly popular with the deeper green environmentalist crowd. In fact, when they planned on opening one of their Tesco Express convenience stores in my hometown of Bristol, it literally resulted in riots.
But while there's legitimate concern around the oversized power that Tesco wields to transform our high streets, it's hard to deny that the company has also made some substantial and important commitments to sustainability. Whether it's tackling food waste, deploying electric vans for deliveries or housing employees on the roofs of its stores, many of its initiatives reach beyond the ubiquitous promotion of reusable bags or selling organic produce. Now Business Green reports that the company is making a firm, long-term commitment to the fight against climate change.
Specifically, that commitment includes a promise to slash its own operational greenhouse emissions 60% by 2025, and by 100% by 2050. 2030 | Denmark Retires Coal. In Brief Denmark has committed to phasing out its use of coal by 2030. The country's minister of energy and climate made the announcement at the COP23 conference. Coal Crunch This year, at the annual COP23 climate conference, Denmark renewed its pledge to end its reliance on coal for the purposes of producing electricity by 2030. This timeline was previously announced, but was later scrapped when the country elected a right-leaning government in 2015.
A host of countries made the same commitment at the event. The alliance hopes to grow its numbers to include 50 countries by the time the 2018 climate conference rolls around. “It is no use countries acting alone in relation to this agenda,” said the Danish energy and climate minister Lars Christian Lilleholt. Denmark currently has three power stations that utilize coal. Farewell to Fossil Fuels In recent years, Denmark has made great strides toward implementing a more environmentally conscious energy program. 2030 | Wind Providing 26% of China's Electricity. Last month Energywise argued that the primary reason Chinese wind farms underperform versus their U.S. -based counterparts is that China’s grid operators deliberately favor operation of coal-fired power plants.
Such curtailment of wind power has both economic and technical roots, and it has raised serious questions about whether China can rely on an expanding role for wind energy. New research published today appears to put those concerns to rest, arguing that wind power in China should still grow dramatically. The report today in the journal Nature Energy projects that wind energy could affordably meet over one-quarter of China's projected 2030 electricity demand—up from just 3.3 percent of demand last year. In fact the researchers, from MIT and Tsinghua University, project that modest improvements to the flexibility of China’s grid would enable wind power to grow a further 17 percent.
These projections come at an important moment. 2030 | All New Builds in Vancouver Zero Emissions. VANCOUVER, Canada — What does a city powered entirely by renewable energy look like? Ray Wills imagines a Sydney that, by 2025, is generating more energy than it’s consuming. Every home in the sunny Australian city has solar-paneled rooftops whose energy can be fed back into the grid or stored at home to be used later. Luciana Nery sees a Rio de Janeiro that is more resilient in the future because it doesn’t need its power shipped from elsewhere. She cites a tantalizing number: 187 percent. And Colleen Giroux-Schmidt envisions a city where the streets are bustling but silent — all the cars and delivery trucks are powered by electricity.
Those were images of future cities presented at this week’s Renewable Cities’ Global Learning Forum in Vancouver. They and others aimed to help an audience of more than 300 leaders from local governments, the private sector, utilities and the NGO and research communities break out of the current mindset of slow, incremental change. Collective effort. 2035 | NZ's Energy Generation 100% Renewable.
After defying the political odds to become the world’s youngest female leader, New Zealand’s Prime Minister is taking on a different kind of power challenge. Jacinda Ardern aims to switch the electricity grid entirely to renewables by 2035, which would place the South Pacific island in a small club of nations ditching fuels like coal and natural gas to cut carbon emissions. While the country of 4.7 million people already gets more than 80 percent of its electricity from green sources, maintaining reliable supply and affordable rates will become more challenging as it nears its goal.
Ardern, 37, took power in a coalition after winning the backing of a minor nationalist party last month, a rise that’s drawn comparisons with the generational leadership changes in countries like France and Canada. Ardern won support from younger voters with her focus on climate, which she described as “my generation’s nuclear-free moment” -- a reference to New Zealand’s ban on nuclear ships in the 1980s. 2035 | Australia Achieves 100% Renewable Power.
As plans emerge for the development of a massive new “baseload” solar thermal and storage plant to “replace” coal in South Australia, a new report from WWF Australia has questioned the very concept of “baseload”, arguing that this model of power generation is made redundant by a 100% renewable energy grid. The report, published on Wednesday, argues that Australia could completely and effectively replace the nation’s mostly coal-based “baseload” power generators by harnessing huge volumes of renewable energy – using existing technologies, including battery storage – distributed across the country. “The reality is that electricity usage is variable, demand changes throughout the day and night, and Australia doesn’t need baseload power generation,” the report says. “With key market reforms in place to manage the energy transition, Australians can comfortably let go of the mindset of ‘baseload’ and have confidence in a modern, reliable, renewable energy sector powering our future.”
2050 | Norway Becomes 1st Fully Electric Country. Norway can become the world’s first fully electric-powered country with a concerted push for sustainability, according to an energy think tank. Energi Norge, a industry advisory body, set out its green energy programme and said it was possible for the country to operate entirely using clean electricity by 2050. Hydro power is currently the source of over 96 per cent of Norway’s electricity and there are more than 110,000 electric cars in use in the country. Ministers recently declared that no vehicles powered by fossil fuels will be sold in Norway after 2025. A full conversion to electric cars would require “considerable effort within the transport industry”, Energi Norge said. Oluf Ulseth, director of the organisation, said greater sustainability had “huge potential” to assuage the dual problems of climate change and oil industry job losses faced by Norway.
Reuse content. 2050 | Costa Rica's National Decarbonization Plan Delivers a Fossil-Free Country. 2050 | Germany Achieves 100% Renewable Energy. Germans have set their sights on powering their country from renewable sources exclusively by 2050. They’re already well on their way, and just over a week ago they celebrated a major milestone. According to an update from Patrick Graichen, director of the Agora Energiewende Initiative, 64% of the power consumed in Germany over the final weekend in April came from renewables.
Sunny, breezy weather gave solar, and wind farms a big boost, and biomass and hydro plants also helped out. Just last year, deal weather conditions created a very brief window one afternoon where renewable energy met 87% of demand. There was a surplus of electricity as a result, which resulted in negative billing. Germans actually got paid to use electricity. The same thing happened again this year, and peak renewable production — which hit 85% — lasted several hours longer. That’s part of a larger trend: Germany plans to completely phase out nuclear power within five years.