Floods, storms and other natural disasters caused global damage totaling 120 billion US dollars in the first half of 2024. 4,500 people lost their lives in the disasters. Although the losses are lower than in the first half of 2023, according to reinsurer Munich Re, they are higher than both the ten-year and thirty-year averages. […]
Man-made climate change made the extremely high temperatures around the Mediterranean in July possible. Without it, the heatwave would have been up to 3.3 degrees Celsius cooler. These are the key findings of a new rapid analysis by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) research group. “Once impossible, these heatwaves are now relatively common due to […]
Energy consumption in Germany continued to fall between January and June 2024. As preliminary calculations by the Working Group on Energy Balances (AG Energiebilanzen) show, it was 3.4 percent below the same period last year. In absolute figures, consumption was 5,428 petajoules (PJ) or 185.2 million tons of coal equivalent (HCU).According to AG Energiebilanzen, this […]
Despite the rapid global expansion of renewables, coal demand – along with coal consumption – is expected to remain constant in 2024 and 2025. This is according to the biannual update on the coal market published by the International Energy Agency (IEA). The reason for this is “the strong growth in demand,” especially in China […]
Madam Minister, Colombia’s economy relies on oil and coal exports, yet your government wants to phase out fossil fuels. Has a phase-out date been set?Our policy does not have an exact end date, but it will probably take around 15 years to complete the phase-out. We don’t just want to change Colombia’s energy supply, but […]
Global forests are an important reservoir for a large proportion of global emissions. Over three decades, from 1990 to 2020, the amount of new carbon stored in them each year was almost stable – only declining slightly in the 2010s. This is the conclusion of a study recently published in the journal Nature. However, its […]
In a new policy brief, the Forum Ökologisch-Soziale Marktwirtschaft (FÖS) advocates increasing certain environmental taxes “regularly or automatically” in line with inflation. If energy taxes and the national CO2 price alone were linked to inflation, this could generate additional revenue of around €9 billion – with a doubly positive effect. More money would be available […]
On July 1, Environmental Action Germany (DUH) filed another climate lawsuit against the German government before the Berlin Administrative Court for failing to submit its climate action report due on June 30 – an “essential control instrument of the Climate Change Act” in DUH’s view. The report is “submitted late every year. This means that […]
Because the oil company Equinor is not reducing its CO2 emissions sufficiently, a London-based science museum has terminated its sponsorship contract with the company. This was reported by several British media outlets. Equinor had been sponsoring the interactive “Wonderlab” exhibition at London’s Science Museum since 2016. The Science Museum is now ending the collaboration because […]
According to a recent survey, a majority of Germans believe that the European Union should invest more in renewable energies, especially in solar and wind farms. Almost half would like the EU to provide more financial support for replacing fossil fuel heating systems with heat pumps. And a large proportion (39%) believe that Europe should […]