Category:

Climate, Environment, Renewable Energy

Saudi Arabia’s bold plan to rule the $700 billion hydrogen market

Hydrogen is morphing from a niche power source — used in zeppelins, rockets and nuclear weapons — into big business, with the European Union alone committing $500 billion to scale up its infrastructure.
As governments and industries seek less-polluting alternatives to hydrocarbons, the world’s biggest crude exporter doesn’t want to cede the burgeoning hydrogen business to China, Europe or Australia and lose a potentially massive source of income.So it’s building a $5 billion plant powered entirely by sun and wind that will be among the world’s biggest green hydrogen makers when it opens in the planned megacity of Neom in 2025.

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IMD: Above normal summer temperatures likely across country except south, central India

Last month the IMD had said the minimum temperature recorded in the country in January was the warmest for the month in 62 years. South India was particularly warm.

The month was the warmest in 121 years, with 22.33 degrees Celsius in south India, followed by 22.14 degrees Celsius in 1919 and 21.93 degrees Celsius in 2020 as the second and third warmest months.

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Extreme weather events put $84 billion of Indian bank debt at risk

The banks flagged exposure to environmentally sensitive businesses including cement, coal, oil and power. They also listed the effects of cyclones and floods on loan repayments in farming and related sectors. Lenders accounted for 87% of the total risk, valued at about $97 billion, across 67 top Indian companies that responded to CDP.

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Global insurers unite to tackle climate risk with launch of Geneva Association Task Force

Jad Ariss, Geneva Association Managing Director, said: “In 2020 alone, the world witnessed massive wildfires in California and Australia, historic floods in China and a record hurricane season in the Atlantic. The societal impacts of climate change have become ubiquitous, and individuals and institutions must fully commit now to confronting the climate crisis. Insurers are obvious, strong leaders on global climate action, given their core functions – managing risk and investing – and our industry-led initiative demonstrates that they are proactively rising to the occasion.”

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Climate pledges for 2030 put world far off 1.5C goal, UN warns

Only two of the 18 largest emitters – Britain and the European Union – had so far presented an updated “nationally determined contribution” (NDC) containing a “strong increase” in their emissions reduction targets, she noted. “Other major emitters either submitted NDCs presenting a very low increase in their ambition level or have not presented NDCs yet,” she added in a statement.

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Lloyd’s insurer Brit says it will not insure Adani coal mine

Twenty-six Lloyd’s syndicates have now said they will not insure the mine, according to action group Insure Our Future.

Adani has begun construction at Carmichael together with an associated rail project, with plans to start producing 10 million tonnes of coal per year from 2021.

The coal industry is in the spotlight for its higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions than crude oil.

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