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Showing posts with the label Energy

(12ab) International solidarity to tackle climate change

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How I think the world community can help each other to create a better world that is affordable and benefits everyone. For instance, when climate change hits a region or country, other regions and countries that are not hit can help with contribution of food and drinks, showing that respect for farmers and their work is important. In summary, solidarity is important in times of crises. But first why I defend Greta Thunberg's speech at the UN and afterwards. Indeed, over the past weeks (see here and here ) and even years ago I wrote, after reading climate scientists' warnings, we should take climate change serious and act to prevent the worse possible scenarios. It may not only concern loss of ice at the arctics and glaciers and thus rising sea levels (as Venice, Italy  and Jakarta, Indonesia experiences) or fires due to extreme hot and dry weather (as Australia  and Russia experiences) but may even result in a different distribution of weights in the world and as a res...

Energy: Electrabel versus Minister of Economy in Belgium.

There is at this moment a war between the Belgian government, i.e. Mr Vande Lanotte (Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Economy) en Electrabel. Here I write what I understand of the dispute because it involves quite a lot. Electrabel, a company ones owned by the government but now part of Suez-GDF, makes and delivers electricity to companies and the general public. For historical reasons (Electrabel was the only company in Belgium to make electricity owning all infrastructure), the company is still the largest company in Belgium to make electricity and uses a number of methods, including nuclear energy while the decisions are now made in France. Since the law of 31 December 2003 it knows that the nuclear energy in Belgium will be reduced from 2015 onwards until the last nuclear reactor is closed by 2025 (see website ), thus it had a minimum of 12 years to invest in alternative energy. However, over these years the company invested insufficiently in new and clean energy because it ho...