Canadian Tar Sands summarized = TRULY NUTS!!!

For every barrel of oil they extract there, they have to use enough natural gas to heat a family's home for four days, and they have to tear up four tons of landscape, all for one barrel of oil. It is truly nuts.

India can show the USA how to roll out cost effective solar power that is just a few sunrises away from competing with the price of coal fired power!

India, the world’s third-largest energy consumer, is cutting solar-power costs to a record by forcing project developers into auctions, helping avoid the spiraling renewable-energy subsidies that have hurt Europe.



The lowest bid in India’s latest national auction on Dec. 2 came from Solairedirect SA, France’s second-largest producer, which offered to sell photovoltaic electricity at 7,490 rupees ($147) a megawatt-hour. That’s 38 percent below the average price set in a December 2010 auction and about 30 percent cheaper than the global average for solar projects.



Governments in Europe including Germany and Spain, the world’s largest solar-panel markets, this year cut above-market rates paid to all plant operators that led to ballooning costs amid an escalating debt crisis. India is staying ahead in driving down costs by forcing companies to compete on price.


“Astonishingly competitive pricing in the latest auction,” Anand Mahindra, managing director of Mahindra Group, whose solar unit won two of the 28 contracts awarded for the solar plants, said in a Twitter feed that was confirmed by his spokeswoman Roma Balwani. “The sun appears to be shining on India’s solar power program.”


Globally, power project developers on average demand to be paid $208 per megawatt-hour to build a solar plant, $78 for a wind farm and $76 for a coal plant, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance levelized cost of energy analysis.




The auction’s results for $700 million of projects shows the price of solar power in India is closing in on the cost of coal-fired generation faster than expected as photovoltaic equipment costs plunge, said Mohit Anand, senior consultant at Bridge to India Pvt., a New Delhi-based advisory firm.

Canada says to the WORLD: Damn the environment; let's get on with polluting in a really big way!!!!

Canada on Monday became the first country to announce it would withdraw from the Kyoto protocol on climate change.


Environment Minister Peter Kent broke the news on his return from talks in Durban, where countries agreed to extend Kyoto for five years and hammer out a new deal forcing all big polluters for the first time to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Canada, a major energy producer which critics complain is becoming a climate renegade.

The right-of-center Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, which has close ties to the energy sector.

"It's a national disgrace. Prime Minister Harper just spat in the faces of people around the world for whom climate change is increasingly a life and death issue," said Graham Saul of Climate Action Network Canada.

"Our government is abdicating its international responsibilities. It's like where the kid in school who knows he's going to fail the class, so he drops it before that happens," said Megan Leslie of the opposition New Democrats.

Canada's former Liberal government signed up to Kyoto, which dictated a cut in emissions to 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. By 2009 emissions were 17 percent above the 1990 levels, because of the expanding tar sands development.

1 step forward; 1 degree warmer; and several billion tonnes of mercury later...

Developing nations led by China and India pledged they’d work toward an agreement that would limit their fossil fuel emissions for the first time, the biggest advance in the fight against global warming in 14 years.



Envoys from more than 190 nations also extended the Kyoto Protocol, the only ratified treaty limiting greenhouse gases. They will develop document with “legal force” by 2015 that would curb pollution for all nations, according to a text adopted today in Durban, South Africa.


The move breaks a division enshrined in the United Nations- led discussions since 1992 that allowed the poorest nations to escape commitments on burning coal and oil while requiring industrial nations to clean up the atmosphere. That rift prevented the U.S. from ratifying Kyoto, which is the heart of the international effort to protect the environment.

“Historic is the word,” Grenadian ambassador Dessima Williams, lead negotiator for a coalition of 42 island nations, said in an interview. “The idea that we got everybody to agree to take some form of legal commitment is a major outcome.”

Canada is the only country in the world saying it won’t honor Kyoto!!!

Canada, the country furthest from meeting its commitment to cut carbon emissions under the Kyoto Protocol.


The country’s greenhouse-gas emissions are almost a third higher than 1990 levels, and it has a 6 percent CO2 reduction target for the end of 2012. If it couldn’t meet its goal, Canada would have to buy carbon credits, under the rules of the legally binding treaty.


Canada, which has the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves, would be the first of 191 signatories to the Kyoto Protocol to annul its emission-reduction obligations. While Environment Minister Peter Kent declined to confirm Nov. 28 that Canada is preparing to pull out of Kyoto, which may ease the burden for oil-sands producers and coal-burning utilities, he said the government wouldn’t make further commitments to it.

“Canada is the only country in the world saying it won’t honor Kyoto,” said Keith Stewart, an energy and climate policy analyst for Greenpeace in Toronto. Under a previous Liberal government, Canada was one of the first countries to sign Kyoto in 1998. The current Conservative government made a non-binding commitment at 2009 United Nations talks in Copenhagen to reduce emissions by 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels, in line with a pledge by the U.S., its biggest trading partner.

Renewable Energy Investment Surpasses Fossil Fuels for 1st Time!!!

Renewable energy is surpassing fossil fuels for the first time in new power-plant investments, shaking off setbacks from the financial crisis and an impasse at the United Nations global warming talks.

Electricity from the wind, sun, waves and biomass drew $187 billion last year compared with $157 billion for natural gas, oil and coal, according to calculations by Bloomberg New Energy Finance using the latest data. Accelerating installations of solar- and wind-power plants led to lower equipment prices, making clean energy more competitive with coal.

"The progress of renewables has been nothing short of remarkable," United Nations Environment Program Executive Secretary Achim Steiner said in an interview. "You have record investment in the midst of an economic and financial crisis."

The findings indicate the world is shifting toward consuming more renewable energy even without a global agreement on limiting greenhouse gases. Delegates from more than 190 nations converge in Durban, South Africa, on Nov. 28 to discuss new measures for limiting emissions damaging the climate.

The renewables boom, spurred by about $66 billion of subsidies last year, intensified competition between wind- turbine and solar-panel manufacturers, gutting margins from the biggest producers led by Vestas Wind Systems A/S and First Solar Inc. The 95-member WilderHill New Energy Index of renewable- energy stocks has tumbled 40 percent this year, steeper than the 14 percent drop in the MSCI World Index.