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LUXEMBOURG, Luxembourg (AFP) – The impact of surging gas and electricity prices globally threatens the EU’s energy market, but the bloc will not react hastily, officials said on Tuesday. An emergency meeting of EU ministers in Luxembourg to discuss the issue largely backed 11 member countries in rejecting proposals from Spain and France for deep-rooted reforms to the market. The ministers recognised the price hikes “jeopardised the integrity of the European energy market,” the chair of […]
TEHRAN, Iran (AFP) – Iran’s capital is suffering its worst drought in half a century, a water resources official said Tuesday, citing a 97 percent drop in monthly rainfall compared with last year. Tehran has had 0.4 millimetres of rain since September 23, compared with 14.3 mm over the same period in 2020, said Mohammad Shahriari, deputy director of the company that supplies the region. “Groundwater and surface water are at a critical state and […]
by Etienne BALMER and Hiroshi HIYAMA Agence France-Presse SHIMODA, Japa (AFP) – A boat’s crew casts a net into the seemingly clean waters off Japan’s Izu peninsula, but not to catch fish — they are scooping up microplastics to learn more about the pollution’s impact on marine life. Tiny floating fragments from plastic packaging, synthetic clothing and fishing nets have proliferated over the past four decades, and are now found in every part of the […]
MANAMA, Bahrain (AFP) – Bahrain announced Sunday it aims to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2060, a day after neighbouring Saudi Arabia made the same pledge ahead of the COP26 climate summit. The Gulf kingdom “aims to reach carbon neutrality by 2060, in order to face the challenges posed by climate change and to protect the environment”, its official news agency said. Bahrain will use technology including carbon capture, as well as tree planting, to […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) – China is targeting an ambitious clean energy goal of reducing fossil fuel use to under 20 percent by 2060, according to an official plan published by state media on Sunday. The cabinet document follows a pledge by President Xi Jinping to wean the world’s biggest polluter off coal, with a target of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality 30 years later. But the country has been criticised for pushing […]
by Anne-Sophie THILL Agence France-Presse BEAUHARNOIS, Canada (AFP) – With vast amounts of cheap and renewable electricity mostly generated from hydro dams, Quebec is seeing more and more tech giants setting up power-hungry data centres in the Canadian province. Demand for cloud services has sent the number of data centres soaring worldwide, and in Quebec alone fifty now operate where just 39 existed two years ago. Many are owned by multinationals such as Amazon Web […]
by Rania Sanjar Agence France-Presse RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AFP) – Top crude exporter Saudi Arabia will aim to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2060, its de facto ruler said on Saturday, days before the COP26 global climate summit. The kingdom, one of the world’s biggest polluters, said it would also join a global effort to cut methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. The UN says more than 130 countries have set or are […]
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) – Success at the upcoming COP26 climate summit is “definitely harder” than the 2015 Paris talks which resulted in a landmark accord, the British minister presiding over the gathering warned Saturday. The October 31-November 12 gathering in Glasgow is the biggest climate conference since the Paris summit and is seen as crucial in setting worldwide emission targets to slow global warming. Alok Sharma, the British minister in charge of the talks, […]
KAMPALA, Uganda (AFP) – Environmental watchdogs Saturday condemned the arrest of six Ugandan rights campaigners as a coordinated effort to silence critics of a contested energy project involving French oil giant Total. The activists from Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO), the country’s highest-profile environmental defenders group, were detained without charge at a police station outside Kampala on Friday, the organisation said in a statement. Its French partners, Amis de la Terre France (Friends of the […]
NEW DELHI, India (AFP) – Nearly 200 people have died in floods and landslides in India and Nepal, officials said Thursday, with whole families buried in their homes and two young girls swept away as forecasters warned of yet more heavy rain. Experts say that they were victims of the ever-more unpredictable and extreme weather that has hit South Asia in recent years caused by climate change and exacerbated by deforestation, damming and excessive development. […]
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AFP) – New Zealand passed a law Thursday forcing banks to reveal the impact of their investments on climate change, describing it as a world-first move to make the financial sector’s environmental record more transparent. Climate Change Minister James Shaw said the law meant banks, insurance companies and investment firms would make mandatory disclosures about their portfolios’ global warming record from next year. Shaw, who will head to Glasgow later this month […]
by Khaliun Bayartsogt Agence France-Presse TSAGAAN KHAD, Mongolia (AFP) – Snaking across the barren Mongolian desert, a convoy crawls along the once-busy highway to the Chinese border — its truckers desperate to finally deliver their cargo of coal after months of brutal Covid-19 delays and no pay. Pre-pandemic, the route was packed with drivers delivering the vital fuel to China — the world’s biggest coal importer — currently grappling with widespread power cuts threatening its […]
