The Green Leap Forward travels to Singapore to look at three start-up companies–Zeco, AmpleMotion and The Green Car Co.–trying to make Singapore’s electric transportation dreams come true, and ponders the road blocks that lie in the path towards a renewable electron economy.
Singapore and the Renewable Electron Economy Proposition
The electrification of Singapore’s transportation has received [...]
Mobility
In the wake of more bad (good if you are for green) news in China’s auto sales trends, GLF is observing an increasingly resonant cacophony of green washing in the auto sector…
“Small is beautiful” seems to be the message by industry analysts to Chinese auto makers. The government agrees, as evidenced by the new tax [...]
Energy Price Reforms
NDRC announced that it would be removing price caps on coal from next year in a move towards a more market-driven price mechanism. This move comes at an opportune time when coal prices have dropped by 30 to 40% since the summer, but GLF points out an earlier post (see finding #4) on [...]
GLF has been traveling and getting a little caught up on side projects, but let’s play some catchup. Let’s pick things up with two specific appointments by President-elect Obama which have implications for U.S.-China energy relations–one being the 1997 Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Steve Chu of Lawrence Berkeley Labs (LBL) as the new Secretary of [...]
The auto industry is front and center of the current financial-energy tsunami. Detroit is in big trouble, and in need of a life-line. Chinese automakers are faring better (and some have them tipped to be Detroit’s white knights), but the shakeout in China has played itself out in petroleum price reforms.
On Friday (Dec 5), [...]
We’ve gone more than a month without a “Green Hops” update…what a crime! We atone for that oversight here…
Climate Change and International Cooperation
A “high level” summit in Beijing on international technology transfer and climate change held on November 7 and 8 provided a preview of the international climate change negotiations that have kicked off in [...]
The following is the complete transcript, modified and supplemented for completeness and readability, of the closing speech that the author of this blog (pictured below) delivered on November 11 at the JUCCCE Clean Energy Forum in Beijing.
We are at war. A world war. But unlike World War I or II, this is not a war [...]
Dr. David Tyfield (pictured right) of Lancaster University in the UK is a critical realist of science and innovation policy. Cross-trained in molecular cell biology, philosophy of social sciences and the law, Dr. Tyfield brings an interdisciplinary approach to analyzing current trends in international collaboration in low carbon innovation. The Green Leap Forward had the [...]
Climate Social Responsibility. At its firs global supply-chain summit in Beijing, Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, launched an ambitious program dubbed the “Global Sourcing Responsibility Initiative” that will require its Chinese suppliers (which may number up to 20,000 according to China Daily) to abide to potentially costly energy efficiency targets, to be verified by third [...]
Nuclear is Hot. Big 5 power company China Huaneng Group has signed contracts with suppliers to equip its first nuclear power plant in Shandong province. The plant, planned for 200 MW in its first phase with a 2013 start date, will boast “high temperature, gas-cooled technology” (HTR-PM), which is supposed to be safer and simpler [...]
