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Events & Comments (ARCHIVE)

 

Energy efficiency was one of the main topics of the climate conference that took place in Bonn, Germany. Experts who took part in the technical meeting of the past negotiation session set a task for the governments of the world – to reduce the cities’ energy consumption on an urgent basis. This challenge is extremely actual for the Russian cities.

The work on the new international agreement that is due to be adopted at the climate summit in Paris in the end of this year continues. What are the main points of the new document? Are politicians’ plans close to what is expected from them by lay citizens? We decided to compare the preliminary text of the future agreement to the opinion of lay people who took part in global citizens’ consultations on climate and energy that took place as part of the global World Wide Views on Climate and Energy initiative

The main concern of the book are climatic systems feedback mechanisms and their probable influence on climate in connection with the anthropogenic transformations in the bed surfaces underlaying hydroelectric dams in the process of their construction and maintenance. Also important is boreal forests extinction in the catchment basins of rivers under regulation.
Climate variability is taken into account in the design and operation of hydroelectric dams and is founded on environmental regulations and legislation on safety for hydro-technical buildings.
Climate events related to disasters in different parts of the world confirm that studies discussed in the book are of burning importance.
The book could be of interest to specialists in geo- ecology as well as to students of environmental departments of universities and a wide audience concerned with these problems.

The recently published IMF report reveals data demonstrating that global fossil fuel subsidies are much greater than previously thought. The IMF calls the revelation “shocking” and says the figure is an “extremely robust” estimate of the true cost of fossil fuels. Subsidies must be re-routed from fossils towards clean energy sources, say environmental NGOs.

The report, prepared by Clmate Secretariat of Russian Social Ecological Union, analyzes the existing potential and nesessary conditions for more wide RE use in the Russian regions, and nesesary supporting solutions on national, regional and local level.
Text of the report (in Russian)

Russia’s First Deputy Minister of Energy Alexey Teksler, during his speech at the UN Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) Forum that took place in Austria earlier this month, proclaimed Russia’s intention to increase renewable energy production 10 times. Russian environmental NGOs say that the country’s real renewable energy potential exceeds the announced level by far, yet the effort demonstrated by the authorities in this respect has been insignificant.

Strategies of response action to climate change on different levels (federal, regional and municipal) will allow us to lower the risk of damage from negative effects of climate change. This is the conclusion made by the authors of the recently published Second Assessment Report on climate change and its effects on the territory of Russian Federation, by RosHydromet. Environmental NGOs make it clear that adaptation and mitigation measures must become an inevitable part of Russia’s national and regional policies.

A conference titled Petersberg Climate Dialogue took place in Berlin. It was the continuation of the Petersberg Dialogue forum, initiated by Vladimir Putin and Gerhard Schroeder back in 2006 to promote cooperation between Russia and Germany in all areas. The conference this year was dedicated to the preparations to the UN climate summit to take place in Paris in the end of 2015. In order for Paris summit to become a success it is necessary that climate change discussion get more informal and active, say environmental NGOs.

On June 6, public consultations with the world’s citizens took place all over the world. They were focused on the topic of climate and energy and were part of the global World Wide Views on Climate and Energy, that unfolded in the run-up to the next round of UN climate talks in Paris later this year.

The 42nd session of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Chance) Subsidiary Bodies opened in Bonn, Germany. The main task that lies in front of the negotiators is to simplify the agreed-upon text of the agreement due to be adopted in Paris, later in December this year.

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