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Oil & gas companies are professing that the natural-gas and solar industries should be partners, working together supposedly to mutual benefit. It is a strategy that should be avoided by all solar companies able to do so – which is to say all those not owned by oil & gas companies – as long as the oil and gas industry pursues its current goal of growing gas use for decades to come.

We wish you a healthy and peaceful Year of the Monkey and 2016 - in the conviction that the immediate and unequivocal move the renewable energy is empowering and supports peace. The signs are auspicious: not only great opportunities in economic shifts, but also great shifts in cultural realities support a rapid move to the regenerative age. And just in time.

Renewable Energies are a human responsibility
Presented by Peter Droege

The construction and commissioning of the solar roof on the Pius IV-reception hall on 26 November 2008 was inspired by EUROSOLAR and Hermann Scheer and financed by SolarWorld. In November 2014, a delegation with representatives from EUROSOLAR and WCRE attended the General Papal Audience and submitted a petition to Pope Francis to embrace a 100 % Renewable Church. This act reflected a beginning attitude by the Vatican towards acknowledging the need to act against climate change and to move towards the use of renewable energy. Since then there has been no clearer position from Rome than the now published encyclical letter ‚Laudatio Si’ – On Care for our Common Home, published on 24 May 2015. The letter identifies the use of fossil fuels as a fundamental problem and presents an entire series of important statements about the need to rapidly and broadly move to renewable energy. No word is wasted on nuclear energy.

Dear fellow solar advocates

A wonderful example of a big problem we face yesterday. As you may have seen, a main UK news story was that a small oil company claims to have found up to 100 billion barrels of oil below the Weald region of southern England.  They estimate that up to 15 billion barrels is recoverable, about as much as Brazil's proved reserves. They base this on a single drill site with no flow measurements. Beyond ludicrous.

This monstrous piece of hype went without challenge at the top of the TV news bulletins I saw through the day, even as the company's share price soared through the roof. In the evening, I had a call from a radio station asking for an interview about how the UK should spend all the money.

Jeremy Leggett, WCRE Member of Chairpersons Board
May 04, 2015

UPDATE: The Winning of the Carbon War, now updated through 20th April, is downloadable free here: http://www.jeremyleggett.net/download-page/
Sincerely hoping it is both useful and a good read
Jeremy

Dr. Jeremy Leggett
Founding Director, Solarcentury | Founder and Chairman, SolarAid | Chairman, CarbonTracker | Chairman, Firefly Clean Energy

Jeremy Leggett, WCRE Member of Chairpersons Board, 7 September 2015

UPDATE: The latest edition of The Winning of the Carbon War, now updated through 3rd September, is downloadable free here.

Sincerely hoping it is both useful and a good read
Jeremy

Dr. Jeremy Leggett
Founding Director, Solarcentury | Founder and Chairman, SolarAid | Chairman, CarbonTracker | Chairman, Firefly Clean Energy

Jeremy Leggett, WCRE Member of Chairpersons Board, 14 January 2016

UPDATE: The latest edition of The Winning of the Carbon War, now updated through 14th January, is downloadable free here.

Sincerely hoping it is both useful and a good read
Jeremy

Dr. Jeremy Leggett
Founding Director, Solarcentury | Founder and Chairman, SolarAid | Chairman, CarbonTracker | Chairman, Firefly Clean Energy

Comrades from the Netherlands staged a wonderful launch of the Dutch edition of The Winning of the Carbon War in Amsterdam on June 8th. They also made a professional film of my presentation at the event, intercutting powerpoint slides with commentary. So if you have half an hour for a bang up-to-date summary of the book and events in the great global energy transition since, you can do so here.

Direct link zu website and video: http://bit.ly/28O4AA2

Sincerely hoping it is both useful and a good read
Jeremy

Dr. Jeremy Leggett
Founding Director, Solarcentury | Founder and Chairman, SolarAid | Chairman, CarbonTracker | Chairman, Firefly Clean Energy

Comment by Prof. Peter Droege

The narrow pro-Brexit vote was triggered by the rivalry of a pair of self obsessed Eton graduates, David Cameron and Boris Johnson, aided by a coterie of fear mongering pocket demagogues and a seeming ocean of under informed voters critical of what they understand to be 'globalisation policies'.

The door to the revolt was opened by the British Government's failure to seize the energy and efficiency revolution as an opportunity to reindustrialise its rust-belts, and to embrace the structural change from long gone coal and steel industries to a renewable age, with all the benefits in innovation, job creation and value this offers. Instead, the Tories foolishly perpetuated their determination in pushing strategic mistakes like fracking and new nuclear power.

On his website Dr. Jeremy Leggett - founding director of Solarcentury & SolarAid and a chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy (WCRE) - published an article on the "State of The Transition, July 2016: Might the fossil fuel industries implode faster than the clean energy industries can grow to replace them?":

In a memorable recent statement, some of Germany’s top scientists argued that “controlled implosion of fossil industries and explosive renewables development” can deliver the targets in the Paris agreement on climate change. Taking this premise at face value, and setting aside the thought that other factors might also be needed, the course of events in July does not offer much hope that “controlled” is a word easily applicable to the array of existential problems currently battering the energy incumbency. And while the clean energy industries continue to make progress, they are clearly not “exploding” as fast as they could. Might it be that the ongoing implosion of fossil fuel industries will happen much faster than the necessarily explosive transition to solutions?

Direct link to full text: http://bit.ly/2aX5RlO

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