Recent additions to the Library

India, a rapidly emerging economy with the world’s second largest population, is facing a surging energy demand. Its rural Base of the Pyramid (BoP) consists of 114 million households, representing 76 percent of India’s rural residents and almost 60 percent of the country’s total population. Despite their low income, these households constitute a significant consumer market for the energy services and products required to provide daily necessities such as cooking and lighting. Using the most...

Based on recent science, WWF’s Plugging The Gap paper outlines that global emissions in 2020 should not exceed emissions of greenhouse gases 40 Gigatonnes in order to stay clear of dangerous warming levels. However, current promises by the world’s governments will result in approximately 10 Gigatonnes more, up to 30% off the safety track.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has released "A Brief for Policymakers on the Green Economy and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)," which concludes that investment in clean energy, sustainable transport, forests and environmentally-friendly agriculture is essential to meet the MDGs.

The report was launched at the UN Summit on the MDGs, convening at UN Headquarters in New York, US, from 20-22 September 2010. The report cites several cases where green strategies have paid multiple...

The Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science, has today launched a new short guide to the science of climate change. The guide has been written to summarise the evidence and to clarify the levels of confidence associated with the current scientific understanding of climate change. It makes clear what is well-known and established about the climate system, what is widely agreed but with some debate about details, and what is still not well understood.

Climate change: a summary...