Following a row that lasted several months, solar firms have finally agreed on a concept for voluntary panel recycling. This comes too late, as the EU now wants to use the WEEE Directive to dictate what should happen to old panels.
China remains the largest wind market in the world, but the domestic sector is facing a tough period of consolidation. New regulations aim to improve quality and grid integration.
If Europe is to achieve its renewable energy goals, its power grid will have to grow accordingly. New studies point to a need for expansion on land and at sea. The greatest challenge lies in coordination between governments.
Ecuador's Yasuni-ITT initiative, a pilot project to protect the climate and the rainforest has failed miserably. How might international agreements on environmental protection be achieved in the future?
The Clean Development Mechanism was supposed to ensure sustainable development in emissions trading. But instead, it has turned out to be an escape route for polluters.
The planet keeps getting hotter and hotter. In many regions, people are experiencing climate change at first hand. However, when it comes to the issue of a binding climate agreement, politicians struggle to make progress.
Lufthansa is the world's first airlines to use biofuel on scheduled flights. In the long term, the aviation industry will not achieve its climate goals without biofuels.
Because the price of solar panels is plummeting, large ground-mounted photovoltaic plants are squeezing solar thermal power plants out of the market. Is the future of concentrated solar power already over?
Wind power plants are most productive when nothing blocks their access to the wind. But turbines often take wind away from each other. Repowering and the allocation of new priority sites are aggravating the problems the most.
2011 has been a hard year for clean energy fund managers so far, and there are few signs of improvement any time soon. Investors are shunning the sector in the face of industry-specific issues such as overcapacity and shifts in demand, and they are mindful too of the steadily deteriorating macro-economic outlook.
