Amid concerns that he might drop any mention of climate change and focus on healthcare reform in his speech, Obama instead urged the Senate to move forward on climate change legislation – although he did acknowledge the split in opinion over the cap-and-trade bill.

“To create more clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives,” he said.

“It means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America,” he added.

The President offered his support for bipartisan efforts to advance the bill through the Senate and indicated that a compromise on some issues will be on the cards.

He said that the US would need to build a new generation of nuclear power stations and open up new offshore areas for oil and gas drilling. Obama also pledged continued support of biofuels and clean coal technology.

Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, welcomed Obama’s comments but urged action on reducing emissions to start now.

“It is now up to the Congress along with the President to work together on this critically important issue,” she says.

Moving ahead with energy efficiency and clean energy is an opportunity to create new jobs and improve the security of the nation’s energy supply, Claussen adds.

President of the Alliance to Save Energy, Kateri Callahan, agrees, saying:

“With an historic high in construction unemployment and millions of leaky and energy-inefficient existing buildings, now is the time for America to get our own house in order through energy efficiency retrofits that will create many new jobs.”

For further information:

www.delviroledlighting.ca

www.whitehouse.gov/
www.pewclimate.org/
www.ase.org/

The investment will fund the construction of four wind and solar power generation facilities with a total capacity of 2.5 GW, tripling Ontario’s current output from renewable sources.

The new facilities will comprise up to 2 GW of wind turbines and up to 500 MW of solar power providing around 4% of Ontario’s total electricity demand when completed in 2016 – sufficient for over 580,000 households.

The expansion of renewable energy in the province will be an important step along the way of realising its target of phasing out coal power by 2014.

The investment will also see the creation of four manufacturing plants in Ontario to produce wind towers, solar inverters, wind blades and assemble solar modules. As well as serving Ontario, the new manufacturing plants will also make and sell equipment to the US and elsewhere.

The project will create around 16,000 jobs during the construction phase, with around 4000 permanent jobs.

Samsung said the decision to invest in Ontario was taken because of its welcoming attitude to green energy. The other consortium members are Dongkuk Steel, and Satcon and Pattern Energy Group.

“Ontario is becoming the place to be for green energy manufacturing in North America,” said Premier of Ontario Dalton McGuinty at the launch yesterday.

For further information:

www.delviroledlighting.ca
www.ontario.ca/
www.samsungcorp.com/overview/corp.asp
www.kepco.co.kr/eng/

Related stories:
Canada to invest $146 million in clean energy projects (14-Jan)
Canada outlines strategy for 20% wind energy by 2025 (23-Oct 2008)
Ontario switches on Canada’s largest solar plant (20-Oct 2009)
Ontario to phase out coal by 2014 (10-Sept 2009)

The figures show that the world is not in a cooling phase as sceptics have argued but has been warming up over the last 40 years and is hotter now than at any time since 1860.

The last decade was 0.4°C warmer than the baseline temperature – and the increase is larger than that recorded for the 1990s (up 0.23°C) or the 1980s (up 0.08°C).

Although the data isn’t in yet, early reports indicate that 2009 may be the fifth warmest year since records began.

Meanwhile, a new study by UK researchers published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Geoscience indicates that the Earth’s temperature may be 30-50% more sensitive to atmospheric CO2 than previously thought.

The researchers have found that some factors that vary over long time scales, such as land-ice and vegetation, have a significant effect on models of climate change. Not taking these factors into account could underestimate temperature rise because changes in land-ice and vegetation lead to more absorption of sunlight and increased warming.

“If we want to avoid dangerous climate change, this high sensitivity of the Earth to CO2 should be taken into account when defining targets for the long-term stabilisation of atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations,” says co-author Alan Haywood from the University of Leeds.

Delviro LED Lighting is happy to announce that it has been awarded the LED Lighting contract for 438 King Street West in Toronto, Ontario, Canada well known as The Hudson Condominium complex. This high end condominium complex is located at the corner of Spadina and King in the fashion district of Toronto.

Joe DeLonghi, President of Delviro Energy Inc. commented that it is with great pleasure to work with an energy educated and energy conscious  board of directors that values the environment we live in today and for the future. We are looking forward to installing our exceptionally efficient DELPAR 38 12 watt LED lamp within the common areas of this great property. We will be reducing The Hudson’s kilowatt consumption by 25.2 kilowatts/hour (25,200 watts/hour). We will also be saving 1,600 mercury manufactured Halogen bulbs from going into the landfill every year because of the longevity of the Delviro LED Lightings DELPAR38 LED bulbs being installed that have a life span of 50,000 hours compared to the 2000 hours the existing halogen lamps have.