[Another good example of how carbon offsets and/or taxes can used to fund green research projects.
So far the money is only earmarked for clean energy. But soon I suspect well will see such funding also be used to support research on the demand side as well – such as Green IT—BSA]
http://www.euractiv.com/en/climate-environment/eu-launches-45bn-clean-energy-fund-news-499617
The European Commission opened competition for the world’s biggest investment programme in green technologies yesterday (9 November) aiming to gain a competitive advantage over the US and China on renewables and carbon capture and storage.
Approximately €4.5 billion will be made available to at least 34 innovative renewable energy and eight carbon capture and underground storage (CCS) projects.
The money will be raised by selling 300 million carbon permits from the 'New Entrant Reserve' of the EU emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) for greenhouse gases.
The first call for proposals covers 200 million allowances and a second round will be arranged later to allocate the remaining money. The Commission is expecting to take decisions on which projects to award in the second half of 2012.
Eligible projects will cover renewable technologies like solar power, offshore wind and various ocean energy technologies, which are yet not commercially viable but regarded key ingredients of a future low-carbon economy. The CCS projects will test CO2 capture in different industrial applications and storage into various geological formations.
------
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro
This blog is about using ICTs to develop climate change preparedness solutions built around Energy Internet and autonomous eVehicles
Energy Internet and eVehicles Overview
Governments around the world are wrestling with the challenge of how to prepare society for inevitable climate change. To date most people have been focused on how to reduce Green House Gas emissions, but now there is growing recognition that regardless of what we do to mitigate against climate change the planet is going to be significantly warmer in the coming years with all the attendant problems of more frequent droughts, flooding, sever storms, etc. As such we need to invest in solutions that provide a more robust and resilient infrastructure to withstand this environmental onslaught especially for our electrical and telecommunications systems and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint.
Using autonomous eVehicles for Renewable Energy Transportation and Distribution: http://goo.gl/bXO6x and http://goo.gl/UDz37
Free High Speed Internet to the Home or School Integrated with solar roof top: http://goo.gl/wGjVG
High level architecture of Internet Networks to survive Climate Change: https://goo.gl/24SiUP
Architecture and routing protocols for Energy Internet: http://goo.gl/niWy1g
How to use Green Bond Funds to underwrite costs of new network and energy infrastructure: https://goo.gl/74Bptd