Good news and bad news from our English-speaking cousins:
First the good news: Jim Prentice, Canada's environment minister, announced last week that his Conservative government will institute a cap-and-trade system for coal-fired power plants, effectively forbidding new coal-plant construction without carbon sequestration and leading to the phase-out of existing plants.
The bad news is that Australia has delayed its cap-and-trade system by a year, until 2011, reportedly in response to the looming recession. The move by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Labor government is seen as a blow to hopes that developed nations might present a unified front at the Copenhagen climate summit in December. To keep Green Party support, Rudd reportedly will offer a more ambitious carbon reduction target of 25% by 2020, up from 15%. Australia currently is the world's largest per-capita carbon emitter - and one of the most vulnerable nations in the world to climate-change drought.
Coal-fired electricity now constitutes about 18% of Canadian carbon emissions. If the government follows through on the cap-and-trade initiative, the next step should be regulation of oil-sands processing emissions.
The PV modules on top can be oriented to face the sun, and recharge the battery at about one amp. If you park it in the sun while at work, the battery will hold a full charge for the commute home.
Seth Masia
Liz Merry
