The week in green numbers…

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656,000: The number of homes and businesses in New York City that lost power due to Hurricane Sandy, the superstorm that killed at least 18 people in the five boroughs this week.

4: The number of days that Cuba’s second-largest city, Santiago, has been without power or running water, since Hurricane Sandy made landfall.

69: The storm’s death toll across the Caribbean: 52 in Haiti, 11 in Cuba, two in the Bahamas, two in the Dominican Republic, one in Jamaica and one in Puerto Rico.

0: The number of times the phrase “climate change” was mentioned during the three presidential debates between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, a first since 1988, the year Congress was first briefed on the emerging threat by the scientist James Hansen.

100+: The number of Britain’s Tory MPs signed a statement this year opposing new windfarms.

2018: The year by which renewable energy capacity is expected to overtake nuclear power in the UK, if current rates of growth continue, and will provide enough power for one in 10 British homes by 2015, according to new research.

40+: The number of cooperatively-run renewable energy projects that now operate across the UK, since the the first wind coop opened in Cumbria in 1997. In this time, over 7,000 individual investors have invested over £16 million into community-owned wind turbines and other renewable technologies.

50,000: The number of air conditioners-worth of equivalent electricity demand that Sydney transmission network operator TransGrid says will be removed from the city’s grid during Summer peak season with the introduction of the company’s new demand management initiative.

6 billion: The US-dollar amount that Indian mining billionaire Gautam Adani and his Adani Group plan to spend on coal mining investments in Australia over the next three years. The investments will be made in Abbot Point coal terminal, as well as in a railway line connecting the terminal with the coal mines in the Galilee basin.

13: The percentage of America’s total annual energy consumption that is used for treating, heating, pumping and cooling water, according to a University of Texas at Austin study.

Sophie Vorrath

Sophie is editor of Renew Economy and editor of its sister site, One Step Off The Grid . She is the co-host of the Solar Insiders Podcast. Sophie has been writing about clean energy for more than a decade.

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