Categories: CommentaryRenewables

The week in green numbers ….

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Some lofty new green goals for the US Navy’s ashore energy use; a mini-solar boom triggered by the man trying to knock Queensland solar on the head; and the NOAA calls it how they see it on the past year of weather in the US. Welcome to the week that was in green numbers…

2020: The year by which the US Navy aims to cut its ashore power consumption in half, source half of its energy from renewables, and make its bases net-zero consumers of energy.

75,000: The number of applications by Queenslanders for rooftop solar received in the 13 days after Premier Campbell Newman announced the government would be cutting the state’s PV tariff from $0.44c to $0.08c.

710: The gigawatt amount of renewable energy capacity IEA executive director Maria van der Hoeven said the agency expects to be installed in the next five years – a 45 per cent jump over the previous five years.

148: The number – out of 151 – of South Korea’s voting politicians who supported the passage of the nation’s ETS legislation.

1 in 1,594,323: The odds, according to the NOAA, of it being a random climate occurrence that, during the June 2011-June 2012 period in the US, each of the 13 consecutive months ranked among the warmest third of their historical distribution for the first time in the 1895-present record.

69: The percentage of energy lost – mainly through waste heat – in the production of thermal electricity in the UK.

15: The percentage of Australian electricity bills attributable to the overall cost of retailers – the cost of packaging up your bill and collecting money from customers.

3 billion: The Australian-dollar amount that a report found had been added to customers’ power bills due to the nation’s flawed system gov­erning distribution companies.

10 trillion: The number of kilowatt-hours per year that global energy consumption for cooling is projected to grow by – equal to half of the world’s entire electricity supply today.

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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