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For decades city authorities have been haggling over the cost of keeping lovely Juárez Park lit up and safe for children to play at night. The beginning of the end of that problem is at hand. The expat community has begun with the donation of a solar electrical system, which eventually will supply the park’s full demand for public lighting....

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Subway trains need a lot of electricity to get going, turning electricity into kinetic energy, the energy of movement. When they pull into a station, many of them can do the opposite: generate electricity from their momentum. They turn their motors into generators to slow the train, producing current.

But in many systems, some of that energy goes to waste because of a bottleneck: the third rail, which carries current to the train, cannot handle as much energy as the train is generating during deceleration. Too much current pushes up the voltage, and when the voltage gets too high, the electricity is dissipated by running it through a piece of metal that converts it into heat.

But in Philadelphia, on the Market-Frankford line of the Southeast Pennsylvania Transit Authority, a new company called Viridity Energy will install batteries to capture a lot of that electricity and hold it while the train is in the station. Then it can deliver the power when the train starts up again or store it for a time of day when it is needed more.

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BRUSSELS — Governments around the world have pledged emissions cuts aimed at keeping global warming below levels that could set off runaway climate change. So what proportion of the low-carbon energy needed to meet those goals will come from sources like the wind, sun and waves?

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Written by Ben-Zion Ptashnik

Mexico is on the verge of a solar and wind energy revolution, similar to the growth of these technologies in Europe, China, Japan and North America, where state-sponsored subsidies and favourable regulations have advanced the solar and wind energy industries to significant levels. Renewable energies have become major players in the advanced industrial states, carving a strong niche out of the multi-trillion dollar energy-sector: European countries such as Germany, Denmark and Spain are well on their way to eliminating dependence on gas and other fossil fuels for producing electricity, while creating “green jobs”. Denmark has not only become self-sufficient in electricity, but this small country of six million is now the world’s largest producer of wind turbines thanks to government policies aimed at energy-sustainability, and to carbon reduction policies born from public concerns regarding global climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

It is expected that newly emerging industrial nations such as Mexico, Brazil, India and China, will also inevitably shed their dependence on fossil fuels, and will embrace the fountains of free and limitless sun and wind energies. This transition will take time. Many emerging industrial nations feel that they must first grow their economies and catch up with the developed industrial states, and later worry about their “carbon footprint”. In fact China is commissioning a new coal-burning plant every week. In Mexico, the energy ministers were always chosen from PEMEX, the national petroleum monopoly, and so naturally much of the energy policy momentum for decades has focused on petroleum and natural gas plants to produce electricity. President Calderon was the first exception when he was appointed Energy minister during the Fox administration. There are still those within the CFE bureaucracy and governmental agencies who are promoting nuclear and coal to replace oil and gas.

Mexico is particularly well endowed with immense sun and wind resources. Mexico is rated the third best country on Earth for potential solar production, and there are great wind resources throughout the Republic. Mexico now has wind farms in Oaxaca and Baja California, and one solar park in Aguascalientes. Thousands of solar photovoltaic systems that produce electricity have been installed all over Mexico in homes and businesses, and many tens of thousands of solar hot water boilers are now in operation here. It should be recognized that a paradigm shift to renewable energy is a slow process, and will require great effort and promotion from the private sector and from the environmentalist community.

It is worth noting that in the USA a thirty-year struggle between alternative energy advocates and private oil, gas and coal energy companies has markedly slowed down progress towards energy sustainability. Mexico now has net metering throughout the Republic, while ten States in the USA still do not have regulations allowing home power producers to connect their solar or wind system to the electric grid. In 2010 lobbyists from the fossil-fuel industries managed to torpedo efforts in Congress at legislation promoting renewable energy and carbon reduction.

So Mexico is making relatively great progress in a short time, and has begun the climb out of its dependence on fossil fuels with government energy-sector policies and goals aimed at promoting renewable energy. Mexico’s accelerated commitment to solar and wind made a leap forward with the signing of a new Energy Law in 2008, permitting consumers and businesses to sell power to the grid for credit.

This coincided with the announcement that Mexico’s largest oil reserve, the Cantarel oil field in Campeche, had depleted by over 35%. Mexico’s electric power grid is dependent for 74% of its electricity production on gas and oil, and recently Mexico has become a net importer of gas (40% is now imported from the USA). As fossil-fuel resources diminish it is inevitable that Mexico will be compelled to move inexorably to renewable energy.

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By Enrique Caldera/ Translation Lydia Carey

The discussion surrounding global warming was begun in stages. When the media began to expose the increasing greenhouse effect due to fossil fuel emissions and the consequential global warming, academia was still discussing the average increase in temperature at the end of this century and how many centimeters the sea level had risen. It took insurance companies to sound the alarm by discovering that the payments for natural disasters associated with climate change had been increasing 10 fold in the span of a few years. However, while a dangerous and telltale sign, these consequences might be the least significant of our planet's changes.

Nature, after millions of years of evolution, has constructed the earth's atmosphere, not only its chemical composition, but also its physical behavior, and therefore the physical chemistry of life on earth. Changes to this physical chemistry are precisely what is slowly but surely destroying an ecological balance that has permitted the existence of so-called civilized man. Though very few dispute the scientific fact that there are man-made changes to the global climate, there are those that argue that this process of environmental destabilization will take much longer than predicted, and that the short-term environmental consequences are exaggerated.

But that is equivalent to saying that it won’t be in our grandchildren’s lives that the balance of our eco-system will collapse, but rather that the dangers will not become catastrophic until our great grandchildren’s lives, or their children’s. Either way we are living up to the title of the “me generation”. The further out in time we think this collapse might occur, the less important it is perceived by political leaders and especially by corporate and business interests that profit from the status quo.

These changes in the atmosphere due to human influence have three main causes:

1. The burning of fossil fuels and their emissions.
2. The release of methane gas from agricultural and industrial activities.
3. Deforestation and excessive logging.

The primary greenhouse gases are CO2 and Methane gas, which both act as a filter for infrared radiation, trapping heat that otherwise would be sent into outer space. 40% of CO2 emissions accumulate in the atmosphere. 60% is reabsorbed by plants and an important fraction dissolves in the ocean, forming carbonic acid, which slowly but surely decreases the alkalinity of the seawater, and is a threat to vital sea life.

The resultant global warming changes weather patterns, creates more powerful meteorological phenomena, and causes glacial melting. These effects result in each of the following immediate consequences:

Climate Chaos- desertification and flooding. The loss of harvests due to excessive or diminished rainfall. Insect plagues. Epidemic spread of tropical diseases. Famine.

Indirect Potentiality-Destruction of methane deposits in the tundra and seabed, with massive releases of methane gas, accelerating global warming as a prelude to another ice age.

Extreme Phenomena- Stronger and more frequent hurricanes. Tornados. Catastrophic storms. Mudslides, flooding. Destruction of economic infrastructure. Loss of human life.

Glacial Thaw- Causing sea levels to rise, threatening life on our coasts, creating additional tectonic plate movement which increases likelihood of earthquakes, volcanoes, and other eruptions, and interruption of the gulf stream possibly leading to another ice age in the northern hemisphere.

As we can see the consequences of our modern lifestyle, are putting at risk the survival of civilization. Everything that big business derives from extracting and selling the daily 86 million barrels of oil equates to 6,880 million dollars a day. Consequently the oil industry is hundreds of billions of dollars richer each year, which is mostly divided between a dozen large companies, making a few select people, or countries, immensely wealthy.

Our energy use is based on fossil fuels, oil, gas and coal. Our most effective solution would be to redesign the current system, and base it principally on renewable energy. Currently this option is technically and economically viable. The problem is political. Will supposedly democratic societies be able fight the special interests and big business trying to keep things the same?

This is the test; of humankind, of our reasoning capacity, and our ability to do what we have been built to do: adapt.

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By Ben-Zion Ptashnik, Dec 16th 2010

In 2008 and 2010 reforms to the Ley del Servicio Público de Energía, made it possible for producers of renewable energy in Mexico to sell electricity back into the power grid after decades of electricity monopoly by the Comission de Electricidad Federal (CFE). This new law mandates that CFE allows for both residences and commercial enterprises, and possibly municipalities, to sell electric power from renewable energy generators such as solar Photovoltaic systems or wind generators back to the electricity grid, and is one of the most important steps in building a national solar energy industry and wind industry in Mexico.

Net metering is hailed as “providing the most significant boost of any policy tool at any level of government…to decentralize and to ‘green’ energy sources.” It makes every customer of electricity a potential producer of clean energy, and makes the solar or wind system significantly more economical to install, because it requires less batteries, and reduces the time that it takes to return the investment to the owner of that system. It also could give the grid a new degree of stability via “distributed generation.” Net metering allows consumers to participate in greening the electric grid and freeing the utilities to invest more in transmission and distribution, rather than new gas or coal power plants.

For example: In the state of New Jersey (USA) early this decade the state electricity infrastructure became unstable due to rapid economic and residential growth, which outstripped the State’s utility infrastructure. After a series of blackouts disrupted industry and created millions of dollars in losses of refrigerated and frozen food in restaurants and supermarkets, a commission was formed to study how to repair the problem. After studying all the alternatives, New Jersey’s solution was to legislate $800 million dollars in state subsidies to homeowners and businesses to incentivize installation of solar systems. New Jersey rebated $5 dollars for every $8 dollars invested in solar photovoltaic energy.

This distributive renewable energy generation stabilized the electric grid of New Jersey, and prevented the need for a two billion dollar investment in new transmission lines. It also prevented the need for New Jersey to buy power contracts from coal plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio- plants that New Jersey was suing because of the acid rain produced by these same plants, and which was destroying New Jersey’s forests. In the process New Jersey also created thousands of green energy jobs, and built a stable, sustainable “green” electricity grid.

Mexico will be in a similar position as New Jersey in the coming years. As population and industry grows, Mexico will have to build new transmission and gas-fired generation plants to meet demand. But Mexico already depends on gas for 74% of electric generation capacity, and PEMEX production of fossil fuels has diminished to such a great extent that Mexico now imports 40% of the gas needed for domestic consumption. This has resulted in drastically higher electricity rates, as every homeowner and business owner in Mexico can attest. That’s why net metering is so important for Mexico, as it begins the process of creating a stable and green energy grid for Mexico that is not dependent on fossil fuels, and which can produce electricity at half the cost of gas. Wind and solar energy resources in Mexico are abundant and limitless. And the day will surely come when most of the electricity produced in Mexico comes from such renewable resources. It makes logical, ecological and economic sense.

Net metering is an advanced electricity policy for consumers, and for society. The method of net metering used in Mexico involves installing a new bi-directional meter which measures both the purchases by the consumers, and also the kilowatt hours of renewable electrical generation that is “sold” back to the CFE utility."Net", in this context, is used in the sense of meaning "what remains to be paid after deductions". One might also “net out” the millions of tons of carbon emissions which renewable energy sources deduct from the Earth’s atmosphere.