Cover it all in solar cells

And doing so ignores the not inconsiderable problems of getting the power from the Sahara to where it is wanted in Europe, never mind the USA.
(Also many such schemes ignore the fact that solar is only directly available during daylight hours at the panel so one either needs a whole interconnected network of such farms in different time zones, or some way of storing energy for use during panel-night.)

Here is another following in the tire tracks of Elon Musk and Tesla:


Volvo Cars to go fully electric by 2030


If Sweden can do that, why not the rest of the world?


All on our only one planet,
Martin

If Transport is to go 100% electric, then at 2016 petroleum product usage we need 30 trillion kWh of energy to replace it. An increase of 20% over present day electricity production.

Even if plans are in place to increase electricity production rather than replace old dirty stations it takes more than 10 years to get approved, built, commissioned and connected up.

A budget electric vehicle (EV) selling in China for $4,500 (£3,200) is now outselling Tesla's more upmarket cars.

The compact car is proving a big hit for state-owned SAIC Motor, China's top automaker. The Hong Guang Mini EV is being built as part of a joint venture with US car giant General Motors (GM).

Last month sales of the budget electric car in China were around double those of Tesla...

... The cars are being marketed as "the people's commuting tool"...

A new approach to making jet fuel from food waste has the potential to massively reduce carbon emissions from flying, scientists say.

Currently, most of the food scraps that are used for energy around the world are converted into methane gas.

But researchers in the US have found a way of turning this waste into a type of paraffin that works in jet engines.

The authors of the new study say the fuel cuts greenhouse gas emissions by 165% compared to fossil energy.

This figure comes from the reduction in carbon emitted from airplanes plus the emissions that are avoided when food waste is diverted from landfill.

Hydrogen gets props as a zero emission fuel. When deployed in a fuel cell, it reacts with ambient air to generate electricity. Water is the only byproduct. However, shadowing the tailpipe is a long, dirty tail. Almost all of the hydrogen circulating the globe today is produced from fossil energy, mainly natural gas.

A much-promoted grants programme to help UK householders insulate their homes is to be scrapped within days.

The Green Homes Grant (GHG) reached just 10% of the 600,000 homes the chancellor promised would be improved.

The scheme will be stopped on Wednesday and the cash allocated to a separate insulation fund run by councils.

... To be fair, I wouldn't fight to save the scheme in the current form. The chumocracy have made a complete horlicks of it, as usual. But to do it this way?...

Great Britain's electricity system was the greenest it had ever been at lunchtime on Easter Bank Holiday Monday, its operator has said.

Sunny and windy weather, coupled with low demand for power, led to a surge in renewable sources of energy, National Grid Electricity System Operator said.

It meant low-carbon energy sources made up almost 80% of Britain's power.

There was no coal generation on the grid and just 10% of power was from gas plants, the operator added...

... By comparison, on Tuesday, 24.8% of Britain's energy came from fossil fuels, most of which was gas (combined cycle), while 45.2% was renewable energy sources...

Lawmakers voted in favour of a bill to end routes where the same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours.

New Zealand is to become the world's first country to bring in a law forcing its financial firms to report on the effects of climate change.

The country wants to be carbon neutral by 2050 and says the financial sector needs to play its part...

Scientists in the US have developed a paint significantly "whiter than the whitest paint currently available".

Tests carried out by researchers at Purdue University on their "ultra-white" paint showed it reflected more than 98% of sunlight.

That suggests, the scientists say, that it could help save energy and fight climate change.

Painting "cool roofs" white is an energy-saving approach already being rolled out in some major cities. Commercially available white paints reflect between 80% and 90% of sunlight, according to lead researcher Prof Xiulin Ruan from Purdue, in West Lafayette, Indiana. "It's a big deal, because every 1% of reflectance you get translates to 10 watts per metre squared less heat from the Sun,"...

A constellation of satellites will be flown this decade to try to pinpoint significant releases of climate-changing gases, in particular carbon dioxide and methane.

The initiative is being led by an American non-profit organisation called Carbon Mapper...

In his final State of the Union address, President George W. Bush devoted several lines to science and technology topics. He called for research and funding to reduce oil dependency and reverse the growth of greenhouse gases..

[Yet:]

... scientists around the country aren't buying what they see as rhetoric not backed by funding. And they are frustrated by what they view as the White House's morality-based politics that they say ignores scientific evidence, distorts facts and leads to outright censorship of reports and scientists...

... "Science establishes facts but facts can unmask bad policy," said Ken Caldeira, a climate and ecology researcher at Stanford University. "Thus good science has been seen as a threat by the Bush administration."

Alan W. Harris, senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute at La Canada, Calif., accused the White House of "systematic suppression of scientific evidence that does not support administration plans."...

... "A president who does not accept evolution is clearly someone who cannot change their mind in face of overwhelming factual evidence,"...

... In September 2002, the [Bush] administration removed a section on climate change from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) annual air pollution report, even though the climate issue had been discussed in the report in each of the preceding five years...

... The Government Accountability Project (GAP), a non-profit, public interest organization and law firm, is now representing Piltz. In June 2005, GAP gave the New York Times internal documents from Piltz’s office showing handwritten edits on several 2002 and 2003 scientific climate change reports. The edits increased and at times overstated the level of uncertainty associated with climate science. According to the New York Times, the edits tended "to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust."

The edits were made by Philip A. Cooney, then chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, who formerly worked for the American Petroleum Institute and led the oil industry’s drive to prevent restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions...

... see the Bush years as a concerted assault, from the administration's undermining of the science on climate change to its dismantling of environmental safeguards to its support for mining and oil interests.

"He has undone decades if not a century of progress on the environment,"...

... The campaign to keep the public unaware of the evidence on climate change came to light in October 2004 when the Nasa scientist, James Hansen, accused the Bush administration of trying to block data showing an acceleration in global warming.

The full extent of the White House efforts to downplay, distort and outright censor the science on climate change remains unclear...