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reprint Investors who have dumped holdings in fossil fuel companies have outperformed those that remain invested in coal, oil and gas over the past five years according to analysis by the world’s leading stock market index company, MSCI, which runs global indices used by more than 6,000 pension and hedge funds, found that investors who divested from fossil fuel companies would have earned an average return of 13% a year since 2010, compared to the 11.8%-a-year return earned by conventional investors. _progress | M replaces _kt75 | mirror. visit: http://progress-m.blogspot.com . ready: 01.07.2015. close ✕ The figures indicate that if a major charitable institution or foundation with £100m in funds had divested from fossil fuels in November 2010 they would be around £7m better off today than if they had maintained their holdings in coal, oil and gas companies. In total, a portfolio of shares with fossil fuel companies included has grown in value by 62.2% since 2010,...

_NEW: follow the development of the new web-presence wolframscharnhorst.blogspot.com reprint The so-called “carbon bubble” is no longer a concept, it’s a reality, according to UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, who will oversee the crucial UN climate conferencein Paris in December. Investors who sunk their money into the fossil fuel sector are going to come up losers, she suggested, as plummeting oil prices have made new extraction projects too costly to continue to pursue and concerns about global warming have made them too risky. “A lot of the stranded asset conversations we’ve been having for a long time are now coming true,” she told RTCC, speaking from the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. “Those expensive oil projects —deep sea, Arctic, tar sands—those are actually beginning to be taken off the table because of the low oil prices.” That’s good news for the environmental groups that have long warned about “stranded assets”—coal, oil ...

-- a _kt75 | reprint Inside Sustainability: Facts, Figures, Bullshit - Part II: Alternative Energy A new report from researchers at Oxford University argues that large dams are a risky investment - soaring past projected budgets, drowning emerging economies in debt and failing to deliver promised benefits. Do they ever really make sense? A peek over the edge of the Hoover Dam's 60-storey wall is enough to send shivers down anyone's spine. Constructed from enough concrete to pave a motorway from New York to San Francisco - this colossal barrier is touted as a symbol of man's mastery over nature and a marvel of 20th Century engineering. The dam was credited with helping jump-start America's economy after the Great Depression, reining in the flood-prone Colorado River and generating cheap hydroelectric power for arid south-western states. Even more miraculously, the Hoover Dam was completed two years ahead of schedule and roughly $15m (£9m) under budg...

-- a note from _kt75 Worldwide, the most recent history was characterised by a drastic increase in the price of water [ 1 ], [ 2 ]. There exist a number of diverse (partially contradictory) price drivers: investment into (defective) supply and treatment infrastructure, installation of new infrastructure (incl. expansion of existing infrastructure), real and/or artificially induced water scarcity/depletion of natural water resources, failed financial speculations [ 3 ], targeted non-investment into water supply infrastructure to, for example, increase the sales volume of bottled water, etc. In addition to this there exists still a comprehensive lack of awareness on the limited resource water [ 4 ]. The rise of the price of water (along with an increase of the price of water rights) is a common phenomenon [ 5 ]-[ 8 ], but there exist particularly sensitive regions that may face particular increases in water prices: # Near Eeast (incl. Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq,...

-- an SWM THiNKTANK article   * alpha-terms : a series of attributes describing the fundamental characteristics of sustainability. edited: 2012-05-22 (ws),2012-05-23 (ws) S ustainability today is overquantified, institutionalised (suffering from inflexible conditions), technified, etc. [ 1 ]. There exists (unfortunately) a popular unidimensional belief that almost exclusively technical solutions (entities, vehicles, etc.), i.e. entities that somehow can be 'engineered' (in the broadest sense) can provide for sustainable development. Two major characteristics of sustainability are: credibility and confidence . Looking exemplary at the finance sector it is rather evident that both attributes have seriously suffered in the course of the recent social and economic developments. Reflecting on the information available to the public about the economic development, specifically the finance sector, from the more recent three to four years the following major processes/...