A new study, published in the journal Science, highlights 14 key air pollution control measures that if implemented could slow the pace of global warming, save millions of lives, and boost agricultural production.

YikeBike Ltd., creators of the world’s smallest, lightest, compact electric bicycle, today unveiled the YikeBike Fusion, a lower-priced yet uncompromising version of the original YikeBike Carbon Fiber electric bicycle that has captivated the imagination of consumers and bicycle enthusiasts around the world, and earned awards, accolades and acknowledgements from Time Magazine, the Guinness Book of World Records, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and other international organizations.

In just a few weeks´ time the European Union will present its scenarios for tomorrow’s energy, the “Energy Roadmap 2050” – and already there is some excitement about the question of price increases. Behind such estimates, however, there are scientific models: computer simulations of real world processes. They are the tools to assess costs and benefits of a transformation of our energy system in line with climate change mitigation. This week, the most relevant developers of such models assembled under the umbrella of the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum (EMF), met for the first time at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). The new analyses they are preparing are about data and formula – but in the end also about euros and cents for industry and households.

Without a bold change of policy direction, the world will lock itself into an insecure, inefficient and high-carbon energy system, the International Energy Agency warned as it launched the 2011 edition of the World Energy Outlook (WEO). The agency's flagship publication, released today in London, said there is still time to act, but the window of opportunity is closing.

The European Commission has tabled a plan which will fund €50 billion worth of investment to improve Europe's transport, energy and digital networks. Targeted investments in key infrastructures will help to create jobs and boost Europe's competitiveness at a time when Europe needs this most. The "Connecting Europe Facility" will finance projects which fill the missing links in Europe's energy, transport and digital backbone. It will also make Europe's economy greener by promoting cleaner transport modes, high speed broadband connections and facilitating the use of renewable energy in line with the Europe 2020 Strategy.

Huge delays and cost overruns totalling billions for nuclear reactors under construction in Finland and France are once again demonstrating that nuclear power is no match for renewables in the fight against climate change.

Long-term public policy and increased capital markets financing needed to bridge carbon capital chasm through 2020 across Europe. The banking sector will be critical to Europe’s low carbon transition, and will finance and intermediate the vast majority of the €2.9 trillion capital required to implement low carbon infrastructure, according to a report by Barclays and Accenture published today. Banks will play an increasing role in the financing of the transition, primarily through intermediating institutional capital, but stable and long-term government incentives and policies will remain vital.

New self-assembling photovoltaic technology can keep repairing itself to avoid any loss in performance. Plants are good at doing what scientists and engineers have been struggling to do for decades: converting sunlight into stored energy, and doing so reliably day after day, year after year. Now some MIT scientists have succeeded in mimicking a key aspect of that process.

According to a new study of large companies using telepresence technology, U.S. and U.K. businesses that substitute some business travel with telepresence can cut CO2 emissions by nearly 5.5 million metric tons in total – the greenhouse gas equivalent of removing more than one million passenger vehicles from the road for one year – and achieve total economy-wide financial benefits of almost $19 billion, by 2020.

An abrupt and persistent strengthening of the ocean currents forming the Atlantic subpolar gyre could have resulted from a large freshwater flooding event 8,200 years ago. New climate model simulations resolve the contradiction of increased freshwater inflow and enhanced deep water formation in the North Atlantic. The enhanced surface circulation could contribute to the climatic stability since the last ice age, the researchers suggest in the American Geophysical Union’s electronic journal “G-Cubed”.