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So what do the world’s great investors have their eyes on in Africa, in addition to the usual natural resources – minerals, petroleum and timber – that they’ve always coveted? In a word, land. Lots of it. The land-grabbing 'investors' are purchasing or leasing large chunks of African land to produce food crops or agrofuels or both, or just scooping up farmland as an investment,

At the moment, the grabbing of Africa’s land is shrouded in secrecy and proceeding at an unprecedented rate, spurred on by the global food and financial crises. GRAIN, a non-profit organisation that supports farm families in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems, works daily to try to keep up with the deals on its farmlandgrab.org website.[vi]

Apart from the African governments and chiefs who are happily and quietly selling or leasing the land right out from under their own citizens, those who are promoting the new wave of rapacious investment include the World Bank, its International Finance Corporation (IFC), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and many other powerful nations and institutions. The US Millennium Challenge Corporation is helping to reform new land ownership laws – privatising land – in some of its member countries. The imported idea that user rights are not sufficient, that land must be privately owned, will efface traditional approaches to land use in Africa, and make the selling off of Africa even easier. GRAIN notes the complicity of African elites and says some African 'barons' are also snapping up land.

Wind turbine makers and project developers will continue to introduce new technologies and cut costs, but “constraints on technology innovation are on the horizon,” at least for onshore wind farms, WoodMac said Wednesday, highlighting key trends for the industry.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and professor emeritus of Physics at Stanford, returned to campus Monday to speak about the role of clean energy in combating global climate change. A sustainable energy revolution, he said, is not only vital in mitigating climate change, but is a critical step in ensuring U.S. economic competitiveness.

A team headed by Stanford’s Mark Z. Jacobson outlined plans for 139 nations to transition to 100 percent clean, renewable energy by the year 2050.

The shift would also allow the countries to avoid the 3 percent they now spend in their Gross Domestic Products to address the costs of air pollution — mainly in the form of higher health care spending.

The plan maps each country and the energy sources it would rely on to reach the 100 percent renewable goal. Water-bound and geologically active Iceland would get 28 percent of its power from hydroelectric sources and nearly 23 percent from geothermal. Parched and wide-open Australia would get nearly 45 percent of its power from wind farms. Poland would get nearly two-thirds of its power from the wind.