Making tourism sustainable: ‘What’s good for the area is good for everybody’

It’s great when somewhere beautiful draws visitors, whether it’s the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher or the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu. But for it to be sustainable, the tourism has to be balanced by conservation

Sustainable: the underground visitor centre at the Cliffs of Moher helps the site cope with hundreds of thousands of tourists a year. Photograph: Nutan/Tourism Ireland

‘You can’t eat the scenery,” people used to say. A beautiful landscape, in other words, couldn’t generate an income. We’ve come a long way since then, particularly in parts of the country such as the Burren, where the landscape, particularly the Cliffs of Moher, draws hundreds of thousands of tourists a year. But tourism has to be managed, both to preserve the sight they’re coming to see and to interest them in the area’s broader heritage.

CHILE CON LA MAYOR PLANTA SOLAR DE LATINOAMÉRICA EN DESIERTO ATACAMA

El Grupo CAP y SunEdison firmaron un acuerdo para construir una nueva planta de energía solar en el norte de Chile, esta vez en el Desierto de Atacama, el que se transformará en el proyecto de mayor envergadura a nivel latinoamericano e incluso entre los primeros a nivel mundial entre las plantas solares y cantidad de paneles solares a utilizarse.

Landfill gas helps Palo Alto go carbon neutral

 In this April 8, 2013, file photo, an employee of energy company Eon Hanse walks across the premises of the natural gas storage facility in Hamburg-Reitbrook, Germany. Clean Energy refers to energy that pollutes less than coal and oil, the dominant sources of fuel for electricity and transportation. Natural gas is considered by some, including the Obama administration, to be clean because it emits far fewer pollutants than coal or oil. Others consider only renewable energy truly clean

It’s not all about solar for Palo Alto, Calif.

Sure, the Silicon Valley city offers generous installation rebates, has a feed-in tariff programand has contracted for some of the cheapest utility-scale solar known to man, at 6.9 cents per kilowatt-hour. But Palo Alto is also big on landfill gas-to-energy, and a new project 90 miles down U.S. Highway 101 in Gonzales, Calif., is expected to provide the city around 10.4 gigawatt-hours of electricity every year.