Solar power runs 'world's largest laundry'


BERWYN, Ill. - One of Tom Benson's claims to fame, proclaimed in five-foot-high letters across his storefront, is that he owns the "WORLD'S LARGEST LAUNDROMAT" — complete with 153 washers, 148 dryers and 15 flat-screen TVs.
But that's not the claim that excites advocates of renewable energy. It's that, perched atop the hangar-sized facility in this working class Chicago suburb, is one of the largest, most cost-effective solar systems in the country.
Scaling a ladder to the scorching roof one recent morning, the 61-year-old beamed with pride as he showed off the 36 10-by-4-foot panels that supply his 24-hour laundry with hot water.
Benson's boast about having the largest coin-operated laundry on Earth might be open to debate. At least one laundry in Denver claims to have a few more washers and dryers — though Benson hastens to add that it seems to have less floor space than his.
What's not in doubt is that his $150,000 hot water system has become a darling of environmentalists and officials smitten with the solar promise, heralded as a prime example of how sun energy is practical, simple and cost-wise.
"The World's Largest Laundromat has served as a role model," said Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn, a vocal solar advocate. "It's shown that solar can work in the Midwest climate, in the heartland."
To the chagrin of such advocates, however, fewer than 5 percent of the 40,000 coin-operated laundries nationwide use solar, according to estimates from the Coin Laundry Association, which represents nearly 3,000 companies in the $5 billion industry.
Benson first converted from natural gas to solar in 2001, two years after buying the laundry. The motivation, he says unapologetically, was pure dollars and cents.
His heating bills were climbing as high as $13,000 — the equivalent of 25 percent of his total monthly revenue.
"There was just no way I could survive if that continued," he said. "I was looking at a very dire situation."
At a meeting where laundry owners vented about energy prices, someone mentioned solar. Illinois was offering grants to pay 50 percent of the cost of solar systems; Benson applied, got the grant and had a system up within months.
His bank, to his surprise, didn't hesitate to loan him the needed money.
"When I showed the numbers to my bank, they understood immediately," he recalled. "It was like: Boom, 'Here's the money. Go for it.'"
His dream of a profitable, energy-efficient laundry seemed to shatter on Aug. 29, 2004, when a spark from a dryer started an inferno that destroyed the premises.
But instead of cutting his $1.6 million in fire losses and quitting, Benson vowed to rebuild. To make the laundry more customer friendly, he fashioned a play area for kids and added an indoor aviary, featuring miniature doves.
He also upgraded the solar system — again with state aid — in time for the laundry's reopening early this year.
Benson calculates his $150,000 system saves him $25,000 annually and so should pay for itself in about five more years. To boot, he expects it to remain operational for at least 20.
"I figure that when they plant me in the ground, one of my sons will run this place," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised if, 30 years from now, this laundromat and this solar system is still working."
The technology is so simple, requiring what Benson says is laughably low maintenance, he's perplexed why more businesses don't embrace it.
"None of my competitors within a several mile radius are doing this," he said. "It's a shame."
Since a laundry depends on hot water, its bottom line can be greatly affected by how energy efficient it is, said Michael Sokolowski of the Coin Laundry Association.
But the cost of solar systems dissuades many laundries, most of which are a fifth the size of Benson's and have annual revenues of less than $200,000, he said.
"Continuing increases in energy costs would get more to (install) it, and so would better efficiencies for solar systems — especially systems made for smaller laundries," he said.
Benson, who has college degrees in philosophy and business administration, said he could have made his business even more environmentally friendly — say, by adding biodegradable floor tiles. But, in scrutinizing the bottom line, he said that would have been too costly to justify.
"A lot of times the environmental stuff ... ends up costing you money," he said. "People aren't going to do it if it costs more."
His solar setup, though, has virtually no downsides, he argued.
"This happens to be one of these wonderful cases where the idea works on every level," he said.
His reliance on solar also engenders loyalty among his customers, the majority of whom are Hispanic and many of whom are poor.
Their reaction, he says, has tickled him more than anything.
"Many people here have come up to me and said, 'Thank you for helping the environment. Thank you for going solar,'" Benson said.

'Urgency needed' on nuclear waste

The UK government should move with haste to begin burying the country's radioactive waste deep underground, says the Royal Society.
The national scientific body made its call as the panel tasked with finding a long-term solution to the waste problem prepared to issue its final report.
The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management has already said that deep geological disposal is the best option.
Current scientific knowledge supported this view, said the Royal Society.
"It is important that we act with urgency because identifying appropriate sites and then consulting on and building these deep storage facilities will take decades," commented Sir David Wallace, the society's vice president.
The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) will issue its final report on Monday.
UK NUCLEAR WASTE - VOLUMES AS PACKAGED FOR DISPOSAL

High-level waste - 2,000 cubic metres
Intermediate-level waste - 350,000 cubic metres
Low-level waste - 30,000 cubic metres
Spent fuel - 10,000 cubic metres
Plutonium - 4,300 cubic metres
Uranium - 75,000 cubic metresThe panel was set up by the government to investigate the most appropriate option, or combination of options, for managing radioactive waste into the future.
It was specifically not asked to identify locations in the UK where this storage and disposal should take place.
CoRWM released an interim report in April; Monday's publication is not expected to differ on the main details.
A final disposal facility, or facilities, would be located several hundred metres underground. The waste would be encased in tough materials and would use the surrounding rock as a barrier to prevent radioactive leakage into the environment.
Around one-third of the land in the UK is thought to be geologically suitable for this purpose.
The committee said in April such stores could take several decades to develop and robust interim measures were therefore essential.
The Royal Society said it supported CoRWM's view that an independent body be set up to oversee the staged decision-making process into site selection and beyond.
"Such a body should have a much stronger science and engineering capacity than CoRWM and also have public engagement and education capability," the academy added.

CoRWM goes for deep option
Action time on nuclear waste
Tackling UK's nuclear legacy Sir David explained: "The management of radioactive waste is a national issue that will require a continuing need for an open public dialogue. This should form a vital part of the long-term management of radioactive waste as the process moves to selecting sites and beyond."
The UK's radioactive inventory from its current nuclear programme is expected to include 470,000 cubic metres of materials.
This includes the highly active waste from fuel re-processing and the irradiated remains of decommissioned reactors (it also includes the uranium and plutonium in spent fuel rods, although these are not technically classed as waste at the moment because the materials could be re-cycled into more nuclear fuel).
CoRWM's extensive three-year investigation of the issues has dismissed other disposal options, such as putting the waste on the ocean floor or flying it into the Sun.
The UK government indicated in its recent energy review that it was open to the idea of industry bringing forward proposals for a new generation of nuclear power stations.
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Bicycle and oil deals cement Chavez's ties to Iran

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez enveloped his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a bear hug on Sunday and the two men backed their anti-U.S. rhetoric with deals on everything from bicycles to oil.
In a typically verbose speech, robust ex-paratrooper Chavez lambasted their common enemy, Washington.
"If the U.S. empire succeeds in establishing its dominance, there will be no future for humanity. Therefore we should save humanity and end the American empire," Chavez told a crowd at the University of Tehran.
Chavez also criticized the current offensive by Israel, Iran's arch-enemy, against Lebanon as "both fascism and terrorism." This chimed with the view of Iran's president who has compared Israel's conduct to that of Adolf Hitler.
A beaming Ahmadinejad presented Chavez with the golden "High Medallion of the Islamic Republic of Iran" and slipped a blue sash around his chest.
"Mr Chavez is my brother, the brother of the whole Iranian nation and of all freedom-seeking people in the world," he said.
"He is a perpetual warrior against the dominant system, a worshipper of God and a servant of the people," he added.
Chavez and Ahmadinejad are both ex-military populists who take a hawkish price stance in the OPEC oil cartel. They enjoy a close personal rapport.
Both countries frequently boast they are steeled for any military assault the United States may launch.
Venezuelan Energy and Mines Minister Rafael Ramirez echoed the leaders' defiant attitude by threatening to cut oil exports to the United States if Washington did not drop its hostile stance toward Chavez's administration.

Indonesia oil well explodes, thousands evacuated - Yahoo! News

SURABAYA, Indonesia (Reuters) - An explosion at an oil well in East Java province triggered an evacuation and more than 200 people were treated for breathing problems after some lost consciousness, officials said on Saturday.

he well, located in the Bojonegoro area, is operated by state oil company Pertamina and PetroChina and officials said the fire was now out with no impact on production after the explosion shortly after midnight on Saturday morning.

"Suddenly, residents saw a big fire ball in the sky with a thunderous sound," Rumhadi, a local police chief, said by telephone.

A local official in Bojonegoro told a radio program some people had been hospitalized because of respiratory problems and after losing consciousness.

Rustam Pakaya, a senior health ministry official, told Reuters that there had been no casualties but 210 people had been treated in hospital with one kept in.

He said 2,600 people had been evacuated and 12,000 were close enough to suffer potential health problems from the fumes.

Ari Sumarno, director of Pertamina, said that water and mud had been used to quell the flames.

"Initially, we were worried about H2S (hydrogen sulfide) gas emerging, causing many people to go to hospital because they were worried about poisoning."

An official from Indonesian oil and gas regulator BPMIGAS also said the situation had been brought under control.

"There was a blow out when conducting development well. There is no impact to the oil production. The well is under control."

(Additional reporting by Muklis Ali and Telly Nathalia in JAKARTA

Customers pony up for renewable energy - Yahoo! News

MINNEAPOLIS - The Rev. Francis Galles lives on a retired priest's income, but he doesn't mind paying an extra 60 bucks a year to make sure some of the energy he uses comes from the wind turbines churning across southern Minnesota. "It's not much. I'd pay more," he said.
Galles is part of a small but growing group of consumers who, despite an era of high energy costs, are willing to pay a premium to support renewable energy.
"I think we need to have a vision when it comes to energy, and at the present time our government doesn't have much of a vision," said Galles, who lives in Preston in the southeastern corner of the state. "So, I do this for my part."
About 23,000 Minnesota households last year paid as much as an additional $150 for electricity, up 30 percent from last year, according to the state
Commerce Department' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Commerce Department.
"Think of it as your charitable contribution to the environment," said Mike Taylor, a program administrator for the agency.
The trend is upward elsewhere, too. Utilities in 36 states offer some form of green pricing, and last year 430,000 households bought green power — up 20 percent from a year earlier, the U.S. Energy Department reported.
Besides increasing the amount of clean energy being used, such programs educate consumers about renewable energy sources, said John Kelly, director of research and economics for the American Public Power Association, which represents public utilities.
"There is this continual education effort, so you have a few progressive states and utilities that kind of lead the way," he said.
Some environmental groups, however, wonder about the ultimate effectiveness of such volunteer efforts.
J. Drake Hamilton, the science policy director for the environmental group Fresh Energy, said green pricing strategies are important because, for the first time, consumers are having a say in the source of their energy.
But she said laws requiring utilities to generate more green energy would do more to transfer energy production from coal and other fossil fuels. The group failed in a push for such a law this year in Minnesota.
"We support green pricing, but if you really want to create jobs and cleaner air and sustainable renewable energy, you need public policy to back it up," Hamilton said.
Since 2001, Minnesota's utilities have been required to offer customers the green pricing option.
Customers check a form to offset a certain percentage of their energy in renewable energy — primarily wind. While the green energy isn't necessarily delivered directly to the customer, the utilities generate an amount of renewable energy equal to the purchase.
In Minnesota, which ranks fourth in the country in wind energy, participation in green pricing varies.
More than 700 customers in Moorhead, for instance, pay higher bills to get power from two 180-foot wind turbines in the city. That's more than 5 percent of the utilities' 14,000 customers — the highest percentage in the state.
Jennifer Walz, a spokeswoman for the utility, said wind is a constant presence in Moorhead, which is surrounded by the plains of western Minnesota and eastern North Dakota. The turbines are also a visible reminder of the program, called Capture the Wind.
"I think we have had good fortune with our program, in part, because we are so windy, and people are just increasingly aware of the importance of finding energy alternatives," she said.
In marketing the program, the city gave its two turbines names: Zephyr (because it makes a gentle breeze) and Freedom (representing independence from foreign sources of oil).
Churches and synagogues are also helping to promote green pricing. At least 40 congregations in the Twin Cities alone are involved in signing up members for the alternative energy premium, according to Sean Gosiewski, coordinator of the group Congregations Caring for Creation.
Other Minnesota cities with top participation rates include Winthrop (3.8 percent), Detroit Lakes (3 percent), and North St. Paul (2.9 percent).
In Preston, the Rev. Galles quietly encourages others to take part in what he sees as a small step toward better environmental stewardship and more responsible energy policy.
"I know just in talking to people, in this area there is a genuine interest in the environment and in producing new forms of energy," he said.
___
Gregg Aamot can be reached at gaamot(at)ap.org

In Australia, a U-turn on uranium - Yahoo! News

SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia's multi-billion dollar uranium industry is gearing up for expansion amid signs the Labor Party could drop its 22-year-old ban on new mines.
The dusty red outback contains the world's largest known reserves of yellowcake.
But since 1984, the left of centre party, which opposes nuclear power, has restricted the number of mines to just three.
Although Labor is not in federal government, it controls all the state authorities across Australia which are responsible for granting mining and exploration licenses.
Mining interests complain the policy has put a stranglehold on the industry and allowed Canada to outpace Australia in supply, despite having substantially smaller reserves.
Amid surging global demand for nuclear fuel and a government review of the nuclear industry, opposition leader Kim Beazley last week called on his Labor Party to drop the policy.
"I believe the real issue is what we do with the uranium we mine, not how many places we mine it," said Beazley, adding he would introduce the strongest export safeguards in the world if he won office.
The issue will dominate Labor's annual convention in April, and has already split the party with several key figures vowing to oppose the ban being lifted.
But Beazley's call for a U-turn last Monday sent ripples through the share market and caused a wave of optimism in the uranium industry.
Paladin Resources, which is sitting on 20,000 tonnes of uranium at Manyingee and Oobagooma in Western Australia, jumped 5.5 percent to 4.21 Australian dollars (US 3.20 dollars) on the day.
Shares in Toro Energy, which holds an exploration license in South Australia, shot up 14 percent to 86 cents.
Uranium Exploration Australia, which has more than a dozen exploration licenses across three states, raced up 12.5 per cent to 31.5 cents.
Fat Prophets senior resources analyst Gavin Wendt said the share movement was speculative and noted the premiers of Queensland and Western Australia opposed the ban being lifted.
"There is still a lot of uncertainty," he told AFP.
But industry players saw Beazley's announcement as a major step forward that would lend further confidence to the sector and see a fresh injection of capital to fund exploration.
"I believe it is a significant turning point," Stephen Biggins, managing director of explorer Southern Gold, told AFP.
The industry is ripe for expansion.
Australia has 39 percent of the world's known reserves of uranium that can be recovered for less then 40 US dollars a kilogram. Canada has 17 percent, followed by Kazakhstan with 16 percent.
Global demand for uranium is surging as countries turn increasingly to nuclear power.
China alone has announced plans to build 28 new nuclear reactors and this year signed a deal to import 20,000 tonnes of uranium from Australia a year from 2010 -- double Australia's current exports of the nuclear fuel.
Demand has seen the spot price for uranium ore rise from around 10 US dollars a pound in 2003 to more than 45 US dollars.
But Labor's policy of restricting the number of mines has meant vast deposits of yellowcake remain untapped and demand is outstripping supply.
There are only three uranium mining operations in Australia: the giant Olympic Dam mine controlled by BHP Billiton in South Australia; the Ranger mine in the Northern Territory run by Energy Resources of Australia and General Atomics' Beverley mine in South Australia.
They produced a combined total of 10,592 tonnes of U3O8 in 2004, approximately 22 percent of global production, according to GeoScience Australia. In the same year, Canada accounted for 29 percent of production.
A change in Labor's policy would help unlock massive deposits.
According to the Uranium Information Centre, there are some 25 major deposits and prospective mines across the country, many of which face opposition from either Labor state governments, traditional Aboriginal land owners, or both.
In Western Australia, for example, where state Premier Alan Carpenter opposes a policy change, Rio Tinto is sitting on 36,000 tonnes of uranium in Kintyre, while BHP Billiton owns the 52,500 tonne Yeelirrie deposit.
Neill Arthur, executive chairman of Uranium Exploration Australia, said it was difficult to predict whether the party would back Beazley.
"I think it is a significant change of intent," he told AFP. "But he has to take the rest of the caucus with him."

Fury over BP chief's £3m bonus:

"Investors take concerns to chairman as Lord Browne succession crisis threatens oil giant

Oliver Morgan, industrial editor
Sunday July 30, 2006
The Observer


BP Chief executive Lord Browne is set to receive a bonus package of up to £3m - double his annual salary - for identifying his successor. The package, outlined in BP's annual report, has deeply angered leading City investors.
It entitles Browne to share awards for developing executive talent and internal management of the group. One investor said: 'We are not happy with it,' and added that the matter had been raised recently with chairman Peter Sutherland, while another said it was 'not appropriate'.
The succession issue has jumped to the top of the investor agenda after Browne confirmed last week that he would stand down at the end of 2008 when he will be 60. Prior to his announcement at Tuesday's second-quarter results presentation, Browne's intentions were the subject of intense speculation and controversy amid reports of a feud with Sutherland, who insisted he stick to the company retirement age of 60.
Investors are split, some wishing Browne, architect of major deals in the US and Russia, and arguably Britain's most respected businessman, to stay on, others believing that he must stick by the BP rule book.
There is also concern about the replacement of other talented directors who are also due to retire - Sutherland himself is 60, and chief financial officer Byron Grote is set to leave in the next two years. In addition there are fears that one or more of the key BP insiders being groomed to replace Browne - Tony Hayward, Iain Conn, John Manzoni and Andrew Inglis - may go to competitors if they do not land the top job."

Beazley's uranium policy optimistic: Albanese. :

"The Federal Opposition's environment spokesman has stepped up his criticism of the Labor leader, Kim Beazley, over the party's uranium mining policy.
Mr Beazley wants Labor to scrap its ban on the development of new mines but wants stronger safeguards on uranium exports.
Labor's environment spokesman, Anthony Albanese, is opposed to the change and says he will fight it.
He has told Channel 10 there are direct links between uranium mining, the nuclear fuel cycle and nuclear proliferation.
'The difference that is there is that Kim is saying that you should allow new uranium mines with stronger safeguards and that allows us to have a great global influence,' he said.
'I think that's optimistic.'"

ERA first half profit up by 17% -

Uranium producer Energy Resources of Australia Ltd (ERA) has posted a 17 per cent rise in first half net profit, but says full year production is likely to be lower than for last year.
Net profit rose to $19.9 million in the six months to June, from $17 million for the same period in 2005.
However production difficulties in the first half would cut the full year output, although sales should be in line.
"As a result of the operational difficulties experienced in the first half of the year, production for 2006 is forecast to be lower than in 2005," the company said.
"Sales volumes in the second half of the year are expected to be lower than in the first half.
"Full year sales are expected to be comparable with 2005."
ERA's uranium oxide production was lower in the first half due to wet weather caused by cyclone Monica earlier in 2006 and unusually high rainfall during the wet season that prevented access to higher grade ore.
The company also experienced operational difficulties during the second quarter at its acid plant, which was shut down for planned repairs and maintenance in April.
"In order to supplement acid inventories, a program of higher price imports was initiated in June," the company explained.
"The higher costs associated with this will have a negative impact on the price of consumables used in production."
Drummed production of uranium oxide for the six months fell 26.8 per cent to 1,988 tonnes, from 2,714 tonnes for the same period last year.
Sales for the first half of the year were up 6.6 per cent to 3,198 tonnes, leading to a 19.2 per cent increase in revenue to $154.7 million, but the company said it expects sales for the full year to be comparable to 2005.
Despite strengthening uranium prices, ERA said it will not feel the full benefit until new contracts come into effect.
The average long term uranium market price in June was $US46.75 ($A62.20) per pound, compared with $US30.00 ($A39.92) in 2005.
During the reported period, ERA's average realised sales price of uranium oxide was $US15.57 ($A20.72) per pound, compared with $US14.64 ($A19.48) per pound last year.
ERA expects exploration drilling to continue in the remainder of this year, both on the eastern vicinity of Ranger's current operating pit and on other targets in the Ranger project area, following the interpretation of results of the airborne geophysical surveys conducted in 2005.
The Ranger Operation is located about 250 kilometres from Darwin.
At 1243 AEST Wednesday, ERA's shares were down 55 cents or 4.5 per cent at $11.60

US House to vote on nuclear deal

The United States House of Representatives is due to vote on a landmark nuclear deal to share civilian nuclear technology with India.
The deal offers US nuclear technology to India in exchange for inspectors' access to Indian civilian reactors.
The accord has been hailed as historic by some, but critics say it will damage non-proliferation efforts.
US Senate and House of Representatives committees have already backed the controversial plan.
The BBC's Shahzeb Jillani in Washington says the landmark deal allowing the US to sell civilian nuclear technology to India - for the first time in three decades - is expected to be ratified by the US Congress.
US Vice President Dick Cheney has said the deal was "one of the most important strategic foreign policy initiatives of President Bush's second term".
The House of Representatives vote is part of an elaborate legislative process to clear the deal, which also has to be cleared by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group, a group of nations that exports nuclear materials, reports say.
Last month, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the International Relations Committee of the House of Representatives endorsed the legislation.
Domestic opposition
"[The deal] could be the most important step made in cementing a critical partnership between India and the United States," Democrat Joseph Crowley was quoted saying by Reuters news agency.
NUCLEAR POWER IN INDIA
India has 14 reactors in commercial operation and nine under construction
Nuclear power supplies about 3% of India's electricity
By 2050, nuclear power is expected to provide 25% of the country's electricity
India has limited coal and uranium reserves
Its huge thorium reserves - about 25% of the world's total - are expected to fuel its nuclear power programme long-term
Source: Uranium Information Center
Global nuclear powers
The proposed agreement reverses US policy to restrict nuclear co-operation with Delhi because it has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and has twice tested nuclear weapons in 1974 and 1998.
Mr Bush finalised the agreement during a landmark trip to India in March.
Under the deal, energy-hungry India will get access to US civil nuclear technology and fuel, in return for opening its civilian nuclear facilities to inspection.
But its nuclear weapons sites will remain off-limits.
Critics of the deal say it could boost India's nuclear arsenal and sends the wrong message to countries like Iran, whose nuclear ambitions Washington opposes.
"By shipping India fuel for its civilian reactors, this legislation potentially frees up their [India's] entire supply of domestic uranium for use in weapons," House Democrat Ed Markey was quoted telling reporters by the AFP news agency.
India's nuclear-armed neighbour Pakistan has asked the US to address what it calls its legitimate needs in the civilian use of nuclear power.
Correspondents say that that there are fears that the deal may spark off an arms race in South Asia with recent unconfirmed reports that Pakistan is a building new nuclear reactor.

The deal was signed during President Bush's visit to India
India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party has termed the deal as "unacceptable".
It said that it would make India "perpetually dependent" on the US for all initiatives in the application of nuclear energy.
India's Communists, who are allies of the ruling Congress-party led federal government, have also expressed their reservations about the deal.
India has made clear that the final agreement must not bind it to supporting the US's Iran policy and does not prevent it from developing its own fissile material.

Japan to build biofuel plant in Indonesia

LOS ANGELES, July 25 -- Japan's Nippon Oil Corp. plans to build a 30,000 tonne/year biofuel plant in Indonesia's Jambi province, according to local officials.
Jambi provincial administration spokesman Erwan Malik said a Nippon Oil management team had visited Jambi's Bungo district to meet with farmers and to survey land that could be planted with jatropha and oil palm trees for use as feedstock.
Erwan said his office would cooperate with the Bungo district administration to obtain land for the cultivation of the biodiesel crops.
He said Bungo is the only area that still could be explored for the biofuel project because most other land in Jambi's districts of Batanghari, Muaro Jambi, Sarolangun, Merangin, and Tebo is controlled by local residents and private corporations.
Indonesia's government is behind the development of alternative fuels, and wants biofuel to account for about 10% of the country's energy portfolio by 2010.
The government has already announced one program to build 11 biofuel plants, with production targets of 187 million l. in 2007 and 1.3 billion l. by 2010.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono plans to issue regulations that will speed up the establishment of plantations for biofuel crops, as well as their processing plants.
On July 24 the government also announced that some 6.5 million hectares of idle land would be allocated for investors who were interested in planting biofuel crops such as oil palm, sugarcane, jatropha and cassava.
It specified that some 3 million hectares of the total would be allocated for oil palms, 1.5 million hectares for jatropha, 500,000 hectares for sugarcane, and 1.5 million hectares for cassava.
Contact Eric Watkins at hippalus@yahoo.com.

Cryogenic LOX tank technology available for industrial apps - July 2006

Scorpius Space Launch Company (SSLC, El Segundo, Calif.), a full service launch and aerospace manufacturing firm in El Segundo, California, announced on July 19 the successful completion of final qualification tests on the full-scale, all-composite cryogenic LOX tank for the Sprite Small Launch Vehicle. Microcosm Inc. (El Segundo, Calif.), designer of the launch vehicle, and under contract by SSLC, successfully tested a 42-inch diameter all-composite liquid oxygen (LOX) tank to nearly 4 times its operating pressure of 550psi. Testing was done at cryogenic temperatures using liquid nitrogen. The work was done as part of the technology development program for the Scorpius family of low-cost, responsive launch vehicles. The 42-inch composite tanks will be used by SSLC on both its Sprite orbital vehicles and SR-M sub-orbital vehicles.


Scorpius cryogenic
The qualification program included testing of 10-inch and 25-inch subscale tanks which performed to comparable levels. Commenting on the successful tests, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Jack Kulpa, CEO & president of SSLC, said, "We are extremely pleased with the exceptional performance of the Sprite LOX tanks. This advance has come about due to new manufacturing approaches by Microcosm and new materials technology from CTD (Composite Technology Development, Lafayette, Colo.). We are grateful to both organizations for their pioneering work that is also scalable to much larger tanks and launch vehicles. In addition to using these tanks on Scorpius launch vehicles, we will offer this technology as PRESSURMAXX products in a range of sizes as well as custom-made pressure vessels for industrial applications where ultra-high strength-to-weight ratio, corrosion resistance, or cryogenic performance is important. The technology offers distinct advantages for a range of other applications such as mobile tanking systems, CNG transport and storage, pressurized propellant systems and aircraft cooling among many others."

PRESSURMAXX tanks conform to ASME standards and their liner-less design reduces cost and weight by over 60 percent compared to metal tanks. They also offer significant advantages over metal or metal-lined tanks, where fatigue characteristics and separation issues of the liner materials can compromise operations. This superior performance profile is expected to benefit many applications such as marine, oil and gas, chemical and pharmaceutical processing, and textile and aper mills.

Scorpius Space Launch Company, Inc. was incorporated in 1999 as a spin-off company of Microcosm Inc. with the distinct mandate to specialize in producing low cost space launch vehicles, and provide affordable on-demand space launch services. SSLC draws on substantial know-how from the parent company, which has been specializing in reducing space mission cost since 1984 with specific expertise in designing commercial, military, and scientific missions from small, low-cost programs to multi-billion dollar, multi-satellite constellations and a family of launch vehicles. While Microcosm provides the technology development, SSLC joins the commitment by providing the "3R" dedication: Responsive, Reliable and Reduced cost launch missions.

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China persisting in quest for global gas


HONG KONG: Gas-hungry China will have to keep scouring the globe for liquefied natural gas in the coming decade, despite a couple of record discoveries at home this year, senior industry executives and experts say.China, which has earmarked space for a dozen or more LNG terminals along its affluent coast, received its first shipment from Australia in May, a landmark in the second-biggest energy consumer’s quest for cleaner power.But it is unlikely to secure new supply streams until the next decade after reluctance from importers put off by a sharp rise in natural gas prices allowed utilities in top consumer Japan to snap up contracts in Russia and Australia.Two giant gas discoveries in past months – in the South China Sea by CNOOC Ltd and Husky Energy Inc, and Sinopec Corp’s Puguang field in southwestern China – may provide some relief to energy planners, but will not allow it to call off the LNG hunt.“The actual demand is so big that neither onshore gas nor offshore gas or LNG will be able to meet the demand on its own. It has to be a combination of them,” said Azfar Shaukat, director of oil and gas studies at consultancy Mott MacDonald Group, now advising several gas supply projects in China.Reserves from those fields, if fully proven, would boost China’s total by nearly 18%, Reuters’ calculation show, helping Beijing’s move toward its goal of doubling its share of gas in its energy mix to 8% by 2010.CNOOC and Husky’s offshore field will need further drilling to confirm the finding, while Puguang is expected to begin pumping 4bn cu m a year in 2008.Top offshore oil and gas producer CNOOC Ltd has also committed to bring gas to the market. Its Panyu and Huizhou gas fields off the China coast, could potentially provide 42bn cu m – a third of China’s estimated total demand by 2020, he said.But with demand set to soar alongside rip-roaring growth, domestic resources can only go so far.“Right now, we see in the LNG business a kind of unprecedented situation: unprecedented demand from not only new emerging buyers China and India, but also the US,” said Steve Del Regno, Managing Director, Asia of Chevron Global Gas.China’s consumption is forecast to jump to 60bn cu m a year in 2010 from 47bn cu m in 2004, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said. By comparison, Europe’s biggest market is Britain, which consumes 100bn cu m a year.Beijing has finalised just one long-term deal, a 25-year contract with North West Shelf – owned jointly by Woodside Petroleum, BP and others – while a second one with Indonesia is caught up in last-minute haggling over price.China has approached the NWS venture for more gas from the North West Shelf, but the venture itself was looking elsewhere for customers as the project expands its capacity, said Peter Cleary, president of North West Shelf Australia LNG.“They made it known that they would like to buy more gas (from NWS) if it were available,” Cleary said from Perth.Subsidised domestic power and natural gas prices remain a serious impediment to investment, however, with oil companies such as CNOOC and Sinopec resisting Beijing’s push to provide more gas at potentially loss-making prices.Shaukat said LNG prices would level off at $8 or $9 per million British thermal units in the five to 10 years, but power plants and industrial users cannot afford to pay more than $3 to $5 per million British thermal units, unless there are subsidies. – Reuters

Origin increases coal seam methane interests

SYDNEY: Origin Energy Ltd, Australia's second-biggest power retailer and Contact's majority shareholder, said on Tuesday it would invest an additional $A114 ($NZ139.60) million in its Spring Gully coal seam gas project in Queensland state.
The investment would double the capacity of the project to 85 terajoules per day and allow Origin to supply natural gas to various Queensland businesses including fertiliser company Incitec Pivot and state-owned energy retailer Energex, the company said in a statement.
As natural gas resources decline, Australia's coal-seam methane is seen as an alternative, alongside overseas sources such as Oil Search Ltd's Papua New Guinean gas pipeline that could deliver gas from the small Pacific island nation into Queensland.
Australia, the world's largest coal exporter and one of the first countries to begin commercialisation of coal-seam methane, has large coal deposits along the length of its eastern seaboard, with government projections suggesting the resource can sustain production for the next 200 years.
Methane is held in coal-seam cracks and its extraction offers reduced greenhouse emissions, safer mining conditions and a valuable source of fuel in times of soaring energy costs.
Origin's shares rose 1.2 per cent to $A7.48 compared with a 1.4 per cent rise for the broader market.

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Extending tax credits to wind energy users

Leading electricity producer Contact Energy may decide in three months if it will get serious and sink some big money into exploring for gas.
If it does, it will still be slower than the state power firms to enter the exploration game.
Rival electricity generator Genesis Energy, a state-owned enterprise, has spent $15 million on funding the drilling of the Cardiff gas prospect and will have a bill of $304 million for its share in developing the Kupe gasfield during the next three years. Kupe gas will fuel a new power station for Genesis.
State power firm Mighty River Power has stakes in five offshore Taranaki exploration permits and has been involved in drilling three onshore Taranaki exploration wells.
Contact has three gas-fired power plants – at Otahuhu, Stratford and New Plymouth – and has contracted gas supplies only till 2010 for those plants. It is also keen to build a gas-fired plant in South Auckland.
Under Contact's offshore Taranaki exploration permit, it is expected to make a commitment to Crown Minerals by the end of September to drill an exploration well by next June or surrender its permit.
The terms of the permit were changed recently. The original permit had required it to make that decision by the end of June this year. Drilling an offshore well can cost more than $10 million.
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The permit now requires Contact to acquire either 100 square kilometres of 3D seismic data or acquire and process 500 kilometres of 2D seismic by the end of September rather than by the end of June.
Spokesman Jonathan Hill said Contact was still interested in pursuing the permit area. Contact had shot the seismic and it was being processed.
"Any decisions regarding drilling wells will be made at the appropriate time. While the market for drilling rigs is tight, we don't think that poses insurmountable problems."
A month ago Contact deputy chairman Phil Pryke said committing Contact to a gas exploration programme would cost several hundred million dollars over several years and involved a lot of risk.
Contact's majority shareholder, Origin Energy of Australia, has a sizable portfolio of exploration permits in New Zealand. Contact has one permit.
It is not clear yet if Contact will decide to leave the exploring to Origin, whose core business is exploring for oil and gas.
Mighty River chief executive Doug Heffernan said Mighty River had become involved in gas exploration for the opportunities that might come up in new gas supply. It was not as big an operator in exploration as Origin or Genesis.
Most of its involvement so far had been in contributing to acquiring and processing seismic data in permits in which it was a stakeholder. It had been involved in the drilling of three onshore Taranaki wells with Swift, a US company that was the operator of the permit.
He said Mighty River had spent about $60 million drilling wells for geothermal exploration for geothermal power plants and less on gas exploration.
Mighty River owns one gas-fired power station – the 125MW Southdown plant at Penrose, which it is expanding by 45MW.

Contact Energy faces decision to drill

Leading electricity producer Contact Energy may decide in three months if it will get serious and sink some big money into exploring for gas.
If it does, it will still be slower than the state power firms to enter the exploration game.
Rival electricity generator Genesis Energy, a state-owned enterprise, has spent $15 million on funding the drilling of the Cardiff gas prospect and will have a bill of $304 million for its share in developing the Kupe gasfield during the next three years. Kupe gas will fuel a new power station for Genesis.
State power firm Mighty River Power has stakes in five offshore Taranaki exploration permits and has been involved in drilling three onshore Taranaki exploration wells.
Contact has three gas-fired power plants – at Otahuhu, Stratford and New Plymouth – and has contracted gas supplies only till 2010 for those plants. It is also keen to build a gas-fired plant in South Auckland.
Under Contact's offshore Taranaki exploration permit, it is expected to make a commitment to Crown Minerals by the end of September to drill an exploration well by next June or surrender its permit.
The terms of the permit were changed recently. The original permit had required it to make that decision by the end of June this year. Drilling an offshore well can cost more than $10 million.
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The permit now requires Contact to acquire either 100 square kilometres of 3D seismic data or acquire and process 500 kilometres of 2D seismic by the end of September rather than by the end of June.
Spokesman Jonathan Hill said Contact was still interested in pursuing the permit area. Contact had shot the seismic and it was being processed.
"Any decisions regarding drilling wells will be made at the appropriate time. While the market for drilling rigs is tight, we don't think that poses insurmountable problems."
A month ago Contact deputy chairman Phil Pryke said committing Contact to a gas exploration programme would cost several hundred million dollars over several years and involved a lot of risk.
Contact's majority shareholder, Origin Energy of Australia, has a sizable portfolio of exploration permits in New Zealand. Contact has one permit.
It is not clear yet if Contact will decide to leave the exploring to Origin, whose core business is exploring for oil and gas.
Mighty River chief executive Doug Heffernan said Mighty River had become involved in gas exploration for the opportunities that might come up in new gas supply. It was not as big an operator in exploration as Origin or Genesis.
Most of its involvement so far had been in contributing to acquiring and processing seismic data in permits in which it was a stakeholder. It had been involved in the drilling of three onshore Taranaki wells with Swift, a US company that was the operator of the permit.
He said Mighty River had spent about $60 million drilling wells for geothermal exploration for geothermal power plants and less on gas exploration.
Mighty River owns one gas-fired power station – the 125MW Southdown plant at Penrose, which it is expanding by 45MW.

Editorial: Uranium should enrich Australia Opinion The Australian

Kim Beazley finally gets it: three mines just aren't enough
PERCEPTIONS of nuclear energy have come a long way since Chernobyl and The China Syndrome. Today about 440 nuclear power stations operate in 32 countries around the globe, providing 16 per cent of the world's electricity. Ten nations, including Sweden, Canada, Britain, the US and Japan, have indicated their desire to increase their nuclear power industries. In Australia, while the construction of domestic nuclear power stations remains controversial, the fact it is being discussed shows how far the debate has come over the past decade. The raucous anti-nuclear protest movement, which could fill CBDs with protesters in the 1980s, can barely occupy a laneway today. Thus in withdrawing his support for Labor's anachronistic "no new mines" policy limiting uranium extraction to just three sites, Kim Beazley is attempting to convince the electorate that Labor is a party concerned about growing the national wealth. No new mines threatens Australia's opportunity to fully take advantage of the resources boom at a time when world energy demand is projected to double by 2050. And in South Australia at least, extractors have for years subverted the policy simply by building roads between digs and treating the various developments as one contiguous mine. Australia is home to an estimated 40 per cent of the world's low-cost recovery uranium, holds 30 per cent of the world's coal trade and has the potential to become the second-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. John Howard had good reason to say last week that Australia has a "massive opportunity" to become an energy superpower. Opposition resources spokesman and left-wing faction member Martin Ferguson, as well as Labor candidate Bill Shorten, deserve congratulations for joining Mr Beazley in recognising that even if nuclear power is not on the cards for Australia, it is for many other countries and that it would be foolish for the nation not to profit from this fact. Speaking in Perth yesterday, Mr Ferguson said, quite correctly: "The world moves on . . . and our policies must change if we are to remain a relevant mainstream political force."

Despite his policy reversal, Mr Beazley could be accused of wanting to have his yellowcake and eat it too. For while he has conceded that Labor's uranium policy is a disaster for a party looking to burnish its economic credentials, the fact is that Mr Beazley still does not appear prepared to fully exploit Australia's vast uranium reserves. He is far less enthusiastic when it comes to enriching uranium, saying the procedure would not take place in Australia were he prime minister. This is bizarre: after all, once you accept uranium mining it is hard to make a moral case against enriching it. And in requiring uranium buyers to be signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Mr Beazley continues to deny India a chance to purchase Australian uranium. Although the Howard Government maintains a similar stance, it is unfair – no matter who is sitting on the Treasury benches. India cannot sign the treaty because it has developed nuclear weapons, yet it has a sterling record of non-proliferation. The US recognised this fact when President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed last March to share nuclear fuel and technology for civilian purposes. Yet because Beijing is a signatory, the Chinese can buy our uranium, even though they have sold nuclear technology to Pakistan, which then on-sold it to North Korea.
Mr Beazley's U-turn will surely horrify apocalyptically minded environmentalists who believe material progress must be sacrificed to appease an angry planet. But the combined influence of concerns about climate change – whether as a natural or man-made process – and rising energy prices due to increased world demand and Middle Eastern instability have completely changed the terms of the debate. Ironically, nuclear power is finally getting a fair hearing in the public sphere specifically because of scare-mongering over global warming. Likewise record high oil prices have provided the world with a de facto carbon tax, one which has thankfully been absorbed by the global economy without too many signs of stress. Politically speaking, Mr Beazley may pay a cost in his party. Much will depend on next year's Labor Party conference, when the no new mines policy will be debated and, if Mr Beazley has his way, discarded. Assuming the party agrees to expand uranium mining, the political battle will then shift to the question of what to do with the stuff. Although initially expensive, facilities to enrich uranium domestically could be operating within five years. Mr Beazley's opposition to enrichment is bizarre, given that adding value to commodities from bauxite to wool has been a cornerstone of Labor policy for decades. The question of uranium mining having been decided, it is here the battle over nuclear energy will take place. And here the Prime Minister and Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane have a far stronger case, though the Government's support for enrichment puts Australia at odds with the US. At the week's G8 summit, Mr Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to work together to "allow all nations to enjoy the benefits of nuclear energy without pursuing uranium enrichment", though perhaps, as with India, a special case could be made for Australia. Either way, while it is great Mr Beazley has finally recognised uranium's potential, his reticence on enrichment suggests his policy backflip has the potential, as with all backflips, to leave Labor facing in the same direction as when it started – that is, backwards.

Texas, Illinois Vie for New Energy Plant

DALLAS — Texas and Illinois will compete for the world's first near-zero-emissions coal power plant, a $1 billion project headed by the U.S. Department of Energy and a consortium of 10 energy companies from the United States, China and Australia.
The Energy Department and the consortium announced Tuesday that two sites from each state will vie for the project known as FutureGen, a plant designed to turn coal into a hydrogen-rich gas to produce electricity for about 275,000 single-family homes.
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The project dates to 2003 when President Bush announced the need for FutureGen to address global warming and touted technologies that would capture carbon dioxide for other uses. Those include fertilizers or liquefying the gas to inject it into old oil wells and push remaining oil or natural gas to the surface.
The process would not release into the atmosphere pollutants usually associated with coal-burning plants, such as carbon dioxide. Scientists have blamed the burning of fossil fuels as one of the main causes of global warming.
Sites in Mattoon and Tuscola in Illinois and near Odessa and in Jewett in Texas, beat out eight other candidates. The winner will be announced in September 2007 and will be operating a facility deemed the "ultimate power plant" almost five years later.
"This project makes coal, one of the most abundant fossil energies in the world, available in the future in the face of growing concern over greenhouse gas emissions and climate change," said Jeff Jarrett, the Energy Department's assistant secretary of fossil energy.
The selection committee, known as FutureGen Alliance, declined to discuss specific criteria that produced a final four until they had talked to those who did not make the cut. But Mike Mudd, chief executive for FutureGen, identified strengths of each.
Jewett's site in Central Texas is 400 acres, more than twice the minimum, and sits near existing industry transmission lines.
The site near Odessa features 600 acres of land, transmission lines within two miles and thick sandstone that ensures long-term carbon dioxide storage.
Mattoon's site needs only minimal grading, has a primary water supply from waste water treating plants and thick sandstone.
Tuscola's case is strong because of proximity to three railroads, all within 1.5 miles of the site, and the thick sandstone.
Texas is putting up $20 million to the FutureGen alliance for use on infrastructure or development. Additionally, a new law indemnifies the alliance of any legal entanglements arising from the plant's carbon dioxide.
Illinois officials said they're ready to back up their candidates with up to $80 million in incentives on the table, from grants to low-interest loans.
Plans call for the 275-megawatt plant to capture most of its emissions of carbon dioxide and inject them permanently into underground reservoirs, a process called sequestration.
FutureGen wants to measure the progress of the finalists' proposals next week in Pittsburgh.
The FutureGen Alliance has already committed more than $250 million to the project. The U.S. government is putting up about $700 million. In addition to commitments from energy companies, the governments of South Korea and India have pledged $10 million each.
Sites not making the cut were: Effingham and Marshall, Ill.; Henderson County, Ky.; Bowman County, N.D.; Meigs and Tuscarawas counties in Ohio; Point Pleasant, W.Va.; and Gillette, Wyo.
___
Associated Press Writers Betsy Blaney in Lubbock, Texas and Jim Paul in Champaign, Ill., contributed to this report.

Big sales don't distract Oil Search

OIL Search maintained its focus on pushing ahead with the Papua New Guinea-to-Australia gas pipeline as it reported record half-year sales of $US315 million ($417 million) thanks to high oil prices.
In its June quarterly report, the company said it was seeking to raise about $US750 million in debt to fund its share of the $US2.5 billion upstream portion of the PNG pipeline.
"The financing memorandum for the project was released to potential lenders and the initial feedback from them demonstrates a strong interest in providing highly competitive funding for the project," Oil Search managing director Peter Botten said.
At this point, the company is debt-free and has $US524.4 million in cash.
The PNG pipeline is expected to win final development approval by the end of the year but it first needs to convert provisional sales contracts into binding purchase agreements with big Australian energy users. AGL, a participant in the upstream and downstream portions of the massive project, is the only customer to have signed a firm purchase agreement.
The upstream portion of the PNG pipeline is to be operated by US oil giant ExxonMobil but Santos remains in discussions to re-enter the project through its interest in the Hides gas field in PNG.
Oil Search reported record sales revenue but lower production from its oil and gas fields in PNG during the first half of the year. The production decline was mainly due to the sale of some of its oil interests to AGL but a small fire at a pumping station and weather-related cargo loading issues also affected the company.
Compared with the first half last year, production fell 4 per cent to 5.3 million barrels of oil equivalent. But Oil Search said its full-year production should remain within its original guidance of 11 million to 11.5 million boe.
"The outlook for the second half of 2006 is strong," Mr Botten said. The company received a record average price of $US74.26 a barrel for its oil in the last quarter and remains unhedged.
Oil Search shares closed 7c higher at $4.21 yesterday.

Senate takes up offshore drilling bill

WASHINGTON - The Senate, trying to show voters it is tackling energy problems, is taking up legislation that would open 8.3 million acres of the central Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling.
Opponents of the bill, which would affect an area believed to contain large amounts of natural gas and 1.3 billion barrels of oil, fear it's a first step to lifting a drilling moratorium that for decades has protected 85 percent of the country's coastal waters from New England to Alaska.
Senators were expected to vote Wednesday to begin debate on the legislation, a largely procedural move that could set up a final vote later this week or early next.
A month ago, the House passed a much broader offshore energy development bill that would lift the ban on oil and gas drilling that has been in effect for 25 years in most waters outside the western Gulf of Mexico. That bill would still bar drilling within 50 miles, but it would open waters beyond that to energy companies unless a state specifically acts to protect waters within 100 miles of shore.
Senate Republican leaders said there aren't the votes to push such a broad measure through the Senate.
Instead, the GOP leaders, along with a few Democrats, favor a more limited bill that directs the Interior Department to begin selling oil and gas leases in 8.3 million acres of the central Gulf. It does not address drilling elsewhere.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Tuesday that if the bill passes he would work to keep it focused and limited to the 8.3 million acres in negotiations with the House.
That may be hard to do.
Rep. Richard Pombo (news, bio, voting record), R-Calif., a key sponsor of the House bill passed last month, said Tuesday he saw no way the House would accept the limited Senate legislation as a substitute for its bill.
Sen. Pete Domenici (news, bio, voting record), R-N.M., chief sponsor of the Senate bill, argued that the additional oil and gas found in Lease Area 181 in the central Gulf could "bring enough oil and gas to market to ease supply constraints and stabilize energy prices."
The 2 million acres in Area 181 and 6.3 million deep-water acres to the south that also would be opened under the bill are believed to have at least 1.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 5.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to heat 6 million homes for 15 years, according to the Interior Department.
Domenici says the offshore drilling measure is likely to be the only energy legislation that has a chance to emerge from Congress this year, despite a growing public clamor over high gasoline costs and grumbling from industry about high natural gas prices.
Talk of offshore oil and gas drilling has its own political pitfalls. Senators from many coastal states worry about potential oil spills that could harm beaches and jeopardize tourist industries.
Several senators are expected to push for a guarantee that the long-standing moratorium remain in place along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts until 2022. It is now approved by Congress annually.
To ease concerns of the Floridians, who continue to adamantly oppose oil and gas development in the eastern Gulf region, the Senate bill would bar drilling in a buffer ranging from 125 miles to as much as 230 miles from shore, and assure the drilling ban remains in place until 2022.
The bill would funnel tens of millions of additional dollars in royalties to four Gulf states — Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama — that already have drilling rigs off their coasts. These states would get 37.5 percent of future royalties from oil or gas taken from federally controlled waters, compared to less than 2 percent today.
That has raised concern among some senators as well as the Bush administration because of the expected drain on the U.S. Treasury.
By 2017, the four Gulf states' annual take would be $590 million and then grow to $1.2 billion by 2022, according to Sen. Jeff Bingaman (news, bio, voting record), D-N.M., who estimated that "over the next 60 years this entitlement to the Gulf Coast states would have a total value of at least $170 billion."
Sen. Mary Landrieu (news, bio, voting record), D-La., who helped broker the compromise bill, argues that the four states have long been shortchanged and that the new federal money would go to restore coastal wetlands and improve hurricane protection.
Energy companies, manufacturers and other industry groups have clamored for developing offshore energy, especially natural gas. The Business Roundtable recently urged lawmakers "to capitalize on this window of opportunity" when the need for more domestic energy has become apparent.
But environmentalists argue it will take six years to bring any of the new oil or gas to market and there already are vast supplies of untapped reserves in waters not subject to drilling restrictions.
"The oil and gas industry is sitting on 33 million acres of Outer Continental Shelf leases which it hasn't developed," said David Alberswerth of the Wilderness Society.
Alberswerth says the government's own estimates show there's four times more recoverable natural gas — 328 trillion cubic feet — in offshore areas where drilling is allowed, compared to waters under drilling bans.

Houses could have own wind-turbine on roof


Some householders could generate about a third of their electricity requirements by fitting a small wind turbine to the roof of their home, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said today.
Commissioner Morgan Williams said rooftop-mountable wind turbines with an output of 1.5kW could provide between 2000 and 3000kW-hours of electricity a year.
"This is equivalent to one third of the total electricity requirement for the average New Zealand household," he said.
Dr Williams used his report, Electricity, Energy and the Environment, to be tabled in Parliament today, to promote a Scottish rooftop turbine which he said could be connected to the electricity supply, or linked to a hot-water cylinder.
He said the award-winning Swift turbines were being installed across Britain. Some UK city councils have called for homes in new subdivisions to be required to generate 10 per cent of their energy-needs on-site from renewable resources.
Dr Williams made a strong call for New Zealanders to take more control over their own energy needs, particularly in terms of electricity services.
The potential to harness "Kiwi innovation" was enormous, and Dr Williams said he was "increasingly convinced that the potential for innovative energy solutions is greatest at the small or micro scale".
He drew attention to a Christchurch company, WhisperGen -- recently taken over by State electricity generator Meridian -- which had led the development of micro-scale gas-fired water cylinders for thousands of homes in Europe.
The cylinders also generated electricity from waste heat so that it could either be used in the home or sold to the local electricity company.
Dr Williams said there were also about 3500 solar water heaters being sold monthly in 2005, 45 per cent more than in 2004.
- NZPA

Soaring bills 'pushing millions into fuel poverty'

Huge rises in household utility bills over recent years are having a dramatic impact on Britain's poorest families, a report claimed today.
UK households with the lowest incomes could be spending as much as a tenth of their incomes on gas and electricity, the price comparison website MoneyExpert.com said.
Analysis of government data showed that during 2004-05, the poorest 10% of households - around 2.4m homes - spent 5.7% of their annual expenditure on gas and electricity. The average proportion for all households was 3.1%.
But the rapid recent rise in the cost of wholesale energy - which has pushed up the average gas bill by two-thirds and the cost of electricity by a half in the last three years - means that the poorest households could now be paying as much as 10% of their incomes on fuel, according to MoneyExpert. This would qualify them to be classified as "fuel poor" according to government criteria.
This latest warning comes hard on the heels of two previous reports this month from National Energy Action and the National Right to Fuel Campaign, which claimed that up to 2m households in England will face fuel poverty by 2009.
A spokesman for the Child Poverty Action Group said MoneyExpert's report confirmed its suspicions that the poorest families were being hardest hit by the recent price hikes.
"The Government has been committed to ending fuel poverty and its focus has rightly been on ensuring that pensioners are protected, but other vulnerable groups such as low-income families with young children must not be forgotten," he said.
"If prices continue to rise with no extra help for the poorest, then both the government's fuel poverty and child poverty targets will be at serious risk."
Meanwhile, pensioners' groups said the government needs to redouble its efforts to help the elderly cope with rising fuel bills. A spokesman for Help the Aged said: "One and a half million older households currently lack decent heating or insulation and are at real risk without increased investment in schemes such as Warm Front and other home energy efficiency programmes."
Yesterday EDF Energy announced that it was putting up the cost of gas and electricity for the second time in less than a year - by 19% and 8% respectively - while the wholesale gas producer BG announced a 46% increase in its second-quarter profits.

Creditors vote to bankrupt Yukos

Creditors of the Russian oil company Yukos have voted overwhelmingly to ask a bankruptcy court to liquidate the beleaguered firm.
The court is almost certain to agree to the request at a hearing scheduled for August 1 and will appoint a supervisor to sell its assets.
They rejected a last-ditch rescue plan put forward by Yukos management.
The decision will spell the end for what used to be the country's biggest privately-owned oil firm.
Russian tax authorities and state-owned oil giant Rosneft are among creditors chasing Yukos for $17bn (£9bn).
Assets likely to be sold off include some of Russia's biggest refineries with Rosneft among those who could benefit.
Conspiracy theory
Last week, Steven Theede quit as Yukos boss after denouncing the creditors' meeting as a "sham".
Yukos has struggled to survive after a series of tax demands totalling $27bn.
It says the demands are linked to a political campaign against its founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is currently serving a long prison sentence in Siberia.
In 2004, the back tax bill led to Yukos' main Yuganskneftegaz subsidiary being expropriated by the government and sold off at auction - to be ultimately acquired by Rosneft.
The sale led to a legal challenge from Yukos when Rosneft floated on the London Stock Exchange.
In his resignation letter, Mr Theede said the creditors' meeting would be "attended by those who are intent on destroying the rest of Yukos and taking its assets with no serious consideration being given to our financial restructuring plan".
He added that he had been told court-appointed bankruptcy manager, Eduard Rebgun, had prepared a report for the creditors stating that a financial restructuring was impossible and the company should be liquidated.

California heat tests power grid

Scorching heat is still severely stretching power supplies in parts of the US, with consumers warned of more shortages unless they reduce demand.
The National Weather Service has issued another excessive heat warning for California with temperatures set to reach 44C (111F) in Los Angeles.
The risk of rolling blackouts still remains and a power grid spokeswoman said: "We still have our guard up."
About 29 deaths across the US in recent days are being linked to the heat wave.
Electricity is now back on in many of the hundreds of thousands of homes hit by power outages in the past few days, including in California and New York.
But in Queens in New York, about 1,000 customers were still without power for a ninth day on Tuesday, a utility company told the Associated Press news agency.
Consolidated Edison said its engineers were working around the clock to restore its services.
By late on Monday, more than 150,000 people still had no electricity in St Louis, Missouri, where supplies were knocked out last week by storms.
Map of recent average US temperatures
Tens of thousands of homes and businesses also lost supplies in recent days because of heavy electricity use and high temperatures that caused transformers and other equipment to break down.
Dire warnings
Monday saw demand for electricity rise to a record high in California, stretching the power grid, California Independent System Operator (Cal ISO) to the limit but rolling blackouts were averted.
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"It looks like we dodged a bullet," said Gregg Fishman, Cal ISO spokesman, told Reuters news agency.
The power grid and utility companies said they would again ask businesses and consumers to conserve power to help avoid disruptions.
"Conservation is absolutely necessary. It's not just key or guidance. It is absolutely necessary if we are going to avoid rolling blackouts," Marlon Walker of Southern California Edison told Reuters.

Garrett opposes Beazley's uranium plans.


Federal Labor MP and environmentalist Peter Garrett has declared his opposition to Labor leader Kim Beazley's attempt to discard the no new uranium mines policy.
Mr Beazley will move to have the ban scrapped at next year's ALP national conference.
Mr Garrett, who is a former Australian Conservation Foundation president, says he opposes any change to the policy.
"I'm not convinced that expanding uranium mining is in the best interests of the country, in the best interests of its environment, Indigenous people, the security framework which has got tatters in it at the moment," he said.
"So I'll be arguing very strongly that we ought to consider that as not the road to take at the present point in time."
Mr Garrett will not be drawn on whether he thinks he can change Mr Beazley's mind.
"What I do know is that I've got a chance to contribute to debate in a political party that welcomes debate and I think that's fantastic and that's necessary and that's good," he said.
But he says he will not desert the Labor Party if the policy is dropped.
"I'm in the Labor tent for good, and I'll discuss and put very strongly my own views to conference, to colleagues like any other member would," he said.
"But any suggestion that someone in my situation is going to pick up the bat and go home simply because there is a possibility that a decision is made by the conference that he personally disagrees with - that's not what I'm here for.
"I'm here to make a contribution to the party, to make a contribution to debate in the country and I intend to stick around and do that."
Mr Garrett denies he has sold out on the nuclear issue.
"I don't spend a lot of time second-guessing what people think I'm doing," he said.
"My conviction about us being as far into nuclear as we ought to be is strong, my reservations about expanding the nuclear industry and all parts of it remain and I will have strong debate in the party and I'm looking forward to it."
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Lennon pushes for bio-mass power station.


The Tasmanian Premier says while he is committed to phasing out clear-felling, a solution needs to be found to reducing the forest fuel created by other harvesting methods.
Paul Lennon told Parliamentary committee hearings yesterday that he will not allow fuel levels to build up to dangerous fire levels.
He says it strengthens the argument for a bio-mass power station in Tasmania's south.
"I remain committed to trying to find a way in the southern forests to have a bio-mass power station constructed," he said.
"I know that provides a solution which will prevent a fuel build-up in the state forest, which could threaten a repeat of 1967."
In 1967, up to 110 separate fire fronts burnt through about 2,642 square kilometres of land in southern Tasmania

Generating Hydrogen, Battling Earmarks - Forbes.com:

"WASHINGTON, D.C. - It's been a busy week on Capitol Hill for those interested in hydrogen as an energy source.
On Thursday, the U.S. Fuel Cell Council, an industry group, holds its annual Congressional expo, complete with a caucus room full of company exhibits and rides in hydrogen-powered vehicles.
The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources heard testimony on Monday from Chevron (nyse: CVX - news - people ) and General Motors (nyse: GM - news - people ) execs on the implementation of the hydrogen and fuel cell provision of last year's Energy Policy Act.
'We still need major technological advances to ensure hydrogen can be affordable, safe, cleanly produced and readily distributed,' said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., at the Monday hearing.
Just across the river in Alexandria, Va., H2Gen Innovations' 40 employees are advancing all those goals. The company's tale illustrates both the promise of the hydrogen economy and the hazards involved when the feds turn to the private sector for research and development.
H2Gen's story begins in the mid-1990s, when founders Sandy Thomas and Frank Lomax worked for Arlington consultancy Directed Technologies on an engagement for Ford Motor (nyse: F - news - people ). The topic: the feasibility of producing sufficient hydrogen for a fleet of fuel-cell vehicles. (For the uninitiated, fuel cells generate electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen. Think of your grade-school electrolysis experiment, only in reverse).
In their research, Thomas and Lomax saw an opportunity to make hydrogen, at low cost and on a relatively small scale, with a technology known as steam methane reforming. In brief, a steam methane reformer subjects water (H2O) and natural gas"

Study: Methane leaks could worsen warming


NEW YORK - If the world continues to get warmer, vast amounts of methane gas trapped under the sea could belch up and worsen climate change, according to a study.
“We may have less time than we think to do something (about the prospect of global warming),” Dr. Ira Leifer, a marine scientist at University of California Santa Barbara, said in an interview.
Leifer is the main author of a study that looks at how “peak blowouts” of undersea formations called methane hydrates could release the potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. The study was published Thursday in Global Biogeochemical Cycles, a climate science publication.

The distribution of methane hydrates throughout the world is so vast that energy companies hope one day to tap the resource. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that such formations could harbor as much as 200,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Hydrate formations exist under hundreds of meters of water in places like the Gulf of Mexico and closer to the surface in frozen areas of the Arctic.
Methane, the main component of the fossil fuel natural gas, has two faces. When burned it releases less carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas that scientists believe are warming the earth, than any other fossil fuel.
But if it escapes to the atmosphere without being burned, it can trap heat rapidly because it is a greenhouse gas at least 20 times stronger than carbon dioxide.
The study measured the amount of methane that escaped to the atmosphere from a peak blowout from small volcanoes on the ocean floor off of California. It found that virtually all of the methane escaping from the deep water reached the atmosphere, countering some theories that methane seeps out in tiny bubbles that harmlessly dissolve in the ocean.

China will fuel global economy

THE good-news China story remains intact despite the turmoil in the Middle East.
Indeed, China offers us something of a buffer against things getting worse -- sparking either significantly higher oil and petrol prices or higher interest rates or both.
And this is true, despite the rocky road ahead for investors over the next few weeks.
That's good news for them and good news for us; and great news for the resource-rich states -- Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory.
Unless, of course, we choose to shoot ourselves in the collective foot. Both feet, lower back, neck, elbows and just about every other collective body part.
That's what we would do to ourselves if we took the "advice" of the dark greens and closed down our carbon-rich export industries. Because the China story is extremely energy and resources-rich.
The economic and investment consequences of what is happening in the Middle East turn on the price and availability of oil.
Provided the oil keeps flowing and/or it doesn't go to $US100-plus a barrel, it'll be essentially business as usual.
There hasn't been any interruption to oil supply and the price is now settling back into the low-70s. Despite being an increasingly significant oil importer, China can live with that quite comfortably.
But it will also give pause to the Chinese powers-that-be. They will look increasingly to diversify away from one three-letter word -- oil, out of the Middle East, to another -- gas, out of Asia. And in particular, from us.
So we are in a no-lose situation. Either China continues to fuel a very strong global economy -- and we get to sell more energy and metals at high prices, or high oil prices slow the world economy, but we get to sell more coal and gas at related high prices. Although metals prices would come off.
The important thing to understand is that this is the scenario projecting into the medium-to-long term. It looks likely to be somewhere between very good to even better.
With that one big proviso of course. That one way or t'other we won't be living in caves.
First though, we have to "get there". And that means navigating not only what comes out of the Middle East, over the next weeks and months, but the Fed building in Washington.
And what that is, as 19th century French diplomat Talleyrand famously said, it's too soon to tell.
It would be very dangerous to assume that the Fed has done, or almost done, lifting interest rates -- despite what its chairman, Big Ben Bernanke, seems to be saying,
O N ONE level, the US Fed works in exactly the same way as our Fed. It decides what it does with rates, meeting to meeting.
At any time, it might intend to be doing something in the future, but it will only actually decide what it does at each meeting.
In very simple terms, if it sees inflation as a problem, it will raise rates. No matter what it has promised.
The investment heft of all this is to be careful about being seduced by both seeming good news and bad news.
On the one hand, don't assume that Bernanke is promising no further rate rises. Rises that would whack Wall St and also our sharemarket.
But equally, don't see it all as doom and gloom because of the Middle East.
The key is to be flexible enough to ride through -- or benefit from -- whatever the short-term throws at us. With the long term still looking good. For the market, for asset prices more generally, for jobs. Provided we keep green hands off the levers.
'

NRTEE releases long-term strategy on energy and climate change

The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) recently released a long-term strategy on energy and climate change.The Round Table has concluded ground-breaking research in an effort to address the opportunities and challenges facing Canada in relation to its long-term energy and climate change future. Specifically, it deals with how to, by 2050: meet the energy needs of a growing economy; achieve substantial reductions in carbon emissions; and improve the quality of Canada's air. The scenario the NRTEE has developed shows that existing technologies can be sufficient to reduce GHG emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 while still meeting the energy needs of sustained growth -- in some cases exponential growth -- of population, labour productivity and per capita GDP.However, NRTEE says that reductions on the order of 60 per cent can only occur if both energy use becomes more efficient and if energy is produced while emitting less carbon.This is the first detailed examination of what a low carbon future might look like for Canada over the next half century.To download a copy of this Advisory Note, visit http://www.nrtee-trnee.ca/eng/programs/Current_Programs/Energy-Climate-Change/EEC-Wedge-Advisory-Note/ECC-Wedge-advisory-note_MED_e.htmFor further information, contact NRTEE at 613-992-7189 or admin@nrtee-trnee.ca

Ford chief calls for help with climate change


Speaking at a conference held during the Motor Show´s international business day, Lewis Booth, Ford´s vice president for Europe called for more co-operation from all stakeholders in meeting the growing challenge of climate change. Recognising the motor industry has a responsibility to bring down emissions, he reminded his audience of business representatives that others had an important role to play too.
As an industry we continue to make improvements to our cars and our manufacturing processes´, he said. ´However, there is a considerable way to go before others, like the oil industry, accept its part in the integrated approach.´
When discussing the role of the government in climate change, Mr Booth welcomed the UK government´s efforts to balance taxes in a technology-neutral way. However, on other EU member states, Mr Booth was more critical. ´Others tend to have incentives based on individual technologies, often ignoring the most efficient and lowest emitting vehicles. This is completely cuckoo.´

Gas use tipped to rise 17pc

AUSTRALIA's domestic use of natural gas could rise by up to 17 per cent a year, federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane told the Australian Pipeline Industry Association yesterday.He said increasing local use of natural gas was a high priority for the Government and that "gas production in Australia was expected to increase by 6 to 7 per cent a year for the next 20 years".
He would be "pursuing a reform process to increase that growth, hopefully by another 10 per cent or so, on an annual basis", with the first step to be the dismantling of state-based regulatory systems.
The proposed reforms include establishing a single national wholesale and retail market operator.
APIA chief executive Cheryl Cartwright responded that the Government's hopes were ambiguous and could cost the national gas-transmission industry dearly.

Discontent clouds Angola's oil boom

KILAMBA KIAXI, Angola (Reuters) - An oil-driven economic boom has made Angola the toast of the town in boardrooms from Houston to Beijing.
But on the outskirts of the African nation's bustling capital of Luanda, the talk is not of a more prosperous future but rather of a stolen one.
Led by a collection of reformed Marxists and Western-leaning technocrats, Angola's government is struggling to convince skeptical citizens that it will use the proceeds of vast oil reserves to improve living standards in a country shattered by a brutal 27-year civil war.
Construction cranes dot Luanda's skyline and dozens of freighters are anchored in its busy port, waiting to load the 1.4 million barrels of oil produced each day in Angola. Texan drawls are now common on the city's arcing seafront.
But such marvels are a distant dream for the people in Kilamba Kiaxi.
In this slum 7 km (4 miles) outside Luanda, raw sewage seeps into the ditches, garbage piles up on unpaved streets and residents queue, sometimes for hours, at communal taps for water that is often unsafe to drink.
"The government is building 30-storey developments in Luanda, but we don't have basic sanitation," said Fortunato Cangombre, a 43-year-old car mechanic who fled to Luanda in 1993 after the war engulfed his hometown in southern Angola.
"They must open their eyes," Cangombre said.
Others are less charitable to the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government, which has been in charge of the country since it won independence from Portugal in 1975.
"They are thieves. We will not see any of the money from the oil," said an elderly man who identified himself as Miguelito.

Generating Hydrogen, Battling Earmarks - Forbes.com

WASHINGTON, D.C. -
It's been a busy week on Capitol Hill for those interested in hydrogen as an energy source.
On Thursday, the U.S. Fuel Cell Council, an industry group, holds its annual Congressional expo, complete with a caucus room full of company exhibits and rides in hydrogen-powered vehicles.
The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources heard testimony on Monday from Chevron (nyse: CVX - news - people ) and General Motors (nyse: GM - news - people ) execs on the implementation of the hydrogen and fuel cell provision of last year's Energy Policy Act.
"We still need major technological advances to ensure hydrogen can be affordable, safe, cleanly produced and readily distributed," said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., at the Monday hearing.
Just across the river in Alexandria, Va., H2Gen Innovations' 40 employees are advancing all those goals. The company's tale illustrates both the promise of the hydrogen economy and the hazards involved when the feds turn to the private sector for research and development.
H2Gen's story begins in the mid-1990s, when founders Sandy Thomas and Frank Lomax worked for Arlington consultancy Directed Technologies on an engagement for Ford Motor (nyse: F - news - people ). The topic: the feasibility of producing sufficient hydrogen for a fleet of fuel-cell vehicles. (For the uninitiated, fuel cells generate electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen. Think of your grade-school electrolysis experiment, only in reverse).
In their research, Thomas and Lomax saw an opportunity to make hydrogen, at low cost and on a relatively small scale, with a technology known as steam methane reforming. In brief, a steam methane reformer subjects water (H2O) and natural gas, which is essentially methane (CH4), to intense heat and a series of catalysts. The process re-forms the molecules, isolates the hydrogen, and emits carbon dioxide as a waste product.
Several years and patents later, Thomas and Lomax's steam methane reformer, called the HGM 2000, is being sold. The unit, about the size of your average garden shed, pumps out purified hydrogen at a rate of 2,000 cubic standard feet an hour, enough to fuel about 20 cars a day, or 2 to 3 buses. How so? That purified hydrogen can be stored in a tank on a fuel cell vehicle. From the tank, the hydrogen feeds into a fuel cell stack, which produces electricity that powers an electric motor.
The company has leased several HGM 2000s as part of a pre-commercial program and notched three commercial sales. One of those three will be set up at a hydrogen fueling station, and two have gone to buyers who need hydrogen for their industrial processes. Such customers, which include semiconductor manufacturers and food processors, have been served by chemicals giants like Air Products (nyse: APD - news - people ) and Praxair (nyse: PX - news - people ).
H2Gen Chief Executive Barney Rush says H2Gen also hopes to sell a key component of its technology, a purification apparatus, to those who would like to reuse the hydrogen they now acquire from other sources. In dollar terms, H2Gen will pull in a few million in revenues this year. By the end of 2007, Rush forecasts that the company will have operating income--in the sense of earnings before interest, taxes and depreciation--on $15 million in sales.
Rush signed on as chief executive of H2Gen three years ago, following a six-year stint at electric utility Mirant (nyse: MIR - news - people ). Rush, who left a year before Mirant's bankruptcy in 2003, ran its European operations, which in the flush days of 1999 posted sales of $976 million. Following Enron's collapse in 2001, however, a ratings downgrade and tough times in the equity markets forced Mirant to abruptly exit Europe. "The last six months," Rush recalls, "I was basically winding down everything I'd worked to build over six years."
When he returned stateside, Rush found himself looking for work at age 50. At the time, H2Gen had built its prototype and needed someone with commercial experience to raise money and sell the technology. Rush, who in addition to his energy industry experience had worked on project financing at Lehman Brothers (nyse: LEH - news - people ), fit the profile.
Another plus to his résumé: Rush was no stranger to Washington, having served during President Jimmy Carter's administration as a special assistant to the Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs. Rush's Beltway experience complemented that of Thomas, H2Gen's co-founder, who worked as a legislative assistant to Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, on matters of national security, energy and environment.
And H2Gen has had its share of dealing with the feds. In 2004, the company won a competition for a two-year, $5.4 million grant from the Department of Energy for research into distributed reformation technologies. Announcing the win, H2Gen touted the grant as validation of its technology and a chance to learn more about making cheaper hydrogen from renewable sources, such as ethanol.
Lately, however, that grant money has become a source of frustration for H2Gen. Why? The appropriations process. Earmarks, Rush explains, have crowded the federal government's hydrogen budget. This has forced the Department of Energy, with whom Rush says H2Gen has an excellent relationship, to delay funding its priorities, even for peer-reviewed projects such as H2Gen's.
Rush says he has contacted the office of Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., who represents H2Gen's district, but he isn't holding his breath, given the vagaries of the appropriations process. As for hiring a lobbyist to intervene, Rush dismisses the idea. "How crazy is that?" he asks. "It's very hard for us to think we should pay some expensive lobbyist to try and get an earmarking for a project that we've already won once."
If it's any consolation to H2Gen, they're not alone in having complaints about deferred funding. At the Senate hydrogen hearing on Monday, the Energy and Natural Resources committee heard from James Balcom, chief executive at PolyFuel, a maker of membranes for fuel cells. Balcom urged Congress to reinstate funding of work on portable fuel cells, in which PolyFuel specializes, deferred by the Department of Energy because of budget constraints.
That hearing also made it clear why such funding is important to companies the size of H2Gen or PolyFuel. Donald Paul, chief technology officer at Chevron, told the committee his company spends $50 million a year in research on fuel cell issues, including reforming technology similar to H2Gen's.
Despite the big-gun competition, H2Gen continues to attract venture capital. This week, it announced a $10.6 million funding round led by Mellon HBV and joined firms @Ventures, Commons Capital and Chrysalix Energy Management, among others.
For investors looking to make related bets in the equities market, the accompanying table includes a few publicly traded outfits doing business in fuel cells and hydrogen.
Fuel Cell Plays
Company
Price
Change From 52-Week High
Price/Sales
Market Value ($mil)
3M (nyse: MMM - news - people )
$71.20
-19%
2.5
$53,416
Ballard Power Systems (nasdaq: BLDP - news - people )
5.59
-57
11.2
619
Distributed Energy Systems (nasdaq: DESC - news - people )
4.45
-60
4.0
173
Energy Conversion Devices (nasdaq: ENER - news - people )
32.97
-43
13.2
1,258
E.I. DuPont de Nemours (nyse: DD - news - people )
40.23
-12
1.3
36,630
FuelCell Energy (nasdaq: FCEL - news - people )
8.80
-41
14.0
452
General Electric (nyse: GE - news - people )
33.01
-9
2.2
337,532
Quantum Fuel Systems Technologies (nasdaq: QTWW - news - people )
3.07
-41
0.9
161
Prices as of July 19
Sources: FT Interactive Data, Reuters Fundamentals and Thomson IBES via FactSet Research Systems