Voltzman

2008-02-04T21:00:00.000+11:00

Algae hold the key to the biofuel conundrum

02 February 2008
Rachel Nowak
Magazine issue 2641

It is no secret that biofuels made from food crops such as corn and palm oil have driven up food prices and depleted rainforests, often without reducing net greenhouse emissions. The message was driven home by two recent UK reports, first from the Royal Society and then last week from the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee.

The days of unbridled enthusiasm for first-generation biofuels have passed, even if production is still rising. Last week the European Commission controversially called for 10 per cent of transport fuels to be biofuels by 2020. Yet the drive to develop second-generation biofuels - ethanol brewed from plant cellulose in the form of wood, grass, or even waste - is edging towards commercialisation in the US.

Many experts say this next generation holds the greatest promise in the short term for cutting greenhouse gas emissions from transport, with potentially far fewer of ...

The complete article is 688 words long.

2007-11-27T16:48:00.001+11:00

Ratifying Kyoto Protocol takes time: law expert
Posted 2 hours 21 minutes ago
An international law expert has cast doubt on whether the newly elected Federal Government will be able to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in the short term.
Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd has nominated ratifying the treaty quickly as one of his top priorities.
But Professor Donald Rothwell from the Australian National University says the normal ratification is a lengthy process requiring a National Impact Analysis, a parliamentary inquiry and development of new laws to support the treaty.
He says even if this is cut short, the treaty cannot be ratified quickly because of the need for new laws.
"Indeed, even under the Howard Government, there were exceptions that were permitted for emergency treaties," he said.
"Ultimately however the Kyoto Protocol will require that new Australian law to give effect to the Kyoto Protocol in Australian law and that ultimately requires an act of Parliament."
Professor Rothwell says there is still a point to signing the protocol even if the climate change conference in Bali next month reaches a new agreement.
"Bali is really seeking to negotiate the successor to the Kyoto Protocol which would see a new climate change instrument kick in from 2013," he said.
"If Australia ratifies Kyoto it will be expected to meet its Kyoto obligations between the period of 2008 and 2012 and to that end, having law in place to give effect to Kyoto will be quite important."

2007-11-24T17:45:00.002+11:00

Cheap hydrogen power gets a nanotube boost

13:00 21 November 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Robert Adler

Tools

Nanotube tangles power printable batteries
16 November 2007
Light-harvesting nanowire could drive tiny devices
17 October 2007
Nano-cables convert light into electricity
14 December 2006

Web Links

Scientists have moved us a step closer to a hydrogen-based economy by successfully "wiring up" carbon nanotubes to hydrogenase – a biological molecule that can be used to harness hydrogen as fuel.

The conductive nanotubes act as tiny wires, shuttling electrons from hydrogenase molecules as they drive hydrogen-based chemical reactions.

Reacting hydrogen with oxygen releases electricity and could therefore offer a greener way to power cars, for example. Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen offers a way to store electricity generated using technology such as solar panels.

But existing methods of drawing electrical power from these reactions relies on rare and expensive precious metals such as platinum, palladium, or ruthenium. Connecting nanotubes to the catalyst hydrogenase promises a much cheaper approach.

"We need to be able to develop ways to generate energy that are cheap and effective," says Paul King, who led the research effort with Michael Heben at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in Colorado, US. "Now we have a nice trick from biology that may be more effective in the long term."

Spontaneous attachment

The researchers forged an electrical connection between individual hydrogenase molecules and single-walled carbon nanotubes by first using detergent-like surfactants to create separate suspensions containing hydrogenase and nanotubes.

When these two mixtures are combined, the nanotubes spontaneously attach themselves to the hydrogenase molecules, producing stable, electrically conductive bonds. Connecting the nanotubes up to a circuit could provide a way to draw electricity out of the chemical reaction for practical use.

The researchers are still studying the exact location and nature of these connections, but believe that the nanotubes attach themselves to the electrically active sites on each hydrogenase molecule.

In the past, getting these sensitive natural enzymes to connect with other materials has been challenging. "We were surprised, at first, at the result," says King. "It wasn't clear that they would interact, but they just self-assemble. And it's a very strong and an apparently stable interaction."

The researchers were able to check that the connections successfully transmit electrons by observing changes in the optical properties of the suspended nanotubes, which occur when they absorb charged particles.

Controlled reaction

Nanotubes normally absorb and re-emit light at characteristic wavelengths but, after hydrogenase is added, this photoluminescence disappears, suggesting that the enzyme is feeding electrons into the nanotubes as it catalyses the oxidation hydrogen.

The team found that they could control the catalytic reaction by changing the pH balance of the solution or the amount of hydrogen in it.

As expected, when they added oxygen, which inactivates hydrogenase, the nanotubes lit up again. In the absence of oxygen, the hydrogenase-nanotube connections continued to work for up to a week.

"This is an exciting result," says John Peters, at Montana State University, US. "The ability to attach hydrogenase enzymes to conductive materials paves the way for biohybrid, precious-metal-free fuel cell technologies and new hydrogen-producing materials."

This is just what King and his colleagues are aiming to do. "It's a way to go directly from solar energy to chemical energy in the form of hydrogen," he says. "Downstream, we would like to use the enzyme in place of a catalyst, for example platinum, in solar-hydrogen energy production."

Journal reference: Nano Letters (Vol 7, No 11, pp 3528)

Energy and Fuels – Learn more about the looming energy crisis in our comprehensive special report.

Add a comment

2007-11-24T17:45:00.001+11:00

Analysis: IPCC issues dire climate change warning

22 November 2007
Fred Pearce
Magazine issue 2631

THE warning is of "abrupt and irreversible" climate change. They are words we have heard often enough - but never before from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Its "synthesis report" published last week - which is intended mainly as a summary of findings presented in three detailed studies released earlier this year - has in fact gone further than those reports.

IPCC chiefs headed by chairman Rajendra Pachauri were stung by criticisms from scientists that their report on the physical science of climate change, agreed in February, had painted too rosy a picture. The charge was that their efforts to concentrate on findings with a 90 per cent certainty or better had resulted in them leaving out scarier but less certain scenarios. The synthesis report tries to make amends.

For instance, the February report predicted that sea levels will rise "between 18 and 59 centimetres" by 2100. Many ...

2007-11-24T17:43:00.000+11:00

China surges ahead on clean energy spending

23 November 2007
NewScientist.com news service

Print Send Feeds

Tools

CHINA is leaving the US in the dust in its spending on clean energy - but it still has plenty to do if it is to shake off its sooty reputation.

According to a study released last week by the Washington-based think tank, Worldwatch Institute, China will invest more than $10 billion on renewable energy this year - double the amount invested by the US in 2006. China is on track to hit its goal of 15 per cent energy from renewables by 2020, up from 8 per cent today, the authors say. "I think the targets are realistic, even conservative based on what they have done so far," says Eric Martinot.

However, China remains heavily dependent on coal, the fossil fuel that emits the most carbon per unit of energy. Seventy per cent of its energy comes from coal compared with less than 25 per cent in the US.

From issue 2631 of New Scientist magazine, 23 November 2007, page 5

2007-11-17T19:37:00.001+11:00

IPCC report urges swift action on global warming

Posted 1 hour 23 minutes ago

The IPCC says retreating glaciers and snow loss in alpine regions, thinning Arctic summer sea ice and thawing permafrost show that climate change is already happening (File photo). (Reuters: NASA)

The world's top scientific authority on climate change is set to adopt a landmark report that warns that the impacts of global warming are already visible, will accelerate this century and are potentially irreversible.

The document, crafted by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), summarises the first overview on the greenhouse-gas effect since 2001.

It is styled as a guide for politicians facing tough decisions on cutting pollution from fossil fuels, shifting to cleaner energy and bolstering defences against drought, flood, storms and other problems that are set to intensify through climate change.

The IPCC is going to adopt a 20-page "summary for policy-makers" and a 70-page technical document.

These will be followed by a press conference attended by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, who has warned that the world is on the verge of a "catastrophe" due to global warming.

The report encapsulates three phonebook-sized assessments, issued earlier this year, that effectively consign once-powerful "climate sceptics" to a small and shrinking minority.

The IPCC says the evidence of a human role in observed warming is now "unequivocal".

It says retreating glaciers and snow loss in alpine regions, thinning Arctic summer sea ice and thawing permafrost show that climate change is already on the march.

By 2100, global average surface temperatures could rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees Celsius, compared to 1980-99 levels, while sea levels will rise by between 18 and 59 centimetres, the IPCC forecasts.

Heatwaves, rainstorms, water stress, tropical cyclones and surges in sea level are among the events expected to become more frequent, more widespread and/or more intense this century.

The draft of the new report warns that all countries will be affected but poorer countries - ironically those least to blame for causing the problem - will be hit hardest and have the least resources for coping.

Bali conference

Publication of the synthesis comes in the run-up to a conference in Bali, in Indonesia, where the world's nations will gather to ponder the climate crisis.

The December 3-14 conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is tasked with setting a "roadmap" of negotiations for intensifying cuts in carbon emissions beyond 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol runs out.

Carbon pollution, emitted especially by the burning of oil, gas and coal, traps heat from the Sun, thus warming the Earth's surface and causing changes to weather systems.

Emissions are spiralling, driven more recently by coal-fired plants in fast-growing China and India.

In its present form, Kyoto will not even make a dent in this threat.

In a commentary published in the International Herald Tribune today, Mr Ban called for urgent action on global warming.

"I believe we are on the verge of a catastrophe if we do not act," he wrote.

"I am not scare-mongering. But I believe we are nearing a tipping point."

But Mr Ban has characterised the IPCC report's conclusions as "encouraging".

"The over-arching message: we can beat this," he wrote.

"There are real and affordable ways to deal with climate change."

- AFP

Tags: environment, climate-change, world-politics, spain

2007-11-17T16:04:00.000+11:00

ASEAN summit to promote nuclear energy, solar power

by Martin Abbugao Tue Nov 13, 9:38 AM ET

SINGAPORE, Nov 13, 2007 (AFP) - Southeast Asian leaders will promote the use of civilian nuclear power, along with other alternative energy sources, when they meet in Singapore next week, a draft statement obtained Tuesday said.

Leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will also agree to establish a "regional nuclear safety regime" to ensure that plutonium, a key ingredient for making atomic weapons, does not fall into the wrong hands.

A draft of an ASEAN Declaration on Environmental Sustainability, obtained by AFP, said the leaders will agree "to take concrete measures to promote the use of renewable and alternative energy sources such as solar, hydro, wind, tide, biomass, biofuels and geothermal energy"

They will also support "civilian nuclear power" for interested countries -- a move which environmental campaigners see as worrying.

But the draft says ASEAN will ensure "safety and safeguards that are of current international standards and environmental sustainability".

Heads of state and government from ASEAN's member states Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam are to sign the document next Tuesday during their annual summit.

Host Singapore has said it wants climate change to be the focus of the summit, but the meeting is instead expected to be dominated by rogue ASEAN member Myanmar's deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in September.

The document commits ASEAN states to implement environmentally sustainable practices, improve cooperation to fight trans-boundary pollution and to take action against illegal logging.

Weak law enforcement to control the use of fire for clearing agricultural land in ASEAN's biggest member, Indonesia, has been identified as a main cause of the haze that blankets wide swathes of the region each year.

ASEAN leaders will also pledge to improve energy efficiency, reduce the loss of biodiversity in the region and halve the number of people without access to safe drinking water by 2010, according to the draft.

But the decision to promote civilian nuclear power has sparked criticisms from environmental activists.

Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam have announced plans to build nuclear power plants by 2020 in a bid to cut their dependence on crude oil and natural gas.

World oil prices topped 98 dollars a barrel earlier this month.

"If they are going nuclear, I think they are going into disaster for the region," warned Nur Hidayati, a campaigner for the environment watchdog Greenpeace.

"The nature of this region is that it is very unstable, and so when there is an accident, the whole region will suffer," she told AFP by telephone from Indonesia, referring to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Southeast Asia also does not have the technology, the expertise or the raw materials to operate a nuclear power plant, she charged.

This means governments will have to import them from foreign sources, defeating the objective of gaining energy security, Hidayati added.

However, she supported ASEAN's efforts to promote solar, hydro, wind and geothermal power.

"There is still a lot of potential in the region that is not being tapped effectively. It is better for governments to look at these alternative energy sources that are relatively clean and safe," she said.

Singapore has embarked on a strategy to establish itself as a centre for solar energy development.

Last month, Norway's Renewable Energy Corporation (REC) said it planned to invest more than 3.0 billion euros (4.31 billion US) to build a manufacturing plant in Singapore for solar wafers, cells and modules.

RECOMMEND THIS STORY

Average (8 votes)

» Recommended Stories

Science News

Science Video

Geeks United ABC News - Fri Nov 16, 7:02 PM ET
Vacuum cleaner dinosaur Reuters - Fri Nov 16, 4:04 AM ET

New dinosaur fossils displayed BBC - Fri Nov 16, 12:01 AM ET
Nov. 15, 1981: NASA Report ABC News - Thu Nov 15, 9:33 PM ET

China sees reduction in coal emissions

Thu Nov 15, 12:05 AM ET

BEIJING - China said measures to improve the environment by cutting pollution at coal-fired power plants has started to show results, with emissions of a key air pollutant falling so far this year.

ADVERTISEMENT
<SCRIPT language='JavaScript1.1' SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/N3382.Yahoo/B2126400.14;abr=!ie;sz=300x250;dcopt=rcl;click=http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12ggcuoba/M=569937.9924994.10714865.1442997/D=news/S=84920061:LREC/_ylt=AomsHKf.zQwBT2ov4DWciLz9xg8F/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1195282782/A=4313061/R=1/*;ord=1195275582988419?"></SCRIPT><NOSCRIPT><A HREF="http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12ggcuoba/M=569937.9924994.10714865.1442997/D=news/S=84920061:LREC/_ylt=AomsHKf.zQwBT2ov4DWciLz9xg8F/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1195282782/A=4313061/R=2/SIG=13b2ikqoq/*http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/N3382.Yahoo/B2126400.14;abr=!ie4;abr=!ie5;sz=300x250;ord=1195275582988419?"><IMG SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/N3382.Yahoo/B2126400.14;abr=!ie4;abr=!ie5;sz=300x250;ord=1195275582988419?" BORDER=0 WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250 ALT="Click Here"></A></NOSCRIPT>

Emissions of sulfur dioxide, a main marker of air pollution, fell by 1.8 percent year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2007, State Environmental Protection Administration Director Zhou Shengxian said Thursday in a statement on the agency's Web site.

This compared to a 1.2 percent rise in 2006 from a year earlier. Zhou attributed the decrease to the installation of facilities that cut emissions of sulfur from coal-fired power plants.

"This shows measures to improve environmental quality have worked," Zhou was quoted as saying by the official China Daily newspaper.

China has some of the most polluted cities in the world and many of its rivers and lakes are full of toxic poisons after decades of breakneck economic growth.

The stunning economic growth means it accounted for 58 percent of carbon emissions worldwide in 2000-06, the International Energy Agency said in a report last week.

The environmental concerns extend to next summer's Beijing Olympics, with the International Olympic Committee and others voicing concern about the city's notoriously bad air pollution.

China aims to cut major pollutants by 10 percent between 2006 and 2010, but missed its target last year.

While China is against binding emissions caps, fearing they could harm economic growth, it is looking to technology — such as installations on power plants — to help cut emissions.

Zho said that a measure of water pollution, called chemical oxygen demand, or COD, also fell fractionally.

His report came a day after a commission on China's Yangtze River said the amount of sewage dumped into that waterway rose last year to a record 30.5 billion tons, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

That was an increase of 3.1 percent, or 900 million tons, from the year before, according to Hu Jiajun, a spokesman for the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission, Xinhua said.

RECOMMEND THIS STORY

Average (1 vote)

» Recommended Stories

World News

2007-11-17T15:57:00.000+11:00

China Powers Ahead on Renewable Energy

Ali Rahman, OneWorld US Thu Nov 15, 9:31 PM ET

WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (OneWorld) - China is well on its way to acquiring fully 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by the year 2020, while the United States is dragging its feet on transitioning away from fossil fuels, according to a pair of reports released here this week.

Nations across the globe invested over $50 billion collectively into renewable energy conversion last year, and in 2007 China alone is expected to account for some $10 billion of investment, explains "Powering China's Development: The Role of Renewable Energy," released Wednesday by the Worldwatch Institute, an independent Washington, DC research group.

With this large financial commitment, China looks poised to pass solar and wind energy leaders in Europe and North America and become a leader in renewables manufacturing, the report notes, adding that, at this pace, China will draw 30 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2050.

"The future of the global climate may rest in large measure on China's ability to lead the world into the age of renewable energy, much as the United States led the world into the age of oil roughly a century ago," said Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin.

Renewable energy continues to be marginalized in many national energy plans despite its numerous benefits, say environmental and geopolitical experts. The environmental benefits are well-known, but also important, they say, is that renewable energy sources -- unlike traditional fossil fuels -- will never run out.

While the Chinese government advances closer towards its renewable energy goals, the United States appears to be lagging. The U.S. Congress recently discussed dropping several key provisions from the energy legislation it is considering.

The terms in question would mandate a 35-mile-per-gallon (mpg) fuel efficiency standard for the U.S. fleet of cars and light trucks; an expansion of renewable energy tax incentives; and a 15-percent share of the nation's energy to come from renewable sources by the year 2020.

But the United States had already set its goals low, and by dropping these provisions it will fall farther behind the rest of the world, said the Sustainable Energy Network, an umbrella group of over 500 organizations, businesses, and individuals that promotes renewable energy and energy efficiency.

In response to Congress' threat to drop the provisions, 100 of the group's members, including Public Citizen's Energy Program and the Redwood Alliance, sent a letter Wednesday urging lawmakers against this action. The letter declared that the goals to be dropped are actually less than "what has been technically and economically achievable for many years."

Although a target fuel efficiency standard of 35 mpg is "a significant improvement," the groups said, with hybrid technology the United States is easily capable of reaching 55 mpg, and with fuel cell technology could possibly go as high as 80 mpg in the future.

The same can be said of the tax incentive and energy share provisions of the bill, according to the groups. The goal of a 15 percent renewable energy share by 2020 pales in comparison to Germany's plan to source 45 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030.

Many U.S. states, including California, Minnesota, Hawaii, and Colorado, have set goals of 20 percent renewable energy shares by 2020 or earlier. If these states can make these ambitious targets, then the nation should at least aim for similar goals, say the letter's signers.

If the United States does not wish to fall behind in global efforts to convert to cleaner and safer renewable energy, then it must move forward -- not backward -- on the legislative front, the groups warned.

Discuss/share this article

2007-11-17T15:56:00.001+11:00

China the focus in clean cars race

By ELAINE KURTENBACH, AP Business Writer Fri Nov 16, 3:38 AM ET

ANTING, China - Automakers racing to find affordable ways to make cars environmentally sustainable are zeroing in on polluted, fuel-scarce China to help them take clean car concepts from the laboratory to the market.

ADVERTISEMENT
<SCRIPT language='JavaScript1.1' SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/N805.yahoo.comSD1509/B2125095.22;abr=!ie;sz=300x250;dcopt=rcl;click=http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12fmmie8p/M=570180.9955598.10735140.2577455/D=news/S=8903535:LREC/_ylt=AomsHKf.zQwBT2ov4DWciLxv24cA/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1195282582/A=4307134/R=1/*;ord=1195275382802994?"></SCRIPT><NOSCRIPT><A HREF="http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12fmmie8p/M=570180.9955598.10735140.2577455/D=news/S=8903535:LREC/_ylt=AomsHKf.zQwBT2ov4DWciLxv24cA/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1195282582/A=4307134/R=2/SIG=13kn65jng/*http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/N805.yahoo.comSD1509/B2125095.22;abr=!ie4;abr=!ie5;sz=300x250;ord=1195275382802994?"><IMG SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/N805.yahoo.comSD1509/B2125095.22;abr=!ie4;abr=!ie5;sz=300x250;ord=1195275382802994?" BORDER=0 WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250 ALT="Click Here"></A></NOSCRIPT>

Mounting alarm over global warming and soaring crude oil prices was evident among automakers showcasing their latest green technologies at the Challenge Bibendum, held this week in Shanghai's "Auto City" — an industrial zone to the west of the city.

At the 2004 Shanghai Bibendum, named after the puffy mascot of French tire-making sponsor Michelin, the talk was all of phasing in various technologies over decades.

Today, with crude oil prices encroaching on $100 a barrel, it's of moving ahead with all technologies as soon as possible, especially in China, where environmental crises and fuel shortages resulting from its embrace of the automobile make it a microcosm of global trends.

"We used to talk about timeframes of short-mid-long-term. Now all of them are in play to figure out what are the different options for the different markets," said Elizabeth Lowery, vice president for environment, energy and safety policy at General Motors Corp.

With its huge market and high velocity growth, China is "critical" to the effort to reduce dependence on petroleum and carbon dioxide emissions, Lowery said in an interview.

In both oil consumption and vehicle sales, China ranks second globally after the United States and is fast catching up. Vehicle sales jumped 25 percent last year to 7.2 million units, including trucks and buses.

Spurred by the country's growing dependence on oil imports, the government targeted cleaner cars as a priority in February 2006 as part of a broad range of efforts to reduce carbon emissions and improve energy efficiency.

It has promised grants and tax breaks to support industry efforts, and recently issued rigorous standards for makers of alternative fuel vehicles.

The urgent need for progress was evident outside the Bibendum venue, where a gray haze hung over the sleek concept cars whizzing around the parking lot.

Worldwide, automakers are investing billions of dollars to develop more eco-friendly vehicles to meet stricter standards on auto emissions and fuel efficiency, helped by recent advances in battery and fuel cell technology.

Late last month, GM announced plans for a $250 million alternative-fuel research center in Shanghai.

Both Toyota and Honda produce hybrid vehicles, which are powered by electricity and gasoline, in China and GM has said it plans to start selling a gas-electric hybrid here next year.

The challenge remains making the technologies affordable, and that hinges on boosting production volumes to reduce manufacturing costs per vehicle. Automakers are looking to the double-digit growth in China and other developing markets such as India to help realize those economies of scale.

"What really counts is applying the right technology on volume vehicles," said John Viera, director of sustainable business strategies at Ford Motor Co.

Herbert Kohler, chief environmental officer and vice president at Germany's Daimler AG, echoed that sentiment. "The number one issue is commercialization: To get the cost down."

Viera urged that Beijing promote clean cars, both hybrids and others, with tax breaks and other policy incentives.

"When we have government support, we shall launch these products for Chinese consumers," he said. "We need governments to be our partners."

So far, progress toward commercialization has illustrated the lack of a one-size-fits-all solution. For some countries, such as major biofuel producer Brazil, ethanol is a viable option. Others are increasingly relying on hybrids and other advances in traditional fuels while they experiment with fuel cell technology.

China has sought to curb an expansion in biofuel production to help protect food supplies and control prices. Thus automakers such as Ford, Daimler and Volkswagen AG are focusing on diesel, which can be processed from a variety of resources, including coal and natural gas.

"Our aim is to make diesel as clean as gas engines and gas engines as efficient as diesel," Kohler said.

Meanwhile, tire makers and chemicals manufacturers are developing new materials to reduce vehicle weight, wind resistance and ground friction — factors that can account for about a third of the carbon emissions that cause global warming.

Even road contractors have a crucial role to play in reducing pollution, recycling materials and using paving that can maximize efficiency, noted Jean Beauverd, chairman of the International Road Federation and president of road building company Colas Switzerland.

"There is a general agreement that business as usual is not an option," Beauvert said.

RECOMMEND THIS STORY

Average (39 votes)

» Recommended Stories

Business News

Business Video

Delayed Tax Refunds for 2008 ABC News - 1 hour, 23 minutes ago
Germany's trade ties

2007-11-17T15:52:00.001+11:00

Absorbing CO2 by Dumping Urea Into Ocean Pisses Off Activists

By Brandon Keim November 05, 2007 | 11:52:52 AMCategories: Climate, Environment, Government, Oceans

The Philippines government has approved an Australian company's plan to absorb excess CO2 by dumping massive amounts of urea in the Sulu Sea. Environmental activists say the dumping is a potentially risky, scientifically unsound gamble that underscores the dangerous absence of international geoengineering regulations.

Like iron seeding, urea dumping is supposed to nourish blooms of greenhouse gas-gobbling plankton. But iron seeding is controversial, with some scientists saying it might produce even more CO2 -- and compared to urea dumping, iron seeding is well understood.

According to a statement issued by the Ottawa-based ETC Group, UK-based Corporate Watch, Malaysia-based Third World Network and the Philippines' SEARICE,

Urea and nitrogen fertilizer pollution caused by agricultural run-off has been linked to the creation of toxic algal blooms in the scientific literature, and raises the possibility of dead zones from oxygen depletion.

The groups called for regulators currently meeting to discuss the London Convention to evaluate urea dumping as well as iron seeding. The Convention, enacted by the International Maritime Organization in 1972, prohibits oceanic waste dumping -- but while simply pouring urea into the sea would be illegal, doing so to absorb carbon dioxide is permitted, or at least not forbidden.

That regulatory loophole is symbolic of the general absence of international guidelines for large-scale climate modification projects, both at sea and on land; and Sulu Sea urea dumping, proposed by the Ocean Nourishment Corporation and planned in the future for Malaysia, Chile and the United Arab Emirates, is symbolic of projects that are only going to become more common as climate change and entrepreneurship collide.

I've written a lot about geoengineering on WiSci, so check those posts out to learn more about the issues. The bottom line: geoengineering could work, and if the worst-case climate scenarios become more probable, we might need it. But there are enough question marks and potential problems to demand that humanity do it as wisely as possible.

Pissing for Profit in the Pacific [Press Release]

Backgrounder: Ocean Nourishment Corporation plans imminent urea dumping experiment in Southeast Asian seas [ETC Group, Third World Network, Corporate Watch & SEARICE]

Image: NASA

See Also:

2007-11-17T15:50:00.000+11:00

Q&A: All We Are Saying Is, Give (Clean) Coal a Chance

By Alexis Madrigal 11.06.07 | 12:00 AM

Stanford research fellow Jeremy Carl says, "Coal is as dirty as it gets," but warns against throwing the possibly cleaned-up baby out with the dirty bathwater.
Photo: Jeremy Carl

Coal is dirty. But coal is driving the U.S., Chinese and Indian economies. And therefore, coal is not going away. Renewable energy sources like solar and wind generate only 1 percent of the world's electricity. Do the math: Making coal burn cleaner might be the most pressing environmental problem that no one talks about.

Despite recent estimates that pollution from China's booming coal industry reaches U.S. shores in as little as five days, the green-tech investment boom that has funded the rise of biofuels has bypassed coal. Even the head of the World Coal Institute recently proclaimed the last 10 years "a lost decade" for clean coal, saying it's time to play catch-up.

Stanford's Jeremy Carl, a research fellow in the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development, couldn't agree more. He spoke on the phone with Wired News to discuss China, the holy grail of clean coal and how many coal plants he'd trade for Kyoto's accomplishments.

Wired News: Why'd you get into clean coal?

Jeremy Carl: I looked at the numbers. It's a question of where the big sources of emissions are and where we can attack them.

WN: Can you give us an idea of the scale of coal power? Can you put coal in context as an energy source?

Carl: Only oil makes a bigger contribution to global energy. In terms of energy in the industrial world, it's about 40 percent of electricity production.

WN: How dirty is coal?

Carl: Coal is as dirty as it gets. Coal has every element in the periodic table. And depending where in the world you get it from, "coal" can mean 100 different substances. If you sent the sort of coal you might use in a typical Indian plant to a supermodern boiler in Japan, it would shut the place down.

WN: But there's got to be good things about coal.

Carl: It's cheap. And coal doesn't have the kind of extreme risk that nuclear power has. You're not going to build a dirty bomb out of coal. And unlike other fossil fuels, it is really widely distributed, so there is less of a coal OPEC.

WN: And that distribution would seem to make resource wars less likely to break out over coal?

Carl: Yes.

WN: Is there an energy source that could replace coal?

Carl: Natural gas is the only viable replacement, and it's not clear that the natural-gas supply could scale up to replace coal.

WN: So, how can we can make coal cleaner?

Carl: The most-well-known is flue-gas desulfurization, which takes sulfur dioxide out of smoke stacks, and came out of concerns about acid rain. There are other pollution-control devices for nitrogen oxide and mercury filters.

WN: What about up-and-coming technologies like carbon capture and sequestration? Can you tell us about that?

Carl: You're taking carbon from a smokestack and pressure-injecting it into a geological formation of some sort. We actually already do this process at an industrial level. We know how this works.

WN: Seems like we're spending a lot of time on the backend scrubbing pollutants out. Should we be designing in a cleaner process on the front end?

Carl: A lot of people point to integrated gasification-combined-cycle (IGCC) plants, which gasify coal before burning it, as the holy grail because they get you a cleaner process. It gives you a more concentrated stream of carbon that you can sequester underground more cheaply. The capital cost is very high, though, and we don't have a lot of experience in designing them.

WN: We hear a lot about China's coal industry. Can you compare it with the U.S. industry, which ranks second in the world?

Carl: We mine about (1.1 billion tons) of coal per year. China was at about 1.4 billion tons seven years ago. Now they are at 2.4 billion tons. So, they essentially took the second-biggest coal industry in the whole world and replicated it in seven years. And if you look at the Chinese plans, they plan to ramp it up even more in the future.

WN: Given the obvious environmental impacts of these plants, why don't we have better answers for these problems than the Kyoto Protocol (which the United States didn't sign, and which exempted China and India from emissions restrictions)?

Carl: I'll give you a speculative, personal answer. It has to do with the politics of the type of people who were negotiating Kyoto. And the pressure put on by environmental groups that were uncomfortable with coal. There was just so much pressure on the symbolic importance of getting a deal done.

WN: What would you have rather seen?

Carl: I think there has been some really good criticism that says, "Was the U.N. really a good forum for this? Or would it have been better to have taken the 10 countries who consume 60 percent of global energy and do something with real teeth in it?" I think that would have been a much better approach.

I would have happily traded every emissions gain from Kyoto for eight clean coal plants sequestering carbon in different countries. Because then we could have a real discussion that says, "This works. Now let's see who has to bear the cost."

WN: Why would that be such a big deal?

Carl: Because right now we're having a conversation with China and India where we're trying to get China and India to build clean coal plants by saying, "Here's this thing that's never been tried before at a mass scale. You should build one." And that's not going to wor

2007-10-20T17:16:00.000+11:00

Mechanical 'fish' could tap turbulence for energy

Devices that harvest energy from swirling wakes surrounding buildings are being developed by US researchers. Their novel designs – inspired by fish – could generate electricity using eddies, something that conventional turbines cannot do.

Fish use their bodies to get an energy boost from surrounding vortices, which may be created by other fish in the same shoal, or by stationary objects in the water. But this kind of turbulent flow cannot be used by conventional wind or water turbines, which instead need a steady flow.

John Dabiri at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, US, realised that it might be possible for a mechanical system to extract energy from vortex wakes and has developed a mathematical model, based on the way fish move, to help put this into practice.

"In fish we have a working example of a system that extracts energy from vortices, now we need to work out how to build our own," he says.

Lateral drift

Fish move from side to side in order to exploit the way wakes in flowing water produce vortices that alternately spin clockwise and anticlockwise, as shown in the videos on this page.

For a mechanical device to pick up energy from an eddy, Dabiri's model shows that it must also change its angle in a similar way to a fish, to pick up as much energy as possible.

"We need a device that can be aware of what is happening upstream and position itself relative to incoming flows accordingly," says Dabiri.

"To exploit this we [also] need to find locations with naturally occurring fluctuations," says Dabiri. "This is exactly the situation in urban environments." Buildings constantly produce turbulent wakes making many rooftops unsuitable for normal wind turbines, but perfect for harvesting eddies.

Dabiri and colleagues have begun designing prototypes devices for use in the air and in the water. "They look less like a fish than you might think – we aren't trying to copy them directly, just to uncover and use the underlying dynamics of what they do."

Slow but steady

Once operational such devices will generate less power than a normal wind turbine in full flow, but should still compete over the long term, Dabiri says. "Turbines need wind to get over about 10 metres per second to work," he says. "But we should be able to extract energy all the time. It's like the tortoise and the hare." Over about a year, Dabiri says, the two may harness the same total energy.

James Liao a biologist at Cornell University, US, first demonstrated in 2003 that fish in shoals use vortices to save energy, something long suspected.

Liao says Dabiri's model will help to push the concept forward. "It could make this idea accessible to a wider audience," he says. Dabiri's model is a simplified version, he adds, but a full model of the fluid dynamics involved is impractical, because of the complexity of modelling both a wake and the effect of a moving fish.

Laio has previously collaborated with other engineers interested in harvesting energy from vortices and is now looking at how fish use their lateral lines to sense vortices and guide the way they move. "The question is, what do you need from the environment to be able to do this," he says. "That is also important for any man-made uses of vortices."

Journal reference: Bioinspiration & Biomimetics (DOI: 10.1088/1748-3182/2/3/L01)

Energy and Fuels - Learn more about the looming energy crisis in our comprehensive special report.

2007-10-14T18:46:00.000+11:00

Go nuclear for a third industrial revolution, says EC

We are on the brink of the "third industrial revolution", according to José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission - who believes it means nations may have to embrace nuclear power.

Europe's "low-carbon age" is the revolution Barroso spoke of last week at an energy conference in Madrid, Spain. "Member states cannot avoid the question of nuclear energy," he said, following the commission's announcement last month of a new research initiative for nuclear energy. The European Union should contribute to research, Barroso said.

However, not all of Europe shares his view. At a separate nuclear energy conference in Vienna last week, environment ministers from Austria, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Norway and Italy declared that global growth in nuclear power would severely increase the risks of nuclear proliferation. "Some European countries are almost religiously opposed to nuclear power," says Hans-Holger Rogner of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

From issue 2625 of New Scientist magazin

2007-10-11T16:13:00.001+11:00

Gore's climate film has scientific errors - judge

· Court rules documentary can be shown in schools · Presentation is 'broadly accurate' but lacks balance
David Adam, environment correspondent
The Guardian
Thursday October 11 2007
Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, was yesterday criticised by a high court judge who highlighted what he said were "nine scientific errors" in the film.
Mr Justice Barton yesterday said that while the film was "broadly accurate" in its presentation of climate change, he identified nine significant errors in the film, some of which, he said, had arisen in "the context of alarmism and exaggeration" to support the former US vice-president's views on climate change.
The film was broadly welcomed by environmental campaigners and scientists on its release last year, and while they did point out that it contained mistakes, these were relatively small and did not detract from the film's central message - that global warming was a real problem and humans had the technology to do something about it.
The judge made his remarks when assessing a case brought by Stewart Dimmock, a Kent school governor and a member of a political group, the New party, who is opposed to a government plan to show the film in secondary schools.
The judge ruled that the film can still be shown in schools, as part of a climate change resources pack, but only if it is accompanied by fresh guidance notes to balance Mr Gore's "one-sided" views. The "apocalyptic vision" presented in the film was not an impartial analysis of the science of climate change, he said.
The judge also said it might be necessary for the Department of Children, Schools and Families to make clear to teachers some of Mr Gore's views were not supported or promoted by the government, and there was "a view to the contrary".
He said he had viewed the film and described it as "powerful, dramatically presented and highly professionally produced", built around the "charismatic presence" of Mr Gore, "whose crusade it now is to persuade the world of the dangers of climate change".
The mistakes identified mainly deal with the predicted impacts of climate change, and include Mr Gore's claims that a sea-level rise of up to 20ft would be caused by melting in either west Antarctica or Greenland "in the near future".
The judge said: "This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr Gore's 'wake-up call'." He accepted that melting of the ice would release this amount of water - "but only after, and over, millennia."
Despite his finding of significant errors, Mr Justice Barton said many of the claims made by the film were supported by the weight of scientific evidence and he identified four main hypotheses, each of which is very well supported "by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]."
The nine points: fact or fallacy?
· The film claimed that low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls "are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming" - but there was no evidence of any evacuation occurring
· It spoke of global warming "shutting down the ocean conveyor" - the process by which the gulf stream is carried over the north Atlantic to western Europe. The judge said that, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it was "very unlikely" that the conveyor would shut down in the future, though it might slow down
· Mr Gore had also claimed - by ridiculing the opposite view - that two graphs, one plotting a rise in C02 and the other the rise in temperature over a period of 650,000 years, showed "an exact fit". The judge said although scientists agreed there was a connection, "the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts"
· Mr Gore said the disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was expressly attributable to human-induced climate change. The judge said the consensus was that that could not be established
· The drying up of Lake Chad was used as an example of global warming. The judge said: "It is apparently considered to be more likely to result from ... population increase, over-grazing and regional climate variability"
· Mr Gore ascribed Hurricane Katrina to global warming, but there was "insufficient evidence to show that"
· Mr Gore also referred to a study showing that polar bears were being found that had drowned "swimming long distances to find the ice". The judge said: "The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm"
· The film said that coral reefs all over the world were bleaching because of global warming and other factors. The judge said separating the impacts of stresses due to climate change from other stresses, such as over-fishing, and pollution, was difficult

2007-10-09T09:32:00.000+11:00

Scientists developing clean energy systems from micro-algae

An international consortium established by an Australian scientist is developing a clean source of energy that could see some of our future fuel and possibly water needs being generated by solar-powered bio-reactors and micro-algae while absorbing CO2.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
Renewable Energy - Learn the truth about solar, wind, hydro, bioenergy www.greenpeace.org.au
46 cent per gal BioDiesel - Not Biodiesel. No conversions. 30,000+ people Love this Answer DieselSecret.com
Top 5 Energy Stocks - Add some Green to your Portfolio. Free Alternative Energy Report. www.RisingStarStocks.com/Energy

Associate Professor Ben Hankamer, from the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) at The University of Queensland, has established the Solar Bio-fuels Consortium which is engineering green algal cells and advanced bio-reactor systems to produce bio-fuels such as hydrogen in a CO2-neutral process.
");
//]]>-->

document.context='YTowOnt9';

“The development of clean fuels to combat climate change and protect against oil price shocks is an urgent challenge facing our society,” said Associate Professor Hankamer, who co-directs the Consortium with Professor Olaf Kruse from the University of Bielefeld in Germany. “Many countries are already aiming to replace 10 to 20 percent of their existing energy production capacity with CO2-neutral energy systems by 2020. But this is very likely not nearly enough. “Some reports indicate that 50-66 percent of current energy production capacity may have to be CO2-free by 2020 to avoid the worst effects of climate change. This will be very hard to achieve and we need new technologies to do so.” Fuels make up about two-thirds of the energy market, yet most low-CO2 emission technologies, such as nuclear power and clean coal technology, target the electricity market. In contrast, the solar bio-hydrogen process uses solar-powered bioreactors filled with single-celled algae to produce hydrogen from water.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
Tank Cleaning Underground Petroleum Tank Cleaning and Biofuel Tank Conversionswww.masstech.com.au
Lowest Electricity Cost Independent energy consultants Best market prices guaranteedwww.tteg.com.au
Complete Biodiesel Kits Turn-key Biodiesel Kits w/ Heat Have questions? Call 1-800-679-1398www.HomeBiodieselKits.com/BioKits

Algae naturally capture sunlight and use its energy to split water (H2O) into hydrogen and oxygen, however this process is not efficient enough to make it commercially viable. The Consortium uses this natural reaction, but is developing ways of enhancing its efficiency to a level where the process will be economically viable. This will be done with the help of a $286 000 Australian Research Council grant received last week. “We have conducted detailed feasibility studies that show that, once key technical milestones are overcome, this technology could achieve economic viability, which will increase further with the introduction of carbon trading schemes and the predicted rise in the oil price,” Associate Professor Hankamer said. “We have focused on micro-algae as a source of hydrogen because they have several advantages over traditional bio-fuel crops.” One major advantage, especially in drought-stricken countries like Australia, is that hydrogen can be produced from salt water. Marine and salt-tolerant algae can extract hydrogen and oxygen from seawater and on combustion these gases produce fresh water and electricity, which can be fed into the national grid. Consequently, clean energy production can theoretically be coupled with desalination. This is by no means the only advantage. One of the current concerns about traditional bio-fuel crops is that they will compete with food production for arable land and water. In contrast, algal bioreactors can be placed on non-arable land and use much less water than conventional bio-fuel crops. “This opens up new economic opportunities for arid regions and eliminates competition with agricultural crops or rainforest regions which are increasingly being used to plant oil palms for bio-diesel production,” Associate Professor Hankamer said. “Algae also have a very short life cycle and can be harvested every one to ten days rather than once or twice a year, increasing yield.” One other major benefit of the hydrogen production process is that it absorbs CO2. “We are therefore starting to investigate whether our hydrogen producing systems can be linked to conventional power stations to sequester CO2 which would otherwise be released into the atmosphere”, said Associate Prof Hankamer. For more information on the Consortium please visit http://www.solarbiofuels.org . Source: University of Queensland
» Next Article in General Science - Biology: Researchers help develop pest-resistant eggplant for South Asia

would you recommend this story?

2007-10-06T16:48:00.000+10:00

Democrats eye key climate summit

By Roger Harrabin
Environment analyst, BBC News

John Kerry has already stated that he will attend the Bali summit

A team of leading US Democrats is planning to send a delegation to a key UN climate conference to rival President Bush's official team.

They are so frustrated by Mr Bush's refusal to support US emissions cuts that they will travel to Bali to set out their alternative vision.

The UN summit in December is seen as a vital step towards a new global climate deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

The delegation may be led by House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Her office has not confirmed or denied Ms Pelosi's travel plans, citing security reasons, but sources say she is keen to attend if the legislative schedule allows.

Details of the delegation are expected to be released in the next few days, but Senator John Kerry, the former presidential candidate and long-term environmentalist, has already publicly stated that he will make the trip.

Power struggle

While it is common for opposition politicians to attend meetings of the UN climate process, this delegation may take on greater significance as the Bush administration nears the end of its time in office and the Democrats' majorities in Congress prepare their strategy.

What happens in the corridors is just as important, maybe more important, than what happens in the negotiating hall

Dr R K Pachauri,
IPCC chairman

Soon, they will push through an Energy Bill that goes further than President Bush wants.

And they are set to introduce a Climate Change Bill in the Senate mandating binding carbon dioxide (CO2) cuts in the US; details of the bill should be published on 15 October.

The Democrat visit is welcome news to EU politicians, who have pledged to cut Europe's emissions by an ambitious 30% by 2020 from 1990 levels if other big nations make similar effort.

Big developing nations like China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico are refusing to make any international commitments while the US refuses to move.

Climate negotiators from Europe and Africa have told BBC News that a Democrat presence in Bali would be very welcome. They said it could apply pressure on President Bush's representatives in the negotiating hall.

Last week, Sigmar Gabriel, the German environment minister, said he had visited Mr Bush's Washington meeting on climate change and that he had enjoyed very fruitful discussions with the Democrats about the shape of US climate policy.

Dr R K Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), observed: "I think it's very important for legislators from every country to be exposed to what's going to happen in Bali.

"In a Conference of the Parties (COP), what happens in the corridors is just as important, maybe more important, than what happens in the negotiating hall," he told BBC News.

"I would like to see legislators from China and India taking part, too."

2007-09-23T16:27:00.001+10:00

Norwegian gas group sets up biggest liquefied gas project in Europe

Fri Sep 21, 2:11 PM ET

OSLO (AFP) - Norwegian oil company Statoil said Friday it had set up the biggest liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Europe in the Barents Sea.

It said the large-scale gas project also involves French oil group Total and gas utility Gaz de France, who respectively hold 18.4 percent and 12 percent of the project, against Statoil's 33.53 percent.

Situated at the northern tip of Norway, and linked by pipeline to the gas deposit at Snoehvit, the project produced its first cubic metres of liquefied natural gas on September 13 after five years of development and with a cost overrun of 18.8 billion kronor (2.4 billion euros, 3.3 billion dollars), it said.

Initially fixed at 39.5 billion kronor, the cost of the project ran to 58.3 billion, Statoil said.

The other partners are the Norwegian company Petoro (30 percent), US firm Hess (3.26 percent), and Germany's RWE-DEA (2.81 percent).

"The first phase will be characterised by instability," Tim Dodson, Statoil's acting executive vice president for exploration and production Norway said in a statement.

"We must expect that the plant will again be closed for shorter or longer periods for further adjustments to the process."

The gas is destined for the American and European markets.

RECO

2007-09-23T16:11:00.000+10:00

Rudd in climate talks with Gore

Posted 5 hours 44 minutes ago
Updated 5 hours 23 minutes ago

Climate crusader: Al Gore (File photo) (Reuters: Joshua Roberts)

Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has met with the former US vice-president and climate campaigner Al Gore in Melbourne to discuss climate change issues.

Mr Rudd says Australia's failure to ratify the Kyoto protocol means it does not have voting rights at the December meeting of the UN framework convention on climate change in Bali.

He says ratification is long overdue.

"We would have been 11 years or a decade at least down the track towards substantive diplomatic engagement on bringing the Chinese on board, on bringing the Indians on board, on working with our friends in Washington to bring America on board and to work out the practical strategies necessary," he said.

"But instead we've had a decade of denial on climate change."

Mr Gore has welcomed Mr Rudd's pledge to ratify the protocol, and says it would put overwhelming pressure on America to do the same.

But he stopped short of endorsing Mr Rudd for prime minister.

"If I were a citizen of Australia and cared deeply about the climate crisis I would pay very careful attention to the fact that there is a clear and stark difference in the positions of the two candidates," he said.

"One supports ratification of the world treaty to solve the climate crisis and the other opposes it. That would weigh very heavily on my vote."

Tags: environment, climate-change, government-and-politics, federal-government, federal-election-2007, rudd-kevin, australia, vic, melbourne-3000

Search for news

Help

My Tags

Add Tag Page links here to follow news categories important to you.

View all tags | Tag cloud

Help

My Stories

Bookmark stories, video and audio clips you may want to access later.

Also Of Interest

Bush lacks leadership on climate: Garrett
2 Sep 2007 - 2 weeks ago

Govt failing on climate change: Rudd
2 Jun 2007 - 16 weeks ago

Rudd in his element in talks with Chinese President
7 Sep 2007 - 2 weeks ago

Rudd pledges $500m towards hybrid car development
15 Mar 2007 - 27 weeks ago

Downer says APEC can deliver on climate change
3 Sep 2007 - 2 weeks ago

2007-09-23T16:09:00.000+10:00

PM announces national clean energy target

Posted 1 hour 38 minutes ago
Updated 1 hour 18 minutes ago

Mr Howard says he plans to consult state and territory leaders immediately. (File photo) (AAP: Dean Lewins)

Prime Minister John Howard has announced a new national clean energy target requiring that 30,000 gigawatt hours per year come from low emission sources by 2020.

Those sources include renewable energy, as well as fossil-fuel power generation which uses carbon capture storage.

The national scheme is designed to replace the individual state and territory schemes.

Mr Howard says he plans to consult state and territory leaders immediately.

"The great virtue of this is it will establish a single national target and over the past few years the states have regularly called on the Commonwealth to have a single national scheme," he said.

"And therefore in announcing this today, the states are really being invited to support something that they have called for."

Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull says the new target will drive further investment in the renewable energy sector as the emissions trading scheme is introduced.

"By the time this target is established, by 2020 and of course the years that follow, the emissons trading scheme itself will be having an impact," he said.

"So we will see both from this target and from the emissions trading scheme, and enormous amount of impetus behind clean energy sources right through Australia."

Tags: environment, alternative-energy, government-and-politics, federal-government, howard-john, australia

Search for news

Help

My Tags

Add Tag Page links here to follow news categories important to you.

View all tags | Tag cloud

Help

My Stories

Bookmark stories, video and audio clips you may want to access later.

Also Of Interest

Creating a bright future for Australia
24 Apr 2007 - 21 weeks ago

Carbon trading on agenda at states' meeting
2 Jun 2007 - 16 weeks ago

Rudd announces $1.5b clean coal policy
25 Feb 2007 - 30 weeks ago

PM criticised for not revealing greenhouse reduction target
3 Jun 2007 - 15 weeks ago

Govt told to bin 'absurd' energy report
31 Jan 2007 - 33 weeks ago

2007-09-21T15:48:00.000+10:00

Study says the best energy strategies to meet the world’s growing demand for electricity are green, small and local

The wisest energy strategy for the United States, and indeed other countries facing similar challenges, is to move away from their reliance on large-scale centralized coal and nuclear plants, and instead, invest in renewable energy systems and small scale decentralized generation technologies. According to Benjamin Sovacool from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, these alternative technologies are simultaneously feasible, affordable, environmentally friendly, reliable and secure. His analysis and recommendations are published in Springer’s journal Policy Sciences.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
Energy Industry Seminars - Understand Energy/Electric Markets, Futures, Options & Derivatives www.pgsenergy.com
Power Generation Mgt - Profit can be Maximized from your Power Plant www.sterling-energy.com
Total Generators - Generators, Transformers, Cables Fuel Cells, Dist & Load Equip www.totalgenerators.com

The electricity sector as it currently operates is at the mercy of natural disasters, price fluctuations, terrorist attacks and blackouts. Coupled with other, more long-standing problems such as increasing levels of pollution, growing vulnerability and inefficiency of transmission and distribution networks, and rising electricity prices related to disruptions and interruptions in fuel supply, these challenges add to the need for an evaluation of alternative energy technologies. Sovacool studies in detail the current technological composition of, and challenges faced by, the American electric utility industry. He then evaluates the broad portfolio of energy technologies available to American electricity policy makers, against five criteria: technical feasibility, cost, negative externalities (or impact on human health and the environment), reliability and security. Sovacool’s detailed analysis shows that three other sets of technologies – energy efficiency practices (like more efficient appliances), renewable energy systems (such as generators that create electricity from sunlight, wind, and falling water), and small-scale distributed generation technologies (such as generators that produce decentralized and modular power close to its point of consumption) – appear to offer many advantages over large and centralized nuclear and fossil fueled generators.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
The Electricity Blog Electrical technologies and their applicationwww.leonardo-energy.org/
Save on energy costs Reduce your electricity and gas bills foreverwww.ecomaster.com.au
Top 5 Energy Stocks Add some Green to your Portfolio. Free Alternative Energy Report.www.RisingStarStocks.com/Energy

Sovacool’s paper shows how these alternative approaches can offer policy makers solutions to curb electricity demand, minimize the risk of fuel interruptions and shortages, help improve the fragile transmission network, and reduce environmental harm. He concludes that “it is these miniature generators – not mammoth and capital-intensive nuclear and fossil fuel plants – that offer the best strategy for diversifying electrical generation in a competitive energy environment.” Source: Springer

2007-09-21T15:46:00.000+10:00

Asia-Pacific nations urged to study biofuels more carefully

The nations of Asia and the Pacific are being urged to study the issue of biofuels with greater care before deciding on how they will use their agricultural products to generate energy.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
Algae Biofuel - The Aquatic Plant That Could Solve America's Fuel Crisis. New Report. www.GreenChipStocks.com/Biofuel_Rpt
46 cent per gallon Diesel - No conversions. Not Biodiesel 30,000 People Love it so far DieselSecret.com
Biofuels International - Free sample copy. Learn more about biodiesel, bioethanol & biomass. www.biofuels-news.com

Scientists say there is an urgent need to support the current rush toward major decisions on biofuel policies in Asia and the Pacific with solid research and unbiased information about their potential benefits, impact, and risks. This appeal was issued at the end of a recent Expert Consultation on Biofuels organized by the Asia Pacific Association of Agricultural Research Institutions (APAARI) together with the Philippine-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in India, the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute, and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico. The consultation was held at IRRI’s headquarters in Los Baños, Philippines, on August 27-29. “There’s no doubt biofuels will have an impact on agriculture in Asia and the Pacific and present some very interesting new opportunities,” APAARI’s executive secretary, R.S. Paroda, said. “But we need to be absolutely sure this will not affect the region’s food security and its continuing efforts to alleviate poverty.”
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
Biomass to Bio Oil Company commercializes technology converting biomass to liquid fuelwww.dynamotive.com
Top 5 Energy Stocks Add some Green to your Portfolio. Free Alternative Energy Report.www.RisingStarStocks.com/Energy
New York University Tisch School of the Arts Asia MFA Film and Televisionwww.nyu.edu/tisch/searchasia

In the Asian region, both China and India are gearing up for substantial investments in biofuels. Malaysia and Indonesia are investing heavily in oil palm plantations for biodiesel production. The Philippines has mandated the blending of gasoline with 5 percent biofuel. However, at the same time, countries such as China have currently banned the use of maize – a vital food crop for national food and feed security – as biofuel. The consultation focused on important issues such as (i) how bioenergy production may have an impact on global and regional food security, (ii) understanding bioenergy options for key crops and cropping systems in Asia, (iii) identifying research priorities for designing and evaluating integrated food-bioenergy production systems, and (iv) developing a framework for research on biofuels in key agricultural systems of Asia. Source: International Rice Research Institute

2007-09-19T08:47:00.000+10:00

Making EU climate goal 'unlikely'

The IPCC report warns of declining crop yields and increased hungerThe European Union's goal of keeping the global temperature rise to 2C is unlikely to be met, a leading climate researcher has warned.
Professor Martin Parry told BBC News that millions, if not tens of millions, would be at increased risk to their lives from a rise above 2C (3.6F).
Professor Parry co-chairs the impacts working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The group's full 2007 report is being presented to scientists in London.
Its summary findings were unveiled in April.
Asked what the chances were of keeping the average global temperature rise at or below 2C, Professor Parry said: "Quite little, I think, unfortunately.
Failing to tackle it will lead to floods, droughts and natural disasters which can destroy poor people's lives
Gareth Thomas, DfID"And it's evident from the work of the IPCC that even with a maximum of 2C we're not going to avoid some major impacts at the regional level."
His personal estimate was that the rise could be constrained to between 2C and 3C.
Adapt and survive
The IPCC report on Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation paints a picture in sober scientific language of a world where some regions see significant changes as greenhouse gas levels and average temperatures escalate.
Parts of Africa would see water shortages, as would Asian and South American zones fed by mountain glacier melt.
Crop yields would decline across the tropics; Europe would see an increase in heatwaves.

Billions face climate risk
Mapping climate impacts But Professor Parry said steps could be taken to help societies adapt to these impacts.
"We need to talk very seriously about major amounts of adaptation being put in place now," he said.
The Kyoto Protocol established mechanisms which would leverage money for adaptation from carbon trading. But the funds have been criticised as being too small and too bureaucratic, and there have been wrangles over who controls them.
A number of development agencies including Britain's Department for International Development (DfID) are seeking to build climate adaptation into their aid projects.
Speaking at the London IPCC meeting, held at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), Trade and Development Minister Gareth Thomas described climate change as a "development challenge".
"Failing to tackle it will lead to floods, droughts and natural disasters which can destroy poor people's lives as well as their livelihoods," he said.
"If we want to achieve the aspirations of the Make Poverty History campaign or the targets of the Millennium Development Goals, we - governments, citizens and developing countries themselves - must rise to the challenge."

2007-09-18T11:10:00.001+10:00

How this 12inch miracle tube could halve heating bills

Amazing British invention creates MORE energy than you put into it - and could soon be warming your homeLast updated at 21:09pm on 15th September 2007
Comments (5) It sounds too good to be true - not to mention the fact that it violates almost every known law of physics.
But British scientists claim they have invented a revolutionary device that seems to 'create' energy from virtually nothing.
Their so-called thermal energy cell could soon be fitted into ordinary homes, halving domestic heating bills and making a major contribution towards cutting carbon emissions.
Scroll down for more...

Hot stuff: Ecowatts boss Paul Calver with the device
Even the makers of the device are at a loss to explain exactly how it works - but sceptical independent scientists carried out their own tests and discovered that the 12in x 2in tube really does produce far more heat energy than the electrical energy put in.
The device seems to break the fundamental physical law that energy cannot be created from nothing - but researchers believe it taps into a previously unrecognised source of energy, stored at a sub-atomic level within the hydrogen atoms in water.
Scroll down for more...
The system - developed by scientists at a firm called Ecowatts in a nondescript laboratory on an industrial estate at Lancing, West Sussex - involves passing an electrical current through a mixture of water, potassium carbonate (otherwise known as potash) and a secret liquid catalyst, based on chrome.
This creates a reaction that releases an incredible amount of energy compared to that put in. If the reaction takes place in a unit surrounded by water, the liquid heats up, which could form the basis for a household heating system.
If the technology can be developed on a domestic scale, it means consumers will need much less energy for heating and hot water - creating smaller bills and fewer greenhouse gases.
Jim Lyons, of the University of York, independently evaluated the system. He said: 'Let's be honest, people are generally pretty sceptical about this kind of thing. Our team was happy to take on the evaluation, even if to prove it didn't work.
'But this is a very efficient replacement for the traditional immersion heater. We have examined this interesting technology and when we got the rig operating, we were getting 150 to 200 per cent more energy out than we put in, without trying too hard.
People are sceptical - but somehow it works
'We are still not clear about the science involved here, because the physics and chemistry are very different-to everything that has gone before. Our challenge now is to study the science and how it works.'
The device has taken ten years of painstaking work by a small team at Ecowatts' tiny red-brick laboratory, and bosses predict a household version of their device will be ready to go on sale within the next 18 months.
The project, which has cost the company £1.4million, has the backing of the Department of Trade and Industry, which is keen to help poorer families without traditional central heating or who cannot afford rocketing fuel bills.
Ecowatts says the device will cost between £1,500 and £2,000, in line with the price of traditional systems.
The development of the groundbreaking technology results from a chance meeting between Ecowatts chairman Chris Davies, his wife Jane and an Irish inventor, Christopher Eccles, while the couple were on holiday near Shannon in 1998.
After the inventor showed the couple his laboratory experiments, Mrs Davies, immediately signed a £20,000 cheque on the bonnet of her car and handed it over to Mr Eccles.
He later became chief scientist of Ecowatts' parent company Gardner Watts, but has since left after 'falling out' with the company, according to insiders. Sadly, Mrs Davies died three years ago, so she will be unable to share in the success of her husband's development of the idea.
Mr Davies, now 75, of Dedham, Essex, was unavailable for comment last night.
But Ecowatts chief executive Paul Calver said: 'When Jane Davies whipped out her cheque book, it turned out to be a very good investment indeed.
'She and Chris were always interested in ecology and now it looks as if our heat exchanger system is ready to go on sale soon. We're producing a device in the next nine months to heat radiators.
'Most British homes rely on gas, and the Government has admitted there is a problem getting a substitute. Our device will help solve that.'
Sustainable energy expert Professor Saffa Riffat, of Nottingham University, has also led a team investigating the system.
He said: 'The concept is very interesting and it could be a major breakthrough, but more tests are required. We will be doing further checks.'
Share this article:
What is this?
Digg it

Del.icio.us

Reddit

Newsvine

Nowpublic

2007-09-18T11:05:00.000+10:00

Bondi Beach to be wiped out

Article from:
Font size: Decrease Increase
Email article: Email
Print article: Print
Submit comment: Submit comment
September 16, 2007 03:05pm
THREE of Australia's most popular beaches could be wiped out by rising sea levels in less than 100 years thanks to climate change, a Sydney mayor said today.Waverley Mayor George Newhouse said results of a CSIRO study into climate change predicted that sea levels would rise by at least 88cm by 2100 wiping out Bondi, Bronte and Tamarama beaches in the Sydney's east. “These are places where families and children gather,” Mr Newhouse said. “Our children are our future and we are mortgaging their future by failing to act on this climate change issue.” Mr Newhouse launched a climate-change marker today at North Bondi Children's Pool, which he said was forecast to be under water by 2030. The marker indicates to beach visitors the predicted water height by 2100. “At Bondi, Tamarama and Bronte, we will just lose the whole beach and at other beaches like Collaroy and Narrabeen (in Sydney's north) we will see houses falling into the water,” Mr Newhouse said. The CSIRO study analysed sea level increases at six sites around the world between 1990 and 2006, he said. “I'm told that CSIRO estimate is actually conservative, meaning we could see greater increases in sea levels,” Mr Newhouse said. “After a recent extreme weather event (high seas in March) in Sydney, we spent $60,000 fixing our beaches in one weekend and those occurrences are going to increase with storm surges and extreme weather events as weather heats up.” Mr Newhouse said the event had prompted a group of Sydney coastal councils to commission an independent study into sea levels. “We are extremely worried about this issue and eagerly await the results of our study so we can look at who is best placed to bare the risk of climate change,” he said. Mr Newhouse said he hoped results of the council study would be available by the end of the year.

2007-09-18T10:55:00.000+10:00

New Method of Studying Ancient Fossils Points to Carbon Dioxide As a Driver of Global Warming
A team of American and Canadian scientists has devised a new way to study Earth's past climate by analyzing the chemical composition of ancient marine fossils. The first published tests with the method further support the view that atmospheric CO2 has contributed to dramatic climate variations in the past, and strengthen projections that human CO2 emissions could cause global warming.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
Global Warming Swindle - Channel 4's documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle www.greatglobalwarmingswindle.com
High Accuracy CO2 - Measures CO2 concentration with high accuracy without calibration www.lgrinc.com
global warming - Discuss climate change & other environmental issues online guardianweekly.co.uk

In the current issue of the journal Nature, geologists and environmental scientists from the California Institute of Technology, the University of Ottawa, the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Brock University, and the Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve report the results of a new method for determining the growth temperatures of carbonate fossils such as shells and corals. This method looks at the percentage of rare isotopes of oxygen and carbon that bond with each other rather than being randomly distributed through their mineral lattices.
");
//]]>-->
document.context='YTowOnt9';

Because these bonds between oxygen-18 and carbon-13 form in greater abundance at low temperatures and lesser abundance at higher temperatures, a precise measurement of their concentration in a carbonate fossil can quantify the temperature of seawater in which the organisms lived. By comparing this record of temperature change with previous estimates of past atmospheric CO2 concentrations, the study demonstrates a strong coupling of atmospheric temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations across one of Earth's major environmental shifts.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
gas analyser, analysers all gases (Ar, N2, CO2, H2 etc) and applications by specialists.www.wittgas.com
Doomsday for Australia? Experts warn Sydney could become virtually uninhabitable by 2070www.thefirstpost.co.uk
Climate crisis or hype? The One Minute Case Against Global Warming Alarmismoneminute.rationalmind.net

According to Rosemarie Came, a postdoctoral scholar in geochemistry at Caltech and lead author of the article, only about 60 parts per million of the carbonate molecular groups that make up the mineral structures of carbonate fossils are a combination of both oxygen-18 and carbon-13, but the amount varies predictably with temperature. Therefore, knowing the age of the sample and how much of these exotic carbonate groups are present allows one to create a record of the planet's temperature through time. "This clumped-isotope method has an advantage over previous approaches because we're looking at the distribution of rare isotopes inside a single shell or coral," Came says. "All the information needed to study the surface temperature at the time the animal lived is stored in the fossil itself." In this way, the method contrasts with previous approaches that require knowledge of the chemistry of seawater in the distant past--something that is poorly known. The study contrasts the growth temperatures of fossils from two times in the distant geological past. The Silurian period, approximately 400 million years ago, is thought to have been a time of highly elevated atmospheric CO2 (more than 10 times the modern concentration), and was found by the researchers to be a time of exceptionally warm shallow-ocean temperatures--nearly 35 degrees C. In contrast, the Carboniferous period, roughly 300 million years ago, appears to have been characterized by far lower levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (similar to modern values) and had shallow marine temperatures similar to or slightly cooler than today-about 25 degrees C. Thus, the draw-down of atmospheric CO2 coincided with strong global cooling. "This is a huge change in temperature," says John Eiler, a professor of geochemistry at Caltech and a coauthor of the study. "It shows that carbon dioxide really has been a powerful driver of climate change in Earth's past." The title of the Nature paper is "Coupling of surface temperatures and atmospheric CO2 concentrations during the Paleozoic era." The other authors are Jan Veizer of the University of Ottawa, Karem Azmy of Memorial University of Newfoundland, Uwe Brand of Brock University, and Christopher R. Weidman of the Waquoit National Estuarine Research Reserve, Massachusetts. Source: Caltech
» Next Article in General Science - Chemistry: Good

2007-09-18T10:54:00.000+10:00

U.S., China sign energy agreement
The U.S. Department of Energy has joined with China in agreeing to increase cooperation to heighten energy efficiency in China's industrial sector.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
The Oil Shale Discovery - Learn How Colorado and Alberta Sit on More Oil Than the Middle East www.DailyWealth.com/Oil_Report
Economic statistics - Leading industry financial courses Investments, economics, analysis www.SeekLearning.com.au
The Real News on Oil - The Last Domino Is About To Fall. New Oil Forecast & Investor Report. www.EnergyAndCapital.com/PeakOilRpt

The agreement was signed last week by Energy Department Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs Karen Harbert and Chen Deming, the vice chairman of China's National Development and Reform Committee. The memorandum of understanding is to increase cooperation and energy efficiency in China's industrial sector, which accounts for 70 percent of that country's total energy demand. The agreement stemmed from discussions during the third U.S.-China Energy Policy Dialogue, in which the United States and China agreed to conduct audits to increase China's national, regional, and local energy efficiency. "This agreement signifies the importance of our strategic energy and economic cooperation with China," said Harbert. "As global energy use continues to rapidly increase, the U.S. is working to identify ways to increase industrial energy efficiency both domestically and across the globe. Our U.S. industry has significant expertise and products that can improve energy efficiency in China." Copyright 2007 by United Press International
» Next Article in General Science - Other: Queen of bees dies at 95

2007-09-18T10:52:00.000+10:00

Nanotech could make solar energy as easy and cheap as growing grass

Scientists are working to produce cheap, sustainable solar energy by imitating nature. Nanotechnology researchers like California Institute of Technology professor Nate Lewis are exploring nanoscale materials that mimic the architecture of grass and photosynthesis to capture and store the sun’s energy.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
Climate Change Technology - carbon capture vs. clean coal The experts debate SYD Nov 07 www.ceda.com.au
Solar Panel Articles - A solar panel portal for products & Information to help save energy. www.SolarPanelArticles.com
Modscape Housing - Prefabricated Modular Sustainable Housing Solutions in 12 weeks www.modscape.com.au

A new podcast looks at how Dr. Lewis and his CalTech research team are trying to imbed tiny nanoparticles into simple, inexpensive everyday products like house paint and roof tiles to revolutionize the way solar energy is produced.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
Solar's Breakout Market How To Profit from Next-Generation Solar Panel Technology: Free Reportwww.GreenChipStocks.com/Solar_Rpt
Build Adelaide Adelaide's Solar Products Outlets Adelaide's Solar Energy Specialistswww.buildadelaide.com.au
Building for Budgets Australian eco-friendly house designs for all materialswww.cheaphomedesigns.com

“More energy from the sun hits the earth in an hour than all the energy consumed by human beings on our planet in an entire year. So, if we are going to find an efficient, environmentally-friendly substitute for fossil fuels, it makes sense to exploit the sun,” says Dr. Lewis. “Nanotechnology offers us a way, in principle, to make very cheap materials—like the paint you buy at Home Depot—act as solar cells and batteries.” Ordinary-looking, nano-enabled house paint, roofs or shingles could replace today’s black, glasslike photovoltaic cells which are usually composed of crystalline silicon and are unwieldy, unsightly and very expensive to manufacture. In addition to homes, this innovative technology someday could power cell phones, laptops and even automobiles. Listen to Dr. Lewis talk about his research in the latest episode of an exciting new series of podcasts, Trips to the NanoFrontier. Produced by the Wilson Center’s Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, these podcasts are available online at http://www.penmedia.org/podcast , or directly from Apple’s iTunes music store.

2007-09-18T09:23:00.000+10:00

Nanotechnology could clean up the hydrogen car's dirty little secret

(Nanowerk Spotlight) Back in January, when the U.S. president announced his hydrogen fuel initiative and proposed to spend a total of $1.7 billion over the next five years to develop hydrogen-powered fuel cells, hydrogen infrastructure and advanced automotive technologies, he said that it will be practical and cost-effective for large numbers of Americans to choose to use clean, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles by 2020. According to the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Hydrogen Program, the government's goal is to achieve "technology readiness" by around 2015 in order to allow industry to make decisions on commercialization by then. That's only eight years to go. Given where the technology is today, this goal seems very ambitious, to say the least. Nanotechnology could help speed up the journey to the hydrogen society, but it will take some sensational breakthroughs on the way. The three key areas for the vehicles (we will not touch on the infrastructure issues here) are clean - the emphasis is on clean - hydrogen production, hydrogen storage, and the fuel cell itself. We'll take a look at how nanotechnology will play a role in these areas.
First, let's get the terminology straight. Getting an internal combustion engine to run on hydrogen is not difficult (but it is difficult to get it to run smoothly). Some of the Hydrogen Vehicles on the road today still have an internal combustion engine, but one that uses either pure hydrogen or a mix of hydrogen and natural gas. True Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles basically are electric cars (having a flashback to the 1970s here?) where fuel cells convert the chemical energy of a fuel – hydrogen – directly into electricity without any intermediate thermal or mechanical processes. Neat thing is that the exhaust consists solely of heat and water.
Hydrogen Production
Hydrogen fuel cells get their hydrogen either produced on-board by converting liquid fuels (gasoline, ethanol, or methanol) to hydrogen, or by using hydrogen that has been generated off-board and stored on the vehicle. Where that off-board generated hydrogen comes from is problem number 1: There are no hydrogen wells.
Hydrogen has to be produced, and that can be done using a variety of resources. The cleanest by far of course would be renewable energy electrolysis: using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen; this electricity could be generated using renewable energy technologies such as wind, solar, geo- and hydrothermal power. The dirtiest, at least until highly efficient carbon capture and sequestration technologies are developed, is the gasification of coal. Of course you can also use nuclear energy to provide the electricity for electrolysis.
However, 95% of all the hydrogen produced in the United States today (and 50% worldwide), some 9 million tons annually, is produced from methane in natural gas using high-temperature steam – so-called steam methane reforming. Government researchers say that they see natural gas only as a 'near-term' solution; 'near-term' meaning the time it takes to come up with a better and cleaner solution that scales industrially. That solution doesn't exist yet.
And here is the dirty little secret: while politicians and the energy industry talk about the clean future of the hydrogen economy, the DOE's Hydrogen Energy Roadmap foresees up to 90% of hydrogen production coming from fossil fuels – coal, gas, oil – the rest mostly from nuclear power plants (why do you think the oil companies are investing hundreds of millions of dollars into hydrogen technology?). In other words: although hydrogen fuel cell cars themselves may emit nothing but water and heat, the process of powering the fuel cells with hydrocarbons will continue the economy's dependence on fossil fuels and leave behind carbon dioxide (sequestered or not), the primary cause of global warming.
(For an in-depth discussion of hydrogen energy read the policy statement "Renewable Hydrogen" (pdf download, 788 KB) from the American Solar Energy Society.)
The greatest challenge to clean hydrogen production is its cost. Unless government mandates the use of hydrogen or significantly increases the taxes on existing fossil-based fuels, the 'gallon/liter gasoline equivalent' (the amount of fuel with the energy content of one gallon/liter of gas) will be the measure used by drivers to decide what fuel to use. And the cheapest way today to produce hydrogen is from fossil fuels.
Nanotechnology's major contribution to the clean production of hydrogen lies in its application to solar cells and the catalysts used in water electrolysis. The holy grail here would be a highly efficient device that you fill with water, put in the sun, and get hydrogen without using any outside source of energy. Solar cells have the potential to make this dream come true. The two key issues for now are efficiency (which is low) and cost (which is high).
In one type of solar cell hydrogen is generated directly in a photoelectrochemical process that is based on the conversion of sunlight energy to chemical energy. It has been shown that nanoscale electrode materials, resulting in higher surface area to volume ratios, will increase the efficiency of the cell.
Another type of solar cell – a photovoltaic cell – produces electricity that can then be used to power electrolytic production of hydrogen from water. Experiments with nanowire arrays and other nanostructured materials have shown that they improve the efficiency of these cells.
Without going into details here – we have plenty of news articles and spotlights on this topic on our site – it is probably safe to say that nanotechnology will play an important role in building the type of highly efficient solar cells required to become a viable alternative to fossil fuel based hydrogen production.
Hydrogen Storage
Storing the hydrogen onboard that is needed to run your car's fuel cells poses another challenge. Very roughly speaking you would need about 1 kg of hydrogen to drive 100 km (or some 2.2 lbs. per 60 miles). That means you need about 5 kg/10lbs. of hydrogen to have the same average range as today's cars. Since hydrogen's density is only 1/10th of a gram per liter at room temperature, that means you somehow need to pack 50,000 liters (∼14,000 gallons) of hydrogen into your tank. There are three ways of doing this: as a high-pressure compressed gas; a cryogenic liquid; or as a solid.
Compressed hydrogen gas tanks will likely be used in early hydrogen-powered vehicles and will need to meet cost and packaging requirements to play a role across various vehicle platforms. Honda last year announced the FCX concept car that stores 5 kg of hydrogen at 5000 psi in a tank small enough to fit into a midsize car.
Rather than using thousands of psi to compress hydrogen into a tank, or cooling it down to minus 252°C (minus 421° F) to liquefy it, an intriguing alternative of hydrogen storage has led to metal hydrides, chemical hydrides, and physisorption-based storage, where hydrogen is adsorbed onto the interior surfaces of a porous material. The stored hydrogen can then be released by heat, electricity, or chemical reaction. Many metals are capable of absorbing hydrogen as well.
Nanotechnology plays an important role here. Nanomaterials have diverse tunable physical properties as a function of their size and shape due to strong quantum confinement effects and large surface to volume ratios. These properties are useful for designing hydrogen storage materials. For instance, researchers are now investigating nanostructured polymeric materials as hydrogen storage adsorbents. The new polymer adsorbent material has shown great promise in preliminary tests.
Due to their large surface areas with relatively small mass, single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) have been considered very promising potential materials for high capacity hydrogen storage. Theoretically, they can store hydrogen up to 7.7 wt%, as every carbon atom in SWCNTs chemisorbs one hydrogen atom. In addition, the subsequent physisorption of hydrogen on the surfaces of hydrogenated SWCNTs can increase the capacity of hydrogen storage even further. However, there is some skepticism on carbon nanotube hydrogen storage due to early mistakes in experimental publications and a rational basis for high capacity hydrogen storage materials is now being developed.
Fuel Cell
Not surprisingly, a fuel cell is essentially just the reverse of an electrolytic cell: whereas electricity is used to decompose water into its constituent gases during electrolysis, in a fuel cell water and electricity are generated by the direct recombination of hydrogen and oxygen.
A major challenge for hydrogen powered cars today is the cost of the vehicle. The cost for fuel cells alone are currently hovering between $1,000 and $3,000 per kilowatt. To compete with vehicles equipped with internal combustion engines, those figures need to drop to about $30/kW. There are several kinds of fuel cells, but Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) fuel cells – also called Proton Exchange Membrane fuel cells – are the prime candidates for use in automobiles.
Both the electrolytic and the fuel cell use expensive platinum (which currently sells for about $45,000 per kilogram) as electrode material. Researchers are looking at two ways to bring the cost of catalysts down: One way to minimize platinum usage is to increase catalytic efficiency by nanostructuring the platinum metal; another way of eliminating the use of platinum altogether is by exploring the use of much cheaper non-precious metal catalysts where the nanostructured surfaces match or exceed the catalytic properties of platinum.
Nanotechnology certainly will play a major role in a future hydrogen economy. The big question is when most of this hydrogen will be generated from renewable sources and not fossil fuels. Certainly not by 2020.
By Michael Berger, Copyright 2007 Nanowerk

2007-09-18T09:17:00.000+10:00

Go-ahead for £28m Cornish wave farm
Guardian Unlimited
Monday September 17 2007
The world's first large scale wave farm, to be built off the coast of Cornwall, will get the go-ahead, it emerged today.
The government is poised to announce planning permission for the £28m renewable energy project.
However, the business secretary, John Hutton, will use the announcement to warn that a "snail's pace" planning system is preventing more green energy schemes from going through.
Mr Hutton will accuse green groups of being hypocritical by opposing proposals to speed up the planning system.
The Cornish wave farm, known as a wave hub, will be built 10 miles off Hayle and has been described as a "giant electric socket" on the seabed.
It could generate enough electricity for 7,500 homes, saving 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide over 25 years and meeting 3% of Cornwall's domestic electricity needs.
Companies developing wave energy technology will be able to plug up to 30 devices into the 50 metre deep hub to test them.
Four companies have already been chosen to use the installation, which will cover an area of sea measuring 4km by 2km. The hub is expected to be operational by 2009.
Maria McCaffery, the chief executive of the British Wind Energy Association, said the project represented the "kind of progress that makes the UK the global hotspot for the expansion of carbon free energy from the sea".
In a lecture to the Fabian Society, Mr Hutton will say that other environmentally friendly energy projects have been stuck in the planning system for more than two years.
As a result, 2.4m tonnes of carbon have been unnecessarily pumped into the atmosphere.
He will say urgent reform of the planning system will be a key factor in determining whether Britain has a realistic chance of meeting its 2020 renewable energy goals, and will claim green groups' opposition to government planning proposals proves their environmentally-friendly rhetoric is "hot air".
"All major infrastructure progress should be put through a rigorous planning process, but we have to get the balance right," he will say. "As along as we all want energy, we have to accept that it needs to be generated somewhere."
Mr Hutton will point out that an increasing percentage of wind farm applications have been turned down in recent years - meaning that, by 2006-2007, almost 50% of all applications had been refused.
The Campaign to Protect Rural England has voiced fears that reforms to speed up the planning system would remove people's right to protest against major infrastructure projects.
Marina Pacheco, the organisation's head of planning, said it was "disappointing" that Mr Hutton was highlighting green opposition to planning reforms.
"We are not against wind farms … but we want them developed in appropriate places," she said.
"We are aware of the problems affecting the planning system but, if you look at the planning delays, it is not local people's concerns that are holding up the system."
Environmental group, Friends of the Earth, said the government was using issues such as climate change to push through major changes to the planning system that will stop local people from having a say in how their area is developed.
FoE planning adviser, Naomi Luhde-Thompson, said: "The vast majority of projects tipped to go ahead under the new system will be huge carbon emitters including new airport runways and motorway expansions." She added: "The slow development of renewable energy projects in the UK is not the fault of the planning system. The problem lies in a lack of leadership at a local level. Some local authorities are blocking renewable projects despite national planning policy which prioritises action on climate change."
"Local councillors must take a lead by highlighting the part all communities need to play their part in tackling climate change and by championing renewable projects."
Mr Hutton will also give permission for a 30-turbine wind farm in the north-east, between Redcar and the mouth of the river Tees

2007-09-18T09:10:00.000+10:00

Giuliani: More Ethanol, Nuclear Power
Thursday July 19, 2007 6:01 PM
By LIBBY QUAID
Associated Press Writer
SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) - Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani argued on Thursday that he can lead the country away from reliance on foreign oil with increases in ethanol production and nuclear power.
On a visit to Iowa, the leading ethanol-producing state, Giuliani called for more ethanol plants and new nuclear reactors, oil refineries, clean coal and transmission lines. He toured the Hawkeye Renewables plant in Fairbank, asked questions about the process and said ethanol ``gives us hope for the future.''
Giuliani held a private meeting with plant officials and workers after the tour.
Presidents dating to Richard Nixon have promised energy independence, ``and we haven't made much of a real dent in getting there,'' Giuliani told a gathering Wednesday at restaurant in Le Mars.
``But we've got Brazil way ahead of us on ethanol,'' the former New York mayor said. ``It doesn't make sense that Brazil, per capita, would be ahead of us on ethanol. We have a country like France that's 85 percent nuclear power. We haven't built a new nuclear plant in 30 years.''
The United States produces and uses more gallons of ethanol fuel than Brazil - a relatively recent development - although Brazil remains the world's largest exporter. Ethanol is made from sugar in Brazil and from corn in the U.S., where government farm policy keeps sugar prices higher and limits supply.
``Every potential solution must be pursued - from nuclear power to increased energy exploration to more aggressive investment in alternative energy sources,'' Giuliani said in a statement.
The ethanol industry is expanding rapidly in the United States. More than a quarter of the corn crop will go into ethanol this year in the United States, according to Agriculture Department estimates, up from 20 percent last year and 14 percent in 2005.
In Iowa, there are 28 ethanol refineries operating and 19 under construction or expanding, and there are 12 refineries for soybean-based biodiesel operating and three under construction, according to the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association.
Where a presidential candidate stands on ethanol use is a critical issue for White House contenders hoping to win Iowa's first-in-the-nation's caucuses, scheduled for Jan. 14.
Giuliani said he supports the 51-cent-a-gallon tax credit created by Congress to encourage growth of the ethanol industry: ``I agree with subsidies for energy independence,'' he said. The tax credit expires in 2010.
Besides expanding nuclear power and renewable fuels like ethanol, Giuliani also called for more clean coal technologies, more clean-burning natural gas, environmentally safe drilling for oil and natural gas in North America and new technologies like hybrid cars and hydrogen fuel cells.
Giuliani has extensive ties to energy companies.
He leads all presidential candidates in contributions from donors and spouses of donors employed by the oil and gas industry. An analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics placed Giuliani's contributions from such donors at $396,000 through June 30, far ahead of the second highest oil and gas beneficiary, Mitt Romney.
Giuliani's law firm, Houston-based Bracewell & Giuliani, also has lobbied Texas legislators on behalf of Citgo Petroleum Corp., a Texas-based oil company ultimately controlled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Giuliani himself, however, did no lobbying for Citgo, which was a client of the law firm before Giuliani joined, Giuliani and Citgo officials have said.
The firm has worked on behalf of Saudi Arabia's oil ministry in a Texas court case. It's other legal clients include ChevronTexaco; BMB Munai, a developer of oil wells in Kazakhstan, and Statoil, a Norway-based oil and gas conglomerate.
^---
Associated

2007-09-17T16:59:00.000+10:00

Gas to 'feature more' in Eastern States
Email
Print
Normal font
Large font
September 17, 2007 - 4:14PM
AdvertisementAdvertisement
Power retailer Origin Energy Ltd says a carbon emissions pricing scheme will position gas as a competitive player in the eastern states energy market.
The market is dominated by coal-fired power generation, which is a cheaper and more abundant energy source than other forms of energy including gas.
In Victoria alone, there is enough coal to underpin about 500 years of electricity generation.
Origin regulation and government affairs national manager Julian Turecek said gas was taking a "back seat" to coal, but climate change fears and the emergence of a carbon emissions pricing scheme was likely to weigh in favour of gas.
Mr Turecek said gas was a more expensive energy alternative when compared with coal, but the addition of a carbon tax would make it more competitive.
"We now have a bi-partisan approach on climate change policy, which we haven't had ever," Mr Turecek said on Monday in Melbourne.
Mr Turecek said there was a push for a carbon emissions trading scheme and the scene was set for gas to play a bigger role in the local energy market.
He said Origin would concentrate on the gas market over the next few years to help bring down its own supply chain emissions.
"Gas-fired power generation has a significant role to play in achieving this reduction," he said.
© 2007 AAPBrought to yo

2007-09-17T12:18:00.000+10:00

A quick look at natural gas and biogas hybrids

Last year in June, the Institut Français du Pétrole (IFP) participated in the Challenge Bibendum in Mortefontaine, near Paris. IFP presented, with Gaz de France, an all-natural-gas hybrid prototype vehicle developed on a Toyota Prius II base, with which it achieved record fuel efficiency and slashed greenhouse gas emissions compared to a gasoline powered hybrid. The prototype used only 3.56 kg of natural gas for 144 km of combined city and highway driving. In energy terms, this performance is equivalent to a fuel consumption of 3.63 liters of gasoline per 100 km (64.8 miles per gallon). On gasoline the Prius achieves a combined fuel economy of only 5.11 L/100 km (46 mpg). Most impressively, CO2 emissions for the natural gas hybrid were less than 75 g/km.We have a look at this exceptional car, because it can just as well be fueled by biomethane instead of natural gas, lowering its carbon footprint still further.Biomethane is obtained from biogas that has been upgraded to natural gas quality. In Europe, the fuel is increasingly used as it is by far the most efficient transport biofuel. In Sweden, Switzerland, Austria and Germany, the gas is already being fed into natural gas grid, and dedicated CNG infrastructures supplied with upgraded biogas are now available. Of all transport biofuels made from dedicated energy crops, biogas by far yields most useable energy per hectare. Researchers have found that for temperate grass species, one hectare can yield between 2,900–5,400 cubic meters of methane per year, enough to fuel an ordinary passenger car for 40,000 to 60,000 kilometers (one acre of crops can power a car for 10,000 to 15,000 miles) (earlier post).The combination of hybrid technology and biomethane fuel has enormous potential for improving both the fuel economy and cutting the CO2 emissions of vehicles. Last year, the EU published a well-to-wheel analysis of more than 70 different fuels and propulsion technologies but forgot to include biomethane hybrids. After pressure from many organisations, a new version of the document was made available, including the compresed (bio)gas-hybrid (it calls the fuel Compressed Biogas - CBG - analogous to CNG). The CBG-hybrid came out as a concept as efficient and clean as cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells. However, CBG-hybrids do not require the new and expensive infrastructures needed for the hydrogen economy.The study also looked at coupling carbon capture and storage (CCS) to fuel production. CCS would increase the cost of fuel production, but would considerably reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As we have reported earlier, CCS technologies can be applied to biogas in a cost-effective way, in which case the fuel becomes carbon-negative. Carbon-negative fuels can only be obtained from biomass (more here on a concrete project in the U.S. that is applying CCS to biomass and coal to obtain carbon-neutral jet fuel; if the biomass fraction were to be increased, the fuel would become truly carbon-negative and start taking historic CO2 emissions out of the atmosphere).In short, one of the cleanest and most efficient vehicles would be a car running on a carbon-negative biofuel coupled to CCS and used in a hybrid-electric propulsion technology or in a fuel cell. The CBG-hybrid would be one of the most promising candidates over the medium term because (1) of all carbon-negative biofuel production pathways, biogas+CCS is the least costly, (2) contrary to hydrogen and fuel cell cars, CNG-hybrids can be brought on the market today, whereas (3) compared to hybrids running on liquid (bio)fuels, CNG-hybrids running on gaseous fuels are more efficient on a well-to-wheel basis: energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: natural gas :: CNG :: biogas :: biomethane :: hybrid :: The IFP and Gaz de France demonstrated that CNG-hybrids can reduce both fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. The vehicle was adapted for natural gas using simple technological solutions, without sacrificing the passenger compartment or the trunk: the gasoline tank is replaced by strong, lightweight natural gas tanks placed under the chassis, with a special manifold, and natural gas injectors replacing the gasoline injectors.The project was a natural next step in a joint research effort being carried out by IFP and Gaz de France on natural gas as a fuel for vehicles: it was preceded by a first Smart-based demonstrator with a "downsized" engine (an engine having a reduced displacement, turbocharged to preserve performance) running on natural gas alone, developed in 2004, and will soon be followed by a Smart-based natural gas hybrid prototype currently under development.IFP, a research center active in the fields of energy, transport, and the environment, develops new engine and fuel technologies. In an energy context marked by the need to diversify sources while protecting the environment, IFP devises innovative solutions to meet sustainable mobility needs in the decades to come. Using its unique experience in fuels and engines, IFP is developing alternative fuels (biofuels, synthetic fuels, etc.) and clean, economical vehicles (Natural Gas for Vehicles or biofuels, hybrid powertrains, etc.).IFP's transport business, and, more specifically, its Powertrain Engineering Business Unit, draws on the skills of multidisciplinary teams, comprising over 200 highly specialized engineers and technicians, and is supported by a very broad range of testing facilities and equipment. The research program is hinged around the following strategic themes: fundamental research (particularly in the field of combustion), low-emission engine technologies (CO2, pollutants, noise), engine control, advanced fuels and lubricants as well as alternative fuels with low greenhouse gas emissions, and demonstrators.For a number of years, Gaz de France has been using its experience and its extensive industrial experience to make natural gas a genuinely promising alternative fuel. The research that the Group has undertaken in the use of natural gas as a fuel has meant that it is coming to be increasingly used, and that the market is in constant growth, first and foremost with local authorities (buses and cleaning and waste collection vehicles) and, more recently, in company vehicle fleets.The advantages that natural gas displays mean that it is imposing itself as a credible solution for the necessary changes in road mobility in coming years. Natural gas fuel is a means of reconciling the desires of car users with the challenges facing the transport and energy sectors in the years to come, in terms of the environment, of public health, of energy supplies, prices, performance and comfort of use. Gaz de France offers a whole new energy for automobiles.References:IFP: Record fuel efficiency for the first all-natural-gas hybrid prototype developed by IFP and Gaz de France - July 4, 2007.European Commission, Joint Research Institute, Institute for Environment and Sustainability: Well-to-Wheels reports [updated and revised frequently].Biopact: A closer look at the revolutionary coal+biomass-to-liquids with carbon storage project - September 13, 2007Biopact: Report: carbon-negative biomethane cleanest and most efficient biofuel for cars - August 29, 2007Biopact: Pre-combustion CO2 capture from biogas - the way forward? - March 31, 2007
posted by Biopact team at 3:02 PM

0 Comments

2007-09-16T20:09:00.000+10:00

Ancient records help test climate change

By BRADLEY S. KLAPPER, Associated Press Writer Sat Sep 15, 10:50 AM ET

EINSIEDELN, Switzerland - A librarian at this 10th century monastery leads a visitor beneath the vaulted ceilings of the archive past the skulls of two former abbots. He pushes aside medieval ledgers of indulgences and absolutions, pulls out one of 13 bound diaries inscribed from 1671 to 1704 and starts to read about the weather.
ADVERTISEMENT

"Jan. 11 was so frightfully cold that all of the communion wine froze," says an entry from 1684 by Brother Josef Dietrich, governor and "weatherman" of the once-powerful Einsiedeln Monastery. "Since I've been an ordained priest, the sacrament has never frozen in the chalice."

"But on Jan. 13 it got even worse and one could say it has never been so cold in human memory," he adds.

Diaries of day-to-day weather details from the age before 19th-century standardized thermometers are proving of great value to scientists who study today's climate. Historical accounts were once largely ignored, as they were thought to be fraught with inaccuracy or were simply inaccessible or illegible. But the booming interest in climate change has transformed the study of ancient weather records from what was once a "wallflower science," says Christian Pfister, a climate historian at the University of Bern.

The accou

2007-09-16T20:08:00.001+10:00

Tax proposed for gas-guzzling cars in UK

Sat Sep 15, 6:57 PM ET

LONDON - Britain's Treasury chief plans to introduce a "purchase tax" of up to $4,000 on the most polluting vehicles, The Sunday Times reported.
ADVERTISEMENT

Alistair Darling also plans to propose making fuel-efficient cars eligible for a $4,000 rebate, the newspaper said, citing a paper leaked ahead of the treasury chief's forthcoming pre-budget report.

The leaked document indicates that officials acknowledged the measures would be "presentationally difficult" but argue they would also "strengthen the environmental signal" of the government.

The Treasury declined to comment on the Sunday Times report, with a spokeswoman saying: "We never comment on leaks."

Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour Party and the opposition Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have been competing to become the party that appears most active in the battle against global warming.

* Email Story
* IM Story
* Printable View

RECOMMEND THIS

2007-09-16T20:07:00.001+10:00

Arctic ice melt opens Northwest Passage

By JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 28 minutes ago

PARIS - Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane.
ADVERTISEMENT

The European Space Agency said nearly 200 satellite photos this month taken together showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, and ice retreating to its lowest level since such images were first taken in 1978.

The waters are exposing unexplored resources, and vessels could trim thousands of miles from Europe to Asia by bypassing the Panama Canal. The seasonal ebb and flow of ice levels has already opened up a slim summer window for ships.

Leif Toudal Pedersen, of the Danish National Space Center, said that Arctic ice has shrunk to some 1 million square miles. The previous low was 1.5 million square miles, in 2005.

"The strong reduction in just one year certainly raises flags that the ice (in summer) may disappear much sooner than expected," Pedersen said in an ESA statement posted on its Web site Friday.

Pedersen said the extreme retreat this year suggested the passage could fully open sooner than expected — but ESA did not say when that might be. Efforts to contact ESA officials in Paris and Noordwik, the Netherlands, were unsuccessful Saturday.

A U.N. panel on climate change has predicted that polar regions could be virtually free of ice by the summer of 2070 because of rising temperatures and sea ice decline, ESA noted.

Russia, Norway, Denmark, Canada and the United States are among countries in a race to secure rights to the Arctic that heated up last month when Russia sent two small submarines to plant its national flag under the North Pole. A U.S. study has suggested as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden in the area.

Environmentalists fear increased maritime traffic and efforts to tap natural resources in the area could one day lead to oil spills and harm regional wildlife.

Until now, the passage has been expected to remain closed even during reduced ice cover by multiyear ice pack — sea ice that remains through one or more summers, ESA said.

Researcher Claes Ragner of Norway's Fridtjof Nansen Institute, which works on Arctic environmental and political issues, said for now, the new opening has only symbolic meaning for the future of sea transport.

"Routes between Scandinavia and Japan could be almost halved, and a stable and reliable route would mean a lot to certain regions," he said by phone. But even if the passage is opening up and polar ice continues to melt, it will take years for such routes to be regular, he said.

"It won't be ice-free all year around and it won't be a stable route all year," Ragner said. "The greatest wish for sea transportation is streamlined and stable routes."

"Shorter transport routes means less pollution if you can ship products from A to B on the shortest route," he said, "but the fact that the polar ice is melting away is not good for the world in that we're losing the Arctic and the animal life there."

The opening observed this week was not the most direct waterway, ESA said. That would be through northern Canada along the coast of Siberia, which remains partially blocked.

___

Associated Press Writer Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, Sweden, contributed to this report.

___

On the Net:

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMYTC13J6F_index_1.html

* Email Story
* IM Story
* Printable View

RECOMMEND THIS STORY

Recommend It:

Average (375 votes)
4.6 stars
» Recommended Stories
Full Coverage: Climate Change

Off the Wires
* Ancient records help test climate change AP, Sun Sep 16, 2:44 AM ET
* Scientists set for major disease conference in Chicago AFP, Sun Sep 16, 2:42 AM ET

Feature Articles
* Greenland sees bright side of warming at BBC, Sep 14
* In Greenland, an interfaith rally for climate change The Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo! News, Sep 12

News Stories
* States are closer to trimming autos' CO2 emissions The Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo! News, Sep 15
* Bush aide says warming man-made at BBC, Sep 14

Opinion & Editorials
* Global warming � who pays and when? The Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo! News, Aug 31
* Scramble for the Arctic The Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo! News, Aug 21

Science News
* Ancient records help test climate change AP
* Prestigious Lasker awards announced AP
* Yale to return Machu Picchu artifacts AP
* Explorer who found lost Peru cities dies AP
* Downgraded Ingrid moves through Atlantic AP

Most Viewed - Science
* Hungry bears plague US west after record drought AFP
* Arctic sea route opens Reuters
* Ancient records help test climate change AP
* Sick? Lonely? Genes tell the tale Reuters
* Yale to return Machu Picchu artifacts AP

Science Video

* Talking research parrot dies CNN - Fri Sep 14, 9:06 PM ET
* Effects even more 'special' BBC - Fri Sep 14, 3:18 PM ET

* Midwest warming weather.com - Sat Sep 15, 5:30 PM ET
* National Forecast weather.com - Sat Sep 15, 5:30 PM ET

Related Video
AP
story image Play
Northwest passage emerges under melting ice
AP
» All news video
Humble Oil and Refining Co.'s icebreaking tanker, the SS Manhattan, and the Canadian Ministry of Transport's newest icebreaker, the Loius S. St. Laurant, crunch through the snow covered ice of northern Baffin Bay on May 22, 1970. The Manhattan is completing its second Arctic voyage to collect data for use in determining the economic feasability of transporting Alaskan crude oil through the ice-covered Northwest Passage to the U.S. East Coast. Arctic ice coverage has receded to record lows, the European Space Agency said, raising the prospect of greater maritime traffic through the long-sought waterway known as the Northwest Passage. Satellite images released in September 2007 showed Arctic ice cover fell to the lowest level since scientists started collecting such information in 1978, according to a statement on Paris-based ESA's Web site Saturday, Sept. 15, 2007. (AP Photo)
AP Photo: Humble Oil and Refining Co.'s icebreaking tanker, the SS Manhattan, and the Canadian Ministry of...
View
Elsewhere on the Web

* Time.com: Are We Ready for Another Tsunami?

2007-09-16T20:06:00.001+10:00

Official: Russian fuel ready for Iran

By NASSER KARIMI, Associated Press Writer 48 minutes ago

TEHRAN, Iran - Enriched uranium fuel is ready to be shipped from Russia to Iran's first nuclear power plant, state television on Sunday quoted Iran's foreign minister as saying.
ADVERTISEMENT

The announcement comes after talks in Moscow between minister Manouchehr Mottaki and Russian nuclear chief Sergei Kiriyenko to address delays in completing the $1 billion joint Iranian-Russian Bushehr power plant.

"Nuclear fuel for this power plant, inspected and sealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, is ready," the broadcast quoted Mottaki as saying late on Saturday. "We do see the trend of cooperation between Iran and Russia moving ahead for the Bushehr power plant."

The project, Iran's first nuclear power plant, has been beset by repeated delays due to payment problems on the Iranian side, according to the Russians. Tehran, however, maintains it is because Moscow has been caving into Western pressure to halt the project.

The U.S. maintains that Iran's nuclear power program is a cover for developing weapons and has called for further sanctions, while Tehran denies the charges and insists it just wants to master the technology to meet future power needs under the provisions of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

2007-09-16T19:55:00.000+10:00

‘HOT ROCKS’ SEARCH EXPANDING

The search for geothermal or “hot rock” energy in Tasmania continues to expand.

Labor member for Braddon, Bryan Green, said today that two new Special Exploration Licences for geothermal energy would be granted.

Geothermal Energy Tasmania West Coast Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of Allegiance Minerals NL, has applied for a Special Exploration Licence of 2205 square kilometres over the Pieman – Arthur River area of western Tasmania, and Geopower Pty Ltd has applied for an area of 4,892 square kilometres in the north-east of Tasmania.

“Geothermal Energy Tasmania’s exploration will be directed towards finding and evaluating hot dry rocks from which energy can be extracted, ultimately as electricity,” Mr Green said.

“Hot dry rock geothermal power is ideal for base load generation. A successful outcome may result in a very large, new source of energy that could be extracted with minimal environmental impact or greenhouse emissions”.

The company intends to spend $350,000 on exploration over the first two years of the licence’s life.

The initial exploration will focus on a review of the current knowledge and data available on the area followed in later years by deep exploration wells if enough encouragement is obtained from the early work.

Geopower Pty Ltd intends to search for a similar deep target of hot dry rocks in the North-East, and also to investigate the potential for shallow warm water systems. Successful low temperature turbine technology can operate using water at 60 to 70 degrees centigrade.

Exploration over the first two years of the Special Exploration Licence will include geophysical and groundwater surveys and the drilling of at least five holes for an expenditure of $558,000.

“Commercialisation of hot rock energy is still at a developmental stage, but exploration for geothermal energy is on the increase in Tasmania,” Mr Green said.

“We are seen as an attractive prospect because we have favourable geological conditions, and access to the national electricity grid through the Basslink cable”.

Mr Green also announced that an exploration licence in western Tasmania would be granted.

Eastren Pty Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Allegiance Mining NL, the owner of the Avebury nickel mine, has applied for an exploration licence covering 7 square kilometres in the Great Northern Creek area, south of Renison Bell.

The company aims to target nickel sulphide deposits by interpreting geophysical data, re-logging and re-assaying drill core held by Mineral Resources Tasmania and by drilling four drill holes in the summer of 2007/08.

The drilling program will be serviced by helicopter to minimise environmental disturbance. The expenditure commitment for the first two years of tenure is $850,000.

“The opening of the Avebury nickel mine in early 2008 will establish Tasmania as a significant nickel producer for the first time,” Mr Green said.

“The high level of commitment by Allegiance and other companies to the search for nickel in the State has the potential to enable this industry to grow and is another welcome sign of confidence in the future of mining in western Tasmania.”

2007-09-14T16:20:00.000+10:00

Thundercloud "accelerator" fires gamma-ray beam

Physicists in Japan claim to have the best evidence yet that thunderclouds can act as high-energy particle accelerators for seconds or even minutes at a time. Using an array of radiation detectors installed at a nuclear reactor, the team recorded a 40-second burst of gamma radiation during a severe thunderstorm. According to the researchers, the energy distribution of the pulse suggests that the radiation is produced by electrons that have been accelerated by the high voltages present in a thundercloud (arXiv:0708.2947).
Physicists have known for over a decade that 10 - 20 MeV gamma rays are produced in millisecond bursts during electrical storms. These bursts are believed to occur when high voltages in a thundercloud accelerate electrons to energies up to about 35 MeV. These electrons are slowed down by colliding with atoms in the air and as a result give off bremsstrahlung -- gamma rays that are created when an electron is deflected off its course by an atom.
Much longer bursts lasting up to several minutes have also been seen, but these events seem to be much rarer than their shorter counterparts. Physicists have yet to work out where in the sky the longer pulses are coming from – if they are indeed coming from the sky. The energy distribution of the pulses and whether the pulses contain any other types of radiation such as charged particles was also unclear.
Now Harafumi Tsuchiya of the Cosmic Ray Laboratory of Japan’s RIKEN research institute and colleagues have used a new bank of direction-sensitive detectors they installed at a nuclear power plant to detect a 40-s gamma ray burst during a very intense thunderstorm on 6 January, 2007. Their system at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant on the coast of the Sea of Japan was designed to measure the energy distribution, composition and source of thundercloud pulses.
By analysing the energy distribution of the pulse, the team was able to say that the pulse was made of bremsstrahlung gamma rays. The directionality of their detectors allowed the team to confirm that the pulse came from the storm and because such gamma rays can only travel short distances in the atmosphere, the team could also conclude that the pulse was created a kilometre or less from the detectors.
Since the gamma rays arrived about a minute before the first lightning strike, Tsuchiya believes that the pulse was probably created while electrical energy was building up in the thundercloud, rather than when energy is being discharged as lightning. He adds that the process is likely to begin with a cosmic ray passing through the cloud and ionizing the air to produce electrons, which are accelerated to towards the bottom of the cloud, which has a positive charge. These electrons ionize other atoms on the way, creating a stream of high-energy electrons.
Tsuchiya says that bremsstrahlung at MeV energies would be focused into a beam that only illuminates a small area on the ground, which could explain why so few long-duration pulses have been seen. The team plan to verify this by placing many radiation detectors over a wider area.

David Smith, a physicist at the University of California at Santa Clara and an expert on atmospheric gamma ray pulses, agrees that the pulse was made in a thundercloud accelerator. “The spectrum looks just right for bremsstrahlung”, he says. According to Smith, the millions of volts required to produce MeV electrons could be sustained in a cloud for seconds or even minutes as long as the stream of electrons does not become so intense that it causes an avalanche-like electric breakdown of the type that could lead to lightning. Smith is now designing an airborne experiment to test whether lightning flashes are preceded by gamma-ray pulses.
About the author
Hamish Johnston is editor of physicsworld.com

2007-09-14T16:18:00.001+10:00

Australian scientist stresses solar energy
www.chinaview.cn 2007-09-13 23:09:20

Print
BEIJING, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- An Australian scientist, a winner of "Alternative Nobel Prize," has predicted solar energy will meet a quarter of human's kind's energy demand by 2050.
The next 10 to 20 years would see a transition from using fossil energy resources, such as natural gas, coal and oil, to renewable resources, including solar, wind and biomass energy, said Martin Green, a solar cell authority and recipient of the 2002 Right Livelihood Award, usually referred to as "Alternative Nobel Prize."
Energy transition would be the best solution to further offset the negative impact of global climate change, which was caused by using fossil fuels, the photovoltaic (PV) expert told a Nobel laureate forum in Beijing.
Martin said the number of coal-fired power plants could be cut by 15 percent around the world with the application of solar heating.
Founded in Sweden in 1980, the Right Livelihood Awards were introduced to "honor and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today".
Nine Nobel laureates and five world-renowned scientists, including Robert Mundell, Edmund Phelps, Richard Schrock and Thomas Schelling, are meeting from Sept. 11 to 14 to discuss energy efficiency, solar energy and its market development, global warming and the reduction in greenhouse gases with 600 Chinese scientists, officials and experts in Beijing.
Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan told the opening forum that China would vigorously promote energy conservation and emissions reduction to tackle climate change and promote sustainable development.
The National Development and Reform Commission, China's top planning body, issued a plan last week, articulating the aim of using renewable resources for 15 percent of its energy consumption in 2020 in a bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pursue sustained economic growth.
The long-term plan would cost China two trillion yuan (266.7 billion U.S. dollars).

2007-09-14T09:09:00.001+10:00

Neanderthal climate link debated
By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC News, York

The demise of our evolutionary cousins remains a puzzleThe theory that an abrupt, catastrophic change in the climate extinguished the last Neanderthals is challenged in the journal Nature.
Our evolutionary cousins went extinct in most of Europe about 35,000 years ago, but small pockets survived much later than this in southern Iberia.
The cause of these ancient humans' demise is hotly debated and a variety of theories have been put forward.
However, other researchers question the study's conclusions.
Our findings suggest that there was not a single abrupt climatic event that caused the extinction of the Neanderthals
Katerina Harvati, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary BiologyNeanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) first appear in the fossil record about 230,000 years ago and, at their peak, ranged across Europe and parts of western Asia.
Competition with modern humans (Homo sapiens) - who arrived on the European continent about 40,000 years ago - as well as climate change, have long been discussed as culprits for the Neanderthals' extinction across much of their former range 35,000 years ago.
They are trying to match this event with a time when Neanderthals were still around and are doing alright - within the limits of being a late population
Clive Finlayson, Gibraltar MuseumBut pockets of these ancient humans appear to have survived in southern Iberia until much more recently than they did elsewhere - perhaps until 24,000 years ago.
Climate change is proposed to have played an important role in this local extinction. A study published earlier this year suggested a sudden cold snap about 24,000 years ago was implicated in the Neanderthals' disappearance from their Iberian refuge.
In the new research, an international team turned to a site at Gibraltar called Gorham's Cave.
Radiocarbon dating of material form that cave has suggested the Neanderthals may have died out between 32,000 to 24,000 years ago.
Costa del Neanderthal
The researchers mapped three radiocarbon dates spanning this period - 32,000, 28,000 and 24,000 years ago - on to a well-dated palaeoclimate archive based on deep-sea cores drilled in Venezuela. The archive relates records of past climate to radiocarbon dates.
They discovered that 32,000 and 28,000 radiocarbon years ago, Europe was experiencing conditions similar to the general climatic instability of the previous glacial period - conditions the Neanderthals had already proven able to survive.
Professor Katerina Harvati, an author of the paper and a palaeoanthroplogist from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Germany, said: "The more controversial date of circa 24,000 years ago, places the last Neanderthals just before a major climate shift that would have been characterised by a large expansion of ice sheets and the onset of cold conditions in northern Europe.
"But Gibraltar's climate would have remained relatively unaffected, perhaps as a result of warm water from the sub-tropical Atlantic entering the western Mediterranean."
Speaking at the BA festival in York, she concluded: "Our findings suggest that there was not a single abrupt climatic event that caused the extinction of the Neanderthals."
Professor Harvati added: "This eliminates catastrophic climate change as a cause for extinction, but this leaves a whole range of other possibilities."
Late survivors
Professor Clive Finlayson is director of the Gibraltar Museum and co-authored the paper proposing a link between the sudden cold snap and the extinction of Neanderthals in southern Iberia.
Although he said he welcomed the interest in Gorham's Cave, he also saw several problems with the conclusions of the latest study. Firstly, he said, it was "strange" to try to link climatic events in the Caribbean with ones in Europe.
"I think they've missed the point," he told the BBC News website, "those dates, 32,000, 28,000 and 24,000 years ago, are occupation dates. They're dates when there are enough Neanderthals around for them to be picked up in the archaeological record.
"Whichever of those three dates you choose, populations would have gone extinct after that. They are trying to match this event with a time when Neanderthals were still around and are doing alright - within the limits of being a late population.
"This climatic event, which they say is 3,000 years later than our occupation date at 24,000 years ago, coincides perfectly with a period of no Neanderthals and no modern people in Gorham's Cave. That was music to my ears."
In their Nature paper, Professor Harvati and her colleagues contend that if the Neanderthals did die out at the later date of 24,000 years ago, climate changes in the north might have pushed modern humans further south into the Neanderthals' territory - forcing them into competition for scarce resources.
But Professor Finlayson explained there was no evidence for a southward human migration at this time. He said there was only one site in southern Spain with evidence for modern human occupation at the same time as Neanderthals were in the region - and even that one was disputed.
The next evidence for modern humans in southern Iberia comes several thousand years after the last evidence for Neanderthals at Gorham's Cave.

2007-09-13T16:30:00.000+10:00

Emissions targets for 2030 will only be reached by banning cars in London
London Authority (GLA) takes radical steps, one of which could be the removal of all cars from both inner and outer London, according to a report published today.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
Team ALP: Peter Garrett - Helping to save the planet with fresh ideas on climate change. http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/iclk?sa=l&ai=BUd52bsDpRsbwAYm4iwP3ip2iD67GtDXyv7i8A8CNtwGA3IgBEAEYASD2toUCKAY4AFDYn7edB2CliJ6AoAGqARUwNTU5MzY5OTY3KzM5NDUyMDM2MTOyAQ93d3cucGh5c29yZy5jb226AQozMDB4MjUwX2pzyAEB2gEpaHR0cDovL3d3dy5waHlzb3JnLmNvbS9uZXdzMTA4ODgxNzk3Lmh0bWypAk3p4KGvLqw-yAL28aEDqAMB6AO6A-gDLOgDDPUDAAAAAPUDIAAAAA&num=1&adurl=http://www.kevin07.com.au/fresh-ideas/climate-change-water/climate-change-water.html&client=ca-pub-0536483524803400
Does tree planting really - tackle climate change? Discover the truth behind the feel-good spin. http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/iclk?sa=l&ai=Bl1yabsDpRsbwAYm4iwP3ip2iD86X7DKyoe-IBcCNtwGA4gkQAhgCIPa2hQIoBjgAUMzn6qf8_____wFgpYiegKABoAHc4-z-A6oBFTA1NTkzNjk5NjcrMzk0NTIwMzYxM7IBD3d3dy5waHlzb3JnLmNvbboBCjMwMHgyNTBfanPIAQHaASlodHRwOi8vd3d3LnBoeXNvcmcuY29tL25ld3MxMDg4ODE3OTcuaHRtbIACAakCTengoa8urD6oAwHoA7oD6AMs6AMM9QMAAAAA9QMgAAAA&num=2&adurl=http://www.newint.com.au/catalog/subscribe-co2nned.htm&client=ca-pub-0536483524803400
APEC & climate change? - Expert opinion on APEC, Kyoto & global action on climate change http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/iclk?sa=l&ai=BiJsQbsDpRsbwAYm4iwP3ip2iD7q7wDHO3pSHBcCNtwGA9P0BEAMYAyD2toUCKAY4AFDkiYuC-v____8BYKWInoCgAaoBFTA1NTkzNjk5NjcrMzk0NTIwMzYxM7IBD3d3dy5waHlzb3JnLmNvbboBCjMwMHgyNTBfanPIAQHaASlodHRwOi8vd3d3LnBoeXNvcmcuY29tL25ld3MxMDg4ODE3OTcuaHRtbIACAakCTengoa8urD6oAwHoA7oD6AMs6AMM9QMAAAAA9QMgAAAA&num=3&adurl=http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/apec&client=ca-pub-0536483524803400

The GLA is committed to reducing London’s carbon dioxide emissions by 60% by 2025, but most climate scientists argue that even more rapid reductions will be needed if we are to avoid dangerous climate change. A team of experts from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and the Transport Studies Unit (Oxford University Centre for the Environment) will today reveal that London is on course to reduce land transport emissions by only 10%-23%.
");
//]]>-->

document.context='YTowOnt9';

They do, however, offer a radical vision which could achieve a 72% drop in emissions by 2030 – a figure that is 83% lower than the current UK average. The solution involves combining a car-free London with high levels of active transport (for example walking and cycling) and realistic but challenging energy-efficient improvements. Their findings will be released today at a press event taking place at LSHTM to launch the Lancet Series on Energy and Health, which looks at access to electricity and energy poverty, transport, agriculture, nuclear and renewable power, and a range of other energy issues, and the effect each has on health. The Series calls for action to be taken at personal, national and global level to address these issues. Land transport emissions in London have remained stable since 1990 and are now responsible for about 14% of total emissions. Although cycling is gaining popularity, with an 83% increase in the capital since 2000, more than seven out of ten (72%) car journeys in London cover a distance shorter than 8 kilometres. There is evidence of substantial negative health effects from motorised transport in London. Replacing car trips with active transport such as walking or cycling would lower emissions and offer greater health gains than other options. In 2003, only 32% of men and 26% of women in London achieved minimum activity recommendations.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
BCSE Australia's peak industry body for clean energy and emissions tradingwww.bcse.org.au
Carbon Footprint Services Audit Your Company's CO2 Emissions Help Tackle Climate Changewww.emissionstatement.com.au
Doomsday for Australia? Experts warn Sydney could become virtually uninhabitable by 2070www.thefirstpost.co.uk

Calculations show that a car-free inner London scenario equates to a 49% reduction in emissions. Because most London car trips are within outer London, changes in inner London boroughs alone were not found to be sufficient to meet the GLA emissions target. The car-free inner and outer London model was found to bring about a 72% reduction in emissions, with active transport making up 53% of all trips. Given the lower starting point, this means 83% lower emissions than the UK average for 2000. The authors highlight the many benefits, in terms of public health and safety, that the adoption of the car-free scenario would achieve. Not only would the former car users benefit in terms of improved health as a result of greater physical activity, but as active transport in the form of walking or cycling increased, more people would be willing and able to comfortably walk or cycle longer distances. They also point to the strong link between pedestrian injury and deprivation, with rates in the most deprived London areas over twice those in the least deprived. In London, as in virtually all locations, walking is the main transport mode of the poor. With fewer cars, people would be exposed to less traffic danger. Although pedestrians and cyclists are exposed to greater risk than car drivers, previous studies have shown that as the number of pedestrians and cyclists increase, so the danger per km walked or cycled falls. James Woodcock, who led a team of researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical medicine, comments: ‘Only the car-free greater London scenario is close to achieving the emission reductions required by 2030. Even then we need to reduce carbon fuel use on our public transport. Car-free streets could transform the quality of our urban environment, while improving health. Although London has made small improvements, achieving a car-free city would require a dramatic move in favour of walking and cycling’. A separate paper uses London travel data to identify four archetypal car using groups in London: Claire, a 10 year old girl; Lucy, a 40 year old mother; Tom, a 50 year old man living and working in outer London; and Derek, a 78 year old man. It calculates the increases in physical activity and energy expenditure that would result if they transferred their car journeys to walking, cycling and public transport, with occasional trips by taxi. By doing so, they would expend an average of 139,300 kJ of energy a year, equivalent to an average of 4.5 kg of fat. Lucy would reduce her risk of breast cancer by 25% and increase her life expectancy by between 1 and 2 years, while Tom would enjoy a 20-40% reduction in the risk of premature mortality and around a 30% reduction in risk of type 2 diabetes. Source: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
» Next Article in Space

2007-09-13T16:29:00.000+10:00

Carmakers want time to cut CO2 emissions

September 13, 2007 - 10:14AM
AdvertisementAdvertisement
The chief executives of Europe's leading carmakers have backed a European Union proposal to cut carbon dioxide emissions as the auto sector moves to face up to the challenges of global warming.
In a joint statement issued at the Frankfurt Motor Show by the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA), the chief executives of key brand names such as BMW, Ford of Europe and PSA Peugeot Citroen said they endorsed the push to reduce CO2 emissions from cars.
But Sergio Marchionne, ACEA president and chief executive of the Italian carmakers Fiat said the European car industry only supported the EU plan for a cut in emissions to 120 grams per kilometre by 2015 and not the 2012 EU deadline.
"Sufficient lead-time is indispensable ahead of legislation that is this important. Possibly, a phase-in could be considered," the chief executives wrote.
They said lead-time is a common practice around the world with the Japanese government having agreed on new CO2 requirements with the car industry last year resulting in average emissions of 138 grams CO2 per kilometre from 2015.
Car industry executives gathered in Frankfurt this week for what is the world's biggest motor show hoping to use the 10-day event to demonstrate their commitment to helping the fight to tackle climate change.
"We are strongly committed and take our responsibility very seriously," the chief executives said in their joint declaration on global warming.
"We count on a EU policy that supports our efforts. There is a lot at stake for both the environment and the economy", they said.
The chief executives called again on EU governments to embrace a cost-effective integrated approach towards cars and CO2 emissions, which they said would result in larger environmental gains and safeguard investments and employment in Europe.
"The EU objective to bring carbon emissions from cars down to 120 grams per kilometre is achievable through an integrated approach and we fully support that route", said Marchionne.
He said the key elements of such a comprehensive approach are improved car technology, as well as infrastructure changes, a more efficient driving style, CO2-related taxation and the greater use of biofuels.
The European automakers have already invested heavily in CO2- cutting technologies over the past decade, the ACEA said with the industry having faced criticism about its failure to come to grips with the threat posed by climate change.
More than 50 CO2 innovations were introduced since 1995 covering a wide variety of areas, such as engines and transmission, alternative fuel technologies, light-weight materials and aerodynamics, the ACEA said.
In their statement, the chief executives went on to say that the car industry needed adequate lead-time to prepare for specific legal requirements to reflect the long development and production cycles of the car industry.
Apart from BMW, Peugeot Citroen, Fiat and Ford of Europe, the ACEA members include DAF Trucks, DaimlerChrysler, General Motors Europe, MAN truck group, Porsche, Renault, Scania, Volkswagen Group and the Volvo Group.
© 2007

2007-09-13T14:46:00.000+10:00

Tilting poles explain Martian ice cover

It has a mere dribble of water compared to Earth, yet over the past few million years Mars has experienced periodic ice ages that have shaped layers of ice lurking beneath its dusty surface.
The ice cycle arises from periodic fluctuations in the tilt of its axis similar to those that cause Earth's climate to vary from ice age to interglacial. There are important differences, though, because with no large moon to stabilise it, the Red Planet's tilt has varied far more widely than Earth's.
As recently as 5 million years ago, Mars's axis wobbled between 25 and 45 degrees from the perpendicular to the plane of the solar system - enough to evaporate polar ice caps and precipitate snow on the equator. It then shifted to a low-tilt mode, tipping back and forth every 125,000 years in a range from 15 to 35 degrees.
To see how this affected Mars's ice, Norbert Schörghofer of the University of Hawaii modelled its sublimation and diffusion, starting 5 million years ago with an ice sheet covered by a layer of 15 per cent dust and 85 per cent ice. While warm spells sublime the ice, each of the 40 cold intervals caused diffusion of moisture into soil, where it freezes.
Conflict resolution
The model results match the distribution of ice at mid-latitudes, suggesting that it diffused into the soil within the past half-million years. Ice within about 15 degrees of the poles is much older, Schörghofer says.
The new study is "very exciting" because it explains the location and stability of Martian ice, says James Head of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, US.
But Jacques Laskar of the Paris Observatory warns that the transport of Martian moisture depends "strongly on the parameters of the models".
His group published results in June showing that the northern ice cap vanished when Mars was strongly tilted, and didn't reappear until about a million years ago (Journal of Geophysical Research, vol 112, E06012). However, that would require that more than one layer was deposited during each Martian ice-age cycle.
A resolution of the conflict may come next year when NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander touches down in the northern Martian Plains, where Schörghofer expects to find pore ice.
Journal reference: Nature (vol 449, p 192)
From issue 2621 of New Scientist magazine, 12 September 2007, page 23

2007-09-13T14:42:00.000+10:00

Redesigned petrol engine promises green gains

simple redesign of the petrol engine could greatly increase its efficiency when idling or driving at low speeds, as well as reduce the harmful emissions it produces. UK researchers say the new design could even make petrol engines as efficient as diesel ones.
In most petrol engines, fuel is ignited by spark plugs inside cylinders which house the engine's pistons. When the fuel burns, it produces rapidly expanding gases which force the piston to move within the cylinder. This movement is harnessed to power the car.
One important factor in the efficiency of an engine is the amount of fuel it uses when idling. But there is a limit on this: squirt in too little fuel and it becomes so dispersed within the cylinder that it cannot burn and the engine stalls.
Squirt and burn
Car makers have experimented with various ways round this, such as creating a smaller fuel clouds, and controlling the timing and movement of air within the cylinder so that the cloud reaches the spark plug without dispersing.
"Doing that inside the cylinder requires many complex changes to the engine and you are limited by the valve timing and other factors," says Brian Knibb, an engineer at Knibb Gormezano and Partners in Derby, UK, who is part of the team hoping to commercialise a new approach.
The new idea is to have an additional, smaller chamber attached to the cylinder containing the spark plug. When the engine is idling, the fuel cloud is injected into this chamber and ignited.
A crucial part of the design is the chamber's shape, which carefully controls the airflow inside, trapping the fuel cloud so that it cannot disperse as it is pushed towards the spark plug. The resultant hot gases then expand into the larger cylinder to drive the piston as usual.
The smaller chamber allows a smaller amount of fuel to burn well. It also allows more careful control of the way fuel is burnt, so it combusts more completely and produces fewer of the nitrogen oxides known as NOx that form when fuel burns inefficiently. The technique, which was invented by engineer Dan Merritt, whilst working at Coventry University, UK, is known as MUSIC – for Merritt Unthrottled Spark Ignition Combustion.
When the engine needs to do more work, the fuel injector sprays a longer pulse into the chamber, while at peak performance a second fuel injector provides an additional pulse to produce a larger fuel cloud and more power.
Musical engines
Knibb says it is relatively straightforward to modify existing engines to run in this way. "To produce MUSIC engines, a factory would simply need to change the cylinder head fitted to engines, leaving the cylinders and the rest unchanged."
Merrit is now working with a company called Powertrain Technologies in Norfolk, UK, to test the idea on the road. The team is currently modifying a 2.0-litre Ford engine and hope to test it in a Ford Mondeo with the aim to make it 25% more fuel efficient. The project is partly supported by the Energy Saving Trust, a non-profit organisation promoting sustainable energy use and the car maker Ford.
The MUSIC design should make it possible to close the 25% efficiency gap between diesel and petrol engines, says Merrit, which is mostly due to greater efficiency when idling or travelling at low speed. Diesel engines achieve this because they are able to idle using smaller amounts of fuel.
"The MUSIC gasoline engine has now demonstrated part load efficiencies as good as the diesel engine, but at a lower cost," says Merritt, adding that most vehicles on the road spend the greater part of their lives working at light load or idling.
Although the extra chamber could certainly improve efficiency at low loads, the question is at what cost, says Robert Kenny, who works on engine design at Queen's University Belfast, UK. "Using two fuel injectors will certainly increase costs," he points out, "and the thermal load on the neck between the cylinder and chamber could be a long-term issue." The chamber arrangement will also reduce performance at full load, he says, "but the only way to judge the success of the design is to build and test it."
"Most car manufacturers are working in some way on tackling the poor efficiency of petrol engines at low loads, typically by controlling fuel movement better," says Kenny. "The technology is far from dead." Piezoelectric fuel injectors able to fire faster and even injecting multiple clouds of fuel are being investigated by Mercedes, among others, he says.

2007-09-13T14:41:00.001+10:00

Eating less meat may slow climate change

By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer Wed Sep 12, 7:08 PM ET
LONDON - Eating less meat could help slow global warming by reducing the number of livestock and thereby decreasing the amount of methane flatulence from the animals, scientists said on Thursday.
In a special energy and health series of the medical journal The Lancet, experts said people should eat fewer steaks and hamburgers. Reducing global red meat consumption by 10 percent, they said, would cut the gases emitted by cows, sheep and goats that contribute to global warming.
"We are at a significant tipping point," said Geri Brewster, a nutritionist at Northern Westchester Hospital in New York, who was not connected to the study.
"If people knew that they were threatening the environment by eating more meat, they might think twice before ordering a burger," Brewster said.
Other ways of reducing greenhouse gases from farming practices, like feeding animals higher-quality grains, would only have a limited impact on cutting emissions. Gases from animals destined for dinner plates account for nearly a quarter of all emissions worldwide.
"That leaves reducing demand for meat as the only real option," said Dr. John Powles, a public health expert at Cambridge University, one of the study's authors.
The amount of meat eaten varies considerably worldwide. In developed countries, people typically eat about 224 grams per day. But in Africa, most people only get about 31 grams a day.
With demand for meat increasing worldwide, experts worry that this increased livestock production will mean more gases like methane and nitrous oxide heating up the atmosphere. In China, for instance, people are eating double the amount of meat they used to a decade ago.
Powles said that if the global average were 90 grams per day, that would prevent the levels of gases from speeding up climate change.
Eating less red meat would also improve health in general. Powles and his co-authors estimate that reducing meat consumption would reduce the numbers of people with heart disease and cancer. One study has estimated that the risk of colorectal cancer drops by about a third for every 100 grams of red meat that is cut out of your diet.
"As a society, we are overconsuming protein," Brewster said. "If we ate less red meat, it would also help stop the obesity epidemic."
Experts said that it would probably take decades to wane the public off of its meat-eating tendency. "We need to better understand the implications of our diet," said Dr. Maria Neira, director of director of the World Health Organization's department of public health and the environment.
"It is an interesting theory that needs to be further examined," she said. "But eating less meat could definitely be one way to reduce gas emissions and climate change."

2007-09-13T14:32:00.000+10:00

Japanese consumers feel the pinch of biofuel demand

In this file photo, customers check-out samples of food at a Tokyo's department store. As more people embrace ethanol and other biofuels as eco-friendly alternatives to fossil fuels in curbing global warming, the unintended consequence is a rise in food prices as demand puts pressure on agriculture.Japanese consumers hoping to reduce their dependence on petrol at the pump are getting a surprise as they feel the pinch elsewhere -- when they sip orange juice, slurp noodles or bite into a sandwich.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
Biofuels International - Free sample copy. Learn more about biodiesel, bioethanol & biomass. www.biofuels-news.com
Dogears Etc. - Online Bookstore Print-On-Demand Services www.dogearsetc.com
Ski Japan's Deep Powder - Unique Experience - Great Deals! Japan - Snow Holiday - Specialists www.Travelplan.com.au/SkiJapan

As more people embrace ethanol and other biofuels as eco-friendly alternatives to fossil fuels in curbing global warming, the unintended consequence is a rise in food prices as demand puts pressure on agriculture.
");
//]]>-->
document.context='YTowOnt9';

While the most frequently voiced concern is that food will become more expensive in the developing world, the effects are already being felt in quiet ways in rich countries such as Japan, which relies on imports for most of its food needs. The biofuel craze has been blamed for rises in the price of a range of foodstuffs in Japan, from fruit juice to mayonnaise, with one chain of restaurants serving up inexpensive curries hiking prices by some 12 percent this month. "I had no idea why the price of the curry I just ate went up," said office worker Hidenori Kuboaki, 36, after finishing a pork curry-rice at a Coco Ichibanya outlet in Tokyo. The price of his lunch had suddenly risen to 450 yen (3.9 dollars) from 400 yen (3.5 dollars). "Biofuel is one reason," said a spokesman for the restaurant chain, saying prices were rising for pork, beef and dairy products as the animals are fed grain that is also used to produce fuel. The crunch has also hit small companies. Marufuku, a bakery in Tokyo's old Itabashi area, recently decided to hike the price of a loaf of bread by several yen (cents), as biofuel production pushes up the price of the raw materials. "The rise in price is all related to the cost of ingredients for bread. We're barely able to make a profit," bakery manager Norikazu Abe said with a troubled look on his face. Wheat prices for December delivery reached an all-time closing high of 7.84 dollars a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade for the week ended September 1, up from 7.42 dollars the week before. Japan is particulatly vulnerable to rises in commodity prices, as the country's self-sufficiency in food has slipped below 40 percent for the first time in more than a decade, the government said last month.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
Biodiesel Plants We supply components for Biodiesel Plants!www.frankenfilter.com
Top 5 Energy Stocks Add some Green to your Portfolio. Free Alternative Energy Report.www.RisingStarStocks.com/Energy
Niseko Powder Packages Book Central Hirafu accommodation transfers,lift tickets,local tourswww.NisekoPowderHolidays.com

The proportion of Japan's food produced at home came to 39 percent in the year to March, falling below 40 percent for the first time in 13 years, according to official data. Japan imports about five million tonnes of wheat annually, more than 80 percent of its domestic demand, according to the farm ministry. The price changes at consumer level are more subtle, but they are affecting a growing number of food products. Nissin Food Products, the inventor of instant ramen, said September 5 it was increasing the price of its iconic Cup Noodles for the first time in nearly two decades due to rising costs of wheat and other crops. "The price hike was inevitable, as the government-set price of imported wheat is to rise by 10 percent in October," following a 1.3 percent rise in April, said Nissin spokesman Masayuki Yasutake. The government announced the price hike last month, saying "world prices of grains are rising significantly, due to increasing demand for biofuels" along with demand caused by economic growth of emerging countries. Kirin Tropicana, the Japanese sales agent of US beverage giant PepsiCo Inc.'s Tropicana products, in May raised prices of its 100-percent fruit juices by between 10 and 18 percent. The area that was planted with oranges in key citrus producer Brazil has been declining in recent years despite solid demand, according to the Japan Fruit Juice Association. "Because sugar cane is easier to grow and the prices are surging, reflecting demand for biofuel, farmers in Brazil are encouraged to change crops to sugar cane," said Sanosuke Tsuchiya, a board member of the association. Other companies that have raised prices include Kewpie Co., Japan's top mayonnaise maker, and Nisshin Oillio, which hiked prices for rapeseed and soybean oil by about 10 percent in July. While Japan, importing 60 percent of what it eats, is particularly sensitive to the biofuel crunch, other countries have also been alarmed. China has imposed restrictions on the amount of corn that biofuel producers can use. But with companies ignoring the restrictions, China's consumer price index still rose 3.5 percent in the first seven months of this year driven by rising food prices. Akio Shibata, director of Marubeni Research Institute in Tokyo, said further effects around the world were "only a matter of time". World leaders are promoting biofuels, with European Union member states in February agreeing that they should constitute at least 10 percent of fuels used in new vehicles by 2020. In the hope of curbing food prices, Japan's farm ministry is looking to study ways to turn inedible commoditieis, such as straw, into biofuel rather than corn and other crops. It also plans to research whether it can make biofuel out of the millions of wooden chopsticks that are discarded each year in Japan. © 2007 AFP

2007-09-13T14:28:00.000+10:00

To maximize biofuel potential, researchers look for sorghum's 'sweet spot'

Researchers insert an IV into the sorghum plant as a means of infusing the tracer sucrose, so that they can track the movement and distribution of sugar within the growing plant. Credit: Jay Cockrell, TAESPicture this - IV (intravenous) lines in a sorghum field. It's not as far-fetched as it sounds. It's one way that scientists at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station are researching crops that may contribute to the biofuel revolution.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
Algae: The Next Biofuel - The Replacement for Transportation Fuels in the U.S. - New Report. www.GreenChipStocks.com/Algae_Rpt
Coca Plant - Get the facts about marijuana, ice speed, ecstacy & alcohol online. www.australia.gov.au/drugs
#1 Primary Industry Jobs - SEEK has over 150,000 new jobs Get jobs emailed daily. www.seek.com.au

In Beaumont, Dr. Lee Tarpley, plant physiologist, and College Station colleague, Dr. Don Vietor, professor of crop physiology, have focused their research on sweet sorghum. While sweet sorghum and sugarcane are close relatives, the researchers have shown that the two species have different ways of moving and storing sugar. Tracer sucrose is inserted into growing plants, using a system similar to an IV. Once the sucrose is inside the plants, the researchers can track the movement and distribution. They found that, due to the plant's physiology, sweet sorghum appears to be more efficient in reusing the stored sugar to support growth of other parts of the plant. The mechanisms in sugarcane, however, allow it to accumulate very high levels of sucrose. "The differences are critical, and need to be understood for breeders to develop new varieties specifically for the biofuel industry," Tarpley said. Sweet sorghum and sugarcane are both well suited for this purpose.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
Crop Protection Monthly Crop Protection and Pesticide News Take a free 3 month subscriptionwww.crop-protection-monthly.co.uk
Grow Organic Vegetables In Your Own Backyard for Free - Save $100 a Week in Food Billswww.FreeOrganicGarden.com/LearnHow
Cholesterol Cure Reviews Top 5 High Cholesterol Treatments Compared. We Found A Clear Winner!NaturalCureGuide.com

"While sorghum is an annual and can fit well into a crop rotation, sugarcane is a suitable perennial for many areas," Tarpley said. But to maximize the potential of sweet sorghum as a biofuel crop, breeders need to understand the physiology of the plant and not use sugarcane as a model. "There is a large body of research on sugarcane that was previously thought to apply equally well to sorghum. Instead, we need to fully understand how sorghum moves and stores sugar in order to elevate to the next level in our breeding efforts," Tarpley said. The study results were published in the June 2007 issue of BMC Plant Biology (http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2229/7/33).

2007-09-13T08:49:00.000+10:00

S.Korea to invest $6.14 bln in 2 nuclear plants

Wed Sep 12, 2007 4:02am ET
International News
U.S. calls meeting on Iran sanctions
U.S. officials confirm Israel strike on Syria
New British foot and mouth case confirmed
More International News...

Email This Article Print This Article Reprints
[-] Text [+]
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea will invest 5.73 trillion won ($6.14 billion) to build two nuclear plants of 1.4 million kilowatts each by 2013-2014, Seoul's energy ministry said on Wednesday.
The plants will cut the use of fuel oil used for power generation by 4.2 million tones annually.
This is equivalent to saving 2.84 billion won per day on fuel oil, the ministry added.

2007-09-13T08:40:00.001+10:00

Global warming impact like nuclear war: report

Posted 2 hours 8 minutes ago
Climate change could have global security implications on a par with nuclear war unless urgent action is taken, a report said.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) security think-tank said global warming would hit crop yields and water availability everywhere, causing great human suffering and leading to regional strife.
While everyone had now started to recognise the threat posed by climate change, no one was taking effective leadership to tackle it and no one could tell precisely when and where it would hit hardest, it added.
"The most recent international moves towards combating global warming represent a recognition ... that if the emission of greenhouse gases ... is allowed to continue unchecked, the effects will be catastrophic - on the level of nuclear war," the IISS report said.
"Even if the international community succeeds in adopting comprehensive and effective measures to mitigate climate change, there will still be unavoidable impacts from global warming on the environment, economies and human security," it added.
Scientists say global average temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4 degrees Celsius this century due to burning fossil fuels for power and transport.
The IISS report said the effects would cause a host of problems including rising sea levels, forced migration, freak storms, droughts, floods, extinctions, wildfires, disease epidemics, crop failures and famines.
The impact was already being felt - particularly in conflicts in Kenya and Sudan - and more was expected in places from Asia to Latin America as dwindling resources led to competition between haves and have nots.
"We can all see that climate change is a threat to global security, and you can judge some of the more obvious causes and areas," said IISS transnational threat specialist Nigel Inkster.
"What is much harder to do is see how to cope with them."
The report, an annual survey of the impact of world events on global security, said conflicts and state collapses due to climate change would reduce the world's ability to tackle the causes and to reduce the effects of global warming.
State failures would increase the gap between rich and poor and heighten racial and ethnic tensions which in turn would produce fertile breeding grounds for more conflict.
Urban areas would not be exempt from the fallout as falling crop yields due to reduced water and rising temperatures would push food prices higher, IISS said.
Overall, it said 65 countries were likely to lose over 15 per cent of their agricultural output by 2100 at a time when the world's population was expected to head from six billion now to nine billion people.
"Fundamental environmental issues of food, water and energy security ultimately lie behind many present security concerns, and climate change will magnify all three," it added.
- Reuters

2007-09-12T17:30:00.000+10:00

Southeast Asia gears up for palm oil boom

by Samantha Brown 1 hour, 52 minutes ago
JAKARTA (AFP) - Southeast Asian nations are gearing up for a palm oil boom as interest in biofuels soars, but activists warn the crop may not satisfy a global thirst for energy that is both clean and green.
They caution that oil palm plantations require massive swathes of land -- either what's left of the region's disappearing forests, denuded plots that would be better off reforested, or land critical to supporting local people.
Governments and companies have been scrambling to cash in since palm oil prices jumped last year due to spiking demand from China, India and Europe, where biofuels should comprise 10 percent of motor fuels by 2020.
Indonesia has launched a particularly ambitious biofuels expansion programme, which aims to see Southeast Asia's largest economy source 17 percent of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2025.
Evita Herawati, an assistant to Indonesia's minister of energy, said 5.5 million hectares (13.5 million acres) will be set aside for biofuel plantations by 2010, 1.5 million hectares of which are for oil palm.
The main objective is "to create jobs and alleviate poverty," with some 3.5 million new jobs being eyed by 2010.
"A lot of forest has been cut down but they didn't use it at all. We would like to use it for this programme," she told AFP, adding that so far 58 deals worth a total of 12.4 billion dollars have been signed with companies.
She estimated that just in Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of Borneo island, about 5.5 million hectares are available for use -- an area far larger than Denmark and a bit smaller than Sri Lanka. Nine million additional hectares are available elsewhere, Herawati said.
The issue of where the land will come from worries activists, who point out that much of Indonesia's peatland forests have already been destroyed, releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide.
Rully Syumanda, of Indonesia's environmental watchdog Walhi, said proposing palm oil plantations has been used in recent years in Indonesia "as a pretext to clear land and take the more valuable logs".
He estimates that nearly 17 million hectares of Indonesia's forests have been cleared ostensibly for oil palm plantations since the 1960s, but only six million hectares have been cultivated.
Though he concedes that the government is now making efforts to reforest, catch offenders and audit the industry, Syumanda said these were "insignificant compared to the damage that is being inflicted on the environment".
Rudi Lumuru, from Sawit Watch, an industry monitor, meanwhile said much of this "empty" land is actually used by local people. He reckons more than 500 communities have been embroiled in conflicts with more than 100 palm oil companies, typically from Malaysia.
"This land has been used since a long time ago by the people. They live on the land, they grow on the land," he said. "The government says people can make money, but it's about transition of culture. The culture of the farmers, it's rice, coffee, cocoa -- it's not palm oil."
While compensation payments may be meted out, they end up being meagre thanks to endemic corruption, he added.
The Indonesian industry says it is cleaning up its act.
"The industry now is trying to avoid destroying land," said Derom Bangun, executive chairman of the Indonesian Palm Oil Association. "Companies no longer clear land by burning or in ways that harm the environment or wildlife."
Indonesian companies have joined the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a WWF-led initiative to engage palm oil companies, and is trying to abide by their principles, he said.
Companies in Malaysia, the world's largest palm oil producer -- expected to be eclipsed by Indonesia this year -- are being lured here by the vast expanses of already-cleared land.
Malaysian plantations minister Peter Chin insists palm oil production does not damage the environment and said Malaysian companies will boost productivity by replanting with higher yielding clones and adopting good agronomic practice.
"We are committed to ensuring that whatever we do now is not at the expense of the environment and our future generations," he said.
According to the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, 65 percent of Malaysia's total land area of almost 33 million hectares is comprised of forest. Palm oil plantations use 12 percent.
Alvin Tai, plantation analyst at OSK Securities, said most of the companies listed on the Malaysian bourse are expanding in Indonesia as landbank in Malaysia is limited.
He said most major plantation firms were RSPO members and "they have the resources to maintain those standards. It's the smaller plantation owners that are a concern".
Malaysia's northern neighbour Thailand is also getting in on the game.
High prices for palm oil, driven by Bangkok's search for alternative fuels, have driven more and more farmers to convert rubber and fruit plantations to grow oil palm, an official from Thailand's agriculture ministry said.
Local prices of palm oil have almost doubled to more than four baht (seven cents) per kilogramme (2.2 pounds) from two baht last year.
The Philippines meanwhile has about 25,000 hectares under cultivation, but some 454,000 hectares of "disposable land" -- pasture or shrubbery -- mostly in the south, has been earmarked as well, the agriculture department said.

2007-09-12T14:31:00.000+10:00

Frankfurt motor show: Automakers go green, will clients follow?

by Bill Ickes Tue Sep 11, 11:52 AM ET
FRANKFURT (AFP) - The Frankfurt Motor Show pushed its green theme to the limit Tuesday, but if heads of the world's biggest auto companies were clearly on board, questions remained about whether clients would follow.
Chinese and German automakers skirmished meanwhile in a copyright spat over the four-wheel drive CEO model, produced by the Chinese company Shuanghuan and which BMW claims was copied from its own discontinued X5 sports utility vehicle (SUV).
US giant General Motors was among carmakers introducing new designs that focused on sustainable mobility, the show's theme, rolling out several cars aimed at sharply cutting fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.
"It's neither feasible, nor optimal for our industry to continue to rely almost exclusively on oil to supply the world's automotive energy requirements," GM chairman and chief executive Richard Wagoner told banks of reporters and company executives as he presented his strategy for the future.
One day earlier, Wagoner's Japanese counterpart at rival Toyota, Katsuaki Watanabe, told a press conference that competition in the field of hybrid cars was good for everyone because progress made by one automaker benefited all.
Toyota leads the industry with its Prius hybrid that combines an electric motor with a petrol engine, while GM has invested heavily in developing so-called E85 capable cars that use gasoline with a stiff shot of ethanol.
The US automaker, running neck-and-neck with Toyota this year for the title of world's biggest car manufacturer, also presented an Opel concept car that runs on electricity, along with a dollop of diesel to recharge the batteries.
GM's European president, Carl-Peter Foster, told reporters that automakers would probably rely on a range of solutions, with no single technology covering all needs to begin with.
"I think that basically what you will see is a competition of various technologies and ultimately the one that best suits the needs" of specific segments would win, Foster said.
"I think that alternative fuels have to play a larger role," he added, along with electrification, which was cheap to produce and integrate into vehicles.
Even German luxury sports car maker Porsche showed a hybrid version of its Cayenne SUV, keeping to the German Automobile Federation's slogan for the show: "See What Will Move Your Future."
German giants Volkswagen and DaimlerChrysler sent flotillas of "clean cars" to the fair, and fuel consumption and CO2 emissions replaced, temporarily at least, horsepower or torque as sector buzz words.
Clean is not cheap however, and analysts question how many customers will dig deeper into their pockets to prove they are environmentally concious.
Wagoner told reporters that GM was happy to build eco-friendly cars, like its low-slung silver electric Volt model that glittered under metallic trees, but that making them affordable was tough.
The issue was supplying them "in a way the consumer feels like its a good value," he said. "That's the challenge."
BMW faced its own challenge with the Chinese-built CEO. But despite disclosing last week it had launched legal action against the importer of the CEO, it said it did not plan to immediately confiscate the two models that were on display.
"We are not planning anything tomorrow at 9:00 am," a BMW spokesman said Tuesday, although he refused to rule out further action.
German manufacturers are believed to be wary of getting on the wrong side of Chinese authorities given the country's massive market, but trade and copyright issues nonetheless keep cropping up between European states and the Asian giant.
Meanwhile, more than 1,000 companies from around 40 countries showed wares at the Frankfurt fair, one of the world's biggest, amid a blitz of bright lights, beautiful models and men in business suits.
The emphasis on cleaner cars comes in part because automakers are under pressure from the European Commission to cut CO2 emissions sharply by 2012 to around 130 grams per kilometer.
Opel's Flextreme concept car was designed to run around 55 kilometers (34 miles) on electricity while recharging with a small diesel engine.
That would meet the needs of 75 percent of European commuters, according to GM research, but emit less than 40 grams of CO2 per kilometer and use less than 1.5 litres of diesel fuel per 100 kilometers, a feat by current standards

2007-09-12T09:12:00.001+10:00

Research finds diesel exhaust kills throat cells
Researchers at Deakin University have found that diesel exhaust is far more damaging to our health than exhaust from biodiesel, the plant-based fuel.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
46 cent per gallon Diesel - Revolutionary New Diesel Fuel No conversions. Easy to make fuel DieselSecret.com
Team ALP: Peter Garrett - Helping to save the planet with fresh ideas on climate change. www.kevin07.com
Dust & Fume Australia - Designed to suit your application Portable to Fully-Automatic systems www.smithsfans.com.au

Associate Professor Leigh Ackland, Associate Head of Deakin’s School of Life and Environmental Sciences, led a team of researchers who compared the effects of diesel exhaust and biodiesel exhaust on human airway cells. They found that diesel exhaust damaged and killed the cells, while biodiesel exhaust had little effect. “Australia's escalating need for fuel is posing a major health problem,” Associate Professor Ackland said. “The fumes from burning fuels, including diesel, contributes to pollution and can cause heart disease, bronchitis and asthma. Efforts are underway to replace petrol and diesel with cleaner biofuels, such as biodiesel, but there is considerable resistance to this. “This study provides clear evidence that diesel exhaust is more harmful to our health than biodiesel exhaust.” As it is not possible to study in real time what happens in the real human airway, the researchers conducted their research on human airway cells grown in a culture. The cells were exposed to the particulate matter emitted in diesel and biodiesel exhaust fumes. “Particulate matter is the burnt material, including carbon particles, emitted into the air. This particulate matter is part of biodiesel and diesel fumes but the particles produced from biodiesel were much less damaging to the cells than particles produced from diesel,” Associate Professor Ackland explained.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
Air & Noise Pollution Control Specialist, products to eliminate harmful emissionswww.exhaustcontrol.com.au
Increase Engine Power Increase performance, pervent wear. No mechanical modification.www.costeffective.com.au
Find Fuel-Efficient Cars With Thousands Of New & Used Cars, CARSguide.com.au is Too Big to Misswww.carsguide.com.au

“Our research found that the particulate matter from diesel exhaust stimulated a ‘death pathway’ response that the body uses to dispose of damaged cells. This response caused the airway cells to fuse together and die. “We saw hardly any cell death after treatment with biodiesel particulates.” Associate Professor Ackland said that the results of the study provide support for calls to move towards replacing petrol and diesel with cleaner biofuels. “It is clear that breathing in diesel fumes is going to have a far more detrimental effect on our health than biodiesel. Given the level of cell death we have found, diesel exhaust could be the cause of respiratory disorders such as asthma and could even be implicated in cancer,” she said. Source: Research Australia

2007-09-11T15:23:00.000+10:00

Red faces as the state's green scheme hits wall

Email
Print
Normal font
Large font
Wendy Frew and Marian WilkinsonSeptember 11, 2007
Page 1 of 2 Single page
Latest related coverage
Going global, crashing locally
AdvertisementAdvertisement

NSW'S flagship scheme to cut greenhouse gas pollution is on the verge of collapse, putting jobs and millions of green investment dollars at risk and killing the incentive for householders to cut soaring electricity consumption.
A plunge in the state's carbon price - caused by an oversupplied market colliding with investor uncertainty - is crippling the Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme. As big energy companies stop buying emission savings, the green-friendly companies that sell them are finding their cashflow drying up.
Blame for the crisis has been sheeted home to the NSW and federal governments. Critics say the State Government has made it too easy for polluters to participate in the market and that the Federal Government has created long-term uncertainty about climate change policy.
Paul Gilding, the head of the high-profile energy saving company Easy Being Green, told the Herald yesterday the scheme was in crisis and that the survival of his company was on the line.
"Easy Being Green is absolutely at risk of ceasing to exist in NSW if the price stays where it is," he said. "It means the end of operations in this state and the end of 140 permanent jobs and 100 full-time contractors."
The revelation of the crisis is an embarrassment for the NSW Government, which will release the Owen report this morning, recommending the sale of the state's electricity retailers and generators.
Under the scheme - the first of its kind in Australia - power plants, forestry groups and energy efficiency companies that act to cut greenhouse gas emissions are awarded certificates, each one representing the equivalent of one tonne of carbon dioxide avoided.
They sell these certificates to energy retailers, which have to meet mandatory emissions targets set by the State Government. The costs are passed on to electricity consumers.
The certificates generated since 2003 are estimated to be worth about $450 million. But over the past few months a series of federal and state policy announcements has sent the market into a spin. The price of carbon
has plummeted 50 per cent, from $12 a tonne of carbon dioxide mid-year to just over $6 yesterday.
Doubts were raised about how a state scheme would merge with any national emissions trading scheme when the Prime Minister, John Howard, released his emissions trading report in May.
The NSW carbon price, already languishing around $11 a tonne, fell further in July when Mr Howard appeared to exclude demand management and energy efficiency abatement from the scheme. At $6, it is no longer economical for companies such as Easy Being Green, Neco and Fieldforce to install light bulbs, low-flow showerheads and other energy-saving devices into homes free or at heavily discounted prices.

Mr Gilding said the scheme's most cost-effective and efficient way of cutting greenhouse gas pollution would disappear. "That will be a tragedy," he said. "This is the scheme that is cutting greenhouse gas pollution at the mass consumer level."
The NSW Government has been accused by some market participants and green groups of contributing to the collapse by making it too easy to generate certificates that did not represent genuine greenhouse gas cuts. The NSW Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Water, Phil Koperberg, declined a request for an interview. A spokeswoman for him blamed the Federal Government for the market crash.
The State Government has formed a taskforce to investigate the price collapse.
The head of the NSW advisory panel on climate change, Martijn Wilder, from the law firm Baker & McKenzie, said he believed a number of energy efficiency companies in the market were "on the edge". He said there were two simple factors: the oversupply of certificates and the uncertainty in the market since the Federal Government announced its carbon trading scheme.
Fieldforce's managing director, Craig Bathie, said if the price of carbon remained at $6, more than half of NSW householders would miss out on free or discounted energy installations, and his company might have to lay off a couple of hundred employees in rural areas.
Neco's carbon services director, Ben O'Callaghan, said his company might have to close its regional Carbon Services Division, and 60 jobs in 10 regional locations would be lost.

2007-09-11T11:28:00.000+10:00

Howard, not conservationists, 'biggest threat to coal miners'

By Jane Cowan
Posted 22 minutes ago

The CFMEU says the Government needs to invest more in clean goal technology and renewables. (File photo) (AAP)
Audio: Miners and greenies join forces on climate change (AM)
The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) have joined forces to pressure the major parties for a tougher stance on climate change.
The unconventional alliance threatens to blow a hole in Prime Minister John Howard's rationale that bigger cuts to greenhouse gas emissions would put coal miners out of work.
Mr Howard has said he will not do anything in the name of climate change that hurts the jobs of Australian coal miners.
But CFMEU national president Tony Maher says it is not the environment that is threatening miners' livelihoods.
"John Howard's the biggest threat to coal miners' jobs I've ever seen," he said.
"That decade of inaction means that we're a decade behind where we need to be in terms of clean coal technology."
The ACF and the CFMEU want both the Government and the Opposition to set science-based legislative targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and to substantially increase the existing mandatory renewable energy target.
The alliance also wants Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol before the end of the year.
Mr Maher says climate change needs more consensus and less conflict.
He says while some environmentalists might oppose all mining outright, that kind of argument is really on the fringes of the modern debate.
"The mainstream debate is about how we go forward, how we have a low emissions future, and we need more renewables, we need a lot more investment in low emission coal technology," he said.
"I think there's an emerging consensus amongst stakeholders. I think even business is starting to come on board in a pretty serious way."
Mr Maher says what is missing is leadership on the part of the Government.
"Our members support our policy of going for a low emissions future and we're not afraid of it, so the Government has let us down and we'll forge ahead anyway," he said.
ACF executive director Don Henry agrees.
"We've both realised if you're a worker or an environmentalist or for that matter even a businessman, it's in all of our interests that we get cracking on climate change because none of us want to hand on a dangerous climate to our kids, and there's also job opportunities in cleaning up our economy," he said.
Mr Henry says the alliance puts paid to the argument that tackling climate change puts mining jobs at risk.
"I don't think tackling climate change is a debate about jobs versus the environment," he said.
"It's really a matter of trying to find common ground and solutions and working together for a cleaner, prosperous future rather than debates being stuck - us and them - and as a nation us not moving forward. We can't afford that."
A spokesman for federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull says the alliance is a blatant political ad on the part of a union.

2007-09-11T10:25:00.000+10:00

Radio frequencies help burn salt water

2 hours, 49 minutes ago
ERIE, Pa. - An Erie cancer researcher has found a way to burn salt water, a novel invention that is being touted by one chemist as the "most remarkable" water science discovery in a century.
John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn.
The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.
Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, has held demonstrations at his State College lab to confirm his own observations.
The radio frequencies act to weaken the bonds between the elements that make up salt water, releasing the hydrogen, Roy said. Once ignited, the hydrogen will burn as long as it is exposed to the frequencies, he said.
The discovery is "the most remarkable in water science in 100 years," Roy said.
"This is the most abundant element in the world. It is everywhere," Roy said. "Seeing it burn gives me the chills."
Roy will meet this week with officials from the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense to try to obtain research funding.
The scientists want to find out whether the energy output from the burning hydrogen — which reached a heat of more than 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit — would be enough to power a car or other heavy machinery.
"We will get our ideas together and check this out and see where it leads," Roy said. "The potential is huge."
___
Information

2007-09-10T13:50:00.001+10:00

Iowa Catches Wind to Boost State's Energy Supply

By Greg Flakus Des Moines05 September 2007
As the price of energy increases and the environmental effects of burning fossil fuels become more apparent, utility companies around the country are looking to alternative energy to generate at least part of their electricity. One place where such a program is moving forward quickly is the Midwestern state of Iowa. VOA's Greg Flakus has more in this report from Des Moines.
Wind turbine at the Iowa State FairAmong the many attractions at this year's Iowa State Fair was a structure on a small hill in the middle of the fair ground that provided some of the electrical power consumed there.
The wind turbine operated by MidAmerican Energy served both as a source of energy and an educational exhibit to show fairgoers how the state is utilizing alternative energy to lessen air pollution and reduce use of fossil fuels like coal.
That idea appeals to many Iowans, including this farmer who wanted to know how he could participate in the program.
Wind turbine"We don't have to dig up any extra coal or natural gas," he said. "Basically, the wind is a free substance, but it does not blow all the time."
In fact, many farmers around the state already have wind turbines operating on their land, producing electricity that goes into the statewide grid.
Although the turbine installed on the fair grounds is close to 40 meters high, it is half the size of the standard turbines used in rural areas. Still MidAmerican spokesman Allan Urlis says it is producing a significant amount of electricity.
Allan Urlis"We are talking about all the electricity that is used during the 11 days of the state fair," said Allan Urlis. "That is how much electricity this wind turbine produces in a year's time."
Many Iowans visiting the MidAmerican visitors' center at the fair were surprised that their state has gone so far in developing this resource since it is far from the windiest state, but Urlis says the state has a strong commitment to develop alternative energy.
"Iowa is number ten in the country in the amount of wind resources we have, behind nine other states, but when it comes to the amount of wind-energy electric generation, Iowa is number three, behind Texas and California," he said.
Row of wind turbines in rural IowaWind currently produces 460 megawatts of power for MidAmerican in Iowa. Because windy conditions come and go, Iowa cannot rely exclusively on wind generation, but Allan Urlis says planned expansion of the system will cut use of coal and benefit the environment.
"When we finish the plans that we have, to have almost 1,000 megawatts of wind energy by next year, that is the equivalent to removing the emissions that are placed in the atmosphere by 682,000 cars in the state of Iowa in a year's time," said Urlis.
The wind mills, which often stand in rows, are viewed by many as graceful visual attractions in the countryside, their huge white blades moving slowly above the green fields. Urlis says most farmers who have signed contracts to allow turbines to be placed on their land are quite satisfied.
"It is a win-win for landowners," he said. "They get an annual easement payment for the wind turbine plus they can still farm the ground virtually right up to the base of those turbines."
With planned expansion, the huge white turbines could soon become a common sight in corn fields and pastures all over Iowa.
E-mail This Article

2007-09-10T13:37:00.000+10:00

Reproducing the power of the sun on Earth is no easy task,

but an international team of physicists based in Europe is now preparing to give it a go.
If their attempt to develop nuclear fusion works, it could provide a limitless and clean source of energy that promises to end reliance on the fossil fuels that are causing global warming.

The consortium, led by Mike Dunne of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxford, UK, hopes to develop commercial nuclear fusion using lasers to crush together isotopes of hydrogen - deuterium and tritium - to create helium. This releases neutrons and huge amounts of energy.
The European Commission gave approval in July for the High Power Laser Energy Research (HiPER) facility. Last week, negotiations began to establish where the facility will be located, how the £500-million project will be funded and what technical options to pursue.
"This project is now going ahead," says Dunne. "It's just a matter of working out the detail." Dunne leads a consortium of scientists from 15 nations, which hopes to begin construction of the facility in 2011

Voltzman

Algae hold the key to the biofuel conundrum

Tools

Related Articles

Web Links

Spontaneous attachment

Controlled reaction

Add a comment

Tools

IPCC report urges swift action on global warming

Bali conference

ASEAN summit to promote nuclear energy, solar power

RECOMMEND THIS STORY

China sees reduction in coal emissions

RECOMMEND THIS STORY

China Powers Ahead on Renewable Energy

China the focus in clean cars race

RECOMMEND THIS STORY

Absorbing CO2 by Dumping Urea Into Ocean Pisses Off Activists

Mechanical 'fish' could tap turbulence for energy

Lateral drift

Slow but steady

RECO

Search for news

My Tags

My Stories

Also Of Interest

Search for news

My Tags

My Stories

Also Of Interest