Analysis by Zahra Hirji
Mon Aug 30, 2010 08:20 PM ET
The rapid expansion of biofuel production in Africa over the past decade has stirred up enormous controversy. Critics have questioned the efficiency of the alternative fuels, and charged rich countries with endangering the food security of developing nations by commandeering land that would be used to grow food crops.
In that vein, a new study (pdf) by the environmental group Friends of the Earth points a wagging finger at the European Union, among other international organizations, for buying over 19,000 square miles of land across Africa -- an area larger than the Netherlands -- to build massive biofuel projects that supposedly provide few returns for local communities.
Drawing upon case studies of "land-grabbing" (the leasing or selling of land to outside governments or corporations) from 11 different countries across Africa, Friends of the Earth argues that the only solution is for African states to, "immediately suspend further land acquisitions and investments in agrofuels."
But the report is steeped in alarmist language, and it oversimplifies the many complexities surrounding biofuel production in Africa and its effect on local economies.
Across the African continent, projects are supporting over a dozen different types of biofuels -- jatropha, sugar cane, and maize, to name a few. The efficiency of these projects is highly variable and depends on a collection of factors, including the type of biofuel production process, the technology being used, and geographical location.
Friends of the Earth (whose acronym is, ironically enough, FoE) highlights a trend of some African countries jumping on the biofuel production bandwagon without properly researching the productivity of certain crops. For example, many countries in Africa and elsewhere blindly threw large sums of money at jatropha farms, a plant with an oily seed that can be harnessed for fuel shown in the image above, only to find was not the miracle crop it had promised to be.
But such negative examples are only half of the African biofuel story. In the same countries that the FoE reports as suffering from biofuel production, well-recognized international donors, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and research programs, like the International Food Policy Research Institute, have shown the benefits of biofuel projects for local communities.
Biofuel farms often provide jobs and stimulate local economies. Moreover, the fuel is then distributed to both domestic and international markets (rather than only international markets, as touted by FoE).
Mozambique is a perfect example of an African nation that is going into the biofuels business with its eyes open. The government is investing lots of land (over 46,000 square miles) and money into biofuels, even though 35 percent of the country's population is "chronically food insecure." The country believes it can accommodate both food and biofuel production.
But if it cannot, the government will halt biofuel production, promising, "not to allow biofuel production to compromise food security in any way."
The key to successful biofuel production in Africa depends on crafting policies that safeguard the interests of local populations.
There are many examples of countries failing to do this in the past, but according to a recent review by the Forum of Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), the continent is on track to strike a healthy balance between between its fuel and food needs.
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
The Key to China’s Electric Car Market: Partnerships
By KATIE FEHRENBACHER of GigaOm
Published: August 30, 2010
Electric car makers that don’t have a “China-strategy” are overlooking the world’s largest market. Most do, and after interviewing a half-dozen EV startups over the past several weeks, it’s clear that partnering with Chinese battery and auto makers is one of the dominant strategies for U.S. electric car startups like Coda, AC Propulsion, and even ZAP. This morning, another China electric vehicle partnership has emerged. Called the New Energy Sustainable Transportation International Alliance, the group includes auto parts maker Eaton, IBM, development firm AECOM, automaker Beiqi Foton Motor Co., lithium-ion battery maker MGL, and electric motor producer Broad Ocean.
The group says their first project is to develop and sell electric buses in Chinese cities that will use products from Eaton, Broad Ocean and MGL, and the alliance says they will be focusing particularly on city-owned fleets, taxis, and commercial charging infrastructure.
There are a couple of reasons why China’s plug-in vehicle market (all-electric and hybrids) is so crucial. With about 35 cars per 1,000 people in China’s 1.3 billion-person population, roughly 80 percent of car sales in the country are currently made to first-time buyers. As Josie wrote for GigaOM Pro (subscription required), this potentially lowers the barrier to adoption of alternative vehicles. Nearly half of the more than 5 million electric vehicle charge point installations anticipated worldwide by 2015 will happen in China, according to Pike Research. In addition, the government-owned utility State Grid Corp. plans to invest $586 million in a smart grid buildout over the next five years.
China has been investing in a green economy across the board, including clean power, energy efficiency and plug-in cars. As investor David Anthony wrote in a column for us in April, China is looking to clean up its economy and its air pollution via EVs:
A 2007 World Bank study found that air pollution kills three-quarters of a million Chinese every year. This number so embarrassed the Chinese government that it prevented parts of the report from being released to the public. Although things have improved somewhat in recent years, clean air remains a scarce commodity in Chinese cities, and pollution-related diseases are still the leading cause of death in China.
Fast-moving U.S.-based electric vehicle startups have already started to put their stakes in the ground in China. Coda Automotive has teamed up with Chinese battery maker Lishen to create a joint venture — called Lio (oil spelled backward) — to make battery cells for Coda’s all-electric sedan due out before the end of this year. EV drive train maker AC Propulsion has been developing an electric minivan with Yulon, Taiwan’s largest automaker, which has an agreement to produce electric cars in a joint venture with mainland China. ZAP recently bought out half of Chinese automaker Jonway, plans to buy out the other half next year, and last week showed off its electric SUV that will eventually be used as a taxi in China.
Other U.S. players interested in the Chinese market include electric motorcycle startup Mission Motors, battery maker EnerDel (a subsidiary of Ener1), smart grid heavyweights General Electric and Cisco, and Atieva, a tight-lipped developer of battery pack management systems. IBM has its eyes on both electric vehicle IT management and the smart grid, and told us last year that it expects to generate a minimum of $400 million in smart grid revenues in China over the next four years.
Published: August 30, 2010
Electric car makers that don’t have a “China-strategy” are overlooking the world’s largest market. Most do, and after interviewing a half-dozen EV startups over the past several weeks, it’s clear that partnering with Chinese battery and auto makers is one of the dominant strategies for U.S. electric car startups like Coda, AC Propulsion, and even ZAP. This morning, another China electric vehicle partnership has emerged. Called the New Energy Sustainable Transportation International Alliance, the group includes auto parts maker Eaton, IBM, development firm AECOM, automaker Beiqi Foton Motor Co., lithium-ion battery maker MGL, and electric motor producer Broad Ocean.
The group says their first project is to develop and sell electric buses in Chinese cities that will use products from Eaton, Broad Ocean and MGL, and the alliance says they will be focusing particularly on city-owned fleets, taxis, and commercial charging infrastructure.
There are a couple of reasons why China’s plug-in vehicle market (all-electric and hybrids) is so crucial. With about 35 cars per 1,000 people in China’s 1.3 billion-person population, roughly 80 percent of car sales in the country are currently made to first-time buyers. As Josie wrote for GigaOM Pro (subscription required), this potentially lowers the barrier to adoption of alternative vehicles. Nearly half of the more than 5 million electric vehicle charge point installations anticipated worldwide by 2015 will happen in China, according to Pike Research. In addition, the government-owned utility State Grid Corp. plans to invest $586 million in a smart grid buildout over the next five years.
China has been investing in a green economy across the board, including clean power, energy efficiency and plug-in cars. As investor David Anthony wrote in a column for us in April, China is looking to clean up its economy and its air pollution via EVs:
A 2007 World Bank study found that air pollution kills three-quarters of a million Chinese every year. This number so embarrassed the Chinese government that it prevented parts of the report from being released to the public. Although things have improved somewhat in recent years, clean air remains a scarce commodity in Chinese cities, and pollution-related diseases are still the leading cause of death in China.
Fast-moving U.S.-based electric vehicle startups have already started to put their stakes in the ground in China. Coda Automotive has teamed up with Chinese battery maker Lishen to create a joint venture — called Lio (oil spelled backward) — to make battery cells for Coda’s all-electric sedan due out before the end of this year. EV drive train maker AC Propulsion has been developing an electric minivan with Yulon, Taiwan’s largest automaker, which has an agreement to produce electric cars in a joint venture with mainland China. ZAP recently bought out half of Chinese automaker Jonway, plans to buy out the other half next year, and last week showed off its electric SUV that will eventually be used as a taxi in China.
Other U.S. players interested in the Chinese market include electric motorcycle startup Mission Motors, battery maker EnerDel (a subsidiary of Ener1), smart grid heavyweights General Electric and Cisco, and Atieva, a tight-lipped developer of battery pack management systems. IBM has its eyes on both electric vehicle IT management and the smart grid, and told us last year that it expects to generate a minimum of $400 million in smart grid revenues in China over the next four years.
Why failure of climate summit would herald global catastrophe: 3.5°
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
The world is heading for the next major climate change conference in Cancun later this year on course for global warming of up to 3.5C in the coming century, a series of scientific analyses suggest. The failure of last December's UN climate summit in Copenhagen means that cuts in carbon emissions pledged by the international community will not be enough to keep the anticipated warming within safe limits.
Two analyses of the Copenhagen Accord and its pledges, by Dr Sivan Kartha of the Stockholm Environment Institute, and by the Climate Action Tracker website, suggest that, with the cuts that are currently promised under Copenhagen, the world will still warm by 3.5C by 2100. Such a rise would be likely to have disastrous effects on agricultural production, water availability, natural ecosystems and sea-level rise across the world, producing tens of millions of refugees.
A month ago, in its annual State of the Climate report, published in conjunction with the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) listed 10 separate indicators of a warming planet, seven of them rising – ranging from air temperature over land and humidity to sea level – and three of them declining: Arctic sea-ice, glaciers, and spring snow cover. "The scientific evidence that our world is warming is unmistakable," NOAA said.
Cancun, or "COP 16" as it is officially known, will again see ministers and officials from nearly 200 nations grapple with the politics of global warming, but no one thinks they will be able to close a widening breach in the world's defences against dangerously rising temperatures – the "gigatonne gap".
A gigatonne is a billion tonnes of carbon, and the emissions cuts currently promised by the nations of the world in the Copenhagen Accord – the last-minute agreement patched together by leaders after the conference in the Danish capital all but collapsed – will mean that, by 2020, when global emissions should be on a firmly downward trend, they will be several gigatonnes too high to limit the warming to C above the pre-industrial level. This is widely considered the most that human society can stand without serious consequences.
Yet the international community does not seem any closer to consensus on the need to make further reductions in carbon and at Cancun, which takes place from 29 November to 10 December, it is at best side issues on which any progress will be made.
Today, the Coalition's Climate Change Secretary, the Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne, will travel to Berlin to discuss strengthening the EU climate target in advance of the Cancun meeting from 20 per cent to 30 per cent, with his German and French counterparts, Norbert Röttgen and Jean-Louis Borloo.
Mr Huhne told The Independent: "There's hard work ahead to maintain and build on the level of commitment embodied in the Copenhagen Accord and to rebuild the credibility of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process.
"We in the EU still need to finalise our positions in advance of COP 16, but I think there's a real chance the negotiations could take important steps forward in Cancun, in particular to implement parts of what was agreed in Copenhagen and to work towards the global deal the world needs."
He added: "It's the UK's view – and one shared by my French and German counterparts – that the EU should raise its ambition and that the economic case for doing so stacks up.
"Cutting emissions by 30 per cent by 2020 would be a game-changer in shifting investment into new clean technologies, generating jobs and growth in supply chains across our economies. The great risk for Europe is in waking up late to these opportunities and losing out to other major blocs who are already eyeing up market share."
It is hard to exaggerate the dire effect which the failure at Copenhagen has had both on the climate change negotiating process itself, and on the belief of those involved that an effective climate deal might be possible.
A year ago, many environmentalists, scientists and politicians genuinely thought that the meeting in Denmark might produce a binding agreement to cut global CO2 by the 25-40 per cent, by 2020, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has calculated is necessary to keep the warming to below C.
Today that optimism has vanished. The Danish meeting foundered on the disagreement between the developed countries and the developing nations over who should do how much, and when, in cutting emissions; the major point of disagreement was the Kyoto Protocol, the current treaty, which makes developed countries do a lot, and developing nations not very much.
The Kyoto treaty runs out at the end of 2012 and the developing nations, led by China and India, wanted it renewed, while developed countries, including Britain and the rest of the EU, want a completely new treaty to share out the carbon-cutting burden.
At Copenhagen last December, world leaders cobbled together an agreement which ended up devoid of any binding carbon emissions targets (but did recognise the need to stay under C for the first time). Instead of the legally-binding treaty which had been hoped for, nations were invited to "register" voluntary targets, saying by how much they thought they could cut their CO2 by 2020.
Britain is part of the EU target of a 20 per cent cut, on a 1990 baseline, which may be raised before Cancun to 30 per cent. (Britain's own domestic target is one of the highest, to cut CO2 by 34 per cent by 2020.) Other targets include 25 per cent for Japan, Australia by 5 to 25 per cent and the US by 17 per cent on a 2005 baseline – although the legislation to achieve it is firmly stalled in the Senate. Among the developing nations, China has promised to reduce the energy intensity of its economy by 40 to 45 per cent by 2020.
Various analyses of all these pledges suggest they amount to cuts of the global CO2 total of between 11 and 19 per cent by 2020, instead of the 25 to 40 per cent which the IPCC says is needed. This can also be expressed in real amounts of CO2, of which the world is currently emitting annually about 45 gigatonnes – 45 billion tonnes of carbon.
If the world continues with these levels of emissions it is thought this will increase to between 51 and 55 gigatonnes by 2020. Lord Stern of Brentford, author of a landmark report on the economics of climate change, has calculated that if, instead, global CO2 could be cut back to 44 gigatonnes by 2020, the world would be on a credible path to stay below a rise of C. Yet analysis suggests the Copenhagen Accord pledges will leave the figure at 48-49 billion tonnes – the gigatonne gap which Cancun is not going to close.
What the conference may do is agree the architecture for the new major climate funds to help developing countries which were agreed in Denmark – a "fast-start" fund of $30bn (£19.4bn) per year in new money for the years 2010-12, and a fund of $100bn annually to be set up by 2020.
If there are no further breakdowns, it is possible that the meeting may at least restore faith in the UN climate process. "Nobody thinks Cancun will be a big-bang moment," said Keith Allott, head of climate change for the World Wide Fund for Nature. "What the world needs to do is put some wheels back on the climate truck."
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
The world is heading for the next major climate change conference in Cancun later this year on course for global warming of up to 3.5C in the coming century, a series of scientific analyses suggest. The failure of last December's UN climate summit in Copenhagen means that cuts in carbon emissions pledged by the international community will not be enough to keep the anticipated warming within safe limits.
Two analyses of the Copenhagen Accord and its pledges, by Dr Sivan Kartha of the Stockholm Environment Institute, and by the Climate Action Tracker website, suggest that, with the cuts that are currently promised under Copenhagen, the world will still warm by 3.5C by 2100. Such a rise would be likely to have disastrous effects on agricultural production, water availability, natural ecosystems and sea-level rise across the world, producing tens of millions of refugees.
A month ago, in its annual State of the Climate report, published in conjunction with the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) listed 10 separate indicators of a warming planet, seven of them rising – ranging from air temperature over land and humidity to sea level – and three of them declining: Arctic sea-ice, glaciers, and spring snow cover. "The scientific evidence that our world is warming is unmistakable," NOAA said.
Cancun, or "COP 16" as it is officially known, will again see ministers and officials from nearly 200 nations grapple with the politics of global warming, but no one thinks they will be able to close a widening breach in the world's defences against dangerously rising temperatures – the "gigatonne gap".
A gigatonne is a billion tonnes of carbon, and the emissions cuts currently promised by the nations of the world in the Copenhagen Accord – the last-minute agreement patched together by leaders after the conference in the Danish capital all but collapsed – will mean that, by 2020, when global emissions should be on a firmly downward trend, they will be several gigatonnes too high to limit the warming to C above the pre-industrial level. This is widely considered the most that human society can stand without serious consequences.
Yet the international community does not seem any closer to consensus on the need to make further reductions in carbon and at Cancun, which takes place from 29 November to 10 December, it is at best side issues on which any progress will be made.
Today, the Coalition's Climate Change Secretary, the Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne, will travel to Berlin to discuss strengthening the EU climate target in advance of the Cancun meeting from 20 per cent to 30 per cent, with his German and French counterparts, Norbert Röttgen and Jean-Louis Borloo.
Mr Huhne told The Independent: "There's hard work ahead to maintain and build on the level of commitment embodied in the Copenhagen Accord and to rebuild the credibility of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process.
"We in the EU still need to finalise our positions in advance of COP 16, but I think there's a real chance the negotiations could take important steps forward in Cancun, in particular to implement parts of what was agreed in Copenhagen and to work towards the global deal the world needs."
He added: "It's the UK's view – and one shared by my French and German counterparts – that the EU should raise its ambition and that the economic case for doing so stacks up.
"Cutting emissions by 30 per cent by 2020 would be a game-changer in shifting investment into new clean technologies, generating jobs and growth in supply chains across our economies. The great risk for Europe is in waking up late to these opportunities and losing out to other major blocs who are already eyeing up market share."
It is hard to exaggerate the dire effect which the failure at Copenhagen has had both on the climate change negotiating process itself, and on the belief of those involved that an effective climate deal might be possible.
A year ago, many environmentalists, scientists and politicians genuinely thought that the meeting in Denmark might produce a binding agreement to cut global CO2 by the 25-40 per cent, by 2020, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has calculated is necessary to keep the warming to below C.
Today that optimism has vanished. The Danish meeting foundered on the disagreement between the developed countries and the developing nations over who should do how much, and when, in cutting emissions; the major point of disagreement was the Kyoto Protocol, the current treaty, which makes developed countries do a lot, and developing nations not very much.
The Kyoto treaty runs out at the end of 2012 and the developing nations, led by China and India, wanted it renewed, while developed countries, including Britain and the rest of the EU, want a completely new treaty to share out the carbon-cutting burden.
At Copenhagen last December, world leaders cobbled together an agreement which ended up devoid of any binding carbon emissions targets (but did recognise the need to stay under C for the first time). Instead of the legally-binding treaty which had been hoped for, nations were invited to "register" voluntary targets, saying by how much they thought they could cut their CO2 by 2020.
Britain is part of the EU target of a 20 per cent cut, on a 1990 baseline, which may be raised before Cancun to 30 per cent. (Britain's own domestic target is one of the highest, to cut CO2 by 34 per cent by 2020.) Other targets include 25 per cent for Japan, Australia by 5 to 25 per cent and the US by 17 per cent on a 2005 baseline – although the legislation to achieve it is firmly stalled in the Senate. Among the developing nations, China has promised to reduce the energy intensity of its economy by 40 to 45 per cent by 2020.
Various analyses of all these pledges suggest they amount to cuts of the global CO2 total of between 11 and 19 per cent by 2020, instead of the 25 to 40 per cent which the IPCC says is needed. This can also be expressed in real amounts of CO2, of which the world is currently emitting annually about 45 gigatonnes – 45 billion tonnes of carbon.
If the world continues with these levels of emissions it is thought this will increase to between 51 and 55 gigatonnes by 2020. Lord Stern of Brentford, author of a landmark report on the economics of climate change, has calculated that if, instead, global CO2 could be cut back to 44 gigatonnes by 2020, the world would be on a credible path to stay below a rise of C. Yet analysis suggests the Copenhagen Accord pledges will leave the figure at 48-49 billion tonnes – the gigatonne gap which Cancun is not going to close.
What the conference may do is agree the architecture for the new major climate funds to help developing countries which were agreed in Denmark – a "fast-start" fund of $30bn (£19.4bn) per year in new money for the years 2010-12, and a fund of $100bn annually to be set up by 2020.
If there are no further breakdowns, it is possible that the meeting may at least restore faith in the UN climate process. "Nobody thinks Cancun will be a big-bang moment," said Keith Allott, head of climate change for the World Wide Fund for Nature. "What the world needs to do is put some wheels back on the climate truck."
An Unlikely General in Climate-Change War
Global-Warming Evangelist Pachauri Began His Career Building Diesel Locomotives, Advocating for the Right to Burn Coal.
Text By JEFFREY BALL
In 2002, when Rajendra Pachauri was elected head of the world's top climate-science body, Al Gore and other environmentalists condemned him as a favorite of the fossil-fuel industry.
Today, the 70-year-old chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is under fire for the opposite offense: being a green zealot.
On Monday, the InterAcademy Council, a consortium of national scientific academies, released its report on its investigation into the IPCC under Mr. Pachauri's leadership. Though it said the organization is "successful overall," it suggested a number of changes to the IPCC's managerial structure and to its vetting process designed to reduce errors and bias creeping into the IPCC's widely watched reports.
Mr. Pachauri said the recommendations were in line with reforms he has tried to institute already. They are "essentially an intensification, a detailing, of what I've wanted to do myself," he said in an interview Monday.
Mr. Pachauri was pressured to request the probe after mistakes were disclosed in an IPCC report that helped win the panel the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Mr. Pachauri was an unlikely general in the war on global warming. He started his career in an Indian diesel-locomotive factory. As an academic, he staunchly defended his country's right to burn coal.
But over the years he underwent a transformation and became convinced of the dangers of global warming. He voiced strong convictions that later exposed him to a more intense backlash when the handful of problems with the IPCC's work came to light.
He made high-profile statements playing down uncertainties about global warming. He added new responsibilities, becoming director of an energy institute at Yale University, even as his IPCC workload increased. And when his organization faced criticism for errors, he initially argued the IPCC could investigate itself.
After the IPCC won the Nobel, he "became a bit of a global rock star," said Daniel Esty, a Yale professor and friend of the IPCC chairman. "I think he got spread very thin and personally should have been more careful in overseeing the team below him" managing IPCC scientific work.
Mr. Pachauri said that the IPCC "is a very decentralized organization," and that the production of its reports is overseen by highly competent scientists who "wouldn't appreciate the chairman looking over their shoulders and trying to look for errors."
Mr. Pachauri receives travel expenses but no salary as IPCC chairman. His paid job is as head of a New Delhi think tank, The Energy Research Institute, or TERI. He has advised several Indian and Western companies during his IPCC tenure, but says he has given the money he has received for that work to TERI. A KPMG audit, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, confirms that about most of the money. It doesn't address a small amount, which he says he gave to charity.
The investigative report released Monday called for the IPCC to implement a conflict-of-interest policy for its chairman and other top officials. The IPCC needs to "maintain the integrity of, and public confidence in, its results," the report said.
Mr. Pachauri was born in 1940 in Nainital, a town in India that looks out onto the Himalayas. Everything in his early career suggested support for fossil fuels.
In his late 20s, he managed the production of train engines at an Indian factory. In his 30s, at North Carolina State University, he wrote a doctoral dissertation on ways that some coal-dependent states could cheaply meet rising electricity demand.
In 1982, he became the head of TERI. He still holds the job nearly three decades later, earning an annual salary equivalent to about $46,000.
The IPCC was founded by the United Nations in 1988. Mr. Pachauri's involvement was hardly surprising, since he was a prominent energy expert in one of the fastest growing countries in the world.
In 1997, he successfully ran against an incumbent to become one of the IPCC's vice chairmen. In 2002, he challenged the IPCC's then-chairman and won.
The George W. Bush administration backed Mr. Pachauri, in part, as a less strident environmentalist than the IPCC's prior chairman. Mr. Pachauri "was going to be a lower-key chair," said a former Bush administration official involved in international climate negotiations at the time.
Within days of Mr. Pachauri's election as IPCC leader, Mr. Gore assailed him in a New York Times op-ed piece. The former vice president cited the Bush administration's backing of Mr. Pachauri as a reason for concern.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Gore said he wouldn't comment. Mr. Pachauri said the two are now good friends.
Mr. Gore had reason to soften on Mr. Pachauri. He became "an advocate for emissions controls that are a lot more radical than he was talking about or almost anyone was talking about 10 years ago," said David Victor, an international-energy expert at the University of California, San Diego.
Mr. Pachauri's views were on full display in his Nobel address in 2007, when he warned climate change could cause "chaos and destruction." Mr. Pachauri says such language is deliberate. "If you want people to take action, then you obviously would make the arguments that require a certain set of actions."
Monday's report found that some summaries the IPCC wrote of its 2007 climate-change findings failed to adequately reflect scientific uncertainty. One of the summaries contained claims "that are not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put into perspective, or not expressed clearly," it said.
Daniel Sperling, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who contributed to the 2007 IPCC report, said of Mr. Pachauri: "He obviously wasn't sensitive enough to some of these uncertainties."
Mr. Pachauri says neither the most recent report nor other recent climate-science probes have questioned the IPCC's overall conclusion about the dangers and causes of climate change.
The IPCC controversy was sparked in November 2009 when more than 1,000 hacked emails from a climate-research center at the University of East Anglia were posted online. The emails showed some climate scientists involved in IPCC reports trying to squelch criticism of the conclusion that humans are causing climate change.
Weeks later, IPCC officials were confronted with a factual error in their 2007 report: a projection that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. Climate scientists say it is essentially impossible to project the demise of a glacier by a particular year.
Within days, Mr. Pachauri and his top IPCC lieutenants issued a statement expressing "regret" over the claim. But criticism mounted, and by mid-February the IPCC informed governments it would appoint a committee to investigate itself. A few weeks later, Mr. Pachauri asked an outside agency, the InterAcademy Council, to conduct the probe.
Text By JEFFREY BALL
In 2002, when Rajendra Pachauri was elected head of the world's top climate-science body, Al Gore and other environmentalists condemned him as a favorite of the fossil-fuel industry.
Today, the 70-year-old chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is under fire for the opposite offense: being a green zealot.
On Monday, the InterAcademy Council, a consortium of national scientific academies, released its report on its investigation into the IPCC under Mr. Pachauri's leadership. Though it said the organization is "successful overall," it suggested a number of changes to the IPCC's managerial structure and to its vetting process designed to reduce errors and bias creeping into the IPCC's widely watched reports.
Mr. Pachauri said the recommendations were in line with reforms he has tried to institute already. They are "essentially an intensification, a detailing, of what I've wanted to do myself," he said in an interview Monday.
Mr. Pachauri was pressured to request the probe after mistakes were disclosed in an IPCC report that helped win the panel the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Mr. Pachauri was an unlikely general in the war on global warming. He started his career in an Indian diesel-locomotive factory. As an academic, he staunchly defended his country's right to burn coal.
But over the years he underwent a transformation and became convinced of the dangers of global warming. He voiced strong convictions that later exposed him to a more intense backlash when the handful of problems with the IPCC's work came to light.
He made high-profile statements playing down uncertainties about global warming. He added new responsibilities, becoming director of an energy institute at Yale University, even as his IPCC workload increased. And when his organization faced criticism for errors, he initially argued the IPCC could investigate itself.
After the IPCC won the Nobel, he "became a bit of a global rock star," said Daniel Esty, a Yale professor and friend of the IPCC chairman. "I think he got spread very thin and personally should have been more careful in overseeing the team below him" managing IPCC scientific work.
Mr. Pachauri said that the IPCC "is a very decentralized organization," and that the production of its reports is overseen by highly competent scientists who "wouldn't appreciate the chairman looking over their shoulders and trying to look for errors."
Mr. Pachauri receives travel expenses but no salary as IPCC chairman. His paid job is as head of a New Delhi think tank, The Energy Research Institute, or TERI. He has advised several Indian and Western companies during his IPCC tenure, but says he has given the money he has received for that work to TERI. A KPMG audit, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, confirms that about most of the money. It doesn't address a small amount, which he says he gave to charity.
The investigative report released Monday called for the IPCC to implement a conflict-of-interest policy for its chairman and other top officials. The IPCC needs to "maintain the integrity of, and public confidence in, its results," the report said.
Mr. Pachauri was born in 1940 in Nainital, a town in India that looks out onto the Himalayas. Everything in his early career suggested support for fossil fuels.
In his late 20s, he managed the production of train engines at an Indian factory. In his 30s, at North Carolina State University, he wrote a doctoral dissertation on ways that some coal-dependent states could cheaply meet rising electricity demand.
In 1982, he became the head of TERI. He still holds the job nearly three decades later, earning an annual salary equivalent to about $46,000.
The IPCC was founded by the United Nations in 1988. Mr. Pachauri's involvement was hardly surprising, since he was a prominent energy expert in one of the fastest growing countries in the world.
In 1997, he successfully ran against an incumbent to become one of the IPCC's vice chairmen. In 2002, he challenged the IPCC's then-chairman and won.
The George W. Bush administration backed Mr. Pachauri, in part, as a less strident environmentalist than the IPCC's prior chairman. Mr. Pachauri "was going to be a lower-key chair," said a former Bush administration official involved in international climate negotiations at the time.
Within days of Mr. Pachauri's election as IPCC leader, Mr. Gore assailed him in a New York Times op-ed piece. The former vice president cited the Bush administration's backing of Mr. Pachauri as a reason for concern.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Gore said he wouldn't comment. Mr. Pachauri said the two are now good friends.
Mr. Gore had reason to soften on Mr. Pachauri. He became "an advocate for emissions controls that are a lot more radical than he was talking about or almost anyone was talking about 10 years ago," said David Victor, an international-energy expert at the University of California, San Diego.
Mr. Pachauri's views were on full display in his Nobel address in 2007, when he warned climate change could cause "chaos and destruction." Mr. Pachauri says such language is deliberate. "If you want people to take action, then you obviously would make the arguments that require a certain set of actions."
Monday's report found that some summaries the IPCC wrote of its 2007 climate-change findings failed to adequately reflect scientific uncertainty. One of the summaries contained claims "that are not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put into perspective, or not expressed clearly," it said.
Daniel Sperling, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who contributed to the 2007 IPCC report, said of Mr. Pachauri: "He obviously wasn't sensitive enough to some of these uncertainties."
Mr. Pachauri says neither the most recent report nor other recent climate-science probes have questioned the IPCC's overall conclusion about the dangers and causes of climate change.
The IPCC controversy was sparked in November 2009 when more than 1,000 hacked emails from a climate-research center at the University of East Anglia were posted online. The emails showed some climate scientists involved in IPCC reports trying to squelch criticism of the conclusion that humans are causing climate change.
Weeks later, IPCC officials were confronted with a factual error in their 2007 report: a projection that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. Climate scientists say it is essentially impossible to project the demise of a glacier by a particular year.
Within days, Mr. Pachauri and his top IPCC lieutenants issued a statement expressing "regret" over the claim. But criticism mounted, and by mid-February the IPCC informed governments it would appoint a committee to investigate itself. A few weeks later, Mr. Pachauri asked an outside agency, the InterAcademy Council, to conduct the probe.
Climate Panel Faces Heat
Investigation Calls for 'Fundamental Reform' at U.N. Group on Global Warming.
By JEFFREY BALL
An independent investigation called for "fundamental reform" at the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, saying the organization's 2007 report played down uncertainty about some aspects of global warming.
The probe of the IPCC, a preeminent climate-science body that won the Nobel Peace Price three years ago, was conducted by the InterAcademy Council, a consortium of national scientific academies. Leaders of the IPCC asked the council to conduct the probe following the disclosure of a few errors in its 2007 climate-science report, which concluded, among other things, that climate change is "unequivocal" and is "very likely" caused by human activity.
The investigation comes at a precarious time for the IPCC and for advocates of tough measures to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. For months, critics of such steps have cited the errors in the IPCC's 2007 report as reason to question the group's basic conclusion about climate change. As the InterAcademy Council's report notes, recent polls suggest the controversy over IPCC errors has caused public confidence in climate science to fall. Meanwhile, the recession has dimmed the enthusiasm of some politicians to push for major changes in energy production and consumption.
Some critics, in the wake of the disclosure of the errors, called for IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri to resign. But Mr. Pachauri, who has said those errors were minor, said Monday that he hopes to serve until his term ends after the publication of the panel's next major climate-science study in 2014. "I was instrumental in requesting this review, and now that we've got it, I believe my responsibility is to take it forward," he said.
Partisans on both sides of the climate debate saw Monday's report as significant. Advocates of deep emission cuts said the investigation, and the reforms it suggested, should boost public confidence in the IPCC's assertions about the dangers of allowing greenhouse-gas emissions to increase. Critics said the investigation underscored problems with the way the IPCC assesses climate science. They said the agency ignored scientific nuances and dismissed minority viewpoints in its 2007 report.
The investigation will likely factor into the next U.N. climate conference in Cancún, Mexico, in December, when governments will try to come up with a global agreement to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. A similar conference last year in Copenhagen failed to come up with a major agreement.
Harold Shapiro, the economist and former Princeton University president who led the InterAcademy Council's review, said in a press conference announcing the report that the IPCC "has been a success and has served society well."
In addition to raising questions about the procedures the IPCC used in coming up with its conclusions, the report was critical of the organization's management. It recommended that the IPCC chairman and other top leaders each serve only one six-year term, and that the IPCC institute a conflict-of-interest policy for its top leaders. This was partly a response to criticism that during his tenure, Mr. Pachauri has served as an adviser to energy and financial companies. These companies, said critics, could be affected by energy policies that rested in part on the IPCC's scientific pronouncements.
German Utilities Warn Tax May Herald End of Nuclear Energy. Access thousands of business sources not available on the free web. Learn More.Mr. Pachauri, in an interview, said he supports the investigation's call for a conflict-of-interest policy and for clearer explanations about areas in which climate science is uncertain. He said the IPCC already has begun work on some of those changes and would consider further action when it holds a major meeting in October in Korea. Mr. Pachauri said his work on corporate boards doesn't interfere with his position as IPCC chair, adding that he has given all proceeds from that work to an energy think tank he heads and to charity.
Mr. Pachauri stressed that neither the InterAcademy Council report nor several other climate-science investigations that have been conducted in recent months have questioned the IPCC's conclusion about the existence of climate change or its likely human cause. Claims to the contrary amount to "gross distortions and ideologically driven posturing," he said. Taken together, the investigations should "strengthen public trust so that we can move forward," Mr. Pachauri said. "Science has confirmed that climate change is real."
Critics of the IPCC said the report validated many of their concerns.
"If these recommendations are followed to the letter and spirit, I think the IPCC could indeed be improved," said John Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville who was consulted by the InterAcademy Council for its review. Mr. Christy participated in the writing of two IPCC reports and said his doubts about evidence of man-made global warming were largely pushed aside both times.
One U.S. company played down the investigative report's importance, saying the political debate over climate change had moved beyond the question of what's causing it to the question of what to do about it.
"We're kind of beyond the science," said Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy Corp., a Charlotte, N.C.-based power company that is one of the country's major greenhouse-gas emitters. "What we're after are the rules of the road," he said, explaining that Duke believes U.S. limits on greenhouse-gas emissions are inevitable and wants to shape the rules to the advantage of its customers.
The IPCC, created by the United Nations in 1988, is a sprawling organization. Thousands of scientists and other experts around the world volunteer their time to help write its massive reports approximately every six years that assess what's known and what isn't about the causes and effects of climate change. Its reports influence government policies on energy and the environment around the world.
The InterAcademy Council investigation, like several other investigations into climate science in recent months, didn't question whether human activity is causing global warming. Instead, it focused on the IPCC's process for forming conclusions, including one that projected Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. The investigation noted that some scientists invited by the IPCC to review the 2007 report before it was published questioned the Himalayan claim. But those challenges "were not adequately considered," the InterAcademy Council's investigation said, and the projection was included in the final report.
Mr. Shapiro said the IPCC needs to tighten many of its procedures and its enforcement of the rules already on its books, given that climate change is such a hotly debated topic and that the IPCC's reports influence environmental policy world-wide.
A particular problem in the 2007 report was that it didn't consistently reflect uncertainty in some aspects of climate change, the investigation found.
Although the IPCC has guidelines in place for measuring uncertainty, those rules were "not consistently followed" in the 2007 report, "leading to unnecessary errors," the investigation said.
For instance, the investigation noted, the 2007 IPCC report said it had "high confidence" that climate change could halve the output of rain-fed agriculture in Africa by 2020.
But a fuller explanation about how the IPCC came up with that "high confidence," the investigation said, "would have made clear the weak evidentiary basis" for that statement. The InterAcademy Council panel recommended that IPCC reports assign specific probabilities to projections "only when there is sufficient evidence" to justify them.
The InterAcademy Council also faulted the IPCC for failing to stress in its 2007 report when some claims were based on literature that hadn't undergone the scientific process of peer-review. The IPCC should impose tougher guidelines to make sure non-peer-reviewed information is clearly "flagged," it said.
The investigation also said the IPCC sometimes failed to adequately reflect "properly documented" views of scientists who disagreed with the consensus conclusions.
IPCC leaders say they have already begun discussing how to better characterize uncertainty and to be more transparent about whether information has been peer-reviewed.
Write to Jeffrey Ball at jeffrey.ball@wsj.com
By JEFFREY BALL
An independent investigation called for "fundamental reform" at the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, saying the organization's 2007 report played down uncertainty about some aspects of global warming.
The probe of the IPCC, a preeminent climate-science body that won the Nobel Peace Price three years ago, was conducted by the InterAcademy Council, a consortium of national scientific academies. Leaders of the IPCC asked the council to conduct the probe following the disclosure of a few errors in its 2007 climate-science report, which concluded, among other things, that climate change is "unequivocal" and is "very likely" caused by human activity.
The investigation comes at a precarious time for the IPCC and for advocates of tough measures to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. For months, critics of such steps have cited the errors in the IPCC's 2007 report as reason to question the group's basic conclusion about climate change. As the InterAcademy Council's report notes, recent polls suggest the controversy over IPCC errors has caused public confidence in climate science to fall. Meanwhile, the recession has dimmed the enthusiasm of some politicians to push for major changes in energy production and consumption.
Some critics, in the wake of the disclosure of the errors, called for IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri to resign. But Mr. Pachauri, who has said those errors were minor, said Monday that he hopes to serve until his term ends after the publication of the panel's next major climate-science study in 2014. "I was instrumental in requesting this review, and now that we've got it, I believe my responsibility is to take it forward," he said.
Partisans on both sides of the climate debate saw Monday's report as significant. Advocates of deep emission cuts said the investigation, and the reforms it suggested, should boost public confidence in the IPCC's assertions about the dangers of allowing greenhouse-gas emissions to increase. Critics said the investigation underscored problems with the way the IPCC assesses climate science. They said the agency ignored scientific nuances and dismissed minority viewpoints in its 2007 report.
The investigation will likely factor into the next U.N. climate conference in Cancún, Mexico, in December, when governments will try to come up with a global agreement to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. A similar conference last year in Copenhagen failed to come up with a major agreement.
Harold Shapiro, the economist and former Princeton University president who led the InterAcademy Council's review, said in a press conference announcing the report that the IPCC "has been a success and has served society well."
In addition to raising questions about the procedures the IPCC used in coming up with its conclusions, the report was critical of the organization's management. It recommended that the IPCC chairman and other top leaders each serve only one six-year term, and that the IPCC institute a conflict-of-interest policy for its top leaders. This was partly a response to criticism that during his tenure, Mr. Pachauri has served as an adviser to energy and financial companies. These companies, said critics, could be affected by energy policies that rested in part on the IPCC's scientific pronouncements.
German Utilities Warn Tax May Herald End of Nuclear Energy. Access thousands of business sources not available on the free web. Learn More.Mr. Pachauri, in an interview, said he supports the investigation's call for a conflict-of-interest policy and for clearer explanations about areas in which climate science is uncertain. He said the IPCC already has begun work on some of those changes and would consider further action when it holds a major meeting in October in Korea. Mr. Pachauri said his work on corporate boards doesn't interfere with his position as IPCC chair, adding that he has given all proceeds from that work to an energy think tank he heads and to charity.
Mr. Pachauri stressed that neither the InterAcademy Council report nor several other climate-science investigations that have been conducted in recent months have questioned the IPCC's conclusion about the existence of climate change or its likely human cause. Claims to the contrary amount to "gross distortions and ideologically driven posturing," he said. Taken together, the investigations should "strengthen public trust so that we can move forward," Mr. Pachauri said. "Science has confirmed that climate change is real."
Critics of the IPCC said the report validated many of their concerns.
"If these recommendations are followed to the letter and spirit, I think the IPCC could indeed be improved," said John Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville who was consulted by the InterAcademy Council for its review. Mr. Christy participated in the writing of two IPCC reports and said his doubts about evidence of man-made global warming were largely pushed aside both times.
One U.S. company played down the investigative report's importance, saying the political debate over climate change had moved beyond the question of what's causing it to the question of what to do about it.
"We're kind of beyond the science," said Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy Corp., a Charlotte, N.C.-based power company that is one of the country's major greenhouse-gas emitters. "What we're after are the rules of the road," he said, explaining that Duke believes U.S. limits on greenhouse-gas emissions are inevitable and wants to shape the rules to the advantage of its customers.
The IPCC, created by the United Nations in 1988, is a sprawling organization. Thousands of scientists and other experts around the world volunteer their time to help write its massive reports approximately every six years that assess what's known and what isn't about the causes and effects of climate change. Its reports influence government policies on energy and the environment around the world.
The InterAcademy Council investigation, like several other investigations into climate science in recent months, didn't question whether human activity is causing global warming. Instead, it focused on the IPCC's process for forming conclusions, including one that projected Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. The investigation noted that some scientists invited by the IPCC to review the 2007 report before it was published questioned the Himalayan claim. But those challenges "were not adequately considered," the InterAcademy Council's investigation said, and the projection was included in the final report.
Mr. Shapiro said the IPCC needs to tighten many of its procedures and its enforcement of the rules already on its books, given that climate change is such a hotly debated topic and that the IPCC's reports influence environmental policy world-wide.
A particular problem in the 2007 report was that it didn't consistently reflect uncertainty in some aspects of climate change, the investigation found.
Although the IPCC has guidelines in place for measuring uncertainty, those rules were "not consistently followed" in the 2007 report, "leading to unnecessary errors," the investigation said.
For instance, the investigation noted, the 2007 IPCC report said it had "high confidence" that climate change could halve the output of rain-fed agriculture in Africa by 2020.
But a fuller explanation about how the IPCC came up with that "high confidence," the investigation said, "would have made clear the weak evidentiary basis" for that statement. The InterAcademy Council panel recommended that IPCC reports assign specific probabilities to projections "only when there is sufficient evidence" to justify them.
The InterAcademy Council also faulted the IPCC for failing to stress in its 2007 report when some claims were based on literature that hadn't undergone the scientific process of peer-review. The IPCC should impose tougher guidelines to make sure non-peer-reviewed information is clearly "flagged," it said.
The investigation also said the IPCC sometimes failed to adequately reflect "properly documented" views of scientists who disagreed with the consensus conclusions.
IPCC leaders say they have already begun discussing how to better characterize uncertainty and to be more transparent about whether information has been peer-reviewed.
Write to Jeffrey Ball at jeffrey.ball@wsj.com
Angela Merkel risks Germans' ire with fresh commitment to nuclear energy
German chancellor adds 15 years to scheduled phase-out of country's nuclear power plants
Kate Connolly in Berlin guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 August 2010 18.35 BST
German chancellor Angela Merkel has announced an extension to the nation's nuclear power plant operations for up to 15 years beyond a scheduled phase-out, in a move critics fear might signal that atomic power is here to stay.
The decision comes after a panel of experts advised that keeping the plants open was the only way of ensuring climate protection and economic goals were met and that electricity prices did not soar out of control.
Merkel, who spent last week touring some of the country's 17 plants, said phasing them out by 2021 – as had been planned – was unrealistic if the country wanted to meet certain environmental goals.
"Nuclear power is desirable as a bridging technology," she said.
Renewable energies will supply half the country's energy needs by 2050, according to the centre-right government's goals. Nuclear and coal power should continue to be central to the country's energy policy until all power supplies could be replaced by clean energy, the experts advised.
Merkel's announcement, which has the backing of her coalition partner, the Free Democrats, is a heavy blow for the left. The nuclear phase-out was secured under the government of her predecessor, Gerhard Schröder of the Social Democrats (SPD), and was considered one its most significant achievements.
Sigmar Gabriel, the leader of the SPD, said his party was ready to launch a constitutional challenge to the extension and accused Merkel of being a pawn of the nuclear lobby.
Gabriel said: "The chancellor is selling off public safety by allowing ailing and ageing nuclear power plants to stay online longer and by taking money for it." He added that her plan showed her goal was clearly "not to achieve a sustainable energy plan".
The Green party, which was part of the Schröder government when it struck the deal, announced an anti-nuclear demonstration in Berlin on Wednesday.
Some politicians in favour of a nuclear extension, such as Norbert Röttgen of Merkel's Christian Democrats, said they nevertheless feared it might reduce the pressure on the energy industry to research into and develop renewable technologies.
Merkel's decision is also likely to prove highly unpopular amongst the electorate. According to a recent poll, 56% of Germans are against extending the lives of nuclear power plants, citing fears of accidents and terrorism.
Kate Connolly in Berlin guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 August 2010 18.35 BST
German chancellor Angela Merkel has announced an extension to the nation's nuclear power plant operations for up to 15 years beyond a scheduled phase-out, in a move critics fear might signal that atomic power is here to stay.
The decision comes after a panel of experts advised that keeping the plants open was the only way of ensuring climate protection and economic goals were met and that electricity prices did not soar out of control.
Merkel, who spent last week touring some of the country's 17 plants, said phasing them out by 2021 – as had been planned – was unrealistic if the country wanted to meet certain environmental goals.
"Nuclear power is desirable as a bridging technology," she said.
Renewable energies will supply half the country's energy needs by 2050, according to the centre-right government's goals. Nuclear and coal power should continue to be central to the country's energy policy until all power supplies could be replaced by clean energy, the experts advised.
Merkel's announcement, which has the backing of her coalition partner, the Free Democrats, is a heavy blow for the left. The nuclear phase-out was secured under the government of her predecessor, Gerhard Schröder of the Social Democrats (SPD), and was considered one its most significant achievements.
Sigmar Gabriel, the leader of the SPD, said his party was ready to launch a constitutional challenge to the extension and accused Merkel of being a pawn of the nuclear lobby.
Gabriel said: "The chancellor is selling off public safety by allowing ailing and ageing nuclear power plants to stay online longer and by taking money for it." He added that her plan showed her goal was clearly "not to achieve a sustainable energy plan".
The Green party, which was part of the Schröder government when it struck the deal, announced an anti-nuclear demonstration in Berlin on Wednesday.
Some politicians in favour of a nuclear extension, such as Norbert Röttgen of Merkel's Christian Democrats, said they nevertheless feared it might reduce the pressure on the energy industry to research into and develop renewable technologies.
Merkel's decision is also likely to prove highly unpopular amongst the electorate. According to a recent poll, 56% of Germans are against extending the lives of nuclear power plants, citing fears of accidents and terrorism.
Bjørn Lomborg: $100bn a year needed to fight climate change
Exclusive 'Sceptical environmentalist' and critic of climate scientists to declare global warming a chief concern facing world
• Climate change voice who changed his tune
• Rajendra Pachauri under pressure to stand aside
Juliette Jowit guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 August 2010 20.17 BST
The world's most high-profile climate change sceptic is to declare that global warming is "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and "a challenge humanity must confront", in an apparent U-turn that will give a huge boost to the embattled environmental lobby.
Bjørn Lomborg, the self-styled "sceptical environmentalist" once compared to Adolf Hitler by the UN's climate chief, is famous for attacking climate scientists, campaigners, the media and others for exaggerating the rate of global warming and its effects on humans, and the costly waste of policies to stop the problem.
But in a new book to be published next month, Lomborg will call for tens of billions of dollars a year to be invested in tackling climate change. "Investing $100bn annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century," the book concludes.
Examining eight methods to reduce or stop global warming, Lomborg and his fellow economists recommend pouring money into researching and developing clean energy sources such as wind, wave, solar and nuclear power, and more work on climate engineering ideas such as "cloud whitening" to reflect the sun's heat back into the outer atmosphere.
In a Guardian interview, he said he would finance investment through a tax on carbon emissions that would also raise $50bn to mitigate the effect of climate change, for example by building better sea defences, and $100bn for global healthcare.
His declaration about the importance of action on climate change comes at a crucial point in the debate, with international efforts to agree a global deal on emissions stalled amid a resurgence in scepticism caused by rows over the reliability of the scientific evidence for global warming.
The fallout from those rows continued yesterday when Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, came under new pressure to step down after an independent review of the panel's work called for tighter term limits for its senior executives and greater transparency in its workings. The IPCC has come under fire in recent months following revelations of inaccuracies in the last assessment of global warming, provided to governments in 2007 – for which it won the Nobel peace prize with former the US vice-president Al Gore. The mistakes, including a claim that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035, prompted a review of the IPCC's processes and procedures by the InterAcademy Council (IAC), an organisation of world science bodies.
The IAC said the IPCC needed to be as transparent as possible in how it worked, how it selected people to participate in assessments and its choice of scientific information to assess.
Although Pachauri once compared Lomborg to Hitler, he has now given an unlikely endorsement to the new book, Smart Solutions to Climate Change. In a quote for the launch, Pachauri said: "This book provides not only a reservoir of information on the reality of human-induced climate change, but raises vital questions and examines viable options on what can be done."
Lomborg denies he has performed a volte face, pointing out that even in his first book he accepted the existence of man-made global warming. "The point I've always been making is it's not the end of the world," he told the Guardian. "That's why we should be measuring up to what everybody else says, which is we should be spending our money well."
But he said the crucial turning point in his argument was the Copenhagen Consensus project, in which a group of economists were asked to consider how best to spend $50bn. The first results, in 2004, put global warming near the bottom of the list, arguing instead for policies such as fighting malaria and HIV/Aids. But a repeat analysis in 2008 included new ideas for reducing the temperature rise, some of which emerged about halfway up the ranking. Lomborg said he then decided to consider a much wider variety of policies to reduce global warming, "so it wouldn't end up at the bottom".
The difference was made by examining not just the dominant international policy to cut carbon emissions, but also seven other "solutions" including more investment in technology, climate engineering, and planting more trees and reducing soot and methane, also significant contributors to climate change, said Lomborg.
"If the world is going to spend hundreds of millions to treat climate, where could you get the most bang for your buck?" was the question posed, he added.After the analyses, five economists were asked to rank the 15 possible policies which emerged. Current policies to cut carbon emissions through taxes - of which Lomborg has long been critical - were ranked largely at the bottom of four of the lists. At the top were more direct public investment in research and development rather than spending money on low carbon energy now, and climate engineering.
Lomborg acknowledged trust was a problem when committing to long term R&D, but said politicians were already reneging on promises to cut emissions, and spending on R&D would be easier to monitor. Although many believe private companies are better at R&D than governments, Lomborg said low carbon energy was a special case comparable to massive public investment in computers from the 1950s, which later precpitated the commercial IT revolution.
Lomborg also admitted climate engineering could cause "really bad stuff" to happen, but argued if it could be a cheap and quick way to reduce the worst impacts of climate change and thus there was an "obligation to at least look at it".
He added: "This is not about 'we have all got to live with less, wear hair-shirts and cut our carbon emissions'. It's about technologies, about realising there's a vast array of solutions."
In a quote for the book launch, Pachauri - who once likened the author to Adolf Hitler - said: "This book provides not only a reservoir of information on the reality of human induced climate change, but raises vital questions and examines viable options on what can be done."Despite his change of tack, however, Lomborg is likely to continue to have trenchant critics. Writing for today's Guardian, Howard Friel, author of the book The Lomborg Deception, said: "If Lomborg were really looking for smart solutions, he would push for an end to perpetual and brutal war, which diverts scarce resources from nearly everything that Lomborg legitimately says needs more money."
• Climate change voice who changed his tune
• Rajendra Pachauri under pressure to stand aside
Juliette Jowit guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 August 2010 20.17 BST
The world's most high-profile climate change sceptic is to declare that global warming is "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and "a challenge humanity must confront", in an apparent U-turn that will give a huge boost to the embattled environmental lobby.
Bjørn Lomborg, the self-styled "sceptical environmentalist" once compared to Adolf Hitler by the UN's climate chief, is famous for attacking climate scientists, campaigners, the media and others for exaggerating the rate of global warming and its effects on humans, and the costly waste of policies to stop the problem.
But in a new book to be published next month, Lomborg will call for tens of billions of dollars a year to be invested in tackling climate change. "Investing $100bn annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century," the book concludes.
Examining eight methods to reduce or stop global warming, Lomborg and his fellow economists recommend pouring money into researching and developing clean energy sources such as wind, wave, solar and nuclear power, and more work on climate engineering ideas such as "cloud whitening" to reflect the sun's heat back into the outer atmosphere.
In a Guardian interview, he said he would finance investment through a tax on carbon emissions that would also raise $50bn to mitigate the effect of climate change, for example by building better sea defences, and $100bn for global healthcare.
His declaration about the importance of action on climate change comes at a crucial point in the debate, with international efforts to agree a global deal on emissions stalled amid a resurgence in scepticism caused by rows over the reliability of the scientific evidence for global warming.
The fallout from those rows continued yesterday when Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, came under new pressure to step down after an independent review of the panel's work called for tighter term limits for its senior executives and greater transparency in its workings. The IPCC has come under fire in recent months following revelations of inaccuracies in the last assessment of global warming, provided to governments in 2007 – for which it won the Nobel peace prize with former the US vice-president Al Gore. The mistakes, including a claim that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035, prompted a review of the IPCC's processes and procedures by the InterAcademy Council (IAC), an organisation of world science bodies.
The IAC said the IPCC needed to be as transparent as possible in how it worked, how it selected people to participate in assessments and its choice of scientific information to assess.
Although Pachauri once compared Lomborg to Hitler, he has now given an unlikely endorsement to the new book, Smart Solutions to Climate Change. In a quote for the launch, Pachauri said: "This book provides not only a reservoir of information on the reality of human-induced climate change, but raises vital questions and examines viable options on what can be done."
Lomborg denies he has performed a volte face, pointing out that even in his first book he accepted the existence of man-made global warming. "The point I've always been making is it's not the end of the world," he told the Guardian. "That's why we should be measuring up to what everybody else says, which is we should be spending our money well."
But he said the crucial turning point in his argument was the Copenhagen Consensus project, in which a group of economists were asked to consider how best to spend $50bn. The first results, in 2004, put global warming near the bottom of the list, arguing instead for policies such as fighting malaria and HIV/Aids. But a repeat analysis in 2008 included new ideas for reducing the temperature rise, some of which emerged about halfway up the ranking. Lomborg said he then decided to consider a much wider variety of policies to reduce global warming, "so it wouldn't end up at the bottom".
The difference was made by examining not just the dominant international policy to cut carbon emissions, but also seven other "solutions" including more investment in technology, climate engineering, and planting more trees and reducing soot and methane, also significant contributors to climate change, said Lomborg.
"If the world is going to spend hundreds of millions to treat climate, where could you get the most bang for your buck?" was the question posed, he added.After the analyses, five economists were asked to rank the 15 possible policies which emerged. Current policies to cut carbon emissions through taxes - of which Lomborg has long been critical - were ranked largely at the bottom of four of the lists. At the top were more direct public investment in research and development rather than spending money on low carbon energy now, and climate engineering.
Lomborg acknowledged trust was a problem when committing to long term R&D, but said politicians were already reneging on promises to cut emissions, and spending on R&D would be easier to monitor. Although many believe private companies are better at R&D than governments, Lomborg said low carbon energy was a special case comparable to massive public investment in computers from the 1950s, which later precpitated the commercial IT revolution.
Lomborg also admitted climate engineering could cause "really bad stuff" to happen, but argued if it could be a cheap and quick way to reduce the worst impacts of climate change and thus there was an "obligation to at least look at it".
He added: "This is not about 'we have all got to live with less, wear hair-shirts and cut our carbon emissions'. It's about technologies, about realising there's a vast array of solutions."
In a quote for the book launch, Pachauri - who once likened the author to Adolf Hitler - said: "This book provides not only a reservoir of information on the reality of human induced climate change, but raises vital questions and examines viable options on what can be done."Despite his change of tack, however, Lomborg is likely to continue to have trenchant critics. Writing for today's Guardian, Howard Friel, author of the book The Lomborg Deception, said: "If Lomborg were really looking for smart solutions, he would push for an end to perpetual and brutal war, which diverts scarce resources from nearly everything that Lomborg legitimately says needs more money."
Monday, 30 August 2010
Wind Ambitions Could Keep Egypt’s Lights On.
A demonstrator held candle light protests against the recent electricity cuts in the evening in many parts of Egypt on Thursday. Large parts of Cairo were left in the dark again this week as Egypt wrestles with a series of major power disruptions. The timing couldn’t be worse.
Public anxiety levels are already sky high due to concerns about wheat supplies and food inflation following Russia’s recent ban on exports. It is, after all the world’s biggest importer of the grain.
But with all this happening during the holy month of Ramadan — a period during which Muslims fast between sunrise and sunset — it’s little wonder that people are taking to the streets in protest.
At the heart of Egypt’s power problem is its outdated and neglected electricity infrastructure. Soaring summer temperatures have pressured an already creaky system while high night-time demand for electricity — a period when Muslim’s break their daily fast — has also contributed to the outages.
To be sure, the Egyptian government is taking some steps to deal with the issue. It recently secured a $385 million loan from the European Investment Bank to fund its North Giza Power Plant project outside the capital of Cairo, but this isn’t expected to come online until 2014.
Four years is a long wait for a rapidly growing and fast developing population. It’s an especially long time to sit through long periods of darkness and without the comfort of air conditioning during the feverishly hot summer months.
Egyptian media reports claim the government is examining ways to avoid the repetition of power failures through the introduction of “nontraditional solutions.”
Besides a “traditional” move to say reign in generous power subsidies, especially to heavy industry, Egypt should instead use the latest disruptions as an opportunity to fast track development of alternative energy sources. Wind speeds in the Gulf of Suez consistently average about 9 to 10 meters a second, way ahead of comparable European locations, and making conditions ripe for harnessing wind power.
Currently only about 1.3% of the 22,580 megawatts of installed power capacity in Egypt is from wind, but the supreme energy council in Egypt has approved a plan to increase the contribution of renewable energy to 20% of total capacity by 2020, with 12% wind powered.
Using wind to help shoulder the country’s heavy electricity load makes a lot of sense and could turn out to be a big revenue generator as well.
Countries like Syria, Jordan, Tunisia and Morocco are all developing a big appetite for wind energy as they seek to diversify their power sources. And with crude oil prices creeping back up towards the $80 a barrel level again, renewable energy is beginning to make a whole lot of sense.
Indeed, Cairo-listed El Sewedy Cables has already identified the opportunity in renewables. It expects its growing wind energy segment to represent more than 15% of total revenues by 2013 with margins running at a chunky 20%. The possibility of more companies following suit is a strong one.
Egypt faces a tricky few weeks trying to alleviate the public’s discomfort from the recent blackouts. Its government needs to act quickly and decisively to furnish old, and develop new energy sources, if the country’s lights are to stay on.
Public anxiety levels are already sky high due to concerns about wheat supplies and food inflation following Russia’s recent ban on exports. It is, after all the world’s biggest importer of the grain.
But with all this happening during the holy month of Ramadan — a period during which Muslims fast between sunrise and sunset — it’s little wonder that people are taking to the streets in protest.
At the heart of Egypt’s power problem is its outdated and neglected electricity infrastructure. Soaring summer temperatures have pressured an already creaky system while high night-time demand for electricity — a period when Muslim’s break their daily fast — has also contributed to the outages.
To be sure, the Egyptian government is taking some steps to deal with the issue. It recently secured a $385 million loan from the European Investment Bank to fund its North Giza Power Plant project outside the capital of Cairo, but this isn’t expected to come online until 2014.
Four years is a long wait for a rapidly growing and fast developing population. It’s an especially long time to sit through long periods of darkness and without the comfort of air conditioning during the feverishly hot summer months.
Egyptian media reports claim the government is examining ways to avoid the repetition of power failures through the introduction of “nontraditional solutions.”
Besides a “traditional” move to say reign in generous power subsidies, especially to heavy industry, Egypt should instead use the latest disruptions as an opportunity to fast track development of alternative energy sources. Wind speeds in the Gulf of Suez consistently average about 9 to 10 meters a second, way ahead of comparable European locations, and making conditions ripe for harnessing wind power.
Currently only about 1.3% of the 22,580 megawatts of installed power capacity in Egypt is from wind, but the supreme energy council in Egypt has approved a plan to increase the contribution of renewable energy to 20% of total capacity by 2020, with 12% wind powered.
Using wind to help shoulder the country’s heavy electricity load makes a lot of sense and could turn out to be a big revenue generator as well.
Countries like Syria, Jordan, Tunisia and Morocco are all developing a big appetite for wind energy as they seek to diversify their power sources. And with crude oil prices creeping back up towards the $80 a barrel level again, renewable energy is beginning to make a whole lot of sense.
Indeed, Cairo-listed El Sewedy Cables has already identified the opportunity in renewables. It expects its growing wind energy segment to represent more than 15% of total revenues by 2013 with margins running at a chunky 20%. The possibility of more companies following suit is a strong one.
Egypt faces a tricky few weeks trying to alleviate the public’s discomfort from the recent blackouts. Its government needs to act quickly and decisively to furnish old, and develop new energy sources, if the country’s lights are to stay on.
Sunday, 29 August 2010
Friends of the Earth urges end to 'land grab' for biofuels
Charity predicts more food shortages in Africa because of EU target to produce 10% of all transport fuels from biofuels by 2020
Katie Allen The Guardian, Monday 30 August 2010 Article history
European Union countries must drop their biofuels targets or else risk plunging more Africans into hunger and raising carbon emissions, according to Friends of the Earth (FoE).
In a campaign launching today, the charity accuses European companies of land-grabbing throughout Africa to grow biofuel crops that directly compete with food crops. Biofuel companies counter that they consult with local governments, bring investment and jobs, and often produce fuels for the local market.
FoE has added its voice to an NGO lobby that claims local communities are not properly consulted and that forests are being cleared in a pattern that echoes decades of exploitation of other natural resources in Africa.
In its report "Africa: Up for Grabs", the group says that the key to halting the land-grab is for EU countries to drop a goal to produce 10% of all transport fuels from biofuels by 2020.
"The amount of land being taken in Africa to meet Europe's increasing demand for biofuels is underestimated and out of control," Kirtana Chandrasekaran, food campaigner for FoE in the UK, said. "Especially in Africa, as long as there's massive demand for biofuels from the European market, it will be hard to control. If we implement the biofuels targets it will only get worse. This is just a small taste of what's to come."
A number of European companies have planted biofuel crops such as jatropha, sugar cane and palm oil in Africa and elsewhere to tap into rising demand. But the trend has coincided with soaring food prices and ignited a debate over the dangers of using agricultural land for fuel.
Producers argue they typically farm land not destined, or suitable for, food crops. But campaigners reject those claims, with FoE saying that biofuel crops, including non-edible ones such as jatropha, "are competing directly with food crops for fertile land".
ActionAid claimed this year that European biofuel targets could result in up to 100 million more hungry people, increased food prices and landlessness.
Natural disasters including floods in Pakistan and a heatwave in Russia have wiped out crops in recent weeks and intensified fears of widespread food shortages.
The United Nations has singled out biofuel demand as a factor in what it estimates will be as much as a 40% jump in food prices over the coming decade.
Estimates of how much land in Africa is being farmed by foreign companies and governments, either for food or fuel crops, vary significantly. The FoE report focuses on 11 African countries in what it sees as a rush by foreign companies to farm there. In Tanzania, for example, it says that about 40 foreign-owned companies, including some from the UK, have invested in agrofuel developments. It argues that such activities are actually raising carbon emissions in many cases because virgin forests are being cut down.
Lip service
The report concludes: "While foreign companies pay lip service to the need for 'sustainable development', agrofuel production and demand for land is resulting in the loss of pasture and forests, destroying natural habitat and probably causing an increase in greenhouse gas emissions."
Sun Biofuels, a British company farming land in Mozambique and Tanzania and named in the report, criticised the charity's research as "emotional and anecdotal" and said that its time would be better spent looking into ways to develop equitable farming models in Africa.
Sun's chief executive, Richard Morgan, said his company's leasing of land in Tanzania had taken three years, during which 11 communities, comprising about 11,000 people, were consulted.
"I find it insulting from Friends of the Earth. Somehow it's indirect criticism of Mozambiquan and Tanzanian governments that they would allow this dispossession to take place," he said.
Morgan conceded that such a protracted process could raise expectations among local people of jobs and investment that could not be met, and said that it was often those negative testimonies that were collected by newspapers and NGOs. But he insisted that Sun was creating jobs where possible and that much of the biofuel production was destined for domestic markets in Africa rather than Europe.
"There's an opportunity here to get investment into local communities in an ethical way," he said.
In many cases, biofuel production was replacing or reducing illegal tree felling, Morgan added. "Tanzania has a large landless community felling forest land. If you give employment to those people as an alternative, there is a chance you can intervene commercially there in a good way."
Biofuel crops were being grown on land that was not intended for food production, he said: "Often we are growing trees on land already cut down for charcoal or in some cases tobacco. We haven't displaced anyone."
But FoE argues that "most of the foreign companies are developing agrofuels to sell on the international market". Its campaigners in Africa are demanding that African states should immediately suspend further land acquisitions and investments in agrofuels. Instead, they want to see fundamental changes in consumption habits in developed countries – be it making more use of public transport or adopting different diets.
Chandrasekaran said: "Biofuels is just a small part of what is happening. What needs to change are consumption patterns in the west. That means [eating less] meat and dairy, given more than a third of the world's agricultural land goes to feeding meat and dairy production. It also means [reducing] consumption of fuel."
Katie Allen The Guardian, Monday 30 August 2010 Article history
European Union countries must drop their biofuels targets or else risk plunging more Africans into hunger and raising carbon emissions, according to Friends of the Earth (FoE).
In a campaign launching today, the charity accuses European companies of land-grabbing throughout Africa to grow biofuel crops that directly compete with food crops. Biofuel companies counter that they consult with local governments, bring investment and jobs, and often produce fuels for the local market.
FoE has added its voice to an NGO lobby that claims local communities are not properly consulted and that forests are being cleared in a pattern that echoes decades of exploitation of other natural resources in Africa.
In its report "Africa: Up for Grabs", the group says that the key to halting the land-grab is for EU countries to drop a goal to produce 10% of all transport fuels from biofuels by 2020.
"The amount of land being taken in Africa to meet Europe's increasing demand for biofuels is underestimated and out of control," Kirtana Chandrasekaran, food campaigner for FoE in the UK, said. "Especially in Africa, as long as there's massive demand for biofuels from the European market, it will be hard to control. If we implement the biofuels targets it will only get worse. This is just a small taste of what's to come."
A number of European companies have planted biofuel crops such as jatropha, sugar cane and palm oil in Africa and elsewhere to tap into rising demand. But the trend has coincided with soaring food prices and ignited a debate over the dangers of using agricultural land for fuel.
Producers argue they typically farm land not destined, or suitable for, food crops. But campaigners reject those claims, with FoE saying that biofuel crops, including non-edible ones such as jatropha, "are competing directly with food crops for fertile land".
ActionAid claimed this year that European biofuel targets could result in up to 100 million more hungry people, increased food prices and landlessness.
Natural disasters including floods in Pakistan and a heatwave in Russia have wiped out crops in recent weeks and intensified fears of widespread food shortages.
The United Nations has singled out biofuel demand as a factor in what it estimates will be as much as a 40% jump in food prices over the coming decade.
Estimates of how much land in Africa is being farmed by foreign companies and governments, either for food or fuel crops, vary significantly. The FoE report focuses on 11 African countries in what it sees as a rush by foreign companies to farm there. In Tanzania, for example, it says that about 40 foreign-owned companies, including some from the UK, have invested in agrofuel developments. It argues that such activities are actually raising carbon emissions in many cases because virgin forests are being cut down.
Lip service
The report concludes: "While foreign companies pay lip service to the need for 'sustainable development', agrofuel production and demand for land is resulting in the loss of pasture and forests, destroying natural habitat and probably causing an increase in greenhouse gas emissions."
Sun Biofuels, a British company farming land in Mozambique and Tanzania and named in the report, criticised the charity's research as "emotional and anecdotal" and said that its time would be better spent looking into ways to develop equitable farming models in Africa.
Sun's chief executive, Richard Morgan, said his company's leasing of land in Tanzania had taken three years, during which 11 communities, comprising about 11,000 people, were consulted.
"I find it insulting from Friends of the Earth. Somehow it's indirect criticism of Mozambiquan and Tanzanian governments that they would allow this dispossession to take place," he said.
Morgan conceded that such a protracted process could raise expectations among local people of jobs and investment that could not be met, and said that it was often those negative testimonies that were collected by newspapers and NGOs. But he insisted that Sun was creating jobs where possible and that much of the biofuel production was destined for domestic markets in Africa rather than Europe.
"There's an opportunity here to get investment into local communities in an ethical way," he said.
In many cases, biofuel production was replacing or reducing illegal tree felling, Morgan added. "Tanzania has a large landless community felling forest land. If you give employment to those people as an alternative, there is a chance you can intervene commercially there in a good way."
Biofuel crops were being grown on land that was not intended for food production, he said: "Often we are growing trees on land already cut down for charcoal or in some cases tobacco. We haven't displaced anyone."
But FoE argues that "most of the foreign companies are developing agrofuels to sell on the international market". Its campaigners in Africa are demanding that African states should immediately suspend further land acquisitions and investments in agrofuels. Instead, they want to see fundamental changes in consumption habits in developed countries – be it making more use of public transport or adopting different diets.
Chandrasekaran said: "Biofuels is just a small part of what is happening. What needs to change are consumption patterns in the west. That means [eating less] meat and dairy, given more than a third of the world's agricultural land goes to feeding meat and dairy production. It also means [reducing] consumption of fuel."
Saturday, 28 August 2010
David Sandalow: Obama's electric car champion
Sunday, August 29, 2010
By Ken Thomas, The Associated Press
Charles Dharapak/Associated PressDavid Sandalow, the Department of Energy's assistant secretary for policy and international affairs, in his Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid vehicle at his home in Washington.WASHINGTON -- David Sandalow starts his five-mile commute each day by unplugging an orange extension cord connecting his Toyota Prius hybrid to an outlet in his brick carport.
His Prius, which was converted two years ago to allow him to recharge the battery from an electric outlet, gets more than 80 miles per gallon and lets him drive 30 miles on a single charge. He fills up his car with gasoline about once every month or two, an oddity in a transportation sector long dominated by the internal combustion engine.
"If you're thirsty, you can get a Diet Coke or orange juice or water. If you're hungry you can get a hamburger or hot dog or a fruit plate. If you want to drive someplace, you only have one choice. You can use gasoline or petroleum-based products," says Mr. Sandalow, the Energy Department's assistant secretary for policy and international affairs. "That doesn't seem strange to us ... but it's odd. It's strange that we are utterly dependent on this one fuel source for mobility."
If American consumers begin to shift to electric cars this decade, Mr. Sandalow will be one of the government's driving forces behind the change. Crafting policy from the vantage point of an electric car driver himself, the former Brookings Institution scholar has helped shape the Obama administration's ambitious plan to pump billions of dollars into partnerships aimed at developing cars running on electric power, creating an advanced battery industry and helping communities prepare for the transition.
President Barack Obama has pledged to bring 1 million plug-in hybrid electric vehicles to U.S. highways by 2015, and turned to the nascent battery industry as one of the hallmarks of his economic recovery plan. Electric vehicles built by General Motors and Nissan are arriving in showrooms later this year, and every major auto manufacturer is working on an electric strategy, encouraged by federal funding and tax incentives.
Plenty of obstacles remain: the lithium-ion batteries expected to power electric vehicles are extremely expensive, even when the costs are reduced by a $7,500-per-vehicle federal tax credit. The government recently estimated that a battery with a 100-mile range costs about $33,000, although federal stimulus funds could bring the costs down to $10,000 by the end of 2015. Other concerns remain about the durability and longevity of the batteries.
The government's projections could be rosy, some analysts contend, and the program could create more capacity for building the batteries than consumers demand. "It definitely is a risky investment. We don't think that the sales of electric vehicles will be as high as the government is hoping," said Mike Omotoso, J.D. Power's senior manager of global powertrain.
But with concerns about global warming and oil politics, the administration sees an opportunity in electric cars, and Mr. Sandalow is leading the charge.
Mr. Obama pushed a $2.4 billion grant program to develop next-generation batteries, which could lead to 500,000 batteries a year by late 2014. A 2007 energy law, meanwhile, has led to billions in loans for automakers to retool their plants for fuel-efficient vehicles, including electric cars.
Mr. Sandalow, 53, served in the State Department and at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. He was tapped for the Energy Department's top policy job after studying oil dependence, electric vehicles and climate change at the Brookings Institute.
Mr. Sandalow has helped the administration speed the development of electric cars and offer incentives for consumers and communities to begin taking steps to transition off conventional vehicles.
His plug-in Prius differs from the standard Prius hybrid, which is powered by a gasoline engine and an electric motor and typically offers drivers better mileage in slow-speed and stop-and-go driving. Standard hybrids do not allow motorists to recharge a battery by plugging into a standard electrical outlet.
Mr. Sandalow discovered the merits of electric cars while studying oil dependence at Brookings. His 2007 book, "Freedom From Oil," included a series of hypothetical memos from different Cabinet agencies with suggestions on how a future presidential administration could help the U.S. move away from imported petroleum.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10241/1083498-84.stm?cmpid=autonews.xml#ixzz0y0luoRrQ
By Ken Thomas, The Associated Press
Charles Dharapak/Associated PressDavid Sandalow, the Department of Energy's assistant secretary for policy and international affairs, in his Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid vehicle at his home in Washington.WASHINGTON -- David Sandalow starts his five-mile commute each day by unplugging an orange extension cord connecting his Toyota Prius hybrid to an outlet in his brick carport.
His Prius, which was converted two years ago to allow him to recharge the battery from an electric outlet, gets more than 80 miles per gallon and lets him drive 30 miles on a single charge. He fills up his car with gasoline about once every month or two, an oddity in a transportation sector long dominated by the internal combustion engine.
"If you're thirsty, you can get a Diet Coke or orange juice or water. If you're hungry you can get a hamburger or hot dog or a fruit plate. If you want to drive someplace, you only have one choice. You can use gasoline or petroleum-based products," says Mr. Sandalow, the Energy Department's assistant secretary for policy and international affairs. "That doesn't seem strange to us ... but it's odd. It's strange that we are utterly dependent on this one fuel source for mobility."
If American consumers begin to shift to electric cars this decade, Mr. Sandalow will be one of the government's driving forces behind the change. Crafting policy from the vantage point of an electric car driver himself, the former Brookings Institution scholar has helped shape the Obama administration's ambitious plan to pump billions of dollars into partnerships aimed at developing cars running on electric power, creating an advanced battery industry and helping communities prepare for the transition.
President Barack Obama has pledged to bring 1 million plug-in hybrid electric vehicles to U.S. highways by 2015, and turned to the nascent battery industry as one of the hallmarks of his economic recovery plan. Electric vehicles built by General Motors and Nissan are arriving in showrooms later this year, and every major auto manufacturer is working on an electric strategy, encouraged by federal funding and tax incentives.
Plenty of obstacles remain: the lithium-ion batteries expected to power electric vehicles are extremely expensive, even when the costs are reduced by a $7,500-per-vehicle federal tax credit. The government recently estimated that a battery with a 100-mile range costs about $33,000, although federal stimulus funds could bring the costs down to $10,000 by the end of 2015. Other concerns remain about the durability and longevity of the batteries.
The government's projections could be rosy, some analysts contend, and the program could create more capacity for building the batteries than consumers demand. "It definitely is a risky investment. We don't think that the sales of electric vehicles will be as high as the government is hoping," said Mike Omotoso, J.D. Power's senior manager of global powertrain.
But with concerns about global warming and oil politics, the administration sees an opportunity in electric cars, and Mr. Sandalow is leading the charge.
Mr. Obama pushed a $2.4 billion grant program to develop next-generation batteries, which could lead to 500,000 batteries a year by late 2014. A 2007 energy law, meanwhile, has led to billions in loans for automakers to retool their plants for fuel-efficient vehicles, including electric cars.
Mr. Sandalow, 53, served in the State Department and at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. He was tapped for the Energy Department's top policy job after studying oil dependence, electric vehicles and climate change at the Brookings Institute.
Mr. Sandalow has helped the administration speed the development of electric cars and offer incentives for consumers and communities to begin taking steps to transition off conventional vehicles.
His plug-in Prius differs from the standard Prius hybrid, which is powered by a gasoline engine and an electric motor and typically offers drivers better mileage in slow-speed and stop-and-go driving. Standard hybrids do not allow motorists to recharge a battery by plugging into a standard electrical outlet.
Mr. Sandalow discovered the merits of electric cars while studying oil dependence at Brookings. His 2007 book, "Freedom From Oil," included a series of hypothetical memos from different Cabinet agencies with suggestions on how a future presidential administration could help the U.S. move away from imported petroleum.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10241/1083498-84.stm?cmpid=autonews.xml#ixzz0y0luoRrQ
Lawmakers OK $75M biofuel plan
One-day special session also outlaws synthetic marijuana
Elizabeth Crisp • elizabeth.crisp@clarionledger.com • August 28, 2010
A Texas-based biofuel venture will get a $75 million state-backed loan to start up in Mississippi after receiving nearly unanimous support from Mississippi lawmakers Friday.
Also, during their one-day special session , lawmakers approved a statewide ban on a synthetic marijuana substance commonly referred to as K2 or "spice," and acted on several other items.
Gov. Haley Barbour, who summoned the Legislature back to the Capitol to consider the bills, pledged to sign them into law.
"The decision by the Legislature to approve the incentive package to bring the first three of KiOR Corp.'s full-scale production facilities to Mississippi is not only an economic development boon for our state, but also a key step toward energy self-reliance for our country," Barbour said in a statement.
The Legislature swiftly pushed through House Bill 8 - the incentive package, to lure Houston-based biofuel start-up KiOR, which will locate the three plants in timber-rich areas over the next five years.
KiOR plans to take biomass - in this case wood chips from local timber that can be made into energy - and add a catalyst to chemically turn the chips into a near-perfect match to crude oil in a matter of seconds.
The product, the company says, can go through existing crude refineries and be used to make standard gasoline or diesel fuel.
"It's an unbelievable process," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Dean Kirby, R-Pearl. "This might be the most exciting piece of legislation that I've ever handled."
The company will get no subsidies or state support until it has formed a partnership with a major oil company to refine it.
The first site will be built in Columbus and could open by the end of 2011.
"This will be the only plant of its kind in the world," said House Ways and Means Chairman Percy Watson, D-Hattiesburg.
Other KiOR facilities will be built in Newton County and in southwest Mississippi near Franklin County by 2015.
Officials estimate 1,000 jobs will be created directly or indirectly.
Several members of Jackson's delegation voted against the project in protest of the state Bond Commission's refusal to issue $6 million in bonds to the city of Jackson for water upgrades around the Capitol.
"I have tried my best to analyze what it is that Jackson will get as a result of me coming to the Capitol and voting for this particular legislation," said Sen. Alice Harden, D-Jackson. "Is it fair for my constituents to have to pay the debt on these bonds when we won't see any jobs, we won't see any benefits from the $75 million? I think not."
Some lawmakers also said they were leery of the technology but ended up voting for the bill.
Sen. David Jordan, D-Greenwood, said he remembers the state's beef plant fiasco and doesn't want a repeat.
"I don't want to get burned again. I want to be absolutely sure," he said.
The state-backed Mississippi Beef Processors Inc. plant operated a short time before closing in November 2004, leaving 400 people without jobs. The beef plant's failure cost taxpayers at least $55 million and led to criminal convictions of private developers.
"That albatross still hangs around our necks," Jordan said, before eventually voting for the KiOR bill.
Senate Bill 2004 - the "spice" ban, also passed with nearly unanimous support.
The product, sold in smoke shops and convenience stores as an incense, will be illegal to sell or possess once the governor signs the bill into law.
Holding up several bright envelopes and small vials filled with green, leafy substances, Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics director Marshall Fisher told lawmakers that officers had bought the K2 at a Jackson convenience store Friday morning.
"You can see where it would be attractive to young folks," Fisher said.
Although the substance is marked "not for human consumption," law enforcement officers say it has become popular among teens and young adults who smoke it to get high.
"It's not the same as marijuana," said House Judiciary A Committee Chairman Ed Blackmon, D-Canton. "It has the same effect, but it does many bad things to the body."
Elizabeth Crisp • elizabeth.crisp@clarionledger.com • August 28, 2010
A Texas-based biofuel venture will get a $75 million state-backed loan to start up in Mississippi after receiving nearly unanimous support from Mississippi lawmakers Friday.
Also, during their one-day special session , lawmakers approved a statewide ban on a synthetic marijuana substance commonly referred to as K2 or "spice," and acted on several other items.
Gov. Haley Barbour, who summoned the Legislature back to the Capitol to consider the bills, pledged to sign them into law.
"The decision by the Legislature to approve the incentive package to bring the first three of KiOR Corp.'s full-scale production facilities to Mississippi is not only an economic development boon for our state, but also a key step toward energy self-reliance for our country," Barbour said in a statement.
The Legislature swiftly pushed through House Bill 8 - the incentive package, to lure Houston-based biofuel start-up KiOR, which will locate the three plants in timber-rich areas over the next five years.
KiOR plans to take biomass - in this case wood chips from local timber that can be made into energy - and add a catalyst to chemically turn the chips into a near-perfect match to crude oil in a matter of seconds.
The product, the company says, can go through existing crude refineries and be used to make standard gasoline or diesel fuel.
"It's an unbelievable process," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Dean Kirby, R-Pearl. "This might be the most exciting piece of legislation that I've ever handled."
The company will get no subsidies or state support until it has formed a partnership with a major oil company to refine it.
The first site will be built in Columbus and could open by the end of 2011.
"This will be the only plant of its kind in the world," said House Ways and Means Chairman Percy Watson, D-Hattiesburg.
Other KiOR facilities will be built in Newton County and in southwest Mississippi near Franklin County by 2015.
Officials estimate 1,000 jobs will be created directly or indirectly.
Several members of Jackson's delegation voted against the project in protest of the state Bond Commission's refusal to issue $6 million in bonds to the city of Jackson for water upgrades around the Capitol.
"I have tried my best to analyze what it is that Jackson will get as a result of me coming to the Capitol and voting for this particular legislation," said Sen. Alice Harden, D-Jackson. "Is it fair for my constituents to have to pay the debt on these bonds when we won't see any jobs, we won't see any benefits from the $75 million? I think not."
Some lawmakers also said they were leery of the technology but ended up voting for the bill.
Sen. David Jordan, D-Greenwood, said he remembers the state's beef plant fiasco and doesn't want a repeat.
"I don't want to get burned again. I want to be absolutely sure," he said.
The state-backed Mississippi Beef Processors Inc. plant operated a short time before closing in November 2004, leaving 400 people without jobs. The beef plant's failure cost taxpayers at least $55 million and led to criminal convictions of private developers.
"That albatross still hangs around our necks," Jordan said, before eventually voting for the KiOR bill.
Senate Bill 2004 - the "spice" ban, also passed with nearly unanimous support.
The product, sold in smoke shops and convenience stores as an incense, will be illegal to sell or possess once the governor signs the bill into law.
Holding up several bright envelopes and small vials filled with green, leafy substances, Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics director Marshall Fisher told lawmakers that officers had bought the K2 at a Jackson convenience store Friday morning.
"You can see where it would be attractive to young folks," Fisher said.
Although the substance is marked "not for human consumption," law enforcement officers say it has become popular among teens and young adults who smoke it to get high.
"It's not the same as marijuana," said House Judiciary A Committee Chairman Ed Blackmon, D-Canton. "It has the same effect, but it does many bad things to the body."
How the Pentagon is Attacking Energy Efficiency
The U.S. Department of Defense's first director of operational energy plans and programs is tasked with weaving energy considerations into war-fighting strategy
By Dina Fine Maron and Climatewire
US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
In the heat of battle, troops may not have time to think about making the most energy-efficient moves. That's where Sharon Burke comes in.
From her office wedged within one of the innermost rings of the Pentagon, the soft-spoken 44-year-old security analyst is tasked with weaving energy considerations into the Defense Department's war-fighting strategy. DOD officials say the push is about improving capability and saving lives lost accompanying fuel through war zones, not making environmental strides.
Burke, however, sees the two areas as linked. "The department needs to cut its energy use for its own reasons -- for the way we do business, for the ability to protect the country, and cutting energy use for climate change is part of that," she said in an interview with ClimateWire.
Burke is the Pentagon's first director of operational energy plans and programs, or, as she called herself during her first public appearance on the job last month -- the "dope," riffing off her DOEEP acronym.
The Senate confirmed Burke to the job in June, after she came under initial fire from Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe (R) for her apparent support of a 2007 law that bars federal agencies from buying alternative fuels that have higher greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels (ClimateWire, March 25).
The energy security expert grew up on tales of her father's Marine Corps service and has spent most of her adult life bouncing between State Department, DOD and think tank jobs.
In her newest role, Burke sees her responsibility as split into three camps: shrinking energy needs in current operations, better incorporating fuel efficiency criteria into decisions about what equipment to buy, and factoring energy into DOD's overall war-fighter fabric.
Achieving those goals could make a sizable dent in the carbon footprint of DOD.
Consider the "operational" energy required to perform tasks like ferrying gas from Pakistan through the Hindu Kush and keep legions of generators humming at forward operating bases. Such activities amount to some 70 percent of all energy used by the Department of Defense. And DOD racks up a hefty energy bill as the nation's single largest energy consumer -- using more than 1 percent of the nation's total.
New war lines, new energy lines
Burke has until December 21 to present Congress with a blueprint for how she will lighten that DOD fuel load. For a department that has never before looked at operational energy as its own entity and is notoriously splintered with its own specific plans and obstacles for each service, this will be a significant undertaking.
Her office walls are bare -- save for a DOD organizational chart -- perhaps underscoring the challenge of developing a crosscutting strategy for the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
Still, Burke says that the bureaucracy in the department is not what she sees as her greatest obstacle. "It's not so much that I see a roof full of stovepipes that need to be knocked down." Her office will be acting as "an integrator and a coordinator and have an oversight function," she said.
The initial hurdle, according to Burke, is defining the challenge and getting more detailed information on which missions, bases and equipment are most responsible for running up the combat fuel tally.
"You know, they've never separated out operational energy as a concern. The very act of standing up in office and pushing people into those conversations or pulling them -- inviting them into it -- has been really important," she said.
Two years ago, the Defense Science Board Task Force on DOD Energy Strategy blasted DOD for failing to achieve better energy savings in combat zones and pointed to the lack of senior leadership within DOD on the issue as a central cause. Congress tried to fill that void in the fiscal 2009 Defense Authorization Act by creating the DOEPP position.
As the first person to hold the job, Burke said she is cautious about keeping her goals realistic and making sure she isn't driven by her inbox to move too quickly.
"It's not every day in the Pentagon you have a chance to establish a whole new organization," she said. But at the same time, she wants to move fast enough to make sure that future strategies, war games and funding reflect the need to move toward a more fuel-efficient future.
DOD's energy landscape is changing, she said. "What is new is how energy-intense our military is, and the kinds of wars we are in where we are not always going to be behind our front lines. The lines are everywhere," she said.
Contracting: ripe for improvement
Burke fancies herself a matchmaker -- identifying needs and marrying them up with possible energy solutions.
In the short term, she said, her plans to "unleash troops from the tether of fuel" won't come from sending a deluge of prototypes of smart microgrids and solar-paneled tents to the front lines.
Instead, Burke said she plans to take stock of proven, off-the-shelf technologies to save on fuel and energy needs and lighten air loads.
"I know it's not as satisfying as being able to say we are going to put an entirely new thing in theater and it will change everything," she said. "I hope that's possible, but right now I think we need to focus on what we know we can do right now, and that will actually add up to quite a bit," she said.
Initial fixes, she said, could range from engine upgrades to material upgrades or changes to the body of a system or its wheels. As gear, weapons and Humvees cycle back to the depot to be refitted and refurbished, that's an opportunity to retrofit equipment with efficiency upgrades, she said.
Dan Nolan, the founder and CEO of Sabot 6, a defense consulting group, said a specific area that could use some of Burke's attention would be creating financial incentives for contractors to be more energy-efficient. Nolan was part of the team that put DOD's Power Surety Task Force together -- the group that pushed the Army to insulate more than 6 million square feet of tents in Iraq and Afghanistan with spray-on foam, saving $1.5 million a day in fuel savings, according to Army numbers.
Contractors perform a lot of DOD's long-term support work in the field. If they were required to buy their own fuel within their contracts and were told they could keep any savings, that could motivate them to slim down their energy needs, he said. Such changes could be where the "greatest impact could happen in the shortest amount of time," he said.
'Climate change will shape our future'
From her previous perch as a senior fellow and then vice president at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Center for a New American Security, Burke helped shape research focused on the intersection of security threats and energy issues.
She started grappling with security issues in the Pentagon years ago. Early in her career, she served as a Presidential Management Fellow in the Pentagon, getting to know the building and serving in its different offices for two years. Since then, she has hopscotched through civil service and political appointee jobs at the State Department and Defense Department and also worked at Third Way, a progressive think tank, where she advised candidates and members of Congress on national security issues.
Burke has championed ramping up consideration of climate change and energy considerations into national security strategy.
"National security capabilities can take decades to build," she told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last year. "We need to design the ideas and equipment and recruit and train the personnel to protect and defend the nation 10 to 40 years in the future, and it is clear that climate change will shape our future," she said (E&E Daily, March 22).
'Spaghetti' metrics
Written into Burke's job description is the requirement that she review the DOD budget and report to Congress if it gives energy considerations short shrift. Since her overarching energy plan has not been written yet, Burke and her current staff of three are combing the fiscal 2012 budget to make sure it provides enough funds for each service's individual energy goals.
While Burke is aware that her job is to lead from the top in energy savings, she said pulling DOD toward better fuel management and energy innovation is not just a matter of laying out targets.
"If you say we are going to cut operational energy use by X percent, well, it's a war. It's not a fixed installation that stays in one place and has certain duty cycles. It's just you either are going to be putting constraints on our soldiers and Marines in the field that would make it difficult to do their jobs, or you would be asking them to ignore you," she said.
Still, that does not mean there should be no evaluative measures, she cautioned. Moreover, Congress required that she come up with some. "We do need to have metrics that measure success, absolutely, but I just don't want to throw spaghetti metrics up on the wall and hope they stick," she said.
In her December plan, she said, she will be laying out requirements to track where energy gets used in the field. Armed with those numbers from the different services, she said, the Pentagon can be better poised to tackle the problem.
"Right now, I know the Army is getting ready to field some monitoring operationally," she said, but she declined to discuss the details of that initiative saying they are "pre-decisional."
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 202-628-6500 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
By Dina Fine Maron and Climatewire
US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
In the heat of battle, troops may not have time to think about making the most energy-efficient moves. That's where Sharon Burke comes in.
From her office wedged within one of the innermost rings of the Pentagon, the soft-spoken 44-year-old security analyst is tasked with weaving energy considerations into the Defense Department's war-fighting strategy. DOD officials say the push is about improving capability and saving lives lost accompanying fuel through war zones, not making environmental strides.
Burke, however, sees the two areas as linked. "The department needs to cut its energy use for its own reasons -- for the way we do business, for the ability to protect the country, and cutting energy use for climate change is part of that," she said in an interview with ClimateWire.
Burke is the Pentagon's first director of operational energy plans and programs, or, as she called herself during her first public appearance on the job last month -- the "dope," riffing off her DOEEP acronym.
The Senate confirmed Burke to the job in June, after she came under initial fire from Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe (R) for her apparent support of a 2007 law that bars federal agencies from buying alternative fuels that have higher greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels (ClimateWire, March 25).
The energy security expert grew up on tales of her father's Marine Corps service and has spent most of her adult life bouncing between State Department, DOD and think tank jobs.
In her newest role, Burke sees her responsibility as split into three camps: shrinking energy needs in current operations, better incorporating fuel efficiency criteria into decisions about what equipment to buy, and factoring energy into DOD's overall war-fighter fabric.
Achieving those goals could make a sizable dent in the carbon footprint of DOD.
Consider the "operational" energy required to perform tasks like ferrying gas from Pakistan through the Hindu Kush and keep legions of generators humming at forward operating bases. Such activities amount to some 70 percent of all energy used by the Department of Defense. And DOD racks up a hefty energy bill as the nation's single largest energy consumer -- using more than 1 percent of the nation's total.
New war lines, new energy lines
Burke has until December 21 to present Congress with a blueprint for how she will lighten that DOD fuel load. For a department that has never before looked at operational energy as its own entity and is notoriously splintered with its own specific plans and obstacles for each service, this will be a significant undertaking.
Her office walls are bare -- save for a DOD organizational chart -- perhaps underscoring the challenge of developing a crosscutting strategy for the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
Still, Burke says that the bureaucracy in the department is not what she sees as her greatest obstacle. "It's not so much that I see a roof full of stovepipes that need to be knocked down." Her office will be acting as "an integrator and a coordinator and have an oversight function," she said.
The initial hurdle, according to Burke, is defining the challenge and getting more detailed information on which missions, bases and equipment are most responsible for running up the combat fuel tally.
"You know, they've never separated out operational energy as a concern. The very act of standing up in office and pushing people into those conversations or pulling them -- inviting them into it -- has been really important," she said.
Two years ago, the Defense Science Board Task Force on DOD Energy Strategy blasted DOD for failing to achieve better energy savings in combat zones and pointed to the lack of senior leadership within DOD on the issue as a central cause. Congress tried to fill that void in the fiscal 2009 Defense Authorization Act by creating the DOEPP position.
As the first person to hold the job, Burke said she is cautious about keeping her goals realistic and making sure she isn't driven by her inbox to move too quickly.
"It's not every day in the Pentagon you have a chance to establish a whole new organization," she said. But at the same time, she wants to move fast enough to make sure that future strategies, war games and funding reflect the need to move toward a more fuel-efficient future.
DOD's energy landscape is changing, she said. "What is new is how energy-intense our military is, and the kinds of wars we are in where we are not always going to be behind our front lines. The lines are everywhere," she said.
Contracting: ripe for improvement
Burke fancies herself a matchmaker -- identifying needs and marrying them up with possible energy solutions.
In the short term, she said, her plans to "unleash troops from the tether of fuel" won't come from sending a deluge of prototypes of smart microgrids and solar-paneled tents to the front lines.
Instead, Burke said she plans to take stock of proven, off-the-shelf technologies to save on fuel and energy needs and lighten air loads.
"I know it's not as satisfying as being able to say we are going to put an entirely new thing in theater and it will change everything," she said. "I hope that's possible, but right now I think we need to focus on what we know we can do right now, and that will actually add up to quite a bit," she said.
Initial fixes, she said, could range from engine upgrades to material upgrades or changes to the body of a system or its wheels. As gear, weapons and Humvees cycle back to the depot to be refitted and refurbished, that's an opportunity to retrofit equipment with efficiency upgrades, she said.
Dan Nolan, the founder and CEO of Sabot 6, a defense consulting group, said a specific area that could use some of Burke's attention would be creating financial incentives for contractors to be more energy-efficient. Nolan was part of the team that put DOD's Power Surety Task Force together -- the group that pushed the Army to insulate more than 6 million square feet of tents in Iraq and Afghanistan with spray-on foam, saving $1.5 million a day in fuel savings, according to Army numbers.
Contractors perform a lot of DOD's long-term support work in the field. If they were required to buy their own fuel within their contracts and were told they could keep any savings, that could motivate them to slim down their energy needs, he said. Such changes could be where the "greatest impact could happen in the shortest amount of time," he said.
'Climate change will shape our future'
From her previous perch as a senior fellow and then vice president at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Center for a New American Security, Burke helped shape research focused on the intersection of security threats and energy issues.
She started grappling with security issues in the Pentagon years ago. Early in her career, she served as a Presidential Management Fellow in the Pentagon, getting to know the building and serving in its different offices for two years. Since then, she has hopscotched through civil service and political appointee jobs at the State Department and Defense Department and also worked at Third Way, a progressive think tank, where she advised candidates and members of Congress on national security issues.
Burke has championed ramping up consideration of climate change and energy considerations into national security strategy.
"National security capabilities can take decades to build," she told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last year. "We need to design the ideas and equipment and recruit and train the personnel to protect and defend the nation 10 to 40 years in the future, and it is clear that climate change will shape our future," she said (E&E Daily, March 22).
'Spaghetti' metrics
Written into Burke's job description is the requirement that she review the DOD budget and report to Congress if it gives energy considerations short shrift. Since her overarching energy plan has not been written yet, Burke and her current staff of three are combing the fiscal 2012 budget to make sure it provides enough funds for each service's individual energy goals.
While Burke is aware that her job is to lead from the top in energy savings, she said pulling DOD toward better fuel management and energy innovation is not just a matter of laying out targets.
"If you say we are going to cut operational energy use by X percent, well, it's a war. It's not a fixed installation that stays in one place and has certain duty cycles. It's just you either are going to be putting constraints on our soldiers and Marines in the field that would make it difficult to do their jobs, or you would be asking them to ignore you," she said.
Still, that does not mean there should be no evaluative measures, she cautioned. Moreover, Congress required that she come up with some. "We do need to have metrics that measure success, absolutely, but I just don't want to throw spaghetti metrics up on the wall and hope they stick," she said.
In her December plan, she said, she will be laying out requirements to track where energy gets used in the field. Armed with those numbers from the different services, she said, the Pentagon can be better poised to tackle the problem.
"Right now, I know the Army is getting ready to field some monitoring operationally," she said, but she declined to discuss the details of that initiative saying they are "pre-decisional."
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 202-628-6500 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Shoppers 'panic buying' old 75W bulbs before EU ban comes into force
Shoppers across Europe are panic buying the last remaining stocks of old fashioned 75W light bulbs before the traditional household items are banned in the EU next week.
By Leigh Philips, Louise Gray and Andrew Hough
Published: 8:00AM BST 28 Aug 2010
The panic buying has come ahead of a EU ban next week. Photo: REUTERS Last year 100W incandescent light bulbs were outlawed, triggering the first wave of stockpiling by worried consumers who do not like the more expensive energy saving alternatives.
Now it will be an offence to import or manufacture 75W bulbs, although shops can continue to sell the model until stocks run out.
Phil Hope's shopping list for his London flat, May 2004 to February 2008The European Lamp Companies Federation said shoppers around Europe are already snapping up the last remaining stocks, with a 35 per cent increase in sales across the EU.
Demand is highest in Germany, Austria, Poland and central Europe.
Although the powerful light is also popular in Britain as a reading lamp or for lighting portraits or chandeliers in historic homes.
Airum, a Finnish producer of bulbs, has reported a doubling of demand for 75W bulbs in the country compared to what is normal for August.
Veronique Skrotsky, a spokeswoman for General Electric Lighting’s French operations, said people do not like the energy saving alternatives.
She said compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), which use a fifth of the energy needed for a conventional bulb, give off a sickly light.
“It’s clear that customers find the light they give off ugly, it’s really terrible,” she said.
CFLs have even been blamed for giving people headaches and skin rashes.
Bobby Damney, a spokesman for the Light Bulb Company, a major British wholesaler and retailer, said the company has seen a 10 per cent rise since June.
He said consumers do not like the "horribly shaped" CFLs, which also take longer to turn on and can flicker.
"It has been a chore for some customers trying to replace the bulbs,” he added.
Supermarkets in the UK have already phased out 75W bulbs but independent retailers and wholesalers reported an increase in demand.
Robert Parker, technical adviser to the Historic Houses Association, said people who live in older homes are stock piling old fashioned lamps.
Even halogen lamps, which give off a warmer glow and come in traditional shapes, will not fit into all old fashioned fittings.
“It has been a concern of ours for quite some time particularly in small bayonet candle bulbs that fit into many chandeliers and ancient fittings,” he said. “The energy efficient bulbs that fit into small bayonets are deeply unattractive.”
The panic buying of light bulbs is expected to get worse when 60W bulbs are banned next year and all incandescent bulbs are phased out by 2012.
Incandescent light bulbs are being phased out in order to meet the EU’s ambitious climate change targets to cut greenhouse gases by 20 per cent by 2020.
Advocates claim that replacing the old fashioned lamps with more efficient models will reduce domestic energy consumption for lighting by 60 per cent in the EU, equivalent to saving 30 million tons of CO2 pollution every year.
Jurgen Sturm, general-secretary of the European Lamp Companies Federation, insisted that the energy saving alternatives not only last longer and save money in the long run, but will improve in quality and range over the next few years.
By Leigh Philips, Louise Gray and Andrew Hough
Published: 8:00AM BST 28 Aug 2010
The panic buying has come ahead of a EU ban next week. Photo: REUTERS Last year 100W incandescent light bulbs were outlawed, triggering the first wave of stockpiling by worried consumers who do not like the more expensive energy saving alternatives.
Now it will be an offence to import or manufacture 75W bulbs, although shops can continue to sell the model until stocks run out.
Phil Hope's shopping list for his London flat, May 2004 to February 2008The European Lamp Companies Federation said shoppers around Europe are already snapping up the last remaining stocks, with a 35 per cent increase in sales across the EU.
Demand is highest in Germany, Austria, Poland and central Europe.
Although the powerful light is also popular in Britain as a reading lamp or for lighting portraits or chandeliers in historic homes.
Airum, a Finnish producer of bulbs, has reported a doubling of demand for 75W bulbs in the country compared to what is normal for August.
Veronique Skrotsky, a spokeswoman for General Electric Lighting’s French operations, said people do not like the energy saving alternatives.
She said compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), which use a fifth of the energy needed for a conventional bulb, give off a sickly light.
“It’s clear that customers find the light they give off ugly, it’s really terrible,” she said.
CFLs have even been blamed for giving people headaches and skin rashes.
Bobby Damney, a spokesman for the Light Bulb Company, a major British wholesaler and retailer, said the company has seen a 10 per cent rise since June.
He said consumers do not like the "horribly shaped" CFLs, which also take longer to turn on and can flicker.
"It has been a chore for some customers trying to replace the bulbs,” he added.
Supermarkets in the UK have already phased out 75W bulbs but independent retailers and wholesalers reported an increase in demand.
Robert Parker, technical adviser to the Historic Houses Association, said people who live in older homes are stock piling old fashioned lamps.
Even halogen lamps, which give off a warmer glow and come in traditional shapes, will not fit into all old fashioned fittings.
“It has been a concern of ours for quite some time particularly in small bayonet candle bulbs that fit into many chandeliers and ancient fittings,” he said. “The energy efficient bulbs that fit into small bayonets are deeply unattractive.”
The panic buying of light bulbs is expected to get worse when 60W bulbs are banned next year and all incandescent bulbs are phased out by 2012.
Incandescent light bulbs are being phased out in order to meet the EU’s ambitious climate change targets to cut greenhouse gases by 20 per cent by 2020.
Advocates claim that replacing the old fashioned lamps with more efficient models will reduce domestic energy consumption for lighting by 60 per cent in the EU, equivalent to saving 30 million tons of CO2 pollution every year.
Jurgen Sturm, general-secretary of the European Lamp Companies Federation, insisted that the energy saving alternatives not only last longer and save money in the long run, but will improve in quality and range over the next few years.
Friday, 27 August 2010
Carbon-capture project near Craig gets boost
By Gary Harmon
Thursday, August 26, 2010
A project to study the potential of carbon sequestration in northwest Colorado received a $5 million boost from the U.S. Department of Energy, the Colorado state geologist said.
The project, which could show the way for other sequestration projects on the Colorado Plateau, was being funded with $4.8 million from various participants.
The Energy Department last week, though, agreed to inject $5 million into the project, state Geologist Vince Matthews told the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday.
The three-year project will evaluate the potential of carbon-dioxide sequestration near Craig and a reservoir that could contain an estimated 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide, Matthews said.
The site itself is typical, suggesting it might be the prototype for similar sequestration sites in Colorado and Utah, Matthews said. If successful, the site could attract carbon-emitting industries such as power plants, gas processing plants, oil shale production and other industries that are a significant part of western Colorado’s economy.
“It could conceivably be an economic boon for northwest Colorado,” Matthews said.
The study has additional beneficial implications in that otherwise proprietary data held by energy companies will be made public, Matthews said.
The University of Utah and the Colorado Geological Survey are leading the project, which brings together scientists from the Colorado and Utah geological surveys, in collaboration with other states’ geological surveys, to assess sequestration opportunities in the Rocky Mountain region.
Other participants in the project include Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, the University of Utah, Colorado Geological Survey, Shell Exploration and Production, and Schlumberger Carbon Services.
The original project began with $3.8 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and $1 million from Schlumberger.
The project is one of 11 nationwide for which the Energy Department awarded a total of $75.5 million to examine promising geologic formations for carbon-dioxide storage.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
A project to study the potential of carbon sequestration in northwest Colorado received a $5 million boost from the U.S. Department of Energy, the Colorado state geologist said.
The project, which could show the way for other sequestration projects on the Colorado Plateau, was being funded with $4.8 million from various participants.
The Energy Department last week, though, agreed to inject $5 million into the project, state Geologist Vince Matthews told the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday.
The three-year project will evaluate the potential of carbon-dioxide sequestration near Craig and a reservoir that could contain an estimated 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide, Matthews said.
The site itself is typical, suggesting it might be the prototype for similar sequestration sites in Colorado and Utah, Matthews said. If successful, the site could attract carbon-emitting industries such as power plants, gas processing plants, oil shale production and other industries that are a significant part of western Colorado’s economy.
“It could conceivably be an economic boon for northwest Colorado,” Matthews said.
The study has additional beneficial implications in that otherwise proprietary data held by energy companies will be made public, Matthews said.
The University of Utah and the Colorado Geological Survey are leading the project, which brings together scientists from the Colorado and Utah geological surveys, in collaboration with other states’ geological surveys, to assess sequestration opportunities in the Rocky Mountain region.
Other participants in the project include Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, the University of Utah, Colorado Geological Survey, Shell Exploration and Production, and Schlumberger Carbon Services.
The original project began with $3.8 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and $1 million from Schlumberger.
The project is one of 11 nationwide for which the Energy Department awarded a total of $75.5 million to examine promising geologic formations for carbon-dioxide storage.
Nation Still Largely in the Dark Over Energy Efficiency
Siseko Njobeni
26 August 2010
Johannesburg — AS THINGS stand, SA will be caught napping when the economy recovers and demand for electricity increases, because the country seems to have put energy efficiency on the back burner.
Eskom has said that SA's electricity supply will be tight in the period between next year and 2012 and after 2017.
These time-lines are linked to the commissioning of Eskom's two 4800MW coal-fired power stations, Medupi and Kusile.
When the government introduced the energy efficiency strategy in 2005, it said the solution to the electricity supply-demand imbalance should not always entail the commissioning of new power. The strategy must include demand reduction .
In fact, the argument is that reducing electricity demand is a cheaper and quicker solution to the imbalance that Eskom is warning us about.
Some have even called it "the low-hanging fruit".
If it is so important, what is stopping SA from realising the potential of energy efficiency?
In her foreword to the energy efficiency strategy, former m inerals and e nergy m inister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said awareness of the costs and benefits of energy efficiency was "a neglected area".
She made the comments in 2005, a few years before the January 2008 electricity crisis.
Because memories of the near calamity of 2008 are still vivid, the lack of enthusiasm on energy efficiency is strange.
Perhaps the introduction of ISO 50001 - a new standard for energy management that will establish an international framework for industrial plants or entire companies to manage all aspects of energy - will encourage firms to embark on energy efficiency with vigour.
Ian Langridge, principle electrical engineer at Anglo American, says ISO 50001 will be ready next year. The standard will enable businesses to systematically set and reach energy-use goals, and realise cost savings.
Mr Langridge says ISO 50001 will make measuring and monitoring energy usage easier.
Anglo American spent about 1bn on energy last year.
Since the 2008 electricity crisis, the mining sector has been at the forefront of energy savings. In fact, according to Eskom's industrial sector project manager, Jethro More, mining accounts for more than 90% of the 278MW verified savings from industrial customers in the 2008- 09 financial year.
Eskom's senior manager in the integrated demand management division, Dhevan Pillay, says that, as a measure to ensure power supply, the utility wants its large industrial customers to implement energy efficiency initiatives to reduce their consumption up to 15%.
The utility is in an energy efficiency partnership with BHP Billiton 's Hillside plant, one of its key customers.
The partnership entails introducing changes at the company's plant. These include "real time" monitoring of electricity consumption, solar water heating, energy efficient lighting and energy audits, Mr Pillay says.
The partnership also extends beyond the plant, as it includes the roll-out of compact fluorescent light bulbs and geyser blankets to employees .
"The savings achieved (through) employees is counted on the company's savings. We have to think out of the box," Mr Pillay says.
He says Eskom has introduced an energy management programme to identify energy efficiency opportunities.
The pillars of the energy management programme include electricity efficiency, water efficiency, renewable energy and alternative energy, he says.
Mr More says Eskom's demand-side management programmes assist customers with project funding "to make projects feasible in terms of payback and sustainability".
"Funds are available with immediate effect on a first come basis," he says.
Eskom has approximately R5,3bn available to spend on various demand-side management programmes in the next three years.
Carbon and Energy Africa GM Denis Es says the potential of energy has not been fully realised. Mr Es points to the lack of sufficient return on investment as one of the barriers to energy efficiency projects.
But the trade in carbon credits could be the answer to this problem.
Mr Es says the environmental benefit of energy efficiency projects can be converted into a financial commodity.
The United Nations' clean development mechanism makes investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in developing countries feasible by providing an extra source of income through the sale of carbon credits.
26 August 2010
Johannesburg — AS THINGS stand, SA will be caught napping when the economy recovers and demand for electricity increases, because the country seems to have put energy efficiency on the back burner.
Eskom has said that SA's electricity supply will be tight in the period between next year and 2012 and after 2017.
These time-lines are linked to the commissioning of Eskom's two 4800MW coal-fired power stations, Medupi and Kusile.
When the government introduced the energy efficiency strategy in 2005, it said the solution to the electricity supply-demand imbalance should not always entail the commissioning of new power. The strategy must include demand reduction .
In fact, the argument is that reducing electricity demand is a cheaper and quicker solution to the imbalance that Eskom is warning us about.
Some have even called it "the low-hanging fruit".
If it is so important, what is stopping SA from realising the potential of energy efficiency?
In her foreword to the energy efficiency strategy, former m inerals and e nergy m inister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said awareness of the costs and benefits of energy efficiency was "a neglected area".
She made the comments in 2005, a few years before the January 2008 electricity crisis.
Because memories of the near calamity of 2008 are still vivid, the lack of enthusiasm on energy efficiency is strange.
Perhaps the introduction of ISO 50001 - a new standard for energy management that will establish an international framework for industrial plants or entire companies to manage all aspects of energy - will encourage firms to embark on energy efficiency with vigour.
Ian Langridge, principle electrical engineer at Anglo American, says ISO 50001 will be ready next year. The standard will enable businesses to systematically set and reach energy-use goals, and realise cost savings.
Mr Langridge says ISO 50001 will make measuring and monitoring energy usage easier.
Anglo American spent about 1bn on energy last year.
Since the 2008 electricity crisis, the mining sector has been at the forefront of energy savings. In fact, according to Eskom's industrial sector project manager, Jethro More, mining accounts for more than 90% of the 278MW verified savings from industrial customers in the 2008- 09 financial year.
Eskom's senior manager in the integrated demand management division, Dhevan Pillay, says that, as a measure to ensure power supply, the utility wants its large industrial customers to implement energy efficiency initiatives to reduce their consumption up to 15%.
The utility is in an energy efficiency partnership with BHP Billiton 's Hillside plant, one of its key customers.
The partnership entails introducing changes at the company's plant. These include "real time" monitoring of electricity consumption, solar water heating, energy efficient lighting and energy audits, Mr Pillay says.
The partnership also extends beyond the plant, as it includes the roll-out of compact fluorescent light bulbs and geyser blankets to employees .
"The savings achieved (through) employees is counted on the company's savings. We have to think out of the box," Mr Pillay says.
He says Eskom has introduced an energy management programme to identify energy efficiency opportunities.
The pillars of the energy management programme include electricity efficiency, water efficiency, renewable energy and alternative energy, he says.
Mr More says Eskom's demand-side management programmes assist customers with project funding "to make projects feasible in terms of payback and sustainability".
"Funds are available with immediate effect on a first come basis," he says.
Eskom has approximately R5,3bn available to spend on various demand-side management programmes in the next three years.
Carbon and Energy Africa GM Denis Es says the potential of energy has not been fully realised. Mr Es points to the lack of sufficient return on investment as one of the barriers to energy efficiency projects.
But the trade in carbon credits could be the answer to this problem.
Mr Es says the environmental benefit of energy efficiency projects can be converted into a financial commodity.
The United Nations' clean development mechanism makes investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in developing countries feasible by providing an extra source of income through the sale of carbon credits.
Making sure we get it right on biofuels
By Patricia Monahan | 08/26/10 12:00 AM PST
This year we’ve had no shortage of examples of why we need to move away from fossil fuels, from the oil disaster in the Gulf and continued dependence on Middle Eastern oil to the record-hot temperatures in the Midwest that speak to the ever-increasing threat of climate change. A big piece of America’s effort to wean ourselves off oil is the development of biofuels, which hold the promise of a domestic fuel supply and a reduction in global warming pollution – if we get it right. But as we’re beginning to see, just because a fuel is made from a plant doesn’t make it smart policy.
California has long been a leader in forward-thinking policies that safeguard our air and water and the natural resources we depend on. The state’s latest effort is to address our climate problem with a broad range of policies designed to reduce our carbon emissions 20 percent by 2020. One important element of that effort is the low carbon fuel standard, which mandates gradual emissions reductions from California's transportation fuels.
Last year the California Air Resources Board (CARB) finalized the regulations governing this fuel standard, which include assessments of the emissions from all the different fuels in use in California. One element of those regulations that received a lot of attention was determining emissions from something called “Indirect Land Use Change.” These emissions account for the changes in land use that result when land that used to grow food grows fuel instead, leading farmers somewhere else to pick up the slack. There is no doubt this is a tricky thing to evaluate, but without it the analysis is incomplete.
While numerous efforts are underway to bring biofuels made from non-food sources into the marketplace, today America’s principle biofuel crop is corn. And as Purdue economist and author of a recent study on land use emissions Wally Tyner says: “With almost a third of the U.S. corn crop today going to ethanol, it is simply not credible to argue that there are no land use change implications of corn ethanol.”
What he means is that, when corn grown here is used to fill a gas tank rather than feed a person or animal, land somewhere else has to be converted to farmland to meet the need for food. Finding a method for quantifying that impact is tough, and certainly a work in progress for CARB and the panel of experts they’ve assembled to advise them. But without doing this analysis, our accounting of crop-based biofuels would not be credible. It’s that simple. To meet the challenge, CARB is seeking out further expert council and research to aid the search for a solution.
In this area, as in so many others, California leads the way. Just after CARB finalized their regulations, the EPA came to broadly similar conclusions, especially on the need for a formal accounting of land use change, as part of the federal rulemaking on biofuels. The EPA similarly recognized the need for more expert input to refine their analysis, and plans to ask the National Academy of Sciences to take up the same questions.
We can’t afford to take shortcuts that erode the credibility of the system for evaluating fuel performance. Our biofuels industry, with the exception of corn ethanol, is still in the fledgling state of its development. These innovators and startups are the engine that will drive us towards a clean energy economy, and in order to secure the capital investment to get their industries off the ground, they need the stability of a reputable system. That stability comes from public support, built over the long term, that the benefits of biofuels are real. And that is a belief which must ultimately be anchored on sound science and transparent government.
CARB is moving quickly and deliberately to ensure their regulations are based on up-to-date analysis that has been carefully reviewed. With a sound, science-based standard for California’s transportation fuels, we’ll have taken a great step forward in securing the global warming pollution reductions we need to safeguard our environmental and economic health.
This year we’ve had no shortage of examples of why we need to move away from fossil fuels, from the oil disaster in the Gulf and continued dependence on Middle Eastern oil to the record-hot temperatures in the Midwest that speak to the ever-increasing threat of climate change. A big piece of America’s effort to wean ourselves off oil is the development of biofuels, which hold the promise of a domestic fuel supply and a reduction in global warming pollution – if we get it right. But as we’re beginning to see, just because a fuel is made from a plant doesn’t make it smart policy.
California has long been a leader in forward-thinking policies that safeguard our air and water and the natural resources we depend on. The state’s latest effort is to address our climate problem with a broad range of policies designed to reduce our carbon emissions 20 percent by 2020. One important element of that effort is the low carbon fuel standard, which mandates gradual emissions reductions from California's transportation fuels.
Last year the California Air Resources Board (CARB) finalized the regulations governing this fuel standard, which include assessments of the emissions from all the different fuels in use in California. One element of those regulations that received a lot of attention was determining emissions from something called “Indirect Land Use Change.” These emissions account for the changes in land use that result when land that used to grow food grows fuel instead, leading farmers somewhere else to pick up the slack. There is no doubt this is a tricky thing to evaluate, but without it the analysis is incomplete.
While numerous efforts are underway to bring biofuels made from non-food sources into the marketplace, today America’s principle biofuel crop is corn. And as Purdue economist and author of a recent study on land use emissions Wally Tyner says: “With almost a third of the U.S. corn crop today going to ethanol, it is simply not credible to argue that there are no land use change implications of corn ethanol.”
What he means is that, when corn grown here is used to fill a gas tank rather than feed a person or animal, land somewhere else has to be converted to farmland to meet the need for food. Finding a method for quantifying that impact is tough, and certainly a work in progress for CARB and the panel of experts they’ve assembled to advise them. But without doing this analysis, our accounting of crop-based biofuels would not be credible. It’s that simple. To meet the challenge, CARB is seeking out further expert council and research to aid the search for a solution.
In this area, as in so many others, California leads the way. Just after CARB finalized their regulations, the EPA came to broadly similar conclusions, especially on the need for a formal accounting of land use change, as part of the federal rulemaking on biofuels. The EPA similarly recognized the need for more expert input to refine their analysis, and plans to ask the National Academy of Sciences to take up the same questions.
We can’t afford to take shortcuts that erode the credibility of the system for evaluating fuel performance. Our biofuels industry, with the exception of corn ethanol, is still in the fledgling state of its development. These innovators and startups are the engine that will drive us towards a clean energy economy, and in order to secure the capital investment to get their industries off the ground, they need the stability of a reputable system. That stability comes from public support, built over the long term, that the benefits of biofuels are real. And that is a belief which must ultimately be anchored on sound science and transparent government.
CARB is moving quickly and deliberately to ensure their regulations are based on up-to-date analysis that has been carefully reviewed. With a sound, science-based standard for California’s transportation fuels, we’ll have taken a great step forward in securing the global warming pollution reductions we need to safeguard our environmental and economic health.
Euro Multivision starts production of solar photovoltaic cell
Source: IRIS (24-AUG-10)
Euro Multivision has commenced the commercial production of solar photovoltaic cell project of 40MW capacity from today.
Euro Multivision is the second largest Indian company in the business of manufacturing CDs and DVDs.
The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till Aug. 23, 2010, rising 6.92% compared with the Sensex`s 1.54% rise. It outperformed the market in past one quarter, gaining 47.83% as against 11.94% rise in the Sensex.
Shares of the company declined Rs 0.05, or 0.15%, to settle at Rs 33.95. The total volume of shares traded was 38,989 at the BSE (Tuesday).
Euro Multivision has commenced the commercial production of solar photovoltaic cell project of 40MW capacity from today.
Euro Multivision is the second largest Indian company in the business of manufacturing CDs and DVDs.
The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till Aug. 23, 2010, rising 6.92% compared with the Sensex`s 1.54% rise. It outperformed the market in past one quarter, gaining 47.83% as against 11.94% rise in the Sensex.
Shares of the company declined Rs 0.05, or 0.15%, to settle at Rs 33.95. The total volume of shares traded was 38,989 at the BSE (Tuesday).
Solar panels approved for Charles residence
By Emily Beament, PA
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
The Prince of Wales was granted permission today to install dozens of solar panels on his home at Clarence House in the latest move to cut his carbon footprint.
The 32 solar photovoltaic panels, which produce electricity, can now be installed on the south-east roof of the central London residence, which has been a home to royalty for 170 years.
The panels are expected to produce around 4,000 kilowatt hours of green electricity a year - equivalent to the electricity used by the average household in the capital.
According to the planning application, approved by Westminster Council, the solar panels will be hidden from view by the high parapet balustrade on the Grade I listed building.
An environmental assessment of the scheme said it would be the latest in a line of renewable energy projects by the Prince's household which aim to cut carbon emissions and raise the profile of green technology.
The news that the scheme had been approved came as energy regulator Ofgem revealed that a record number of homeowners had solar panels installed this month.
The boost to the technology, which has seen solar panels fitted to 2,257 homes so far this month, up from 1,700 in July and 1,400 in June, stems from the Government's "feed-in tariff" scheme which now pays people for the green energy they generate.
A spokesman for Westminster City Council said: "We have approved the planning application from Clarence House.
"There were no objections and the application was not considered contentious.
"We trust it will make a positive contribution to the Prince of Wales's efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of Clarence House."
Clarence House has already had energy efficient boilers and lights installed, while other royal properties have wood chip boilers and his cars run on cooking oil or even, in the case of his Aston Martin, on bioethanol from surplus wine.
A Clarence House spokeswoman said of the granting of the application: "This is good news, particularly as next month Clarence House Gardens will be hosting the 'Start garden party to make a difference', which will showcase various measures people could take to live a more sustainable lifestyle."
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
The Prince of Wales was granted permission today to install dozens of solar panels on his home at Clarence House in the latest move to cut his carbon footprint.
The 32 solar photovoltaic panels, which produce electricity, can now be installed on the south-east roof of the central London residence, which has been a home to royalty for 170 years.
The panels are expected to produce around 4,000 kilowatt hours of green electricity a year - equivalent to the electricity used by the average household in the capital.
According to the planning application, approved by Westminster Council, the solar panels will be hidden from view by the high parapet balustrade on the Grade I listed building.
An environmental assessment of the scheme said it would be the latest in a line of renewable energy projects by the Prince's household which aim to cut carbon emissions and raise the profile of green technology.
The news that the scheme had been approved came as energy regulator Ofgem revealed that a record number of homeowners had solar panels installed this month.
The boost to the technology, which has seen solar panels fitted to 2,257 homes so far this month, up from 1,700 in July and 1,400 in June, stems from the Government's "feed-in tariff" scheme which now pays people for the green energy they generate.
A spokesman for Westminster City Council said: "We have approved the planning application from Clarence House.
"There were no objections and the application was not considered contentious.
"We trust it will make a positive contribution to the Prince of Wales's efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of Clarence House."
Clarence House has already had energy efficient boilers and lights installed, while other royal properties have wood chip boilers and his cars run on cooking oil or even, in the case of his Aston Martin, on bioethanol from surplus wine.
A Clarence House spokeswoman said of the granting of the application: "This is good news, particularly as next month Clarence House Gardens will be hosting the 'Start garden party to make a difference', which will showcase various measures people could take to live a more sustainable lifestyle."
Thursday, 26 August 2010
For Carbon Capture, DOE Moves Oxycombustion Ahead of IGCC
POSTED BY: Bill Sweet / Mon, August 23, 2010
As reported by my fellow blogger David Levitan a couple of weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Energy has announced that its futuristic zero-carbon-generation project will be based on oxycombustion, not on integrated-gasification, combined-cycle technology, as had been expected for more than a decade. With some reason, Levitan suspects the whole project may have turned into an ongoing boondoggle; certainly, FutureGen has come to seem rather like nuclear fusion--the technology that's always just a decade or two away but, like a mirage, never actually gets any closer.
Nevertheless, I'd like to offer another perspective: Possibly DOE's decision is sound and will open the way, at last, for FutureGen to actually be built and then lead, as hoped, to commercial prospects for zero-carbon coal-fired generation.
Several years ago, IEEE Spectrum magazine designated as one of its January winners the oxycombustion plant that Vattenfall, Sweden's national energy company, was building at Schwarze Pumpe, a site in eastern Germany. At that time, as we explained, IGCC still was generally considered the front runner in so-called clean coal technology. Yet the Florida plant that had pioneered the technology in the United States did not make a particularly prepossessing impression and for years had been generating the country's most expensive electricity by far. And now, two companies with substantial reputations in the power business, Vattenfall and Alstom, were betting on a different horse, dubbed oxyfuel or oxyfiring or oxycombustion.
In oxycombustion, coal is burned in an almost pure oxygen atmosphere, so that emissions contain virtually no NOx, which makes it easier to separate and store the carbon initially contained in the coal. IGCC involves gasifying coal, filtering out the carbon, and finally burning hydrogen to generate power. A big barrier to commercialization of oxyfuel is the initial separation of oxygen from air, which is expensive. But the technology is conceptually much simpler and arguably more elegant than IGCC.
Last November, Vattenfall announced that it was recovering virtually 100 percent of the carbon from the fuel burned at its small Schwarze Pumpe demonstration plant. Spectrum's account of the plant is somewhat dated, as the facility is being continually redesigned and rebuilt as part of Vattenfall's ongoing experiment. A fairly recent, nicely illustrated update about the oxyfuel plant is available.
As reported by my fellow blogger David Levitan a couple of weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Energy has announced that its futuristic zero-carbon-generation project will be based on oxycombustion, not on integrated-gasification, combined-cycle technology, as had been expected for more than a decade. With some reason, Levitan suspects the whole project may have turned into an ongoing boondoggle; certainly, FutureGen has come to seem rather like nuclear fusion--the technology that's always just a decade or two away but, like a mirage, never actually gets any closer.
Nevertheless, I'd like to offer another perspective: Possibly DOE's decision is sound and will open the way, at last, for FutureGen to actually be built and then lead, as hoped, to commercial prospects for zero-carbon coal-fired generation.
Several years ago, IEEE Spectrum magazine designated as one of its January winners the oxycombustion plant that Vattenfall, Sweden's national energy company, was building at Schwarze Pumpe, a site in eastern Germany. At that time, as we explained, IGCC still was generally considered the front runner in so-called clean coal technology. Yet the Florida plant that had pioneered the technology in the United States did not make a particularly prepossessing impression and for years had been generating the country's most expensive electricity by far. And now, two companies with substantial reputations in the power business, Vattenfall and Alstom, were betting on a different horse, dubbed oxyfuel or oxyfiring or oxycombustion.
In oxycombustion, coal is burned in an almost pure oxygen atmosphere, so that emissions contain virtually no NOx, which makes it easier to separate and store the carbon initially contained in the coal. IGCC involves gasifying coal, filtering out the carbon, and finally burning hydrogen to generate power. A big barrier to commercialization of oxyfuel is the initial separation of oxygen from air, which is expensive. But the technology is conceptually much simpler and arguably more elegant than IGCC.
Last November, Vattenfall announced that it was recovering virtually 100 percent of the carbon from the fuel burned at its small Schwarze Pumpe demonstration plant. Spectrum's account of the plant is somewhat dated, as the facility is being continually redesigned and rebuilt as part of Vattenfall's ongoing experiment. A fairly recent, nicely illustrated update about the oxyfuel plant is available.
Shell, Cosan to form Joint Venture for biofuels, power
New Statesman
Published 26 August 2010
Print versionEmail a friendListenRSSShell are making moves to commercialise biofuels as they look to expand their product range.
Royal Dutch Shell and Brazil-based Cosan have signed a joint venture agreement to produce and commercialise ethanol and power based on sugar cane in Brazil.
The project, estimated to entail an investment of $12bn, will have an annual capacity to produce two billion litres of biofuels.
Cosan will supply sugar cane bagasse from its sugar mills for power generation.
Shell intends to adopt next generation biofuel technologies from its joint venture companies, Iogen Energy and Codexis.
The scheme envisages a distribution and retail network for industrial and transportation fuels. Regulatory approvals are now awaited.
The Joint Venture intends to explore global business opportunities in production and sales of ethanol and sugar.
Published 26 August 2010
Print versionEmail a friendListenRSSShell are making moves to commercialise biofuels as they look to expand their product range.
Royal Dutch Shell and Brazil-based Cosan have signed a joint venture agreement to produce and commercialise ethanol and power based on sugar cane in Brazil.
The project, estimated to entail an investment of $12bn, will have an annual capacity to produce two billion litres of biofuels.
Cosan will supply sugar cane bagasse from its sugar mills for power generation.
Shell intends to adopt next generation biofuel technologies from its joint venture companies, Iogen Energy and Codexis.
The scheme envisages a distribution and retail network for industrial and transportation fuels. Regulatory approvals are now awaited.
The Joint Venture intends to explore global business opportunities in production and sales of ethanol and sugar.
Euro Multivision starts production of solar photovoltaic cell
Source: IRIS (24-AUG-10)
Euro Multivision has commenced the commercial production of solar photovoltaic cell project of 40MW capacity from today.
Euro Multivision is the second largest Indian company in the business of manufacturing CDs and DVDs.
The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till Aug. 23, 2010, rising 6.92% compared with the Sensex`s 1.54% rise. It outperformed the market in past one quarter, gaining 47.83% as against 11.94% rise in the Sensex.
Shares of the company declined Rs 0.05, or 0.15%, to settle at Rs 33.95. The total volume of shares traded was 38,989 at the BSE (Tuesday).
Euro Multivision has commenced the commercial production of solar photovoltaic cell project of 40MW capacity from today.
Euro Multivision is the second largest Indian company in the business of manufacturing CDs and DVDs.
The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till Aug. 23, 2010, rising 6.92% compared with the Sensex`s 1.54% rise. It outperformed the market in past one quarter, gaining 47.83% as against 11.94% rise in the Sensex.
Shares of the company declined Rs 0.05, or 0.15%, to settle at Rs 33.95. The total volume of shares traded was 38,989 at the BSE (Tuesday).
Australian Capital Territory to pass tough carbon cutting laws
ACT's climate change and greenhouse gas reduction bill aims to cut carbon emissions by 40% by 2020 from 1990 levels
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 August 2010 10.49 BST
The government of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) said today it will enact tough carbon cutting laws, a step that comes after a national election that punished the ruling Labor party over lack of action on climate change.
The ACT, which includes the capital Canberra also ruled by Labor, said its climate change and greenhouse gas reduction bill would set a target of cutting carbon emissions by 40% by 2020 from 1990 levels.
The cut would rise to 80% by 2050, with the aim of the territory of nearly 400,000 people becoming carbon neutral by 2060.
Last week's national election left neither Labor nor the rival Liberal/National coalition with the 76 seats in the 150-seat lower house of parliament needed to claim victory.
Both parties are wooing four independents and the Greens to try to form a minority government.
"Governments have a responsibility to act on this issue," said Simon Corbell, the ACT's minister for the environment climate change and water.
Corbell said the aim was to cut planet-warming carbon emissions by boosting renewable energy and increasing energy efficiency in homes and businesses.
The bill establishes an independent climate change council and encourages the private sector to undertake voluntary agreements with the government.
Australia's Green party saw its national vote double to 12% in last weekend's election, reflecting widespread anger over Labor's perceived failure to honour its 2007 election pledge to take tough action on climate change.
Labor and the Liberals both back a 5% cut in emissions by 2020 on 2000 levels and Labor aimed to achieve this largely through an emissions trading scheme, with a higher target if the world agrees to a tougher climate pact.
However, fierce opposition and two rejections of the laws by a hostile Senate led Labor to shelve the legislation in April, a step that angered many voters but bolstered the popularity of the Greens because of their stronger climate policies.
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 August 2010 10.49 BST
The government of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) said today it will enact tough carbon cutting laws, a step that comes after a national election that punished the ruling Labor party over lack of action on climate change.
The ACT, which includes the capital Canberra also ruled by Labor, said its climate change and greenhouse gas reduction bill would set a target of cutting carbon emissions by 40% by 2020 from 1990 levels.
The cut would rise to 80% by 2050, with the aim of the territory of nearly 400,000 people becoming carbon neutral by 2060.
Last week's national election left neither Labor nor the rival Liberal/National coalition with the 76 seats in the 150-seat lower house of parliament needed to claim victory.
Both parties are wooing four independents and the Greens to try to form a minority government.
"Governments have a responsibility to act on this issue," said Simon Corbell, the ACT's minister for the environment climate change and water.
Corbell said the aim was to cut planet-warming carbon emissions by boosting renewable energy and increasing energy efficiency in homes and businesses.
The bill establishes an independent climate change council and encourages the private sector to undertake voluntary agreements with the government.
Australia's Green party saw its national vote double to 12% in last weekend's election, reflecting widespread anger over Labor's perceived failure to honour its 2007 election pledge to take tough action on climate change.
Labor and the Liberals both back a 5% cut in emissions by 2020 on 2000 levels and Labor aimed to achieve this largely through an emissions trading scheme, with a higher target if the world agrees to a tougher climate pact.
However, fierce opposition and two rejections of the laws by a hostile Senate led Labor to shelve the legislation in April, a step that angered many voters but bolstered the popularity of the Greens because of their stronger climate policies.
UK's nuclear reactor programme falls behind schedule
Regulator and builders blame each other for construction hold-up as designs await approval
Tim Webb guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 August 2010 20.25 BST
The schedule for the UK's nuclear reactor building programme has slipped behind already, the safety regulator has admitted, reinforcing concerns that the first reactor will not be built on time.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said it would probably have to issue an "interim" decision on the safety of the two new proposed reactor designs next June, the deadline for its assessment programme. The regulator expects significant chunks of extra work will remain before it can finally approve or reject the designs, but did not say how long this would take.
Kevin Allars, director of the assessment programme at the HSE, said that companies could continue planning and carry out preparatory construction on proposed nuclear sites while they waited for a final decision. But he insisted that construction of a reactor could not start without its consent.
Allars promised there would be no repeat of the chaotic construction in Finland of what was supposed to be Europe's first new reactor in decades. The Areva plant is more than three years behind schedule and more than €2bn (£1.6bn) over budget, with the Finnish regulator trying to approve each component of the design while it is being built. EDF has promised that the UK's first reactor will be operational in 2018, although it had originally said it would be running by the end of 2017.
The HSE said the companies behind the designs – French consortium Areva, EDF and US firm Westinghouse – had been repeatedly submitting information which was incomplete and late.
In turn, the companies are blaming the regulator for not having sufficient resources to carry out the work. The Guardian revealed last year that the arm of the HSE which was carrying out the work – the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) – had been forced to hire more than a dozen project managers, even though they work for the companies hoping to build the designs under review.
In its quarterly update on the assessment programme, the HSE admitted that this risk of a conflict of interest was a "factor of increasing significance" which it said it would "continue to monitor closely".
Westinghouse, which has put forward its AP1000 reactor design, comes in for particularly harsh criticism. Allars said of the company: "It's very frustrating. We get a load [of work] in late and then we do not get what we were promised or of the quality we were promised. If this carries on they won't get a design acceptance."
The HSE has already raised a red flag over Westinghouse's civil engineering plans for key structures making up the reactor core, which the regulator says are not sufficiently robust. The company was supposed to carry out further analysis by the end of June, but most of this has been delayed, while what had been done "fell significantly short of what we expected".
"Significant issues" are also flagged for Westinghouse's planned control and instrumentation systems to operate the reactor. The company missed a June deadline to provide information on reactor chemistry, "which does not help our confidence that Westinghouse will meet future delivery dates", said the HSE.
A Westinghouse spokesman said: "We accept that some of our input in one or two areas has not met the regulator's expectations."
A Greenpeace spokesman said: "The generic design assessment [GDA] process has already unearthed a string of nasty surprises within the new nuclear reactors' designs. But now we find out GDA won't even be able to give a final green light to the reactor designs. This means we could be faced with the farcical situation where the government is letting utilities press ahead with building work for reactors that haven't been given safety approval."
Tim Webb guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 August 2010 20.25 BST
The schedule for the UK's nuclear reactor building programme has slipped behind already, the safety regulator has admitted, reinforcing concerns that the first reactor will not be built on time.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said it would probably have to issue an "interim" decision on the safety of the two new proposed reactor designs next June, the deadline for its assessment programme. The regulator expects significant chunks of extra work will remain before it can finally approve or reject the designs, but did not say how long this would take.
Kevin Allars, director of the assessment programme at the HSE, said that companies could continue planning and carry out preparatory construction on proposed nuclear sites while they waited for a final decision. But he insisted that construction of a reactor could not start without its consent.
Allars promised there would be no repeat of the chaotic construction in Finland of what was supposed to be Europe's first new reactor in decades. The Areva plant is more than three years behind schedule and more than €2bn (£1.6bn) over budget, with the Finnish regulator trying to approve each component of the design while it is being built. EDF has promised that the UK's first reactor will be operational in 2018, although it had originally said it would be running by the end of 2017.
The HSE said the companies behind the designs – French consortium Areva, EDF and US firm Westinghouse – had been repeatedly submitting information which was incomplete and late.
In turn, the companies are blaming the regulator for not having sufficient resources to carry out the work. The Guardian revealed last year that the arm of the HSE which was carrying out the work – the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) – had been forced to hire more than a dozen project managers, even though they work for the companies hoping to build the designs under review.
In its quarterly update on the assessment programme, the HSE admitted that this risk of a conflict of interest was a "factor of increasing significance" which it said it would "continue to monitor closely".
Westinghouse, which has put forward its AP1000 reactor design, comes in for particularly harsh criticism. Allars said of the company: "It's very frustrating. We get a load [of work] in late and then we do not get what we were promised or of the quality we were promised. If this carries on they won't get a design acceptance."
The HSE has already raised a red flag over Westinghouse's civil engineering plans for key structures making up the reactor core, which the regulator says are not sufficiently robust. The company was supposed to carry out further analysis by the end of June, but most of this has been delayed, while what had been done "fell significantly short of what we expected".
"Significant issues" are also flagged for Westinghouse's planned control and instrumentation systems to operate the reactor. The company missed a June deadline to provide information on reactor chemistry, "which does not help our confidence that Westinghouse will meet future delivery dates", said the HSE.
A Westinghouse spokesman said: "We accept that some of our input in one or two areas has not met the regulator's expectations."
A Greenpeace spokesman said: "The generic design assessment [GDA] process has already unearthed a string of nasty surprises within the new nuclear reactors' designs. But now we find out GDA won't even be able to give a final green light to the reactor designs. This means we could be faced with the farcical situation where the government is letting utilities press ahead with building work for reactors that haven't been given safety approval."
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
DOE grant funds Wyoming carbon capture study
23 August 2010
Supported by a $1.5m (£0.96m) grant from the US Department of Energy (DOE), University of Wyoming (UW) researchers are to study the storage of CO2 as well as nitrogen and sulphur oxides in southwest Wyoming’s Rock Springs Uplift.
The Rock Springs Uplift, which boasts geologic formations that have been identified as among the most promising targets for storing CO2 in the state, is also home to a planned test site to be drilled by a partnership led by the University of Wyoming as well as Baker Hughes and other companies.
Project leader Mohammad Piri, a professor in the UW Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, said that a multidisciplinary research team will assess how much carbon can be injected into the formations and if it can be permanently trapped with negligible leakage.
.Experimental and modelling work will be conducted on reservoir rock samples that will be recovered from the stratigraphic test well.
Recognising the importance of carbon storage to ensure the future of Wyoming’s fossil fuels industry, the university is contributing an additional $1.37m to the project, which is funded by the DOE for three years.
Read more: http://www.theengineer.co.uk/news/doe-grant-funds-wyoming-carbon-capture-study/1004478.article#ixzz0xcCImohh
Supported by a $1.5m (£0.96m) grant from the US Department of Energy (DOE), University of Wyoming (UW) researchers are to study the storage of CO2 as well as nitrogen and sulphur oxides in southwest Wyoming’s Rock Springs Uplift.
The Rock Springs Uplift, which boasts geologic formations that have been identified as among the most promising targets for storing CO2 in the state, is also home to a planned test site to be drilled by a partnership led by the University of Wyoming as well as Baker Hughes and other companies.
Project leader Mohammad Piri, a professor in the UW Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, said that a multidisciplinary research team will assess how much carbon can be injected into the formations and if it can be permanently trapped with negligible leakage.
.Experimental and modelling work will be conducted on reservoir rock samples that will be recovered from the stratigraphic test well.
Recognising the importance of carbon storage to ensure the future of Wyoming’s fossil fuels industry, the university is contributing an additional $1.37m to the project, which is funded by the DOE for three years.
Read more: http://www.theengineer.co.uk/news/doe-grant-funds-wyoming-carbon-capture-study/1004478.article#ixzz0xcCImohh
Energy ‘Lung-Shaped’ Fuel Cell Increases Energy Efficiency
by Timon Singh, 08/24/10
filed under: Renewable Energy
Photo by Brandon Baunach
The human body is arguably one of the finest machines ever created by nature, and now a team from Norway’s Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo are looking to it for inspiration as they design the next generation of hydrogen fuel cells. More specifically, they are looking at the lungs — according to Signe Kjelstrup, who is heading the team, making fuel cells in the shape of lungs could cut down on the amount of expensive catalysts needed, such as platinum, while increasing efficiency. It is hoped that the research will enable hydrogen cars to manufactured en mass.
But what makes the shape of the lung benefical to the efficiency of fuel cells? In Kjelstrup’s team’s cell, they’ve designed channels modelled on the bronchial structure of the lungs in order to supply hydrogen and oxygen gas to their respective electrodes. As such, this design enables the spread of gases much more uniformly and efficiently — just like oxygen in the lungs.
It also means that less platinum is needed, as the efficient spread of gas across the catalyst outdoes current conventional methods — meaning a larger surface area is no longer needed. Reducing the amount of platinum that hydrogen fuel cells use will make their production all the more affordable, and therefore more appealing to car manufacturers. It is entirely possible that within five years, the next generation of ‘green vehicles’ will be powered by these cells.
While tests and designs are currently ongoing, it is just another example of how nature is influencing the science and technology of today. The study of biomimicry has already resulted in generations of aerodynamic cars designed to look like water drops and solar cells designed to mimic the structure of honeycomb.
Read more: 'Lung-shaped' fuel cell increases energy efficiency | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World
filed under: Renewable Energy
Photo by Brandon Baunach
The human body is arguably one of the finest machines ever created by nature, and now a team from Norway’s Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo are looking to it for inspiration as they design the next generation of hydrogen fuel cells. More specifically, they are looking at the lungs — according to Signe Kjelstrup, who is heading the team, making fuel cells in the shape of lungs could cut down on the amount of expensive catalysts needed, such as platinum, while increasing efficiency. It is hoped that the research will enable hydrogen cars to manufactured en mass.
But what makes the shape of the lung benefical to the efficiency of fuel cells? In Kjelstrup’s team’s cell, they’ve designed channels modelled on the bronchial structure of the lungs in order to supply hydrogen and oxygen gas to their respective electrodes. As such, this design enables the spread of gases much more uniformly and efficiently — just like oxygen in the lungs.
It also means that less platinum is needed, as the efficient spread of gas across the catalyst outdoes current conventional methods — meaning a larger surface area is no longer needed. Reducing the amount of platinum that hydrogen fuel cells use will make their production all the more affordable, and therefore more appealing to car manufacturers. It is entirely possible that within five years, the next generation of ‘green vehicles’ will be powered by these cells.
While tests and designs are currently ongoing, it is just another example of how nature is influencing the science and technology of today. The study of biomimicry has already resulted in generations of aerodynamic cars designed to look like water drops and solar cells designed to mimic the structure of honeycomb.
Read more: 'Lung-shaped' fuel cell increases energy efficiency | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World
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