US as a whole still a world leader in green technology but China expected to catch up as its low-carbon economy gains pace
California, as the Global Cleantech 100 list published in the Guardian today confirms, is still hot. Thirty-two of the rising stars in solar panels, energy efficiency, biofuels and more are based there.
But while the sunshine state and the US as a whole are still world leaders in innovating and selling green technology, as this map shows, it's also clear the Earth's axis for "cleantech" is shifting.
China holds just four slots on the top 100 list today, for companies working on solar lamps, LED lighting, waste treatment and batteries (China's low showing on the list is partly because the criteria, which focuses on innovation, excludes firms listed on major stock exchanges). But you can expect that number to shoot up as the "unstoppable upward path" of the country's low-carbon economy accelerates.
China now has three of the top 10 global wind turbine makers, about 50% of the global solar market and produced the world's first solar billionaire several years ago. The Chinese government spent an eye-popping $34.6bn (£22bn) on such industries last year – almost double what the US spent, according to report earlier this month.
The green dragon's ascendancy has clearly rattled some cages. The EU's commissioner for climate action last month warned the US and Europe face losing out to China. "Who is going to get the biggest slice of this pie? A global competition is already well under way. And it is clear that China's huge ambitions make it a formidable competitor for both Europe and the US," Connie Hedegaard told an audience at Harvard Kennedy School in the US.
A damning report by the Centre for American Progress this year ranked the US 19th in the world for selling cleantech products such as wind turbines and solar panels, when the sales were expressed as a proportion of the country's GDP. Even cash injections from the likes of Google, which yesterday said it was investing in a subsea cable network off the eastern seaboard to support a huge 6GW of offshore wind power (tens of thousands of turbines), are unlikely to tilt the balance.
The competitive power of British companies, which took an impressive 10 places on the list, is looking even more uncertain. The UK has the highest level of installed offshore wind turbines on the planet, and the largest single offshore farm. But last week it emerged that the £60m port upgrades vital to handle giant offshore turbines are likely to be cut as part of the government's spending review a week from today. And even if offshore does continue to march ahead in the UK, it's unlikely many of the jobs will be created in Britain – most of the turbines are made in Germany, Denmark, the US and, yes, China.
One of the few embyronic cleantechs that the UK could lead on – capturing carbon emissions at power stations – doesn't look too rosy either. The levy required to build large-scale "carbon capture and storage" (CCS) plants is also a candidate for the government's axe: a move that would be "disastrous", UK parliament was told yesterday.
Ultimately, this is a race that comes down to money. And China, with that colossal $34.6bn spend, is opening a gap that even Silicon Valley's venture capitalists are unlikely to be able to close.
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
UK should fund gas-fired carbon capture
LONDON (Reuters) - A recent global gas glut means Britain should fund carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) for gas-fired as well as coal-fired power plants, the government's chief scientific adviser told Reuters.
Backing advice in June from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), John Beddington on Tuesday called on the British government to fund at least one gas-fired CCS project to capture and bury climate-warming carbon emissions.
Britain plans to fund four demonstration CCS projects by 2020. E.ON and Iberdrola-owned Scottish Power are still competing for the first, and the government has not yet set the details for the other three.
"One of the things the Committee on Climate Change has pointed out and recommended quite strong is that one of the CCS plants we're thinking about putting money in to should be gas-based, with which I completely concur," Beddington said.
"The change in the volume and the economy of natural gas from shale has completely changed the market, so there is potential for significant supplies of gas, which with CCS would be extremely effective technology."
Although still unproven on a commercial scale, CCS is seen as a key weapon in the fight against climate change, and Britain hopes to be able to export CCS technology to big fossil burners such as China and India.
Britain has also set its own ambitious national target of reducing its emissions by 34 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels and plans to use CCS to help achieve this aim.
Beddington said the advent of U.S. gas extraction from shale formations over the past few years meant a lot more gas was available globally, and this made it an even more attractive fuel for generating power.
He added that Britain was still in a good position to be first to develop CCS despite fears that other countries were starting to develop their own technology.
"We do have within the UK a fairly important lead in some of the technologies and understanding of what CCS is going to involve," Beddington said.
Other industry figures at the Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit also called for Britain to focus more on gas CCS projects.
Graeme Sweeney, head of carbon dioxide at Shell, also called at the Summit for one of Britain's CCS projects to involve gas.
"It is important globally to see CCS in association with gas. We need the option to reduce emissions in gas plants to zero."
While others said all four CCS projects are needed to meet Britain's 2020 environmental targets, but they feared funding could be cut as the UK government pledges to reduce public spending.
"It's important we stick with those four projects," said David Kennedy, chief executive of Climate Change Committee. "That is what we need to do to positions ourselves well for the 2020s.
(Reporting by Kwok W. Wan, Gerard Wynn, Nina Chestney, Daniel Fineren; editing by Jane Baird)
Backing advice in June from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), John Beddington on Tuesday called on the British government to fund at least one gas-fired CCS project to capture and bury climate-warming carbon emissions.
Britain plans to fund four demonstration CCS projects by 2020. E.ON and Iberdrola-owned Scottish Power are still competing for the first, and the government has not yet set the details for the other three.
"One of the things the Committee on Climate Change has pointed out and recommended quite strong is that one of the CCS plants we're thinking about putting money in to should be gas-based, with which I completely concur," Beddington said.
"The change in the volume and the economy of natural gas from shale has completely changed the market, so there is potential for significant supplies of gas, which with CCS would be extremely effective technology."
Although still unproven on a commercial scale, CCS is seen as a key weapon in the fight against climate change, and Britain hopes to be able to export CCS technology to big fossil burners such as China and India.
Britain has also set its own ambitious national target of reducing its emissions by 34 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels and plans to use CCS to help achieve this aim.
Beddington said the advent of U.S. gas extraction from shale formations over the past few years meant a lot more gas was available globally, and this made it an even more attractive fuel for generating power.
He added that Britain was still in a good position to be first to develop CCS despite fears that other countries were starting to develop their own technology.
"We do have within the UK a fairly important lead in some of the technologies and understanding of what CCS is going to involve," Beddington said.
Other industry figures at the Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit also called for Britain to focus more on gas CCS projects.
Graeme Sweeney, head of carbon dioxide at Shell, also called at the Summit for one of Britain's CCS projects to involve gas.
"It is important globally to see CCS in association with gas. We need the option to reduce emissions in gas plants to zero."
While others said all four CCS projects are needed to meet Britain's 2020 environmental targets, but they feared funding could be cut as the UK government pledges to reduce public spending.
"It's important we stick with those four projects," said David Kennedy, chief executive of Climate Change Committee. "That is what we need to do to positions ourselves well for the 2020s.
(Reporting by Kwok W. Wan, Gerard Wynn, Nina Chestney, Daniel Fineren; editing by Jane Baird)
Iceland banks on geothermal for economic expansion
IPS: Iceland is moving on from the collapse of its banking sector by exporting something much more sustainable - geothermal power
• Q&A: Geothermal energy
Lowana Veal for IPS guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 October 2010 10.57 BST
Iceland's economy has been rocky since the bank collapse in October 2008, but one field has been expanding -- geothermal energy.
Faced with a dearth of projects, Icelandic engineering companies have increasingly been looking overseas for work. They are being supported by the government and even by the President directly, to win projects for tapping geothermal energy abroad.
Katrin Juliusdottir, minister for industry, hosted Indian energy minister Dr. Farooq Abdullah in September to step up cooperation between the two countries in geothermal energy.
At the World Economic Forum in Tianjin, President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson discussed geothermal energy projects with Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, and signed an agreement on digging for geothermal energy in Inner Mongolia. The new energy will be used for district heating, greenhouse cultivation and electricity.
Icelandic firm Enex has been working in Shaanxi in China and will also work on the Mongolian project.
Iceland is looking further. "In East Africa utilisation of the geothermal potential could free the people of several nations from the bondage of energy poverty," foreign minister Ossur Skarphedinsson told the UN General Assembly late September.
State-owned Iceland GeoSurvey (ISOR) is one of the more experienced companies. Set up in 1945 as part of the National Energy Authority, it has worked on geothermal projects in more than 40 countries.
"In Kenya, Uganda and Djibouti, ISOR has carried out geothermal exploration and related activities, while it has also carried out well testing in Germany, numerical modelling in China and capacity building within the governmental sector in Nicaragua," says ISOR spokesperson Brynja Jonsdottir.
"ISOR is also responsible for much of the teaching and training carried out at the Geothermal Training Programme of the United Nations University (UNU- GTP), and launched several training courses this year in Indonesia and Kenya (1-11 weeks) in cooperation within UNU-GTP."
Together with the Icelandic engineering company Verkis, ISOR has set up the company GeoThermHydro based in Chile. "GeoThermHydro offers services encompassing the major portion of the work comprising the development of geothermal and hydropower plants," managing director Carlos Jorquera tells IPS. "This entails drilling consultation, field management, steam gathering systems, dams, power transmission facilities, consultation on and management of power station construction."
Last May, Reykjavik Energy and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries signed an agreement to cooperate on geothermal ventures overseas. Reykjavik Energy will lead the venture but Iceland GeoSurvey and three engineering companies -- Mannvit, EFLA and Verkis -- are also involved, along with a drilling company and two architect studios.
"But it is still in the beginning stages," says Kristjan B. Olafsson from Reykjavik Energy Invest (REI), the international arm of Reykjavik Energy.
"REI has been working mainly in Djibouti in the Assal Rift Valley. The pre- feasibility study for a geothermal plant has been completed, and four boreholes have been dug, 2.5 km deep. This is thought to be sufficient steam, energy and pressure for the project. But negotiations are still ongoing about the next stage."
"Mannvit is principally working in Hungary, where we are working with the Hungarian firm Pannergy and have 14-15 projects on the go, although we also have offices in Germany and the UK and one project still going in Slovakia. Our newest project is in Santiago," says Runolfur Maack, director of overseas operations with the company.
EFLA signed an agreement in June with Croatian energy firm Energy Institut Hrovje Pozar with the aim of strengthening the development of geothermal utilisation and other forms of energy production in Croatia and some of the Balkan countries. EFLA has also set up a company called Turkison in Turkey undertaking geothermal exploration with a view to designing geothermal power plants for district heating.
One company involved in the overseas market is Reykjavik Geothermal, founded in 2008 purely for geothermal projects abroad. "We are working in Abu Dhabi, Kenya, Papua New Guinea and India," says Gudmundur Thoroddsson, managing director of the company.
Another company, Envent, was set up by REI and Geysir Green Energy to work on geothermal projects in the Philippines and Indonesia. Its biggest current project is on Biliran, an island in the Eastern Visayas region of the Philippines, where a 50MW geothermal power plant is due to come on line in 2012.
The bank Islandsbanki (formerly known as Glitnir) has now a special geothermal energy team. The division was set up in 2006 and includes financial advisors "who are specialised in giving advice about geothermal projects," says the team's executive director, Arni Magnusson.
• Q&A: Geothermal energy
Lowana Veal for IPS guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 October 2010 10.57 BST
Iceland's economy has been rocky since the bank collapse in October 2008, but one field has been expanding -- geothermal energy.
Faced with a dearth of projects, Icelandic engineering companies have increasingly been looking overseas for work. They are being supported by the government and even by the President directly, to win projects for tapping geothermal energy abroad.
Katrin Juliusdottir, minister for industry, hosted Indian energy minister Dr. Farooq Abdullah in September to step up cooperation between the two countries in geothermal energy.
At the World Economic Forum in Tianjin, President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson discussed geothermal energy projects with Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, and signed an agreement on digging for geothermal energy in Inner Mongolia. The new energy will be used for district heating, greenhouse cultivation and electricity.
Icelandic firm Enex has been working in Shaanxi in China and will also work on the Mongolian project.
Iceland is looking further. "In East Africa utilisation of the geothermal potential could free the people of several nations from the bondage of energy poverty," foreign minister Ossur Skarphedinsson told the UN General Assembly late September.
State-owned Iceland GeoSurvey (ISOR) is one of the more experienced companies. Set up in 1945 as part of the National Energy Authority, it has worked on geothermal projects in more than 40 countries.
"In Kenya, Uganda and Djibouti, ISOR has carried out geothermal exploration and related activities, while it has also carried out well testing in Germany, numerical modelling in China and capacity building within the governmental sector in Nicaragua," says ISOR spokesperson Brynja Jonsdottir.
"ISOR is also responsible for much of the teaching and training carried out at the Geothermal Training Programme of the United Nations University (UNU- GTP), and launched several training courses this year in Indonesia and Kenya (1-11 weeks) in cooperation within UNU-GTP."
Together with the Icelandic engineering company Verkis, ISOR has set up the company GeoThermHydro based in Chile. "GeoThermHydro offers services encompassing the major portion of the work comprising the development of geothermal and hydropower plants," managing director Carlos Jorquera tells IPS. "This entails drilling consultation, field management, steam gathering systems, dams, power transmission facilities, consultation on and management of power station construction."
Last May, Reykjavik Energy and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries signed an agreement to cooperate on geothermal ventures overseas. Reykjavik Energy will lead the venture but Iceland GeoSurvey and three engineering companies -- Mannvit, EFLA and Verkis -- are also involved, along with a drilling company and two architect studios.
"But it is still in the beginning stages," says Kristjan B. Olafsson from Reykjavik Energy Invest (REI), the international arm of Reykjavik Energy.
"REI has been working mainly in Djibouti in the Assal Rift Valley. The pre- feasibility study for a geothermal plant has been completed, and four boreholes have been dug, 2.5 km deep. This is thought to be sufficient steam, energy and pressure for the project. But negotiations are still ongoing about the next stage."
"Mannvit is principally working in Hungary, where we are working with the Hungarian firm Pannergy and have 14-15 projects on the go, although we also have offices in Germany and the UK and one project still going in Slovakia. Our newest project is in Santiago," says Runolfur Maack, director of overseas operations with the company.
EFLA signed an agreement in June with Croatian energy firm Energy Institut Hrovje Pozar with the aim of strengthening the development of geothermal utilisation and other forms of energy production in Croatia and some of the Balkan countries. EFLA has also set up a company called Turkison in Turkey undertaking geothermal exploration with a view to designing geothermal power plants for district heating.
One company involved in the overseas market is Reykjavik Geothermal, founded in 2008 purely for geothermal projects abroad. "We are working in Abu Dhabi, Kenya, Papua New Guinea and India," says Gudmundur Thoroddsson, managing director of the company.
Another company, Envent, was set up by REI and Geysir Green Energy to work on geothermal projects in the Philippines and Indonesia. Its biggest current project is on Biliran, an island in the Eastern Visayas region of the Philippines, where a 50MW geothermal power plant is due to come on line in 2012.
The bank Islandsbanki (formerly known as Glitnir) has now a special geothermal energy team. The division was set up in 2006 and includes financial advisors "who are specialised in giving advice about geothermal projects," says the team's executive director, Arni Magnusson.
Google invests in $5bn wind-power superhighway
The Atlantic Wind Connection Project will serve 1.9m homes from New Jersey to Virginia with electricity from dozens of offshore windfarms
Edward Helmore guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 October 2010 15.51 BST
Google is extending its investment in green technology with a $5bn (£3.2bn) programme to build an undersea, wind energy transmission backbone along 350 miles of the Atlantic seaboard.
The grid project, which stands to serve 1.9m homes from Virginia to New Jersey with up to 6,000 megawatts of electric power from dozens of windfarms 10 miles off the mid-Atlantic coast, is the most ambitious of its kind.
Google announced it is working with Trans-Elect and two other firms, but has not offered a timetable for construction. "This system will act as a superhighway for clean energy," said Rick Needham, Google's green-business operations director.
Investment in both wind energy programmes and the controversial extraction of shale oil from deposits in North Dakota, Montana and Alberta, Canada, has increased since the BP spill over the summer caused US lawmakers to curb permits for offshore oil and gas drilling.
For Google, the Atlantic Wind Connection Project is in line with earlier investments. In May, it put $40m into two North Dakota windfarms, its first clean-energy investment. Two days ago the firm announced it had tested a self-driving electric car on Californian highways.
Today's announcement offers hope that further investment will pour into the lagging US wind-energy programme. Consistent wind through Montana and the Dakotas, off the South Carolina coast and across the Texas panhandle gives the US windfarm industry an opportunity to supply significant amounts of electricity to the grid.
But compared with China, now the leading manufacturer of wind turbines and solar energy equipment, the US had been comparatively slow in adopting the technology. Public opposition to windfarms, including a large project off the presidential holiday island of Martha's Vineyard, has taken years to resolve.
That may now be changing: the Global Wind Energy Council industry group estimates wind-power investment may reach $202bn over the next 20 years.
Charlie Hodges, a wind industry analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said: "The North American wind industry hasn't had any players involved with the motivation and financial heft to really move this market forward. Google could play that role."
Edward Helmore guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 October 2010 15.51 BST
Google is extending its investment in green technology with a $5bn (£3.2bn) programme to build an undersea, wind energy transmission backbone along 350 miles of the Atlantic seaboard.
The grid project, which stands to serve 1.9m homes from Virginia to New Jersey with up to 6,000 megawatts of electric power from dozens of windfarms 10 miles off the mid-Atlantic coast, is the most ambitious of its kind.
Google announced it is working with Trans-Elect and two other firms, but has not offered a timetable for construction. "This system will act as a superhighway for clean energy," said Rick Needham, Google's green-business operations director.
Investment in both wind energy programmes and the controversial extraction of shale oil from deposits in North Dakota, Montana and Alberta, Canada, has increased since the BP spill over the summer caused US lawmakers to curb permits for offshore oil and gas drilling.
For Google, the Atlantic Wind Connection Project is in line with earlier investments. In May, it put $40m into two North Dakota windfarms, its first clean-energy investment. Two days ago the firm announced it had tested a self-driving electric car on Californian highways.
Today's announcement offers hope that further investment will pour into the lagging US wind-energy programme. Consistent wind through Montana and the Dakotas, off the South Carolina coast and across the Texas panhandle gives the US windfarm industry an opportunity to supply significant amounts of electricity to the grid.
But compared with China, now the leading manufacturer of wind turbines and solar energy equipment, the US had been comparatively slow in adopting the technology. Public opposition to windfarms, including a large project off the presidential holiday island of Martha's Vineyard, has taken years to resolve.
That may now be changing: the Global Wind Energy Council industry group estimates wind-power investment may reach $202bn over the next 20 years.
Charlie Hodges, a wind industry analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said: "The North American wind industry hasn't had any players involved with the motivation and financial heft to really move this market forward. Google could play that role."
Recycling electrical waste can be made safer, researchers say
Dealing with our electronic waste is hazardous – but a new course hopes to make it safer for the 'dismantlers'
Louise Tickle The Guardian, Tuesday 12 October 2010
People in developing countries who make a living scavenging the dumps of electronic equipment thrown away by the first world face daily hazards most of us never consider as we gaily order our new mobile, laptop or flat-screen television. Recycling our waste electrical items is a dirty job, and those who do it are among the poorest and least educated in the world.
The common practice of burning plastic cables to gain quick access to the valuable copper inside, for instance, gives off smoke that can cause chest and lung problems. Some of the chemicals released into the environment are carcinogenic. Crude break-up of electrical items can cause heavy metals such as lead and mercury to leach into the soil, and then into the water table. From here, they are taken up by plants, ingested by animals, and eventually accumulate at the top of the food chain, in humans.
Though it is now illegal under the UN's Basel Convention for developed countries to ship their toxic e-waste to other countries, there's no doubt it still happens. And even when electronic equipment is certified as safe for re-use and exported legally, the thousands of manual workers who dismantle it are still unlikely to have had any training in how to safely handle it.
Educating these workers in what is a highly casual sector is the problem now being tackled by Professor Oladele Osibanjo, director of the Basel Convention Coordinating Centre For Training and Technology Transfer for the African Region. Osibanjo, based in Lagos, Nigeria, has campaigned internationally against illegal dumping: now, he says, it is imperative to educate workers in how to retrieve the valuable components they depend on for financial survival without damaging their health and that of their community and wider environment.
The difficulty lies not simply in persuading them to attend training, but in finding suitable methods of teaching technical skills to individuals who are often illiterate.
To have any hope of making an impact, training methods must be flexible and highly accessible, and this is where e-learning materials created by UK company Learning Light have played a part, in combination with face-to-face workshops led by Dr Margaret Bates from Northampton University's Centre for Sustainable Wastes Management.
Approached by Osibanjo to see if she could facilitate some initial training for waste workers in Lagos, Bates had to think hard about how to adapt her university approach to teaching people with no academic background. Making graphically clear the long-term effects of poor working practices – through visual images of illnesses contracted because of pollution – is one way she tackled the problem.
"If you're going to stop people continuing with dangerous working practices you have to show them more than just a financial incentive. So the first workshop we ran was the really horrible one, about dioxins and how babies can be affected. We spent time showing participants very visually the effects of this kind of pollution."
About 150 people came along, including local associations of scavengers, dismantlers, repairers, refurbishers and retailers of used and component parts in Lagos state. Representatives of the largest informal e-waste market associations in Lagos also attended.
"The participants were advised to choose from continuing with the present methods, which can shorten their life span, and spend most of the money made from the business in paying for healthcare costs; or adopt international best practice using correct tools and personal protective equipment, and live longer and healthier lives," says Osibanjo.
"Later, the participants admitted to being enlightened that they are at risk of being hurt by e-waste."
Nothing like this had ever been on offer in Nigeria before, says Bates. Driving home the dramatic impacts on human health required her to lead the first workshop; the second session, however, used a tutorial programme already developed by e-learning design specialists Learning Light for prisoner education in the UK.
Though Bates was present for this session, too, the idea is that in future she need not be. It's crucial to the long-term success of this initiative that workers can study under their own steam.
Delivered in discrete online units requiring no reading or writing, and designed to meet the requirements of the European Union's Weee (waste electrical and electronic equipment) Directive, Learning Light's teaching units are loaded into a computer – or accessed online where broadband services are good enough – and use strong visual and oral prompts that translate easily from a UK context to a Nigerian classroom.
"We've got modules for dismantling inkjet printers and computer base stations," says Bates – but that's just the start. Learning Light is developing teaching modules for a variety of equipment types that will ultimately be remotely accessible.
The impact of combining face-to-face contact with experts from Northampton's Centre for Sustainable Wastes Management, with an e-learning course that can be carried out thousands of miles away, could make a significant impact on the safety of those working in the Nigerian dismantling industry, suggests Bates – if funding can be found to keep the course going. Getting approval and encouragement from Nigerian government officials will be vital.
In the UK, the Learning Light course leads to an NVQ; now, with the help of feedback from the initial training sessions, Bates and Osibanjo are working with Nigerian regulators to create a distance-learning programme that will lead to a formal Nigerian qualification for people who might never even have finished school. The sooner a course can be accredited, the easier it will be to attract funding that allows those who rely on our electronic waste to do so without putting their health at risk.
Louise Tickle The Guardian, Tuesday 12 October 2010
People in developing countries who make a living scavenging the dumps of electronic equipment thrown away by the first world face daily hazards most of us never consider as we gaily order our new mobile, laptop or flat-screen television. Recycling our waste electrical items is a dirty job, and those who do it are among the poorest and least educated in the world.
The common practice of burning plastic cables to gain quick access to the valuable copper inside, for instance, gives off smoke that can cause chest and lung problems. Some of the chemicals released into the environment are carcinogenic. Crude break-up of electrical items can cause heavy metals such as lead and mercury to leach into the soil, and then into the water table. From here, they are taken up by plants, ingested by animals, and eventually accumulate at the top of the food chain, in humans.
Though it is now illegal under the UN's Basel Convention for developed countries to ship their toxic e-waste to other countries, there's no doubt it still happens. And even when electronic equipment is certified as safe for re-use and exported legally, the thousands of manual workers who dismantle it are still unlikely to have had any training in how to safely handle it.
Educating these workers in what is a highly casual sector is the problem now being tackled by Professor Oladele Osibanjo, director of the Basel Convention Coordinating Centre For Training and Technology Transfer for the African Region. Osibanjo, based in Lagos, Nigeria, has campaigned internationally against illegal dumping: now, he says, it is imperative to educate workers in how to retrieve the valuable components they depend on for financial survival without damaging their health and that of their community and wider environment.
The difficulty lies not simply in persuading them to attend training, but in finding suitable methods of teaching technical skills to individuals who are often illiterate.
To have any hope of making an impact, training methods must be flexible and highly accessible, and this is where e-learning materials created by UK company Learning Light have played a part, in combination with face-to-face workshops led by Dr Margaret Bates from Northampton University's Centre for Sustainable Wastes Management.
Approached by Osibanjo to see if she could facilitate some initial training for waste workers in Lagos, Bates had to think hard about how to adapt her university approach to teaching people with no academic background. Making graphically clear the long-term effects of poor working practices – through visual images of illnesses contracted because of pollution – is one way she tackled the problem.
"If you're going to stop people continuing with dangerous working practices you have to show them more than just a financial incentive. So the first workshop we ran was the really horrible one, about dioxins and how babies can be affected. We spent time showing participants very visually the effects of this kind of pollution."
About 150 people came along, including local associations of scavengers, dismantlers, repairers, refurbishers and retailers of used and component parts in Lagos state. Representatives of the largest informal e-waste market associations in Lagos also attended.
"The participants were advised to choose from continuing with the present methods, which can shorten their life span, and spend most of the money made from the business in paying for healthcare costs; or adopt international best practice using correct tools and personal protective equipment, and live longer and healthier lives," says Osibanjo.
"Later, the participants admitted to being enlightened that they are at risk of being hurt by e-waste."
Nothing like this had ever been on offer in Nigeria before, says Bates. Driving home the dramatic impacts on human health required her to lead the first workshop; the second session, however, used a tutorial programme already developed by e-learning design specialists Learning Light for prisoner education in the UK.
Though Bates was present for this session, too, the idea is that in future she need not be. It's crucial to the long-term success of this initiative that workers can study under their own steam.
Delivered in discrete online units requiring no reading or writing, and designed to meet the requirements of the European Union's Weee (waste electrical and electronic equipment) Directive, Learning Light's teaching units are loaded into a computer – or accessed online where broadband services are good enough – and use strong visual and oral prompts that translate easily from a UK context to a Nigerian classroom.
"We've got modules for dismantling inkjet printers and computer base stations," says Bates – but that's just the start. Learning Light is developing teaching modules for a variety of equipment types that will ultimately be remotely accessible.
The impact of combining face-to-face contact with experts from Northampton's Centre for Sustainable Wastes Management, with an e-learning course that can be carried out thousands of miles away, could make a significant impact on the safety of those working in the Nigerian dismantling industry, suggests Bates – if funding can be found to keep the course going. Getting approval and encouragement from Nigerian government officials will be vital.
In the UK, the Learning Light course leads to an NVQ; now, with the help of feedback from the initial training sessions, Bates and Osibanjo are working with Nigerian regulators to create a distance-learning programme that will lead to a formal Nigerian qualification for people who might never even have finished school. The sooner a course can be accredited, the easier it will be to attract funding that allows those who rely on our electronic waste to do so without putting their health at risk.
Failure to impose CCS levy on energy bills would be 'disastrous', MPs told
Experts fear the government will not impose the levy needed to raise £4bn for demonstration carbon capture and storage plants
Damian Carrington guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 October 2010 17.32 BST
A failure by the UK government to provide the billions of pounds needed to build full-scale demonstration plants that capture and bury carbon emissions from power plants would be "disastrous", MPs were toldtoday.
Developing carbon capture and storage (CCS) plants is seen as critical to meeting the UK's legally binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions over the next 20 years. But, ahead of the government's comprehensive spending review on 20 October, businesses – including Shell and Siemens – and policy experts have voiced fears that the government will not i impose a levy on energy bills to provide the estimated £4bn needed.
Giving evidence to the House of Commons energy and climate change committee, Prof Jon Gibbins, a CCS expert at the University of Edinburgh, said today: "We are not moving very fast [on CCS]. The biggest obstacle is uncertainty." If the levy was not used, he said: "I think that would send a disastrous message.".
Gibbins was supported by David Kennedy, chief executive of the government's independent advisers, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), who also gave evidence.
The £4bn for four CCS demos would be "money well-spent", he said, in terms of the cutting of carbon emissions and the economic and employment benefits of developing a CCS industry. "If you don't have these [plants] you have to ask is it feasible to decarbonise the electricity supply in the 2020s [as required under existing UK climate targets]?". Asked by MPs if there was an alternative way of funding the CCS plants, he said: "It is not clear what that would be."
Lord Adair Turner , chairman of the CCC, told the MPs that developing CCS was especially crucial given that even gas-fired power stations, which are cleaner than coal-fired stations, could not be allowed to vent their carbon emissions to the atmosphere in the 2020s if targets were to be met.
Kennedy warned that without the CCS levy, the UK would be left behind the US, China, Canada and Australia in developing CCS as a major industrial opportunity, despite the UK's natural advantages of a mature oil and gas industry adept at handling large volumes of piped gas and the proximity of the North Sea, a large reservoir for burying carbon dioxide.
CCS is the process of capturing the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels to generate electricity and then burying it permanently underground, so that it does not contribute to global warming. While the different steps of capture, transport and burial have all been proven, no one has yet put all the steps together on an industrial scale in the UK.
The Labour government's plan was to part-fund the first £1bn demonstration plant with some public money,, with the rest coming from the consumer levy enabled by the Energy Act 2010, passed just before the general election with support from the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. Another three demonstrations would be funded entirely by the levy.
But industry observers have expressed concern that the new coalition government will not use the levy because the funds would appear in the public accounts under the Office for National Statistics' "Blue Book" rules. This would mean an apparent increase in government expenditure in a time of cuts, and would also limit other charges to be levied on energy consumers.
Climate minister Greg Barker worried observers in a speech to the CBI in September in which he warned "some very good [low-carbon] projects" would have to be scaled back, while some less significant programmes will be axed altogether.
Today, 11 of the UK's most eminent energy academics sent a open letter to the government entitled: Don't let accounting rules damage low-carbon policies.
One of the authors, Robert Gross, told the Guardian that putting the CCS levy revenue in the public accounts was "disingenuous". He said: "Without CCS, we would be closing off a key option. We would need a lot more renewable and nuclear energy, and energy could potentially be more expensive."
Another letter, sent to the Financial Times on Monday from 18 companies and organisations including Shell, Siemens and the TUC, said: "It is deeply concerning to hear that the CCS levy may not be introduced.
In other evidence to the committee, Lord Turner said the current cap on the European Union's emissions trading scheme (ETS) was not tight enough to create a carbon price high enough to drive low-carbon technology development. "The crucial issue is, is the EU ETS cap tight enough? I think the argument is no."
Damian Carrington guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 October 2010 17.32 BST
A failure by the UK government to provide the billions of pounds needed to build full-scale demonstration plants that capture and bury carbon emissions from power plants would be "disastrous", MPs were toldtoday.
Developing carbon capture and storage (CCS) plants is seen as critical to meeting the UK's legally binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions over the next 20 years. But, ahead of the government's comprehensive spending review on 20 October, businesses – including Shell and Siemens – and policy experts have voiced fears that the government will not i impose a levy on energy bills to provide the estimated £4bn needed.
Giving evidence to the House of Commons energy and climate change committee, Prof Jon Gibbins, a CCS expert at the University of Edinburgh, said today: "We are not moving very fast [on CCS]. The biggest obstacle is uncertainty." If the levy was not used, he said: "I think that would send a disastrous message.".
Gibbins was supported by David Kennedy, chief executive of the government's independent advisers, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), who also gave evidence.
The £4bn for four CCS demos would be "money well-spent", he said, in terms of the cutting of carbon emissions and the economic and employment benefits of developing a CCS industry. "If you don't have these [plants] you have to ask is it feasible to decarbonise the electricity supply in the 2020s [as required under existing UK climate targets]?". Asked by MPs if there was an alternative way of funding the CCS plants, he said: "It is not clear what that would be."
Lord Adair Turner , chairman of the CCC, told the MPs that developing CCS was especially crucial given that even gas-fired power stations, which are cleaner than coal-fired stations, could not be allowed to vent their carbon emissions to the atmosphere in the 2020s if targets were to be met.
Kennedy warned that without the CCS levy, the UK would be left behind the US, China, Canada and Australia in developing CCS as a major industrial opportunity, despite the UK's natural advantages of a mature oil and gas industry adept at handling large volumes of piped gas and the proximity of the North Sea, a large reservoir for burying carbon dioxide.
CCS is the process of capturing the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels to generate electricity and then burying it permanently underground, so that it does not contribute to global warming. While the different steps of capture, transport and burial have all been proven, no one has yet put all the steps together on an industrial scale in the UK.
The Labour government's plan was to part-fund the first £1bn demonstration plant with some public money,, with the rest coming from the consumer levy enabled by the Energy Act 2010, passed just before the general election with support from the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. Another three demonstrations would be funded entirely by the levy.
But industry observers have expressed concern that the new coalition government will not use the levy because the funds would appear in the public accounts under the Office for National Statistics' "Blue Book" rules. This would mean an apparent increase in government expenditure in a time of cuts, and would also limit other charges to be levied on energy consumers.
Climate minister Greg Barker worried observers in a speech to the CBI in September in which he warned "some very good [low-carbon] projects" would have to be scaled back, while some less significant programmes will be axed altogether.
Today, 11 of the UK's most eminent energy academics sent a open letter to the government entitled: Don't let accounting rules damage low-carbon policies.
One of the authors, Robert Gross, told the Guardian that putting the CCS levy revenue in the public accounts was "disingenuous". He said: "Without CCS, we would be closing off a key option. We would need a lot more renewable and nuclear energy, and energy could potentially be more expensive."
Another letter, sent to the Financial Times on Monday from 18 companies and organisations including Shell, Siemens and the TUC, said: "It is deeply concerning to hear that the CCS levy may not be introduced.
In other evidence to the committee, Lord Turner said the current cap on the European Union's emissions trading scheme (ETS) was not tight enough to create a carbon price high enough to drive low-carbon technology development. "The crucial issue is, is the EU ETS cap tight enough? I think the argument is no."